Friday, 30 May 2008
| 12:00 am
| Culture
You’ve almost certainly heard this phrase before. If you’ve been paying attention to sex in society and popular culture, anyway. You may have read it in a political debate; a conversation about porn; even a movie review.
“(X) is the last taboo.”
Now here’s the weird thing, the thing that should be making your bullshit meter go off with clanging alarms and flashing lights: You’ve probably heard this phrase used to describe half a dozen or more sexual practices.
You might have heard that homosexuality is the last taboo. Sadomasochism. Incest. Bestiality. Necrophilia. A very quick Google search on the phrase “the last taboo” adds scatology, pedophilia, sex among the elderly, and even virginity to the list (along with a wide assortment of non-sexual topics, including atheism, abortion, cannibalism, menstruation, death, consciousness, anti-Palestinianism, money, mental illness, and the discounting of business-class seats on airplanes).
Okay. Reality check number one: Not all of these things can be the last taboo, can they? At the very least, doesn’t one of them have to be the next- to- last taboo, and another one the next- to- the- next- to last, and so on? Unless every one of these taboos is miraculously falling at exactly the same time . . . in which case I suppose they could all be the last taboo. But that doesn’t seem very likely, does it?
Reality check number two: Does anyone actually believe that any of these sexual preferences and practices is the last taboo? Does anyone really think that the taboo against, say, sadomasochism is truly the last sexual taboo in our culture? That if the taboo against it fell and we completely and casually accepted SM, our society would then, for better or worse, be a sexual free- for- all, entirely devoid of any sexual taboos whatsoever?
Have any of the people using this phrase taken a look around them? At, you know, the world?
The world is full of sexual taboos. Loaded with them, up one side and down the other. And I’m not just talking about the big ones like necrophilia or incest. We have taboos against having sex in public. Having sex with someone much older or younger than yourself. Having sex with your best friend’s ex. Leaving your porn out on your coffee table. Discussing the details of your sex life with anyone except your partner, your therapist, and your very closest friends. Interracial sex is now less taboo than it once was (although the taboo is far from gone) . . . but sex with someone of a radically different social or economic class is still a forbidden thrill. Etc., etc., etc.
And it’s not like taboos come in a limited supply, a cookie jar that’ll be empty once we eat them all. One taboo can disappear, only to be replaced with another. We have, for instance, a disappearing taboo against sex before marriage . . . but we also have a new taboo that we didn’t used to have, a taboo against being a virgin past the age of, say, forty. In fact, some things are now considered taboo that were once not only accepted, but positively endorsed. Marrying your brother’s widow would now be considered kind of icky, not flatly incestuous but not exactly showing the best boundaries in the world. But if that widow was childless, then in the Old Testament days this was not only accepted, but actually required.
And, of course, old taboos can come roaring back again. The permissiveness of the Roaring Twenties was followed by the restrictiveness of the Boring Fifties. Ditto the legendarily free-spirited Sixties and the equally legendary Reaganite Eighties. Pendulums swing back and forth.
I once read an anthropologist (I can’t remember her name — I really should have smoked less weed in college) who wrote that, when it comes to very large, important aspects of human life that have a tremendous impact on us — sex, food, drugs, that sort of thing — the mere fact of having taboos is more important than what the specific taboos are. Having taboos is what makes us feel like we have a modicum of control over these huge, powerful things. The ability to sort sex (or food, or drugs, or whatever) into the Good Kind and the Bad Kind gives us the feeling that it’s us who’s in control of this stuff . . . instead of the other way around. And whether a taboo is rational, whether it helps us reduce potential harm that might be caused by sex or drugs or whatnot, is very much a secondary issue.
Now, I don’t agree that all taboos are created equal. Some taboos do have a basis in reality, are guided at least somewhat by genuine ethical or psychological concerns. Others are so irrational as to seem almost completely random. (Drug taboos, for instance, bear almost no relationship with how much harm the drugs in question can do. If they were, marijuana would be available at every corner store, and the possession of alcohol would be what got you time in the hoosegow.*)
And the fight against totally irrational taboos is not a pointless fight. The last fifty years or so has seen an incredible rollback of a whole host of stupid, none- of- anybody’s- business sexual taboos: from contraception to masturbation, oral sex to pre-marital nookie. And that’s largely been the result of a sustained public relations campaign on the part of people who insisted, loudly and repeatedly and in defiance of the prevailing winds, that these taboos made no sense.
I’m just saying this: Sexual taboos will always be with us. If my anthropologist is right, then as long as sex is a viscerally powerful force in our lives, human beings will feel the need to gain control of it — or the illusion of control, anyway — by sorting it into boxes marked Naughty and Nice.
So I’m going to issue a taboo of my own.
I very rarely issue edicts and insist that everyone stop doing what they’re doing and instead do what I tell them to. But I’m going to do it now. From now on, at the risk of incurring The Wrath of Greta, everyone has to stop using the phrase “the last taboo.” Especially when it comes to sex. It’s sloppy writing. It’s sloppy thinking. It’s a cheap way of bringing melodrama to your topic. And it’s simply not true. If you need to bring cheap melodrama to your topic, come up with a different way. I don’t care what sexual taboo you’re talking about. Whatever it is, it’s not the last one.
* For the record, I’m not advocating the criminalization of alcohol. I’m just saying that it demonstrably does much more harm than marijuana, and that having it be a legal and relatively taboo-free drug while marijuana can get you actual prison time is a perfect example of drug taboos bearing no relationship to reality.
Greta Christina, copyright © 2008. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.
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You can find smut in the most unexpected places — provided you have a properly smutty turn of mind, that is.
Apparely the folks at Britain’s Office of Government Commerce don’t have their minds in the gutter, though, because their new logo is . . . causing some comment among people with more impure thoughts. The image reproduced at the top of this column, and if it doesn’t look too strange to you, just rotate it ninety degrees clockwise in your mind — yep, that’s right, there you go, looks like a guy with a nice grip on his, ah, joystick, doesn’t it? When this fact was pointed out — repeatedly, and emphatically, in the British press — the office took it well. Rather than changing the logo, they merely commented that, “It is true that it caused a few titters among some staff when viewed on its side, but on consideration we concluded that the effect was generic to the particular combination of the letters ‘OGC’ — and is not inappropriate to an organisation that’s looking to have a firm grip on government spend!” I wish the American government had such a good sense of humor (I mean, humour) . . .
Fortune cookies, of course, are a traditional source of sexual comedy, with the venerable trick of adding “in bed” at the end of each fortune for hilarious results. Like: “A thrilling time is in your immediate future . . . IN BED!” Or ” As the purse is emptied the heart is filled . . . IN BED!” But webcomic XKCD proposed the rather more interesting game of appending fortunes with the words “except in bed,” — which is, indeed, both funnier and more sad. “The ones you love will never let you down . . .” Well, you see where that’s going.
I actually see a fair number of giant inflatable things in my day-to-day life — at the local Farmer’s Market every weekend there’s usually some kind of giant inflatable castle, or shark, or dinosaur, or whatever in the form of a bounce house or big slide for the kiddies. But I’ve never seen an enormous inflatable terrifying vagina before. Apparently I don’t go to enough avant-garde theater in the Netherlands. Fortunately, the internet can bring giant scary inflated genitalia right into your home!
Finally, Eros Blog turned up a vintage advertisement for, well, a fur-lined keyhole — and that’s not even a euphemism for anything! Yes, it’s a genuine mink keyhole cover, helpfully illustrated, complete with a key plunging in to unlock what are (presumably) the gates of untrimmed paradise. Who says those were simpler times?
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Tuesday, 27 May 2008
| 12:00 am
| Videos
Triple Ecstasy is another fine faux-indie feature from the folks at Vivid Alt. The cynic in me wants to resist the lure of a major company co-opting the style and sensibility of down-and-dirty independent porn . . . but, damn it, they keep making great movies! Sure, there’s some silly pretentious stuff here — words like “tattooed garbage” and “waste of life” flashing in scribble-scrawl across the screen, for instance — but the performers are gorgeous, the performances raw, and even the music is pretty good. The awesome starts early, with an opening scene pairing headliner (and director — she’s multi-talented!) Kimberly Kane and brunette cutie Pixie Pearl in a scantily-clad make-out session that leads to cuntlicking, strap-on riding, blindfolding, and all-around rough romping. Just when you think it can’t get any better, Kimberly sticks a vibrator in Pixie’s ass, and keeps fucking her. Tres haute.
Raunchy girl-next-door Charlotte Stokely (who is adorable, as always, in her striped athletic socks) fucks Mr. Marcus in front of a mirror. Another favorite scene has Princess Donna topping the tiny and helpless Lystra, slapping her with a big strapped-on cock, tying her up, and roughly defiling her on a bathroom floor. Kimberly comes back with redhead Audrey Hollander, and starts the fun by choking her with a double dildo, followed by rough anal intrusions, spanking, rimming, slapping, fucking — the sex seems almost on the brink of turning into a fight, and it’s a believable level of aggressive passion. They fuck so hard it made me tired to watch it. Then, as if they haven’t worn themselves out plenty alone, they’re joined by Otto Bauer and Alec Knight, and much messy cocksucking, anal, DP, and even airtight (with the help of a dildo) ensues. It’s a big nasty fuckfest of a film, no mistake. There’s a disc of bonus features, and a CD featuring music from the film, and the whole package is very attractive and well-made. Vivid Alt does it up right.
On a random closing note, am I the only one who thinks Kimberly Kane looks a lot like the hot blonde Cylon from the new version of Battlestar Galactica? I nominate her to star in the inevitable parody, Battlesperm Galacticock. It’s a film that practically writes itself!
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Tuesday, 27 May 2008
| 12:00 am
| Industry
In the Bush Administration’s ongoing war on porn, one of the strangest legal cases reached a strange milestone last week. It’s the case of Karen Fletcher, aka Red Rose, webmaster of the now defunct red-rose-stories.com.
In October 2005, Fletcher’s house was raided by the FBI. She was arrested for six obscenity counts despite the fact that her subscription site, which charged 29 subscribers $10 a month, distributed only text stories. After a protracted legal battle, according to XBiz.com.Fletcher has decided to plead guilty to obscenity charges in order to avoid incarceration. YNOT.com’s Darklady reports that the reason is that the 56-year-old woman is incapacitated by agoraphobia and social anxiety, and while her attorneys would prefer to continue the legal case and settle the matter of whether text can be considered obscene, it’s not possible given Fletcher’s condition.
According to the XBiz story, Fletcher told the publication in 2006: “I never thought I’d be in trouble for the written word. I had no pictures of a sexual nature on my site, adult or otherwise. [It seems] the only legal sex stories are those that involve a man and a woman consenting to missionary position sex in a dark room.”
Fletcher’s stories, to be sure, push the boundaries of what most people would find it comfortable to read porn about, and A does not equal B — prosecution of Red Rose Stories does not mean that the only allowable sex is vanilla sex. That kind of argument is utterly fallacious and the mark of an hysteric, which is pretty understandable since Fletcher had just been arrested and was looking at prison time. In Red Rose Stories, the characters were neither consenting nor of age, and the scenes written about were in no frickin’ way anything close to safe, sane, or consensual. But even so, many lawyers and industry pundits thought it impossible that a text-only prosecution could be successful in today’s United States, even in the notoriously anti-porn Western District of Pennsylvania, where the recent Extreme Associates case occurred.
The Red Rose Stories prosecution is the first major obscenity trial based on text since the case of William S. Burroughs’s Naked Lunch in the early 1960s. Naked Lunch was targeted for obscenity prosecution, like Red Rose Stories, because in places it involved pedophilia and child murder. In the case of Naked Lunch, it’s easier to recognize — in retrospect — that the book has “literary, artistic, political or scientific value,” which is an element of the Miller Test used in the U.S. courts to determine whether a work is obscene.
It takes a little more work to see the redeeming social value in Red Rose Stories, but Fletcher saw it, and she needed it. According to the YNOT.com story, “Fletcher says she remembers nothing about her life prior to the age of 14, when she ran away from home . . .she began writing her fictional stories of hideous child abuse as a form of cathartic release to deal with likely sexual abuse she suffered as a minor . . .’I would capture a particular feeling of dread and try to weave it into a scenario that explained the feeling . . .I may still be afraid of the monsters, but at least in the stories, they prey on someone else, not me.”
Clearly the redeeming social value in the creation itself was in banishing her fear and dread by giving it form. One might argue that it may not have been the healthiest way to fight that battle — but I’m not sure Baudelaire or Jack Kerouac were exactly healthy people, either. Plus, it’s probably worth mentioning that psychotherapy costs money, and Fletcher depends on disability payments to live — not someone who can afford $165 an hour to confront her demons with a psychiatrist, or even sliding scale at the local mental health clinic — and in her case I’m betting ten sessions wasn’t going to cut it.
But another assertion of pro-censorship forces is that by sharing the stories (and incidentally charging money for them), she might have been encouraging criminal behavior. Ultimately that argument is about sex more than violence, since virtually any level of violence is acceptable in Hollywood movies and some pretty awful shit goes down on 24. But the concern that Red Rose Stories might drive readers out of control comes from the sexual offenses are described in those stories. The violence is incidental — hence the term “obscenity.” That term does not get applied, in a legal context, to violence. Maybe it should — maybe the term “obscenity” should be applied to war, to corruption-driven famine, to torture and yes, to child abuse. But should it be applied to depictions of violence? Where, exactly, does that path lead?
Confronting one’s demons through writing them out is something with which I am intimately familiar. If my demons don’t draw the same reprehension as Red Rose’s, then maybe that’s just my damned good luck. I breathe a selfish sigh of relief, and I hope she finds some peace.
Thomas Roche is a widely published fiction writer, essayist, anthologist and blogger. He can be found at thomasroche.com and Share This
Monday, 26 May 2008
| 12:00 am
| Books
A few months ago I was lucky enough to get to go to Susie Bright’s 50th birthday party. After a reading for The Best of the Best American Erotica 2008, we all crammed into cabs to go to a very cool tiki bar across the bay. Sitting on the lap of a bona-fide BAE author, legs flung across another one’s lap, I was surrounded by kinky talent, everyone completely comfortable with discussing the finer points of erotica (even if we weren’t the most physically comfortable in that cab). Ms. Bright is an expert at selecting the finest caliber of erotica, and it was neat to find out that the erotica is also written by the finest caliber of person, too.
The Best of the Best American Erotica 2008 is the last edition of the series that will be edited by Susie Bright, and while that makes me incredibly sad (I love her taste in erotica!), I am happy about the astounding quality of this last anthology of fiction. She did not limit herself to erotica only written in the past year (though there is some of it and it’s fabulous; don’t miss Haddayr Copley-Woods’ “The Desires of Houses”) but dipped into the past to include erotica written before the series started in 1993, as well as favorites from other BAE’s along the way. The whole work reads like a love song to the world of erotica, and it’s fascinating to read these stories and consider the huge contribution Susie Bright has made to bringing erotic literature into the limelight. Fans of the series, fans of erotica in general and those who like their wank material very well-written should not miss out on the 15th Anniversary Edition of this famous series. Recommended!
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Sunday, 25 May 2008
| 12:00 am
| Toys
So, now that we’ve dished about the G-spot, let’s talk about an even more neglected female body part: the labia. We see a ton of G-spot vibrators these days, and the clitoral vibrators, which we love, are always a popular choice, but how often do you hear that a vibe is particularly good at teasing those soft petals which guard these more obvious treasures? If you like to warm up slowly, or tease yourself to heighten the sensation for when you do get to the nerve-ending-nirvana of the clit, the Blossom Elastomer Vibrator is just the thing. This pretty hot pink flower is powered by a bullet vibrator in the “stem,” which makes the flower petals at the top vibrate ever-so-gently. This gentle vibration feels just a bit like the teasing kisses of a lover over the outside of your labia, and, when used this way, allows you to press that vibrating bullet stem up against your clitoris for more direct stimulation when you’re ready for it. The stem even has a loop through which you can hook one or two fingers to help you hold the vibe; this is especially nice for those of us with RSI or carpal tunnel syndrome, as the loop is just stretchy enough to let you get a snug, grip-free fit. The whole tiny plant is controlled by a separate battery pack which is attached by a matching pink wire. 3-1/2″ long overall, 2″ wide across the blossom. This vibe takes plucking flowers to a whole new level!
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Saturday, 24 May 2008
| 12:00 am
| Toys
Girltalk time! (Guys, you can totally listen in.) You know how some lovers just really know how to move their hips? So, instead of just an in/out motion, they grind as they enter and gyrate as they leave, working their cock into all your sensitive little nooks, hitting parts of you that too often get overlooked, while the two of you bounce and rotate around the bed, tangling the covers and flinging pillows? A.k.a. “a wild ride”? Yeah, you know. No, I’m not going to tell you that the Thumbelina Elastomer Vibrator will shake your mattress, or give you that sweet weight of a lover on top of you, but it does rotate around inside of you. And, thanks to the unique shape of the head of this toy, it manages to hit most of your sweet spots while it moves. The lower edge of Thumbelina dips in a bit, making a gentle ridge that lets it nestle up against your G-spot; as the entire shaft rotates around, this ridge rubs against the G-spot over and over again, feeling a bit like having sex with a guy who really knows how to move his ass. Or someone who’s really really good with their hands. As with all in/out vibes, the “out” version vibes separately and provides delicious counterpoint clitoral sensations to the grinding inside. This one has a clit tickler lined with little bumps, which feel delightful teasing over the clit, but also feel great working over the labia. The little “antennae” at the top of the tickler vibrate madly when turned on, and they tickle and tease the clit wonderfully. The shaft and tickler are controlled by separate controls in the base of the toy, and the rotating does lessen just a bit when you turn the vibrations on. When I concentrated on trying to stop the rotations with my PC muscles, I could, but I had to really try; while using it normally, the rotations kept going just fine. And, it’s made out of elastomer, so it’s phthalate-free. 4″ insertable, 1-1/2″ wide at the widest insertable point. This is one vibrator worth hitching a ride on!
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Friday, 23 May 2008
| 12:00 am
| Culture
As you all no doubt know unless you’ve been hiding under the blankets for the last week and a half, the California Supreme Court recently ruled that the ban on same-sex marriage violates the state Constitution. In a little less than a month, same-sex couples will be able to legally marry in California.
My partner and I are going to be one of those couples.
And I want to talk a little bit about why.
One of the questions that gets raised a lot when the subject of same-sex marriage comes up is, “Why is marriage so important? Why aren’t civil unions or domestic partnerships good enough?”
The usual answers are practical ones. And I’ll certainly second them. Marriage is recognized around the country and around the world, and all its practical and legal rights and responsibilities get carried with you everywhere you go . . . in a way that is most emphatically not true for civil unions and domestic partnerships. Besides, it’s a well- established principle that “separate but equal” is inherently not equal. The very act of saying, “No, you can’t have this thing that everyone else can have, but you can have that other thing we created just for you that’s almost exactly like it — isn’t that special?” It’s the creation of second-class status, pretty much by definition.
But I want to talk about something else today. I don’t want to talk about the legal and practical benefits of marriage. I don’t want to talk about hospital visitation rights, child custody rights, inheritance rights, tax benefits, all that good stuff. That’s all important, but it’s also well-covered ground.
I want to talk about something more intangible. I want to talk about why we’re getting married . . . apart from all that.
Marriage is an unbelievably old human institution and human ritual. My parents did it. My grandparents did it. My great-grandparents did it, and theirs, and theirs. The word and the concept carry a weight, a gravitas, intense and complex social and emotional associations, from centuries and millennia of people participating in it. And as far as I know (admittedly my anthropology is a bit weak), it’s existed in one form or another in almost every human society, in almost every period of human history. There may be exceptions, but I don’t offhand know of any. Getting married means being a link in a chain, taking part in a ritual that’s central to human history and society.
Yes, much of that history and many of those associations are awful. Sexist, propertarian, oppressive. But the evolution of the institution from its complicated and often terrible history into what it is today is part of what gives it its weight. The history of marriage, and its growth away from ownership and towards equal partnership, is the history of the human race’s maturation. Participating in it means participating, not just in the history and the ritual, but in its growth and change.
Civil unions and domestic partnerships just don’t have that.
Let’s look at the recent Supreme Court ruling in California. Let’s look at what it won’t change for my partner and me . . . and what it will.
On a day- to- day level, it probably won’t change much. We’re domestic partners, and California domestic partnership does afford most of the legal rights and responsibilities that marriage offers. Within the state, anyway. As long as we stay in the state, not much changes in any practical sense.
And I doubt that much will change between her and me. We had a commitment ceremony two and a half years ago: a joyful, exuberant, larger- than- we’d expected celebration that we spent many months planning. That ceremony and celebration, and everything we went through to make it happen, did change our relationship, profoundly, and very much for the better. I doubt that our legal wedding in June will have anywhere near that same impact on how we feel about each other.
But it will almost certainly change how we feel about society, and our place in it. And it will change — officially — how society feels about us.
When we get married in June, the State of California will officially recognize that our relationship has the same weight as our parents’ did, and their parents’, and theirs. It will officially drop this “separate but equal” bullshit. It will officially stop seeing us as kids at the little table, poor relatives who should be content with leavings and scraps, second-class citizens. It will officially see us as actual, complete, honest- to- gosh citizens.
Now.
Look at the patchwork of laws around this country regarding same-sex marriage. Look at the states that have banned it, and the ones that have gone so far as to ban the recognition of same-sex marriages performed in other states. Look at the fact that if my partner and I travel to Alabama or Michigan, Alaska or Pennsylvania, or any of over two dozen other states, our marriage will be seen as not having existed at all. Null. Void. Look at the Defense of Marriage Act, passed by Congress and signed by President William Jefferson Clinton in 1996, stating that the Federal government will not recognize same-sex marriages, even if they’re completely legal in the state where they were performed.
What does that tell you about how those states, and the country as a whole, sees us?
That’s the weird paradox of the California ruling. It’s thrilling. It’s unbelievably great news. It’s a huge historical step. But at the same time, it throws the true meaning of this legal patchwork into sharp focus. It makes it that much clearer that queers in this country are, in a very literal sense, second-class citizens. We pay taxes, we serve on juries, we have to obey the same laws that everyone else does . . . but in a very practical, codified- into- law sense, we just don’t count for as much.
Legalizing same-sex marriage isn’t just about the legal and practical recognition of our love and our partnership. It’s about social recognition. It’s about being seen as a full member of society. Kudos for the California Supreme Court for understanding that. Let’s hope the rest of the country figures it out eventually.
Important note: As powerful and historic as this step is, it could be undone. In November, there will almost certainly be an initiative on the California ballot, asking voters to amend the state Constitution and ban same-sex marriage. If you think this issue and this movement are important, please consider supporting Equality California.
Greta Christina, copyright © 2008. Be sure to check out Greta’s blog.
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