Susie Bright's Journal

Mad Men, Ft. Hood, & the Stupak Amendment: Connect the Dots

 I can't be the only one to make the connection. 

For those of us who who are devoted to the American tele-novella Mad Men, the recent psycho-shooting at Ft. Hood had an eerie plot echo.
 

(Spoilers ahead).

In Mad Men, which takes place in New York of 1963, there's a fictional character named Greg, an aspiring surgeon who disgraces himself so badly in the operating room that he is forced to go into, shame of all shames, psychiatry. 
 

Since I've placed my life in the hands of a therapist more than once, this reaction came as a surprise to me! 
 

Yet among Greg's colleagues at the hospital, the psychiatry career path is considered a "fail." The deep background on Greg is that we already know he is a messed-up dude, a rapist with serious issues who is the LAST person you'd want to be talking to on a couch. 

As the season closes, we learn that Greg has joined the Army where they're desperate enough to take a loser like him and give him a surgeon's scalpel and a badge.
 

 He's so ignorant he doesn't have a clue that Vietnam is his imminent destination.

Meanwhile, in real life, Nidal Malik Hasan, the deranged Army psychiatrist who went on a shooting spree at Ft. Hood, also turns out to be… a failed surgeon. The detail that caught my eye was the anecdote revealed by his uncle, who said that Hasan went into psychiatry after he FAINTED in the O.R. during a routine childbirth. The sight of a baby emerging from a woman's vagina sent Nidal over the edge.

With that clue, something in me snapped.

This was a guy, who by all accounts so far, has never been on a date, and routinely complained to his mosque's imam that he couldn't find a woman "pious" enough to marry, a virgin who would wear a veil around the clock.

Hassan is being scrutinized for any potential ties to espionage, fanatical religious beliefs, and vicarious PTSD from treating so many broken soldiers.

 But this man's craziness is more clearly understood in the context of his severe and distorted sexual repression.

In the midst of this reality-fantasy convergence, another piece of patriarchal-creep rocked the country— this time, affecting more people than Ft. Hood and Mad Men's viewership combined. We witnessed the Orwellian "health care reform" process become derailed by what I call "The Stupid Amendment," a wildly successful Vatican intervention to make sure that whatever health care plan comes out of Congress, it will be engineered to control women's wombs. 

 In other words, health insurance for men, not for women. 

The Stupak Amendment is ostensibly about preventing women from using their insurance coverage to pay for abortion procedures. But making a rule that women's healthcare below the waist is subject to moral review is outrageous. 

Would any of these politicians consider making a health care exemption to the complications of a man's penis? His prostate? His semen? His scrotum? His urethra? Would urologists, like abortion surgeons, be treated like criminals whose entire knowledge base should be wiped out of existence? Would any man be put on parade to prove "rape, incest, or imminent death" in order to prove that he needed a procedure about ANYTHING?

"Pro-life" rhetoric is now used across the aisle, with even the President proclaiming that the federal government will never fund abortions. 

 

Afghanistan annihilation, yes! Abortion, no!
  
 

 Our war-lovin', misogynistic culture cares so little about "life" that the candlelight vigil for the Hasan's victims at Fort Hood had the air of a rote exercise. Here's Wade Goodwyn, from NPR, talking last week: 

The thing I was struck by was... that the vigil was a well-established routine. 

 

I mean, this was a pretty big moment for me, but I could tell that the attending crowd had done this before. 

And when we interviewed people, the soldiers and the families, after the vigil was over, they'd tell us, "I've been to too many of these already."

This country cares little about killing all life forms and even less about the welfare of its children. Our atrocious infant mortality rates, hungry children, uneducated children, children with birth defects and developmental disabilities treated like trash… my blood's turned cold.  Watching Congressmen gleefully cheer on the passage of the Stupak amendment, for me, was like watching Greg rape Joan— and worse, to witness her acceptance of it.
 

It reminds me of something I wrote in The Sexual State of the Union:

American boomerangs from "Fear of a Black Planet," a Youth Revolt, a genderfuck coup, to the opposite horror: that of a lone man with a big gun. 

Meet the older, privileged, "had-all-the-opportunities" kinda guy who comes equipped with a bomb, no dates, and a pathologically self-centered attitude. Oh, we'll wish he had only been in the Crips! If only he'd been a drag queen, if only he'd pierced his dick and gotten high on dope! Any of these would be preferable, a million times more humane. 

We can diss a counter-culture, but what are we supposed to do with a counter-human? We can't stand to look at the cult of alienated masculinity and wonder how we got here.

Where the Wild Things Are: Alison Bechdel in Susie-Stitched Pajamas

via dykestowatchoutfor.com

Every year I get inspired by a book or two. Inspired, as in, "If I only had one life to live..." inspired. I usually buy a whole carton and hand them out to my friends.  Sometimes I know the author; sometimes I have to look them up on wikipedia and wonder what I've been missing all these years. But I know one thing: it's rare that authors hear from anyone, besides prisoner requests, about the effect their work is having. So I always write a letter, too. 

I've never had the same author shatter my literary coma two years in a row. But Alison Bechdel did it. She's an old colleague of mine from the days when queers only had secret underground lairs to publish in. I thought she was just like me, one of our talented gang of rabble-rousers. She's not— she's a genius. 

The past couple years she released two books: her graphic memoir, Fun House— AND a compedium of her legendary comic strip, The Essential Dykes to Watch Out For.

I contacted Alison and proposed that I could make her a tailored men's shirt, as an homage to her greatness. Then I realized I couldn't pull that off without demanding she come in for multiple fittings while I wrestled with my seamstress inadequacies. She lives in Vermont but even if she lived next door to me in California, I think she'd go crazy with my methods.

So I said, "How about flannel pajamas?"

She liked that idea. She picked out the grizzly bear print from some samples I sent her.

And then.... a YEAR went by. I guess I'm not the world's greatest fan, after all. But this September, I did it— and mailed them after the Labor Day weekend. Alison emailed me to say they arrived... on her birthday. Magic is in the air!

And they fit. And they're cozy. And she's grizz-tastic.

Susie's SexPosi-FemiNisty Blog Carnival-- With Sticky Treats and Prizes!

Hey guess what? I'm hosting my very first Sex-Posi blog carnival!

Send me your nominations by August 20th, and let's knock everyone's eyes out...

This carnival, inaugurated in March, has a very long name:

The Feminist Carnival of Sexual Freedom and Autonomy!

Some of my favorite bloggers have been hosting this year's editions so far... here's the emmient list. Take a look around for inspiration, but please note that we can stretch all boundaries!

I'm giving my edition a nickname:

It's The SexPosiFemiNisty Carnival With Sticky Treats and Prizes!

Readers are the key to any Carnival's success. I may be annotating your nominations, and throwing in my two cents, but there's no substitute for your roving eyes and critical insights.

Please email me any sexual-politics-related blog stories you've read this summer that you thought were well-written, original, funny, touching, outrageous, furious—and again, WELL WRITTEN.

It can be visual, too, come to think of it. Floor me!

You can certainly send me more than one link... I love seeing your tastes. You can also post your nominations below, in the comments. I'll tak'em by bird, plane, any mode you choose.

I'll read all your suggestions, and pick my favorites to feature and write about. I'll publish the winners the first week of September!

And one more thing: If you suggest a "winning" blog post, not only will I credit and link to you with admiration, I'll also send you the latest ebook of Best American Erotica. —I told you it was sticky! Send me your URL if you want to be praised with a link.

Thank you so much to Caroline Shepherd for inviting me to do this in the first place...

From Tight Sweaters to the Pentagon Papers

When my good friend, and mentor, Sally Binford, died in 1994, I thought I knew the entire story of her life.

Sally was one of the gate-crashing feminist sexual liberationists of her generation; I couldn't get enough of that! She was a great storyteller, and I loved to listen to her.

But sometimes it feels like you never really get to know anyone... until they're gone. They tell their story to someone else, and you learn something altogether new.

When Sally was 50, she decided to "live life to the fullest" and then arranged to "checking out," at age 70, regardless of her health. That was 1994.

That decision, to plan her own death, was my first experience with someone choosing their own exit without any, as they say, suicidal tendencies. She let all her dear friends and lovers know her intentions, and wrote a letter to  us the night before she said adieu.

Now, years later, I've discovered something more, a detailed story of Sally's life I hadn't heard before.

A historian and poet named Janet Clinger published a remarkable collection of interviews Our Elders, Six Bay Area Life Stories.

All the subjects of Janet's book are the kind of largely-unsung heroes who made leaps in American history that still take your breath away.

Sally, for example, is famous as an era-changing anthropologist, but her life as a feminist and sexual pioneer was perhaps, more revolutionary in her time.

From Sally's Interview:

“Not a Jewish princess”

“I was born in Brooklyn in 1924. My parents became upwardly mobile and moved to Long Island when I was nine. I was supposed to be a Jewish princess, but something went wrong. It never quite worked out that way.

"I went to a very small private school from fourth grade through high school. Played a fair amount of field hockey, studied a lot of French and Latin.

"When I was in the second grade in public school in Brooklyn, this little boy and I had a real crush on each other. We were caught passing notes back and forth. When the teacher came to dinner at our house, I remember hearing her and my parents laughing, their being so amused and snotty about it, because this little boy, whom I had a crush on, was Chinese. I was just furious. What was wrong with his being Chinese?   ....

Rude Bits: Tracy Quan on the Raunch Debate

Recently, on BBC Radio 4, Cosmopolitan's UK edition was attacked by Carol Sarler for reducing women to the sum of our "rude bits." Cosmo's deputy editor Helen Daly was a model of civility, despite the fact that Sarler had called her magazine a "raddled old slapper."

This story by Tracy Quan, reprinted from Fifth Estate 

The surprise here is that Sarler isn't your typical anti-sex crusader. Over the years, she has written thoughtful stuff about women's issues. She has opposed repressive porn laws which seek to "clean up" our minds and taken a stand against victim-oriented feminism, especially where drinking and sex are concerned. Her recent commentary on Anna Nicole Smith was provocative yet compassionate.

Despite this, Sarler joins the "anti-raunch" chorus. She's especially ticked off by a question Cosmo posed to readers: is flashing your breasts on a night out empowering?

A transatlantic anti-raunch movement is growing, but today's finger-wagging scolds are different from the militants who opposed porn in the 1980s. They don't necessarily hate men or view women as blameless victims: Ariel Levy, author of Female Chauvinist Pigs, is troubled by the fact that young women are themselves fueling the Girls Gone Wild phenomenon. They're more mainstream: The jacket of Pamela Paul's Pornified features an American-flag thong panty, and Pamela seems just blond enough to carry off the look in private. (Dark-haired Ariel might be too earnest for stars-and-stripes underwear but she has her own appeal.)

I doubt that either of these camera-ready authors could end up like Andrea Dworkin, who, at the height of her fame, looked as eccentric and tormented as her message. Today's anti-porn headliners tend to be pretty and presentable. They may be wrong about a few things but they aren't lunatics— or even wild-eyed visionaries like Dworkin. Nor are they radical thinkers, like Catharine MacKinnon whose outlandish legal theories broke new ground. They are packaged not as hardline feminists, but as voices of sanity in a hyped up, hypersexual wilderness.

But you can't blame Ariel and company for trying to make sense of this new reality. When MacKinnon and Dworkin hatched their theories, the college students who flash, masturbate and French kiss each other in Girls Gone Wild videos weren't even born yet. Strippercise wasn't being hawked by the Washington Post or BBC as the latest way to tone your abs. Back then, MacKinnon, Dworkin and their followers were almost as marginal as the sex industry.

As a former sex worker, I have some questions about "raunch culture" in general and about cardio-striptease in particular. Jenna Jameson, who once worked as a stripper, made it clear in her memoir that exotic dancing is extremely hard on the body— it's a job, and hardly the ideal path to fitness. In How to Make Love Like a Porn Star, Chapter Nine is devoted to shin splints, degenerative muscle tissue and other occupational injuries.

The dancers I know are doing Pilates, yoga, kick-boxing and weights to stay fit— not "strippercise." Some take self-defense classes to protect themselves on the job. The same is true of hookers. Sex industry workers who can afford to do so invest considerable time and money in physical therapy, relaxation treatments and health care because our bodies are, quite literally, our business.

But not all sex workers can afford such antidotes, and sometimes I think women outside the sex trade are being sold a bill of goods about how "empowering" or fun sex work is. While it can be fun, there are dues to be paid, and sexual power extracts a price. That's why I never recommend prostitution as a career to anyone, even the most enthusiastic would-be call girls.

And it's why I question the wisdom of appearing in a commercial video, naked and masturbating, in exchange for... a tank top. If someone is making money off your body, you should too. If it would make you feel a bit sleazy to sell your own sex videos or to get paid for that masturbation routine, then perhaps you shouldn't take your shirt off for the camera. Are you doing it just because you're drunk?

Like Ariel, I can believe that appearing in a Girls Gone Wild video leaves some participants feeling a bit, well, hungover the next day. There's nobody more prudish than a former prostitute. When I see the girls I once worked with, we trade quips about how white our cotton undies are. Few of us will watch porn with our boyfriends or husbands.

Been there, done that—  with our clients— and porn looks too much like work to us.  We actually think it's unromantic for a man to ogle other women— that's something customers do.

And yet I'm not ready to cast my lot with anti-raunch campaigners. While I've arrived at my brand of prudishness honestly, I'm not convinced they have. And, as one who still identifies with the sex industry, I don't trust them. In America, for example, the anti-raunch consensus seems to be that society is going to hell in a handbasket— and college girls are getting rowdier— because sex workers aren't cowering in their shame-filled closets.

Recalling that Vanessa Williams lost her "Miss America" crown because Penthouse photos had resurfaced, Ariel appears to be nostalgic for the good old days when "being exposed in porn was something you needed to come back from."

Now, to her dismay, being in porn is "itself the comeback." Though she urges her readers to remember that sex workers are, indeed, working, you get the eerie sense that we're like black people moving into a previously white neighborhood. Perhaps, since she's deploring our cultural influence on hitherto "nice" girls, a better analogy would be white fans aping black musicians, a trend that's been around since jazz was invented.

One supporter of Ariel's alarmist thesis is Jennifer Egan, a New York novelist who looks askance at mainstream books about sex work and, like Ariel, assumes that commercial sex is in league with raunch culture.

It's more complicated than that, for the sex industry is no monolith. Many prostitutes view themselves as traditional beings clinging to a subtler, more feminine, aesthetic than we now see in porn, at lap-dancing clubs— or at hen parties. Romantic Cinderella fantasies are still alluring to us, but these tend to bubble below the surface, in the private sphere of the prostitute's mind. A deeply independent streak might render those fantasies moot in the cold light of day but still... prostitution can be a lot less raunchy and brutal than some of the mainstream dating rituals I've witnessed.

As a former hooker, I'm shocked and puzzled by what young single males get away with— not with sex workers but with civilians. The old-world pre-feminist concept of the gentleman is alive and well in the world of post-feminist prostitution, where respectful admiration is still valued. From a distance, the sex industry appears larger than life. Close up, you will see that it's not just a parade of bigger 'n' better plastic breasts. Or cosmetically altered sex organs.

In the most traditional areas of the sex trade, where people don't just gawk and stare, there's room for civilized interaction. The problem Ariel describes is real: Women outside the industry don't have much contact with the intimate side of commercial sex. So, they can be conned into embracing the most visible hype— the carnival of the lap dance club, the gymnastics of porn, the superficial sleaziness of "raunch culture."

Prostitution's a different kind of zone where off-the-record intimacy is uniquely its own thing and quite varied: illicit, awkward, friendly, disturbing, joyful, tense, kind, or even angry and resentful. It's a very mixed bag of emotions. Men who aren't in the industry can easily sample these intimate, humanizing secrets. Most men who visit prostitutes are probably aware that internet porn, phone sex and lap-dancing contain a cartoon component.

But they don't tend to discuss their findings with the civilian women in their lives. It's just not done. And yet, women in large numbers find aspects of the sex trade rather alluring. The result is, you guessed it, recreational pole-dancing as a form of empowerment. Or, perhaps, flashing your breasts on a Saturday night.

Whether you find it empowering or appalling, this is a trend worth discussing. It tells us much about our cultural mood and reflects some new thinking about the sex industry in relation to society. In other words, Cosmo has found a way to treat our body parts not as "rude bits" but as, well, talking points.

Tracy writes rude interesting bits like this all the time at FifthEstate. Her latest book is Diary of a Married Call Girl: A Nancy Chan Novel. And of course, her blog will keep you fully informed!  Photo: Finn Fons.

Delta Dawn, What's That Frat Pin You Have On?

Forget scrotum slander— the Times has once again raised the puke-worthy bar of liberal disbelief by exposing a bitter new chapter of Animal House— Big Cat Division.

The story takes place in Indiana, at De Pauw University, a Greek mainstay. One of the nation's oldest sororities— Delta Zeta—  expelled virtually their entire chapter for not being fuckable enough.

"Fuckable" is the key word here, although it's been euphemistically described as an "image problem" defined by weight gain, brown skin, and inattention to fashion trends. Yeah, that's the "nice" way they're putting it! The studious math and science nerds of De Pauw's DZ house failed the "sorostitute" exam, and were sent their notices— evicted a week before finals.

The women who were canned were either fat— exact pounds not released!—  or "ugly," non-white, or some shocking combination of the three. But the main problem was that they didn't put out. The national DZ leadership sent down a team of slender good-to-go blonds to take over recruiting, and weed out the non-compliant.

My "fair and toothy" photo above is— or was, pre-meltdown— the main illustration from DZ's home page. I feel sorry for the models. They might all be perfectly nice dykes who've been sold to DZ's PR Team for Aryan Sisterhood.

The second photo are some of the expelled DZ crew who are thankfully not keeping their mouths shut, despite threats from the National Office that they will be stripped— stripped!— of their alumna status if they make a peep.

You can read what some of the expelled "sisters" have to say for themselves, what some of their adoring  boyfriends have added, plus plenty of indignant and disgusted alumni.

You can also read the campus newspaper, which seems determined to parse the insult by hairs. For instance, according to a recent survey, a slight majority of students say they "understand" why DZ's leaders had to do what they did. Students are already discussing who will be the most undesirable sorority, now that the "Delta Dogs" have been put to sleep.

The Greek system is founded on discriminations of race, class, and family— sugar-coated over the years as a "way to make friends." They prey on every freshman's fear of being lonely and miserable. But popularity contests on this scale are ingrained with their own special kind of misery. "A place to groom future bigots and desperate housewives" is one of the unhappy possibilities.

DZ, like every other traditional Greek, is notorious for closing "problem" chapters (one house was disowned after they recruited a Jewish girl), and keeping segregation alive long after George Wallace began to seem quaint. Putting De Pauw into receivership is just another pearl in their string game.

But there's another angle besides Greek-style eugenics. It's the heightened heterosexual regime of trophy wife assembly. These young women must learn to project the promise of Virgin WASP Money while getting sloshed and performing merit-based blow jobs on a calculated ladder of potential husbands, i.e., frat-brats. Plenty of the De Pauw "undesirables" had boyfriends and sex lives— they just weren't "partying" hard enough. Yep, their booze and tease stats were too low to qualify.

Sure, there's another view, too. It goes like this:

DZ's scandal in Indiana is an example is a sorority gone awry, a blemish on a farm system for the Wholesome Young Ladies of Tomorrow, doing good deeds (service!) and striving for outstanding leadership. Of course, a girl should try and look her best, but it's all about sisterhood and rolling up your charm bracelets to make it work.

This rationale is The Forgiveness Cupcake with Poor Excuse Frosting. Sorority-apologist puppy eyes mask the face of a truly ugly premise— that some people are better than others because of the manner born. Who wants to party down with that?

The media splash at De Pauw is rattling people's cages because of the fear it gnaws on: that we're pedaling backward into a 21st Century Dark Age:

Undergraduate education is no pursuit of knowledge— it's a Barbie Doll knuckle fight for a shrinking brass ring.

Fat is the new black.

"Old school" racism is cemented with tokens and grinding denial. 

Bourgeois obsession with the luxe-fetish of femme-objet dwarfs any student's sexual reality.

These are the bad beans that have everyone's stomach in knots. Is this what anyone imagined their little girl growing up to be? A ballerina, an astronaut— or a student locked in her bedroom by her "sisters" because they think she's too ugly to come downstairs? Even Cinderella wouldn't pass that gas.

Notes on Cunt

One of the biggest sex stories of the year— which many decried as the most repulsive— was child-star-turned-dissolute-divorceé Britney Spears, who flashed her waxed vulva for all the world to see.

The world however, hasn't been able to pry their hands from their face. The peek-a-boo set is, for once, too scared to look.

My photograph on the left is not Ms. Spears— it's a friend of mine. I wish Britney could have been as unapologetic. I wish her audience could have been cunt-positive. Neither is remotely the case. But let's unveil this one slowly.

In Bed with Susie Bright 276: The Year's Top Sex Story

Listen to excerpt.

The phenomenon of celebutard coozie flashings was remarkable, but the depth of analysis was sophomoric. Why?

Was the fury on account of Britney torpedoing her "I'm a Republican Goody-Two-Shoes" career? Nope, she can get in the back of a very long line on that ticket. Was it Hollywood, the star-making suicide machine? Alas, the spectacle of child exploitation in show business until they disintegrate into narcissistic toy-adults is all too common.

The real shock, the bit no one mentions, is that even though everyone is informed, through reading, about Britney's crotch shot, relatively few people have looked at the evidence. The majority haven't seen, or want to see, what all the fuss is about.

Go look. Remember to remove all the whore/madonna crap out of your mind, and tell me what you think about it.

Without the slightest feminist or artistic design, Spears has changed the public perception of what a mother-of-two's sexuality might be all about. Here she is, showing you her bare cunt, and a vulnerable cesarean scar that couldn't be obscured by  otherwise careful makeup.

The picture has an impact, regardless of her delusions.

"But why should I peer at such a thing?" you might protest. "It's vulgar! It's sad! I'm above all that!"

Oh, bullshit. Have you ever looked at titty pictures for the hell of it? And speaking of vulgarity, who flocked to Saddam's hanging video, or clicked on Abu Ghraib's tortures? That was far, far more popular than Brit's twat.

There's no need to list extremes. What about reality TV— squirming is a national pastime!  And who wouldn't pass up a picture of Justin Timberlake's hard cock if it happened to be captured from the Mickey Mouse Club bathroom? Many of us will voyeurize everything, and still hesitate when it comes to a photograph of a woman's genitals. 

There is something about the sexual and creative center of a woman's anatomy that is beyond the PALE of our comprehension. We just can't hack it!

Sure, Britney's hoo-hoo has gotten plenty of internet clicks, but not NEARLY as much traffic as any of the incidents I listed above.

If you do go to the forums where people are looking and commenting on BS's photos, they are all men. Each one of them debates how disgusting her vagina is, and just how desperate you'd have to be to fuck her. The disdain and condemnation for her behavior is beyond anything I have ever seen on any subject. Bush never got it this bad, nor Clinton, for that matter.

In the printed news about Britney, we hear of her "inappropriate behavior" as a euphemism, while the actual deed is obscured. She is said to drink, pop pills, snort powders, pass out in public, commit sartorial murder, lather in promiscuity, be the worst mom ever.

But GOD FORBID you should mention she has a cunt, and that she showed it without any foreplay, tease, or a million-dollar payout. Playboy centerfolds are fainting from the disgrace of it all. Ms. Spears simply opened the door of her limo, then did the same with her legs, and let the cameras go nuts.

Why is THIS act the last straw? A shot of a man's penis, flaccid or erect, never destroyed him. People might think it's funny, interesting, sexy, or bizarre, but not a condemnation to hell. You can see Daniel Craig's cock in his popular movies, and he's  been elevated to Bond.

Britney Spears, or any female public figure, cannot reveal her uncovered mons without a wholescale public attack. It wouldn't matter if she was a brilliant actress or avant-garde philosopher. When it comes to this anatomy, where the pleasure comes in— and the babies come out— our culture is in cardiac arrest. The fear and loathing crush any reality check.

"What about hardcore?" you may ask. Yes, porn is the exception, but even there, we see a transformation. Beaver shots are not "in" anymore, as they were for one brief moment in the 70s. Aroused cunts are not the focus— it's tits, bouncy butts and shaved anuses, gigantic cocks, denuded holes, and fantastic open mouths. When was the last time you saw an X-rated picture promoted based on cunnilingus or any kind of cunny-worship?

Furthermore, the hair issue has been turned upside down. It used to be that pubic hair denoted modesty and mystery, the allure of the enchanted forest.

Now, a single hair is thought of as unclean. By waxing everything off (which shaving alone cannot accomplish)— and following up with bronze makeup from waist to knees— you achieve a Barbie Thing. It's a a desexualized "clean" look, as Britney's stylists put it. If it wasn't for Spears' birthing scar, and the curve of her thighs, you might miss her element altogether!

I have nothing against shaving or waxing per se— it's all quite fun until the hair grows back in! I appreciate seeing the "sculpture" of a woman's cunt, and how it's mature, not like a young woman's. Most people don't even know that— that your coozie grows up. I once published one of Tee Corinne's self-portraits of her shaved vulva in On Our Backs, and the magazine was banned all over the country for being "child porn." The censors don't even know what a 35-year-old woman's genitals look like, and how different it is from a baby's. The ignorance is stupendous.

I'm not trying to be obvious. I'm exhausted with the usual rhetoric. It's not that anyone should shave, or not shave— pose "commando," or wear long-johns. Yes, Britney is a mental health train-wreck, and yes, there are far more important things that should be on the front page of the newspaper. All of those things are easy to say.

My beef is this: the toxic taboo around women's cunts, clits, and the whole furry circle is so over-the-top that it goes beyond celebrity scandal or pleas for modesty. Our conservative culture has made a fetish of women's sex as "dirty" beyond compare; a sin and a revulsion above all else. Of course I could write a book about this, and many others have. Like Inga. Or Laura. Or Betty, Tee, or Joani. Somebody please send Brit copies.

The ultimate disfavor of the anti-cunt clamor is that women get the impression that there is something terribly wrong down there. So wrong it can't be spoken plainly, let alone looked at.

The club-girl commandos like Paris, Lindsay, Tara, and Britney have done us all a very weird favor. They have degraded feminine "virtue"— thank goodness. By making a cunty spectacle of themselves, they have inadvertently triggered consciousness that, in a subversive context, taps the right note. They might not understand a pussy-pride backlash— they may deny, regret, and wring their hands— but the clit-fix is in. I'll look forward to a sober, in-your-face replay.

In my mailbag, I follow all this up by offering some timely advice to a woman who worries her boyfriend will be grossed out when he goes down on her. See what I mean?

Top photo by Honey Lee Cottrell, and middle photo from Tee Corinne, both published with many awesome others in Nothing But the Girl. A wonderful fan sent me the CuntFire Girls logo, but I have no idea who created it! Please tell me if you know!

This story is one of our Top-10 most popular posts!

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Thank you so much... Susie

Susie and Laura Kipnis Share a Female Thing

My podcast guest this week is Laura Kipnis, author of The Female Thing: Dirt, Sex, Envy, Vulnerability—  which follows her last yummy polemic against the monogamous ideal, titled: Against Love.

In Bed with Susie Bright 271: The Female Thing with Laura Kipnis

Listen to a little bit here...
 

Kipnis writes four essays like Pandora opening her box with more caustic eye this time. In her chapter, "Dirt,"  for example, she demands to know when liberated women will put down the soap and sponge. She speculates how women respond to the specter of vaginal "dirtiness" with an overzealous cleaning reaction.

With most popular advice manuals today still screaming about how women can obtain what they "lack," Laura says women now spend inordinate amounts of time keeping themselves and their houses spotless. Those bizarre vagina and labia operations would seem to fit that bill too, where you pay a plastic surgeon to "neaten up" your bits.

In my own case, I seem to have lost this "clean gene" many years ago, and I always thought it was because I got away from my mom's discipline, or because I worked so long as a house-cleaner that I vowed I would never treat housecleaning as anything less than a professional job. I never thought that my indifference to scouring might be related to my growing cunt-positivity as a feminist adolescent!  I kinda like this!

Kipnis is a theorist, so even though her titles make you want to needle her for advice, she avoids "solutions" like the plague. I'd have a hard time being in that position; I  always wanna fix stuff. (Okay, let's not analyze that...)

For example, in her sex section, she writes with some amusement and amazement about the "story of the ever-changing clitoris," the need to justify and explain women's orgasm, which reinvents itself as often as Madonna. The makeover never seems to end. Kipnis likes to consider all the orgasmic permutations from a distance, and says that the very nature of women's genitals, and the fact that their pleasure is not directly connected to the reproductive act, is what makes this merry-go-round of "explanations" such a frustrating loop.

This is something Elizabeth Lloyd (The Case of the Female Orgasm) and Rachel Maines (The Technology of Orgasm) have discussed, with a more earnest feminist motive, and I fall into that camp too. I don't give a shit that there's lots of silly explanations for women's frigidity or flowering... I want gals to put down the vacuum, pick up the Hitachi, take a mirror to their hoo-hoo, and WAKE UP.

My explanation for the contradictory fluff about women's sexual potential is that female orgasm has been not understood, not researched, not considered a matter for science until very, very, recently. It wasn't until the 1980s that women's bodies were considered anything other than an "abnormal" version of the male norm throughout medical practice.

Notwithstanding all the flavor-of-the-month books about how to have a hot sex life, most women are still in the dark about their own orgasm until they're  adults, and typically suffer some sort of sense of inadequacy if they are one of the 90% who don't come through hands-free intercourse in the missionary position. Hell, women are still feeling bad if they do come and it's not in  the confines of "love" or more traditionally, a marriage.

I know that the TV-crowd is supposed to think that women's sexuality has been revolutionized by rabbit-vibe-buying characters on Sex in the City, but I find that to be light propaganda, an amusement. If as many women used a vibrator, as the number who've only laughed at a vibrator punchline, we'd be living in a very different female world.

Laura says that the idea that women can ever go out and have sex "like the boys" is an improbable fantasy; that given our anatomy, it ain't going to happen— as intriguing as it sounds. She believes  this state of affairs hasn't always been factored into the larger feminist story. She has lots of provocative points to talk about, that'll make you wish I kept her locked in the interview chamber even longer than I did!

The most fun, for me, was at the end, when I asked Laura if she wanted to break all her rules against "giving advice" and help me out with a letter from a listener. Laura and I have both written about fat women in porn, so I asked her if she'd like to take  a letter from a listener who has been rejected by a new lover who says she's too fat.... OUCH! 

Once Ms. Kipnis agreed to respond, my god, the tiger was loose! She gave that woman PLENTY of advice.  I'm going to make Laura answer all the letters from now on!

You know... as an aside, I would never, ever, TELL a lover that I was breaking things off with them because of their body type— it's just too fucking mean. It shows some critical lack of empathy, or perhaps missing the point altogether. Sex is not an audition at a modeling agency— thank god. Your erotic opinion, in nearly every case, is  about your preferences— not about your partner's potential to be hot to someone else.

I've also never had anyone say to me: "you're too skinny, too fat, too white, too tall, too flat, too busty," — whatever. Am I unusual, or isn't this the norm? It's not because I'm so gorgeous. I'm sure I haven't been the "ideal body" for plenty of lovers, but no one's been rude enough to give me an "exit assessment!" Most people know to keep their mouth shut and simply decline future dates with the classic Marcia Brady euphemism: "Sorry, but something's come up!"

Don't forget, you can be everyone's favorite Santa just by writing to request Susie's free Girly Cards for your friends. Send those requests, as well as your confidential sex questions and feedback about the show to susie@audible.com. (Episode 271, December 1, 2006.).

An Unsocialized Woman: Ellen Willis Redux

“There are two kinds of sex, classical and baroque.

"Classical sex is romantic, profound, serious, emotional, moral, mysterious, spontaneous, abandoned, focused on a particular person, and stereotypically feminine.

"Baroque sex is pop, playful, funny, experimental, conscious, deliberate, amoral, anonymous, focused on sensation for sensation's sake, and stereotypically masculine.

"The classical mentality taken to an extreme is sentimental and finally puritanical; the baroque mentality taken to an extreme is pornographic and finally obscene. Ideally, a sexual relation ought to create a satisfying tension between the two modes (a baroque idea, particularly if the tension is ironic) or else blend them so well that the distinction disappears (a classical aspiration).”

In Bed with Susie Bright 270: Remembering Ellen Willis

Listen to a little bit...

Ellen Willis, one of my favorite writers/thinkers/hell-raisers, died earlier this November of lung cancer. Among her many incandescent appearances,  Willis was the first pop-music critic for The New Yorker, a founding member of Redstockings, and a progenitor of sex-positive feminism— in fact, she created the term. They broke the mold after this lady, I'm tellin' ya!

In this week's podcast, I read from some of my favorite Ellen originals— from why "Women Against Pornography" had it all wrong, to the inanities of Bush Senior's original War on Drugs. Makes you want to piss on the floor just to hear it.

My one collaboration with Willis' work was in what you might call an "ovular" anthology called Caught Looking: Feminism, Pornography, and Censorship. About twenty women worked their butts off on this rarity. This book is out of print, and even a used copy of the 1988 edition is twenty bucks— but there has never been a more eloquent, hard-hitting, and visceral expression from the most radical of the feminist sexual liberationists.

I was just rereading Caught Looking the other night and realized that I don't know if there's anything I've worked on that said it better.

Finally... for the last part of my show, in my Try This at Home mailbag, I weigh in on the scandal of non-oxynol-9 and why it's far past time for danger-free spermicide option.

Don't forget, you can send your confidential questions, feedback about the show, and your requests for Susie's freebie Girly Cards, to susie@audible.com. (Episode 270, November 24, 2006)

Rape Scenes

I remember the first time someone stuck his hand down my pants when I didn't want him to.

My roommate and I were mugged and molested on Page and Ashbury while walking home from a movie at the Red Vic. I must have been twenty.

What I remember most was that my assailant was a full head shorter than me. He looked to be about fourteen, and he had the tip of his knife pushed against my breastbone. I was scared stiff, unable to move, pleading.

Our two mugger boys were so inexperienced that one of them handed my roommate's keyring back to her so he could use both hands to unfasten her pants. She blew the silver whistle that hung off her keys— and as if she had fired a warning shot— the armed and dangerous brats ran like rabbits.

It was over. I felt like shit, and I continued to feel like shit for months. I moved out of the neighborhood.

I  also remember the first time I had a forced-sex fantasy. I was quite young and had gotten my hands on a naughty book, one of those "pseudo-textbooks" in sociology. It featured “true tales of juvenile delinquency,” and I found it in the library, mis-shelved.

I had never seen the word “delinquent” before, and it sounded pornographic to say the word out loud.

One story described a teenage girl pinned to a cross, just like Jesus, on a grassy hill outside her suburb; all the boys in her school had their way with her.

Another story was about a little girl who didn't obey her parents' warnings not to talk to strangers. She was kidnapped walking to school by a couple who sequestered her in their apartment and introduced her, day by day, to various sex acts which she first resisted and then (of course) became addicted to.

I was attending Catholic school at the time and my head was already filled with stories of romantic martyrdom and the wages of sin. The juvenile delinquents' dramas played over and over again in my head at night as I rubbed myself through layers of sheets, pajamas and underwear, always coming very hard. I never left that neighborhood.

I didn’t acknowledge having perilous fantasies until I was in my twenties. In a women’s studies college course, our teacher asked us if we had experienced arousing “rape fantasies.”

One girl tearfully raised her hand and said this was true for her. My heart beat so fast it was all I could do to stay put. I was just as ashamed as she of these fantasies, but I would never have admitted them. Our professor was quite kind to her, if misinformed.

Our professor comforted the girl by saying that, as women, we had been brainwashed by the patriarchy to eroticize our subordination to men. She said these fantasies were very common, which is true, and that we could "overcome" them by exposing our fantasies to feminist analysis and by our increasing self-esteem.

She was wrong on that count. In fact, I knew she was wrong later that same night. Despite my assertive self-confidence, rock-hard feminist analysis, and weekly shift at the rape crisis hotline, I could still crawl into bed and successfully masturbate to the same disturbing fantasies that had aroused me since I was a child.

Feminism and self-esteem had no more effect on my erotic hot spots than the communion wafers I used to take every Sunday, hoping they would wash away the devil's seed inside of me. Clearly, religion and linear politics were useless in explaining the unconscious and subversive quality of eroticism.

Two years later, I started reading about sexuality for the first time: the stuff that comes after the birds and the bees. At an airport newsstand, just before boarding, I picked up the mass-market edition of Nancy Friday's “My Secret Garden” in idle curiosity. The back cover quoted a psychiatrist who said the book revealed "the hidden content of our own sexuality." I wondered what it would reveal about me, other than that I was a hopeless pervert.

It was a long trip from L.A. to Detroit. In fact, I would say it was the most excruciating five hours I have ever spent in the air. My face was scarlet; my floatable seat cushion was wringing wet. Friday quoted her "first name only" correspondents—Marie, Debbie, Jessica—describing fantasy after fantasy on subjects I had never spoken out loud: incest, anal sex, erotic kidnapings, dog-lickings, gang bangs, screwing on altars, and panting in total darkness with nothing on but a blindfold.

As flabbergasted as I was that these women seemed to come from every background and corner of the map, I recognized that I had aroused myself with similar taboo themes for as long as I could remember. I never consciously said to myself, "Oh, I think I'll fantasize about my sex-slave circus tonight." But each time I climaxed, at the moment of truth, those tigers and cowering slave girls flashed through my mind. The whip cracked.

I was one of Nancy's kids. According to the book's cover copy, I was “one of a million” women who read this book who, I assume, had a similar reaction. Either there were a million female delinquents clutching our stroke-book in sweaty shame, or these sexual fantasies were as normal as apple pie.

I had never considered what created an erotic fantasy. I thought a sex fantasy was some “Tiger Beat” scenario where you scored a dream date with this month's current tanned celebrity. I had masturbated since I was eight, but when I squeezed my eyes shut and bore down so hard on my arm that my fingers went numb, I never saw Robert Redford drift across my orgasmic screen. Or Mick Jagger. Or Bianca Jagger, for that matter. I thought the stars of my generation were glamorous, fascinating even, but they never appeared in my sex dreams. My fantasy characters were strangers to me.

Nancy Friday broke down the closet door by publishing unfiltered erotic confessions of hundreds of women. Unfortunately, she also insisted on providing, in the same pages, her tortured analysis of female sexuality. It was mom’s fault, apparently. On the one hand, she was a feminist who believed her respondents were thriving, healthy women who had a lot of guts to speak out like this. On the other hand, she hinted that the whole lot of them had seriously ruptured relationships with their mothers. Or fathers. Or maybe society at large. It was pop psychology at its most awful.

Instead of describing the delicate framework of erotic triggers, both deeply personal AND cultural, Friday tried to read fantasies like they were Tarot decks.

Oh, you have a lesbian fantasy? That must be the "longing to be close to mother" card. Every time I read one of her explanations, I felt like someone was trying to stuff my foot into a shoe that didn't have a prayer of fitting. Later, when I recommended the book to friends, I issued strict instructions: “Read the fantasies only, and draw your own conclusions.”

It’s normal, it’s common, to fantasize about the bizarre— the things that in real-life circumstances would trouble us, frighten us, or maybe just make us laugh. Erotic fantasies take the unbearable issues in life and turn them into orgasmic gunpowder.

Friday continued to collect fantasies after My Secret Garden into a sequel, Forbidden Flowers, which came out in the mid-Seventies. Then, twenty years later, she compiled an anthology for the New Age: Women on Top. As you can guess from her title, she not only had new stories to share, but also the claim that women's lives and wet dreams have changed since she did her first interviews.

On one score she's right. Most of the women in her recent book are the last, most liberal end of the baby boom. Their  youthful attitude toward masturbation is matter-of-fact. One of the rare fifty-year-old contributors ends her fantasy with the exclamation of a post-feminist convert: "Masturbation is GREAT." These women consider sexual satisfaction a completely reasonable expectation in their lives. The last hurrah before erotic partisanship of the abstinence and “purity ball” era.

Sex toys are common-place in these respondents' bedrooms, and in their fantasies. They sometimes take on Terminator proportions, as in one story about a woman who imagines herself being penetrated and stroked along a relentless conveyor belt.

The fantasies were just as wild when they came from virgins as when they emerged from women with plenty of experience. "Connie," who never had sex with anyone besides the boyfriend she met in fifth grade, tells a hot story about her turn-on for cops in uniform. She imagines being pulled over in her car and given a thorough pat-down. "[He] titillates my cut like a marble in oil."

Switching genders was a new issue in Women on Top. One woman explains that when she massages her clitoris she imagines it growing "larger and larger until it is the size of a penis. I imagine I can feel the sensation of a man during intercourse. I also imagine that the man is having sex with me... hence I can feel the sensation of both partners at the same time."

As excited as Friday was to show off “new” fantasies where women experiment with men's traditional roles, her political agenda was still at odds with her story material. She wanted to prove is that today's modern chick has dumped those nasty old oppressive rape fantasies in favor of turning the tables on their oppressors—dominating men and loving it.

"Women in My Secret Garden who may have had very controlling natures in reality, invented elaborate fantasies of rape," Friday recalls. "It was all they dared themselves. Then once My Secret Garden was published, overnight the rape fantasy was rejected by the women in this book who wanted total power over and domination over men."

Oh, horse feathers! Women are not newcomers to fantasies where they wield the sexual power, nor have we abandoned fantasies of being ravished just because this is the balls-to-the-wall 21st century.

A woman's place in her work, or home, is no forecaster of what her fantasies may be. A woman— or man— CEO can have the most hair-raising rape fantasy on the block, and it will have nothing to do with lack of courage.  A willing submission is every bit as powerful as a domination fantasy.

In our fantasies, no matter how much we struggle to deny it, we control every frame. Whether we stand tall in thigh-high boots or kneel breathless on the ground, it’s a matter of our well-lubricated chosen position. We run the fuck in our minds, the exact amount of ambivalence, the perfect timing of climax. When did that ever happen in a real sexual assault? 

Friday took all the fantasies which didn't fit her new "dominant woman theory" and scattered them throughout the book in the most unlikely places. I had to search and search to find the very best innocent babysitter fantasy ("I am babysitting two boys. They decide to play Indians and tie me up. Here their father comes in...") which was stuck in a chapter called "Women with Bigger Appetites than Their Men."

If this was my anthology, I would have had chapter titles like "Sweet Innocent Babysitters," 'Secret Spy Agents," and "True Tales from the Catholic Church."

In her claim that women are now "on top" in their sexual fantasies, Friday cultivates a dangerous party line. She imagines that women's economic independence is somehow tied to the content of our sexual fantasies.

But no feminist needs to make a case by claiming that women entertain new, improved, ringmaster or revenge fantasies. This kind of thinking unwittingly censors the diversity and complexity of real women's fantasies. It’s the same as my women studies teacher insisting that only un-liberated women had rape fantasies, and that as soon they got their consciousnesses raised, those ugly stains would wash right out.

What really happens when you get your consciousness raised, is that you aren’t afraid of your fantasies. You see the difference between real-life anxieties and limitations versus your potential to go to any extreme in fantasy. That is empowering. Erotic dreams communicate powerful and personal messages. But to read them as if they were tea leaves amounts to some pretty tacky fortune telling.

After I was mugged and fingered by the fourteen-year-old hoodlum, I had several fantasies. In one, my revenge fantasy, I walked in on him at home during Sunday dinner and shamed him in front of his whole family. His mother told him to get out, that he could never come back again. I pictured a closeup of the tears on his face. 

In another fantasy, I imagined my "if only" scenario, where instead of being frozen in fear,  I raised my long arm, disregarded his blade cutting into my chest, and decked him. I spit on him lying in the street, and the blood from where he nicked me dripped into his eyes.

But in the third fantasy, he wasn’t a scared kid, he was an accomplished sadist. He fucked me with his hands, and I was frozen, naked on the sidewalk. He talked to me nasty, he was arrogant, and he teased the knife against my nipples. Neighborhood people gathered; he invited them to take his place. The circus came back; I was on the erotic crucifix.

My old fantasies from childhood took over. It was a good catharsis while it lasted.

A year later, I moved back into the Haight, the "scene of the crime." But I was smarter this time, and, in a first for me, I was territorial. Welcome to my neighborhood— all of it.

Pulp paperback cover from Ace Image Library.

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Thank you so much... Susie

Bring Me The Brave Girls in White Panties

In Bed, #229 Bitching with Andi Zeisler

My interview this week is with Andi Zeisler, co-founder and editorial director of Bitch, a quarterly magazine dedicated to the "Feminist Response to Pop Culture."

Andi and I talk about the proliferation of porn culture, why the "feminist" part of her magazine offends more people than the "bitch" title, and what's up with those new Dove cosmetic ads for firming up cellulite, that feature all the nude wholesome babes in white underwear.

I don't know if anyone believes that a cream is going to do anything about the dimples on their ass, but Dove's ads have been eye candy because they feature women with large natural breasts, significant butts, and womanly thighs.

None of these women are dumpy or bumpy in the least.. you'd kill to have their PhotoShopped tone and glow. These really are the same kind of women, who with high heels and a different make-up set, would pose for Playboy centerfolds.

You know that movie critic show that Roger Ebert  does with his "new" sidekick, Richard Roeper? Well, Roeper writes for the Chicago Sun-Times, and he was nauseated by Dove's ads:

"The raw truth is, I find these Dove ads a little unsettling. If I want to see plump gals baring too much skin, I'll go to Taste of Chicago, OK? I'll walk down Michigan Avenue or go to Navy Pier. When we're talking women in their underwear on billboards outside my living room windows, give me the fantasy babes, please.

If that makes me sound superficial, shallow and sexist—well yes, I'm a man."

Well no, actually, the first description that comes to me isn't "man." It's more like "unconscious twit who has given me way more information about his sexual fantasies than I'd like." He actually thinks his masturbation fantasies speak for the male masses. He's parading his ignorance. It's as if he's never seen a porn magazine before, or had a conversation with other men about who's hot. If he did, he would understand that his taste is just one more card in the infinite catalog.

I was fascinated by Dove's campaign, because first of all, the photos are porno catnip to many who view it, and yet Dove acts like they're making a political statement where eroticism doesn't play a part. Furthermore, as Andi pointed out, it's selling a product that's supposed to make you look skinnier, which is hilarious if their promotion is about accepting yourself as you are. Don't use our cream! Dump in the toilet! Let your freaky butt fly! Rub Richard Roeper's face in it!

Speaking of miracle cures, who originated the term, "Detroit Face-Lift?"? That's where you rub Preparation H under your eyes to temporarily eliminate the bags. Love saying  it— never tried it.

At the end of our show, I asked Andi to stick around and help me answer a letter from the "Try This at Home" mailbag in which a man asks why his female coworkers aren't more upset that the boss is sleeping with the employees.

After our interview, I took Andi and her husband to go get high on the secret hot fudge at Saturn Cafe, and she interviewed me for BITCH. I know how to have my way with these interview subjects! I think they're including me in their January issue... I'll let you know.

Would you like a free coupon for two of my In Bed Shows on Audible? Email me, and I'll send you one! I have a box of these coupons, and I'm handing them out right and left until they're gone!

Female Chauvinist Pigs At the Trough

Christie Noble Walker, from Seattle, wrote me this week:

I've been reading this dialog on Slate this week  discussing  two  recent books on Porn: "Pornified: How Pornography Is Transforming Our Lives, Our Relationships, and Our Families," by Pamela Paul; and "Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture," by Ariel Levy. I would love to read your thoughts on it on your blog!

Every time I read such "debates" about the value (or evil) of porn— and what it means for women and feminism— I get  frustrated that people don't mention the difference of porn produced and consumed as an act of sexual expression, and how that vision is changed when we're talking about true dyke/queer porn— since the object is not to titillate men.

In particular, I'm talking about the "Girls Gone Wild" empire, which Slate mentions, and whose commercials I recently saw during a fit of sleepless TV watching!

Although some, like Laura Kipnis, (one of the debaters in the Slate article), argue that girls who participate in these videos are experimenting w/ their sexuality and finding some type of empowerment because of it, I find it hard to agree with.Yes, girls finally get the chance to make out with their best friends (!), but they are often doing it to please the male eye, or to score a GGW trucker hat while they're drunk.

I would love to see a debate like this consider the very different dynamic that dyke-produced and "preferred" (not sure if that is the right word) porn enters into the equation.

Christie, I'm grateful for your link, because this is just the sort of debate I like to sink my teeth into.  I advise everyone to read the story before commenting so you'll get all the juice and details.

The conversation Slate sponsored is between Laura Kipnis, who's written a lot of thought-provoking material on sex, porn, and romance;  Slate's own editor
Meghan O'Rourke, who tried to walk the middle line and ask pertinent questions; and finally, Wendy Shalit, the woman who wrote that feminist headache, "Return to Modesty," where she argues women had it a lot better when they wore bobby sox with their legs crossed.

I don't have a lot of patience with Wendy, or the new book "Pornified," because they aren't new at all— it's the same hand-wringing we've seen from bourgeois do-gooders since time immemorial. I think Kipnis gives an excellent historical reply to this garbage:

I must confess that this book made me very cranky. Not about the rise of porn, but about the decline of cultural criticism: Paul's analysis is as compartmentalized and shallow as the sex lives of her subjects. She has her nose pressed so firmly against porn culture that she's utterly blinkered about the rest of society, or history, or politics; it's as if sexuality occupied some autonomous world of its own. (Like a porn set.)

Here are a few of the many bad things Paul blames on porn: failing relationships, men's flight from intimacy, men judging women by harsh appearance standards, men liking large breasts, female body-image issues, general female insecurity, lack of sexual foreplay, male impotence, men demanding more oral sex, infrequent sex among couples—just about everything but acne. (Yes, a single explanation for every social ill is very convenient.) I'm no historian, but I'm under the impression that all these behaviors and predispositions long preceded the rise of porn. Men treat women like sex objects? Not exactly new: Consider the brilliant, crazy Valerie Solanas' 1967 S.C.U.M. Manifesto: "It's often said that men use women. Use them for what? Surely not pleasure." Women are romantically disappointed in men? Read—gosh, it's such an endless list—the collected stories of Dorothy Parker. Men are in flight from intimacy? I know from careful study of The New Yorker cartoons that when television was invented, husbands planted themselves on the couch and have yet to look up—unless it's to play golf, poker, flee to the office, or have affairs, all of which wives have been miffed about for decades.

So, when exactly was the golden age of relationship bliss that Paul thinks porn has torn asunder?

I am more intrigued in the implications of Ariel Levy's book, Feminist Chauvinist Pigs, since I know Ariel, and discussed the book with her a few months ago when we were both working on  stories about Andrea Dworkin. 

I consider Levy to be a "sex-positive feminist," if one must use a label. That is to say, I think sexual liberation and self-determination are an essential part of her feminist politics.

I also share her dismay at media like all that Spring Break crap where some ditz in bikini proclaims that she's "Making a choice! I'm empowered with my Bud!"

It's embarrassing, and you cringe to imagine what jerk is behind the scenes, pulling her strings. You realize that her Boomer mom was probably not exactly helping in the role model department, either.

This is another unhappy legacy: the truth is, the mainstream culture and economy has corrupted revolution at every turn. We've seen rock'n'roll turned to mush, civil rights become "The Cosby Show,"  gay liberation transformed into "The L-Word," etc. People who've played a genuine role as artists and activists are rolling in their graves, or are about to start digging.

I haven't read Ariel's book through yet, so this is only an opening shot. I wrote her yesterday:

Ariel,

Many people reading your new book believe that sex-positive feminism, whatever its intentions might have been, has led to a commercial, soulless depravity and mockery of anything that might have given women the slightest uplift.  They look to feminist sex radical "pioneers" like myself, and say, "YOU! YOU! It's all your damn fault this turned out so pathetic!"

Yet my impression from talking to you, is that you don't hold me, or my ilk, responsible for "Girls Gone Wild."  Is that true, or do you see a straight line from Betty Dodson to On Our Backs to Britney Spears making an ass out of herself?

Is there a difference, in your mind, between feminist sex radicals and porn-entrepreneurs who use feminist rhetoric as cover?   Do you think the sincere 'FSR's have done a poor job of differentiating themselves from commercial exploitation, or protesting those developments?

What is the difference between the sad capitalist, sexist, racist, you-name-it sellout of a groovy idea, and the way we've seen other cultural revolutions turned into clown acts for mass consumption? Or is there any?

Ariel replied:

Hey Susie...

OF COURSE I don't think you & co. are responsible for this...the whole point of sex radicals is to explore new and different and more creative ways to represent— and to have— sex. I'm all for creativity. I'm all for exploration. I'm just not for the incessant reiteration of this one incredibly dull shorthand for sexiness... Wet t-shirt contests! Implants! Brazilian bikini waxes!

It's pathetically limiting. I'm tired of hearing about how liberating and empowering "raunch culture" is. I think it's the easy way out...  as if when we  buy a thong or a t-shirt with the Playboy bunny on it, then we don't have to question or face our own complicated desires. (But then you miss out on all the fun!)

You have always been about encouraging women to investigate what they really and truly want from sex. Raunch culture, on the other hand, is about performance, not pleasure. That's my objection.

As I say in my book, the women for whom this is *genuine* — the women who authentically get their kicks from flashing for GGW or stripping or whatever— have my best wishes. But I interviewed many other women who  weren't prioritizing their own desires; they were only automatically re-enacting what they saw around them. One girl said to me,"It's like a reflex."

In terms of faux Feminist Sex Radicals, I think we'd have to talk about this on a case by case basis. (At the same time, sitting around pointing the finger isn't my all time favorite thing to do.) And in answer to your question about whether there is any difference between this sad capitalist, sexist, racist sellout of a groovy idea and other such co-optations, I really don't think so. I think it's same shit, different day.

I look forward to having Ariel on my "In Bed" show soon, and continuing this at length! Maybe I can even get her to do some finger-pointing... just a little!

In the meantime, Christie, you ask about lesbian-made porn in particular, and why no one seems to notice a difference between dykesex and pimp pandering...

This subject came up when I was first editing On Our Backs. We didn't make a lesbian erotic magazine because it was "safe territory" or politically defensible; it was simply our personal lives writ large at that moment!  But it became clear to us that because lesbians were not defending a notion of heterosexual feminine virtue— "Someday I will be a worthy wife and mother"— we did not fear being slut-baited or disrespected. Being a lesbian out of the closet AT ALL already had you in that bag. Remember, this was 1983!   

To make a more personal example, if I was looking for a girlfriend, I did not have to fear that she would reject me for being sexual, I would not be repulsed because I wasn't a "virgin". Those concepts had no meaning in lesbian social worlds at that time.

At the same time that I was involved in OOB, I started meeting a lot of "straight" women who were on the same page, in terms of sexual freedom and self expression. The women who developed that classic book, Caught Looking, would be at the top of my list. Then there was the feminist porn star group, that started with Candida Royalle, Annie Sprinkle, Veronica Vera, and others. Certainly you'd have to include Joani Blank and Betty Dodson, who started the whole vibrator revolution, which had nothing to do with gender preferences.  Women who love men,  and bi women, have every bit as much moxie and right to talk up their sexual ideas as dykes. Duh!

It's obvious to ME that the ripoff of sex positive feminism had nothing to  with its progenitors; rather it's a betrayal.  When I think of girls digging sex w/men and cock, do I think of Girls Gone Wild? Of course not! My role models for self-aware straight women would be the Sweet Action magazine coven:  women who doing DIY gonza girl p.o.v., with no apologies, and as you will see from their mags, no bullshit to please anyone but themselves. They take my breath away. Look at the story Tristan Taormino wrote about them here.

But they are waaaaaaaay too radical to be picked up by Absolut Vodka or MTV. They are not interested in having some prick look down their shirt for a dollar.  Yet what they are doing, their originality, is just like On Our Backs, in that it is  tremendously influential and will be imitated.  And no one will say wow, or thank you, or send royalties. This is the cycle, and it's a tough one.

You know, the very earliest women's libbers had to deal with the same annoyance of having Braless Bond Girls represent the new "liberated woman," when they knew it was all a lot of hooey.  We knew that The Pill was not just a prize for horny guys, it really changed things for us. Loretta Lynn sang about it, and that was real. There's always been the REAL part of sexual liberation for women, and the phonies. It just seems like the phonies have taken over the world right now, and it's very difficult to know how to cope, fight back, or turn it on its head.

Your thoughts?  I'll be reading Levy's book this week, and maybe she'll reply in the meantime to our blog.

Andrea Dworkin Has Died

 
I received word Sunday morning— from Doug Henwood, Amber Hollibaugh, Carol Queen, and Rachel Kramer Bussel— that Andrea Dworkin has died. She was 59. Her partner John Stoltenberg found her near death on Friday, and she passed away peacefully, according to his report, in the evening.

There is nothing about Dworkin's death in the news yet but I am sure we will hear a lot more details by the morning. I knew she had  been ill for some time, but she was notoriously private about her health problems. I don't know how bad or incapacitating her condition was. Most of us who’ve seen her in person in the past couple years saw her move about in obvious pain and disability.  It wasn’t just physical, either. After her father died seven years ago, she had what could only be described as a nervous breakdown.

Andrea Dworkin was...

I can’t do this alone.

Let’s go to Googlism, that site of randomly-selected found poetry, in which you can inject anyone’s name in the “search” box and come up with something like this:

Andrea Dworkin is hell
Andrea Dworkin is a hardcore
Andrea Dworkin is the author of "Scapegoat”
Andrea Dworkin is what I have committed my life to now
Andrea Dworkin is antisex
Andrea Dworkin is a hysterical and puritanical castrator
Andrea Dworkin is internationally renowned as a radical feminist activist and author who
  helped break the silence around violence against
Andrea Dworkin is probably the loudest self
Andrea Dworkin is just another Zionist
Andrea Dworkin is "angry”
Andrea Dworkin is known as a relentless scourge of men
Andrea Dworkin is the feminist whose supple mind gave birth to the assertion that all sexual
intercourse between man and woman is rape
Andrea Dworkin is a former prostitute
Andrea Dworkin is making sense
Andrea Dworkin is one of them
Andrea Dworkin is most definitely a militant feminist and beautifully
Andrea Dworkin is quoted as saying
Andrea Dworkin is part of the feminist camp
Andrea Dworkin is a writer
Andrea Dworkin is a self
Andrea Dworkin is probably the best
Andrea Dworkin is a very outspoken individual
Andrea Dworkin is the greatest mind of all time
Andrea Dworkin is one who does
Andrea Dworkin is a lousy writer
Andrea Dworkin is a rapist
Andrea Dworkin is the Malcolm X of feminism
Andrea Dworkin is a saint
Andrea Dworkin is
Andrea Dworkin is a great pornographer
Andrea Dworkin is served a thick
Andrea Dworkin is famous for her uncompromising feminism
Andrea Dworkin is a maniac
Andrea Dworkin is in a committed
Andrea Dworkin is analyzing Pauline Reage's literary style in The Story of O
Andrea Dworkin is such an "extremist”
Andrea Dworkin is one glaring example and there are several more
Andrea Dworkin is trying to say
Andrea Dworkin is funny
Andrea Dworkin is particularly vocal about the "male problem”
Andrea Dworkin is trying to ban lap dancing
Andrea Dworkin is a sexist pig
Andrea Dworkin is one of the weirdest femi-nazis since Solanas
Andrea Dworkin is typically held up as the most fanatical of the fanatics
Andrea Dworkin is perhaps the sex trade's most ferocious antagonist
Andrea Dworkin is? — Should I know her, or have heard of her?
Andrea Dworkin is the reincarnation of the Marquis de Sade
Andrea Dworkin is hardly without direct resonance
Andrea Dworkin is one of the most dreadful things men do
Andrea Dworkin is someone who
Andrea Dworkin is hurting

You know what?  I recognize my words in a couple of those lines. I was the one who said Dworkin was a great pornographer, if what that means is using explicit sex in her art to cause a tremendous sensation.

Along with Kate Millet in Sexual Politics, Andrea Dworkin used her considerable intellectual powers to analyze pornography, which was something that no one had done before. No one. The men who made porn didn’t. Porn was like a low culture joke before  the feminist revolution kicked its ass. It was beneath discussion. Not so anymore!

Here’s the irony... every single woman who pioneered the sexual revolution, every erotic-feminist-bad-girl-and-proud-of-it-stiletto-shitkicker, was once a fan of Andrea Dworkin. Until 1984, we all were. She was the one who got us looking at porn with a critical eye, she made you feel like you could just stomp into the adult bookstore and seize everything for inspection and a bonfire.

The funny thing that happened on the way to the X-Rated Sex Palace was that some of us came to different conclusions than Ms. Dworkin. We saw the sexism of the porn business... but we also saw some intriguing possibilities and amazing maverick spirit. We said, “What if we made something that reflected our politics and values, but was just as sexually bold?”

Andrea did not like this one little bit. Honestly, when I started On Our Backs and Herotica , I thought all the girls were going to jump on the bandwagon.  I had no idea how bad the animosity would get. I mean, I have tape recordings from colleges where I would go listen to Andrea lecture in rapt attention and turn my little cassette over to capture every word. I never dreamed that I would one day become one of the people she vilified. 

I wondered if she had any close girlfriends or women she considered her intellectual peers. The people she admired most in life were her father, her brother, and partner John Stoltenberg. She was a scholar of great men, and the one she studied the most, the Marquis de Sade, was someone she could quote up one side and down the other. I'm the one who said she was his feminist reincarnation. She rewrote his Juliette when she wrote her novel Ice and Fire. So much for man-hating.

It was Andrea’s take-no-prisoners attitude toward patriarchy that I always liked the best. Bourgeois feminists were so BORING. They wanted to keep their maiden name and have it listed in the white pages; they wanted to get a nice corner office in the skyscraper. When I was a teenager in the 70s I couldn't relate to those concerns. It was Dworkin's heyday.

Andrea presented herself as a street fighter intellectual, a bohemian freedom fighter, and someone who wanted to get to the bottom of things. That quote about Malcolm X is apt. Malcolm pointed out  “The problem is WHITE PEOPLE.”  Dworkin said, “The problem is MEN.”  And for all the  holes that can be poked in that cloth, there is something about that grain that is absolutely true, when you are the short end of the bolt.

I loved that she dared attack the very notion of intercourse. It was the pie aimed right in the crotch of Mr. Big Stuff. It was an impossible theory, but it wasn’t absurd. There is something about literally being fucked that colors your world, pretty or ugly, and it was about time someone said so.

I know it’s strange that I have such a tragic affection for her, when she apparently only had loathing for my kind. I’ve had women come at me with knives who felt they had to do me in, in Dworkin’s name. Her passion and activism was classic Prime of Miss Jean Brodie. She was a dangerous lady, with no class analysis, no psychological insight-- a scary combination. Her loaded warped pistol  was neatly picked up by right wing creeps who took all the femme bullets out of it and never looked back..

Every time you hear some preacher/politician talk about “violence against women” or how something is “degrading to women” tell them to to send a royalty check to Andrea and ask them what they’ve done lately to empower female sexual authority.  I never understood why she didn’t attack them the way she attacked feminist pornographers.

I could feel the great loss in the messages I read this morning, from the old guard of feminist activists. Her death is going to be a horrible reminder to many that women’s place in society today is a cruel rebuttal to many of our dreams of women’s liberation. The media image of women today is pathetic; it’s Barbie on Steroids. “I Am Bimbo, Hear Me Roar!  Tee-hee!”

I like the comparison to Valerie Solanas that came up in the Googlism list. The brilliance of a woman who has "HAD IT" is a rock'n'roll beauty to behold:

“Life in this society being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of society being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and destroy the male sex.”

Maybe it’s just My-My-My Generation, but those words still make the hair on my arms stand on end.

I’m sorry Andrea Dworkin started a sexual revolution that she ended up repudiating. She never got to see people like me, Carol, and the rest of us little protégées who took her inspiration and flew to a new dimension. She got stuck, and then she got sick, and when you’re famous for one thing, no one wants to see you change unless you reject it all, like a pathetic sinner seeking redemption. She was too stubborn and too old-fashioned for that. Andrea Dworkin never would have admitted that she was a SuperStar.  She was the animator of the ultimate porno horror loop, where the Final Girl never gets a chance to slay the monster, she only dies, dies, dies, with the cries of the angry mourners to remember her.

UPDATE:

I've published a PDF book of all the stories/essays I ever wrote on Dworkin.

I call it "Inspired by Andrea: Essays on Lust, Aggression, Porn, & The Female Gaze That I Might Not Have Written If Not for Her.

Click on link for more info— and thanks to all of you who've written me about this essay; I really appreciate your thoughts.