Villains in Leather: Negative Portrayals of Kink in Fiction
It has been a few weeks of strenuous debate on the net about kink and how it’s portrayed in the media. Meghan Murphy (Rabble.ca) and William Saletan (Slate), who both have a large mainstream reading audience, wrote posts exhibiting a basic lack of understanding about kink and BDSM. They each, in their way, made exaggerated […]
“What’s With The Needles?”: The Origin of Desire & The Fall
I got an email today. All it said is: “What’s with the needles?” Yup, that’s all. With a fake return address. And since I take questions seriously, because they afford me some opportunity for reflection, I’m going answer it publicly. I gather it was actually an expression of disgust at story I recently posted called […]
Entry Points: Ways into a Story
“A story has no beginning or end; arbitrarily one chooses that moment of experience from which to look back or from which to look ahead.” The End of the Affair, by Graham Greene I’ve been thinking a lot recently about linearity and the different points of entry into a story. We experience time in a […]
Domination vs Oppression – the explicit version
I invited a number of Doms to write a post for my Order of Turbulence blog on why women’s reproductive rights mattered to them. One of the people I invited was @pissgums . He was kind enough to write a nice staid version of his stance here, on the political blog, and then he sent […]
My Response: A Writer’s View
After attempting to edit an anthology myself and failing miserably, I have a deep appreciation and respect for anthology editors and the work they do to compile a cohesive yet varied collection of stories that will be salable and, to one extent or another, feature something to everyone’s taste. They often have to cull through […]
Dominion
This is my body, there are many like it, but this one is mine. First, let me say that by current reigning definitions of ‘feminism’, I’m not one. Mostly because, for fear of getting stuck in history, feminist theory often demands that its adherents pretend that it didn’t happen. That, somehow, we should all stop […]
My Response to ‘The Good Men’s Project: The Day I Went for an Abortion’
At the age of 10, I lived in Madrid. The first thing I remember about the event was watching my mother carry a basin-full of blood out of our housekeeper’s room. There was so much blood, and it scared me. The Spanish doctor came, and I heard he and my mother shouting at each other. […]
The Handmaid’s Tale Revisited: All our Dystopian Tomorrows @MargaretAtwood
I was 22 years old when I read Margaret Atwood’s ‘The Handmaid’s Tale.‘ I remember being angry for days after I read it. My father, who read it at the same time, laughed at me and told me to be a more critical reader. He said it was a novel that typified feminist hysteria. My […]
In Honour of #BipolarAwarenessDay : Revisiting the Grave Cave
One of the things that I think very few of my readers know about me is that I am bipolar. I’ve hesitated to say anything about it because I’ve always feared that if people knew, they would simply discount anything I had to say. So, why have I decided to be public about it? Well, […]
Perfect Abs and Emo Too: Bared To You Reviewed
I decided to read Bared To You because it was sold as a well-written version of Fifty Shades of Grey. And I thought: hey, maybe the optimists were right! Maybe FSOG was a flawed but timely incursion of erotic fiction into mainstream literature. To give credit where credit is due, Sylvia Day is not E.L. […]