The Jouissance of the Other: Envy disguised as Prejudice.
This week, I changed browsers. Doesn’t sound like a big deal, but actually it was a chore. I’ve been a Firefox fan for a very long time. I love it for a lot of reasons. It’s an excellent browser and if they charged money to own it, I would have gladly paid. Then Mozilla made […]
Lifeboats: The Myth of the Safety of Sameness
I just finished reading and commenting on The Good Men Project article Who Is In Your Rowboat? by Dale Thomas Vaughn. He’s reportedly vaunted as “a man of quality and one of the leaders of men of quality” by best-selling author and top feminist attorney Gloria Allred” which only reminds me why I have such […]
Abstraction: Desire and Disgust
Jacques Lacan once famously said ‘the Woman does not exist.” Like so many French theorists, it’s a confrontational statement designed to draw a response. It’s important to really read it with care and to know, above all, who is speaking it. Lacan was male. But it’s a fun place to start an argument – there […]
Unpacking The Baggage of History: Sex Work and the Myth of Protecting Women
I recently had an interesting twitter interchange with Mistress Matisse on the subject of sex work. On December 4th, the National Assembly in France passed a bill criminalizing the purchase of sexual services. It is a move overwhelmingly supported by feminists around the world. I wanted to express my opinion on this matter and my […]
Gender and Sexual Orientation: Authoritarian Desires to Label
I recently got caught up in a discussion on twitter with the charming Louise Sorensen over this article: “What Science Knows About Homosexuality.” As much as I applaud any survey of scientific research on a subject, I have to say that there is an undercurrent of assumption in a lot of the scientific literature that […]
Critical Discourse: Erotica and Why We Can’t Get No Respect
*Warning: Public Spanking* Back in early May, I wrote a post on why I felt having a ‘Best Male Erotica’ anthology was important to the genre as a whole. I said I felt that it was vital to the genre to have new, original male voices. It generated many thoughtful, interesting comments. One, however, stood […]
The Sublime Angst of the Condom Aisle
Most of you are probably too young to know this, but there was a time when, if you wanted to buy condoms, you had to go to the pharmacy counter and ask for them. A stern man or woman wearing the white, side-buttoned jacket of pharmaceutical authority would assess whether you were in fact worthy […]
It Was A Pleasure To Burn – The Tattoo
I’ve always wanted a tattoo. I like the idea of marked flesh – but not casually or without thought, I know many people who see a design they like and go for it. Through the years, I’ve pondered on what, if anything, I’d consider having indelibly marked on my flesh. I’ve never wanted anything terribly […]
Pretty Vaginas
This is one of those rant posts, prompted by this: I wish I had a pretty vagina. — Mush•Mouth (@GirrlGenius) April 24, 2013 One assumes, therefore, that this woman thinks she has an ugly vagina. What, you might very well ask, constitutes a ‘pretty’ or an ‘ugly’ vagina? Although I often say I don’t have […]
A Writer’s Obligations
I’ve had a marvelous and vibrant discussion on Twitter with a whole raft of writers on what it means to be a writer, and what a writer’s obligation is. I think there are some things that all of us, who care about what we write agree on. However, this is my list of a writer’s […]