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Archive for the ‘Sex and Women’ Category

On Twitter today I came across an interesting discussion about the word “ladies” via The F Word UK (@thefworduk). Emma Dixon had been sent a message that said “Attention Ladies, come to our Xmas lunch.” Emma asked if there was any women who would prefer not be be addressed as “lady” or “ladies”. The replies showed that some women hate it, others don’t mind it. The same goes for “girls”.

I’ve actually been musing on this topic for a while, even since I saw this comedy sketch by Demetri Martin.

At 1:49 he says “If you want to sound like a creep, just add the word ladies to the end of things that you say. You can even say something harmless like ‘Thanks for coming to the show…. ladies.’ ‘Help, I’ve fallen into a well and I’m trapped… ladies’.”

It’s funny but it also makes a point about why women aren’t so keen on the “ladies” word. It can so easily be used in a creepy, suggestive or condescending way. “Ladies” used to be a term of respect or politeness but now it can be… sleazy. Or sexist. I’ll admit I’ve never been that keen on the word. And the other awful way it’s used is when you are called a “lady” on the street by a child or by a stranger. “Look at that lady.” “Get out of the lady’s way, darling.” I knew I was old when someone called me a “lady” for the first time.

Way back when I got started in women’s porn there were a few adult sites that attempted to cater to women and more often than not, the tem “ladies” was used. Ladies Secret. Just For Ladies. Ladies Only Porn. A lot of those sites were run by mainstream companies trying to cater to a newly emerging women’s porn market, not sure what to do. To me, there was often an element of condescension to them and the name reflected that. You could say the same thing about “Ladies Nights”. Even if it’s meant to be a female friendly event, the word suggests an “otherness”. Ladies nights are about attracting women to a location, perhaps to bring on the sexytimes…. ladies.

Compare this with the word “girls” as a way of addressing a group of women. It too can be problematic, especially if it’s a guy that’s using the word. And yet I want to defend it, not least because I have a paysite called For The Girls (more on that in a bit).

One of the triumphs of the feminist movement in the 70s was their insistence that grown women not be called girls, as was often the case in workplaces and at home. And rightly so; the term infantilised women and took away their power. It didn’t matter if you were 50 and had been working somewhere for years, you were still the girl who brought the coffee. It’s good that that changed. And today, it’s still a no-no for a man to refer to a woman as a girl.

And yet when women use the word “girls” to refer to their friends or their family, it’s about comeraderie. “Come on girls, let’s go.” A “girl’s night out” is about women getting together to have a good time. Even the phrase “you go girl!” (which I personally don’t like) has an element of empowerment. Girl power.

When we named For The Girls in 2003, we wanted to capture that feeling of female inclusiveness. We wanted to be a porn loving girl’s club, a fun time with like-minded women, a girl’s night out online. No restraints, no need to be “ladylike”. I suspect that when Violet Blue started her Smart Girl’s Porn Club she was thinking the same thing.

I’ve since wondered about the suitability of For The Girls as a name. Perhaps some find it as bad as “ladies”. And goodness knows I don’t want anyone to think that it’s somehow catering to underage females. Perhaps “For Women” or something similar may have been better, although I must admit, we were working with pre-existing domain names so that restricted our choices at the time. Nonetheless, I do think that the intention of comeraderie remains. For The Girls is about a special women’s space, by women, for women. In that context, using “girls” is OK.

Shall I also muse on the word “chick”? I used to hate it but I’ve come to accept it because it’s a relatively non-derogatory female word, similar to “guy”. It’s usually referring to young women but not necessarily so. I think I’d prefer strangers called me a “chick” rather than a “lady”. Then I can pretend I’m young and groovy.

Yes, there’s chick lit and chick flicks. Both of these things are derided because women enjoy them but the term “chick” in and of itself isn’t the problem. Originally those phrases were positive things. I think the way they’re now used negatively reveals volumes about how society discounts the experiences and stories of women.

What are your thoughts? Do you find “ladies”, “girls” or “chick” offensive or are you OK with them?

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Scientists at Rutger University in New Jersey have created a map of a woman’s brain during an orgasm. They monitored a woman who masturbated in a functional MRI machine and created a digital map of the results. It’s quite an impressive bit of work and may help better understand why some women can’t achieve orgasm.

The Guardian reports that activity changes in 80 different sections of the brain during stimulation and orgasm. Their description of it and sequence of sensation may sound familiar to women:

As the animation plays, activity first builds up in the genital area of the sensory cortex, a response to being touched in that region. Activity then spreads to the limbic system, a collection of brain structures involved in emotions and long-term memory.

As the orgasm arrives, activity shoots up in two parts of the brain called the cerebellum and the frontal cortex, perhaps because of greater muscle tension. During orgasm, activity reaches a peak in the hypothalamus, which releases a chemical called oxytocin that causes pleasurable sensations and stimulates the uterus to contract. Activity also peaks in the nucleus accumbens, an area linked to reward and pleasure.

After orgasm, the activity in all these regions gradually calms down.

Not only is this is an amazing scientific achievement, it’s also an impressive sexual achievement for the woman involved. MRI machines are horribly noisy, often uncomfortable and so magnetic that you can’t take anything metal in there. So no vibrators. This woman managed to get off, by hand, in a big noisy machine with lots of people watching. Bravo, I say.

In a related article, here’s Kayt Sukels first-person account of having an orgasm in an MRI for science. She reveals a particularly tricky aspect of the process – keeping still. You can’t move your head around or it will mess up the data. She actually had her face enclosed in a metal cage, on top of all the other stuff. Amazing.

I’ll be honest, I’d never previously considered the amount of movement in my orgasm habits prior to that conversation. I started to worry that I might not be up to the task. But when I mentioned my fears, Wise laughed.

“I know you can do it. Just practice,” she said. “You know what they say. Practice makes perfect!”

For the next two weeks, I did just that. To help optimise my body movement for fMRI, I attached a small bell – an ornament belonging to my cat – to my forehead with some duct tape.

Wise was right. With practice I diminished any jingling sound to something manageable, no matter how raucous I may have felt on the inside. And once she and Komisaruk had bolted me to the scanner bed, while it wasn’t easy to work up to an orgasm, I found it wasn’t quite as difficult as I had imagined.

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In February I met Dr Clarissa Smith who told me about the massive research project into porn that she was undertaking with collegues Feona Attwood and Martin Barker. Not long after they put out the call for porn users to participate in their survey which aimed to look at porn use in a non-judgemental way.

They received 5,490 responses to their questionaire and a heap of extended emails. They’re currently working their way through a mountain of information (over 1.2 million words) and expect it will take some time to reach any extensive conclusions. Nonetheless, they’ve put out a preliminary report of the survey, with some useful statistics and information.

Naturally I was interested in their demographic data, particularly when it came to women. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the survey threw up the same “one third” figure that repeatedly appears in statistics about porn. In this case, 31.6% of respondents were female, a figure that is pretty similar to the Nielsen Netratings’ 2003 report which is regularly quoted in the media (and on this blog). What’s really interesting is how much age is a factor in porn use for women:

As you can see, women aged 18-25 are far more likely to use porn than their older counterparts.

The authors make this interesting point:

What we can’t tell,from this snapshot, is whether this is simply a ‘passing phase’ for them, or whether it signals that wider generational shift we think we have identified – something which over time will reduce the overall differences between male and female interest in pornography.

It’s only an opinion (and largely anecdotal) but I think they’re on the right track. From what I’ve seen online, today’s young women have no problem with porn and a lot of them embrace it just as easily as their male friends. Previously there’s been a cultural difference in how women were brought up – there was no entrenched culture of sharing porn among the women of twenty or even ten years ago. Now, with the ubiquity of online porn, the male-female divide has weakened.

Of course, the majority of porn is still aimed at men and I think that partly accounts for the disparity in usage rates between men and women.

The report goes on to say that men attach more importance to porn and use it more frequently. When it comes to why people use porn, simple sexual gratification was the most popular reason. A user feels horny, they satisfy the urge with porn. Interestingly, they also found that a lot more women used porn to induce arousal than men.

Among the other results: DVDs are on the way out, tube sites are hugely popular and pop-up ads don’t convince people to look at porn. Also, amateur porn sites are far more popular than a lot of upmarket studio-produced porn sites.

I can’t wait to see the extended results. It will be incredibly useful to have this kind of research available, especially as there really isn’t enough unbiased information about porn use out there.

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I can’t wait to see this film. Starring Maggie Gyllenhaal and Hugh Dancy, Hysteria is a dramatisation of the true story behind the invention of the vibrator and it looks like a lot of fun.

I read Rachel Maines’ book The Technology of Orgasm back in 1998 when it was released and I wrote a piece on it for Australian Women’s Forum (it’s now in the member’s area of For The Girls). The story of the invention of the vibrator is fascinating: in the late 1800s doctors would bring women to orgasm to treat “hysteria” (sexual frustration). There weren’t enough doctors to keep up with the demand so the industrial revolution and electricity came to the rescue in the form of the vibrator, allowing the treatment of many more women an hour (and upping the profit margins).

The trick with treating “hysteria” like this was, of course, that it wasn’t supposed to be sexual. Sex was about putting a penis into a vagina. Rubbing a woman’s clitoris until she experienced the relief of a “hysterical paroxysm” was simply a medical procedure. Nothing suss! It reveals much about Victorian attitudes to sexuality and women.

If you want more info I recommend the Good Vibrations online vibrator museum – lots of pics and info there.

via Violet Blue

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A couple of videos have come out in the last week or so that celebrate women’s genitals. Or, to use their term, the vagina.

Both of them are attempts at viral videos from companies that sell “feminine hygiene” products (that term always makes me cringe). The first one features a talking cat advocating the use of the word “Vaginal” as a substitute for “awesome”. The second one has a nice lady singing various euphemisms about the female genitals, similar to Eric Idle’s Penis Song (and, dare I say it, my own Paddling The Pink Canoe short film).

I like the vocabulary change that the cat is suggesting but I can’t in good conscience take it up since the company behind it is Summer’s Eve, which produces lots of sprays, gels and soaps for down there. They want us to celebrate our cunts while simultaneously telling us they’re filthy and smelly. That’s quite the mixed message. Summer’s Eve has previously had trouble by suggesting the best way to get a promotion was to douche.

The second one is better and it’s from a company I feel more comfortable with. The Mooncup is a silicon cup designed to be inserted inside the vagina during menstruation. It collects the blood in a more environmentally friendly way than disposable tampons or pads. I use a similar cup from Diva and they’re great. They’ve saved me a lot of money and it’s a much easier way of dealing with my period.

The comment I did want to make about both these videos is the use of the word “vagina” to describe a woman’s genitals. I’ve had my rants about this before here and here. Suffice to say, there’s a good reason to be pedantic about semantics here: put briefly, the emphasis on talking about the vagina implies that it’s the main source of female pleasure and it means the clitoris can be neglected when it comes time to stop talking and start humping.

When the cat talks about how fantastic the vagina is, I don’t disagree. The vagina can do lots of interesting things like accommodate both a penis and a baby. But I think the clitoris is far more impressive and worth celebrating. Wouldn’t it be cool if “that’s clitoral” was a replacement for “that’s awesome”?

The thing is, both videos are talking about “the vagina” as a region rather than as the specific birth canal. And that’s the colloquial term for a woman’s genitals; it’s what most people use to describe the cunt.

As much as I hate it, perhaps I’m just going to have to give in on this one. The Skepchick argues that insisting on “vulva” makes me a “pussy pedant” because language changes. It’s a fair cop.

Still, poor old vulva is sitting in a corner feeling very neglected. And I’m still going to picture speculums when people say “You can see her vagina”. Perhaps I need to start being obtuse and refer to men’s genitals as “the scrotum”. It’ll be a bit of fun, if nothing else.

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There’s a logical fallacy called “cherry picking” which is essentially this: you come up with a hypothesis. You then seek out data to back your assertions. You ignore any contradictory evidence and only use the stuff that supports your theory.

Then you write a book about it. Cue the articles in major newspapers and interviews on TV. Suddenly, your delightful theory is accepted uncritically as fact.

Thus, we come to A Billion Wicked Thoughts, the book by Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam. It’s subtitle is “What the World’s Largest Experiment Reveals about Human Desire” and it’s main idea is that the authors have revealed fundamental differences between men and women by looking at internet porn (or, specifically searches for internet porn). You’ll never guess what that fundamental difference is. Yep, men like sex, women don’t.

I’m a bit late with this blog post. Plenty of other bloggers have already pointed out the various problems with this book and the methodology used and I figured I didn’t need to add my voice to the protest. Indeed, I didn’t pay a lot of attention when it first came out.

But today I discovered that the researchers had asserted that the (alleged) lack of popularity of For The Girls was proof that women are only interested in romance fiction. And well, fuck that, I’m kind of angry.

Before I go there, let me direct you to the article (and assertion) in question. It’s this: Censored by the Wall Street Journal: The Female Sexual Brain in Psychology Today. Yes, the same Psychology Today that recently published an article saying black women are objectively less attractive.

Here is the main thing they have to say about the differences between men and women when it comes to sex:

“Men seek out visuals and go straight for orgasm. Women prefer stories and often favor conversation over culmination.”

Sound familiar? It’s the same thing Kinsey was asserting 60 years ago, back when there was no porn for women. It’s the same idea that is repeated ad nauseum in any discussion about women and porn. And it’s the same idea I’ve been battling for the last 11 years.

Note the blanket statement about what men like and what women like? No detail, no nuanced acknowledgement of the wildly varying sexuality and tastes of men and women. And no concept of bisexuality or homosexuality or queerness or transgenderism at all.

(Let me say this – I’ve been called out on this in the past, saying “women like this sort of thing”. And they were right. I’ve done my best to change my views. It’s wrong to say “all women like this” because it’s just too broad a statement to be accurate).

This use of search statistics to support the “men are from Mars, women are from Venus” idea was apparent from the very beginning of their research. This was posted on Slash fan fiction sites in 2009:

We’re deeply interested in broad-based behavioral data that involves romantic or erotic cognition and evinces a clear distinction between men and women. (my bold) Fan fiction matches this criteria perfectly. Let us make clear, however: fan fiction is not the subject of our research. Our subject is the human brain. For us, fan fiction is a wonderfully rich source of data–like single-neuron recordings in rhesus monkeys–albeit a unique and invaluable one.

Suffice to say, the researchers fell foul of the fanfic community on whom they based many of their conclusions about women and romance – the response can be seen here.

So, on to the bee in my bonnet. It’s this:

The five most popular adult sites for men are all within the top 100 most popular sites on the entire Internet. All are webcam or video sites featuring anonymous graphic sex, such as PornHub, the most popular adult YouTube clone, which draws about 13.9 million visitors a month. In contrast, the most popular adult video site for women, For The Girls, draws a meager 100,000 a month (and up to half of those visitors are gay men). All across the planet, with women free to access any erotic content they wish, they mostly seek out character-driven stories of sexual relationships: romance novels, erotic romance (sometimes called EroRom or Romantica®), fan fiction, slash fiction, gay romance novels, and erotic stories.

The most popular “erotic” site for women is fanfiction.net, featuring more than 1.5 million visitors a month and more than two million stories, about half of which are tagged as “romance.”

The bit in bold is their assertion about For The Girls. According to them, FTG is a minnow in terms of traffic and half of our members are gay men. That’s quite the statement to make when you have never contacted the owners and don’t have access to a site’s statistics or membership details. Let me say this now: it’s totally inaccurate.

Today I sent them an email asking where they got the data to make such statements.

I can only assume they’ve come to this conclusion by looking at the figures on Alexa, an Amazon-owned company that keeps track of people’s surfing habits via a toolbar. As alluring as that data can be, it’s not very accurate. It relies on people willingly installing their software, allowing themselves to be tracked. And the info is often 3 months out of date. Interestingly, Alexa says our main audience is 65 year old women without children – exactly the kind of person who would unknowingly install spyware or a toolbar.

But wait! Here I read that the authors contacted fellow women’s erotica site Sssh.com. Interesting. Did Sssh give them the figures on FTG? If so, why would the authors listen to a competitor site who also does not have access to our stats? And if they contacted Sssh, why isn’t THAT site the one they quote in their Psychology Today article?

I’m not about to publicly bandy about the traffic figures for FTG. That’s given out on a need-to-know basis. But rest assured, we get a shitload more traffic that 100,000 visitors a month. A metric shitload.

To be honest, though, I’m more offended about the assertion about the gayness or otherwise of our membership. Assuming they relied on the dodgy data from Alexa… there’s absolutely NOTHING on there that discusses the sexual orientation or otherwise of site visitors (and if there was, well, damn, there’s bound to be a human rights violation in it). I can only assume this assertion is based on Playgirl’s readership figures – which have absolutely nothing to do with us.

The fact is, I have no idea how many of our members identify as gay. We don’t collect that kind of data. Asking would be rude. And, what’s more, it doesn’t fucking matter. What I do know is that the majority of names on members’ credit cards are female.

Yes, we do get men joining For The Girls but I don’t know whether they’re straight or gay. Given that our content is half straight hardcore and half nude men, I don’t think it’s remotely accurate to say we resemble a gay site or that we are trying deliberately to cater to gay men. Our target audience has always been straight women. I do get emails from straight men thanking us for offering a more positive version of porn or saying they joined to share the experience with their wife or girlfriend.

Beyond this, let me say that comparing FTG to a fan fiction site (or free mainstream tube sites) is not even remotely comparing like to like. Notice how the authors called us an “adult video site” as if we’re the same as Pornhub? We’re a membership site that requires people to be aged over 18. A great deal of our visitors arrive there having clicked on an ad, knowing we’re a commercial product. We self identify as a porn site and offer hardcore content but we’re also a magazine with articles and fiction. Compare that with your average free fan fiction site. It’s apples and oranges. What’s more… FTG doesn’t offer slash or gay fiction (although we’re changing that soon). So right there you’ve got a vast difference in individual tastes.

And that’s the problem with this research. It doesn’t seem to understand the idea that women’s tastes ARE different and different women will seek out different things on the net depending on who they are, how old they are and what turns them on at that very moment.

So to use For The Girls as “proof” of the assertion that “women aren’t visual” and are more turned on by romance novels or “conversation” is just a nonsense.

By the way, let me say I’m so disappointed in this research. The idea of looking at internet porn searches IS interesting. For one thing, it seems to suggest that Gail Dines’s assertion that men are seeking out violent porn is way off the mark. But I couldn’t in good conscience use this data in a debate.

If they can’t get the facts right about For The Girls, what other information did they fudge or fuck up?

If or when I get a reply from the authors as to the source of their assertion, I’ll add it to this post.

* Note: I thought I’d include the above image from the Billion Wicked Thoughts website. Nice indication of the gender stereotypes they’re selling.

——————-
Update 25th June
I’ve had a reply from Sai Gaddam. He says they emailed us in July 2009 and got no reply. I searched back, couldn’t find any emails from them. Perhaps they went into spam.

Sai says:

We used the web analytics services Quantcast and Alexa to obtain traffic and demographic estimates. Both report a monthly traffic of less than 100k.

Quantcast also reports that 54% of the visitors are male and the most correlated site are freebuddymovies.com and outpersonals.com, which are both categorized as Gay.

We understand that these numbers rely on random sampling and are estimates — but reasonably useful ones.

We will be happy to update these articles with more accurate information about your site if you can share any relevant data with us.

Quantcast is an analytics service that relies on websites to volunteer their own data by inserting code onto their pages. When a website does not use Quantcast (and For The Girls doesn’t), they estimate. I have no idea how they estimate, but the figures they apparently pull out of thin air look impressive. Thus, according to Quantcast, 54% of our traffic is male and the majority of our surfers are black. Uh, OK.

There’s also an “Audience Also Likes” feature which says “The people who visit forthegirls.com are also likely to visit these categories and sites.” Apparently our surfers are “likely” to visit Outpersonals, Ebaums World and Urban Dictionary.

The truthiness presented by this information was “reasonably useful” enough for our intrepid authors to present it as fact and then use us to prop up their assertion that women aren’t visual.

Not good enough. As I said, if they fudged the stats here, what else did they fuck up?

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It’s been in the news for weeks and I thought I’d finally weigh in on the whole Anthony Weiner penis photo drama. Not because of all the glorious jokes that can be made about dicks but because of the above video from The Daily Show.

It’s mostly great. I especially like the point Kristen makes that men who send unsolicited penis photos labour under the misapprehension that more information about their penis will seal the deal with desirable women. Rest assured, fellas, it won’t. Sure, we may be curious about your penis and maybe even want to see it one day. But there’s a time and a place for knowing about it and seeing an uninvited photo on one’s phone isn’t one of them.

What I didn’t like about the above video was this exchange at around 2:30:

Jon Stewart: To be fair though, sometimes women send men risque photos as well.
Kristen: Well, because the female body is beautiful and penises look like a species discovered on the undersea floor living near sulphur jets.

This whole “penises are ugly” thing has been repeated fairly often during the whole affair. And it’s a common trope that women’s bodies are naturally beautiful but men’s bodies are undesirable and unappealing. It’s an idea that reinforces the idea of the male gaze, where men do the looking but are not to be looked at.

I for one would like to speak up for the penis. I think cocks are lovely. They’re a fantastic piece of the human anatomy and we should celebrate them.

And I should know. I’ve been looking at them constantly for ten years. I think in that time I may well have seen at least ten thousand examples of the male member in all shapes and sizes and in all states of being. They all have their own personalities and unique characteristics. And they all look glorious when they’re erect.

I didn’t always think this way. I remember feeling a little squeamish about cocks when I started out. I enjoyed looking at handsome faces, muscles, hairy chests, gorgeous legs and pert butts… but the penis didn’t really thrill me. I may have considered them to be a little ugly to be honest (although, to be fair, I didn’t find female genitals all that appealing either). I was a typical example of my culture at that time; as a woman I wasn’t encouraged to look at men nor was I exposed to male nudity very often. While female nudity was common, the cock remained secret and hidden. Especially images of the hard cock, which were (and are) regularly censored.

What’s changed is sheer exposure. Over the years I got to know the penis and I finally came to appreciate how lovely it is.

I think more and more women will begin to feel the same way, especially now that we have easy access to a plethora of cocks on the internet. It’s time we stopped deriding the male body and started admiring it.

Consensually, of course.

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The SMH is reporting a survey by soap company Dove which asked women what they found attractive in a man. The big winner is a good sense of humour:

“Sixty five per cent of women surveyed said they are turned off by guys seeking physical perfection, with 86 per cent citing vanity as one of the biggest turn-offs in a man.

“Although one in four men view a muscular tanned physique as desirable, women prefer a man with a warm inner glow to hot looks.

“A convincing 99 per cent of women would in fact prefer a funny guy with good manners to the perfect Paragon.”

I have to agree, a guy who makes you laugh is very appealing. Of course, if you’re just out for a perve, this may take a back seat. The other thing about this is it’s a soap company survey so you have to take it with a pinch of.. um, soap.

The comments underneath that article are a whole other can of worms. The first ten of so are from guys vowing that it’s not true, that all women are shallow and self obsessed and will only go for good looking guys. As a later commenter wrote: “It’s good to see that no one here harbours any kind of resentment from rejection.”

This pic is an “outtake” from the photo shoot we did with male stripper Jay a few years ago. As you can see, Jay is a man who knows how to laugh. He’s also hot. One doesn’t preclude the other.

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Am I queer?

It’s probably a ridiculous question to which the answer is, simply, no. And yet I’ve been wanting to write about this since the Erotics conference 2 weeks ago because I found myself sitting there wondering if I was queer. Simply asking the question raises more questions about the concept of “queer” and how it’s applied.

At the conference I was surrounded by a lot of people who identified as queer and there was a lot of discussion about queer issues, queer gazes and queer politics. There was also a lot of talk about heteronormativies, monogamy and cultural expectations.

What does it mean to be queer, exactly?

In the commonly understood sense, it means homosexual – gay or lesbian. The term has also been used to include transgender, bisexual and polysexual people and, ultimately, anyone whose gender or sexuality doesn’t fit into an easily defined box.

In theory, being queer means anything other than heterosexual and cisgender (i.e. identifying with the sex/gender assigned at birth).

But wait. I’ve been reading things that suggests the word “queer” also encompasses attraction and ways of seeing, not just identity and behaviour. So if you’re a woman who finds Lady GaGa or Madonna rather hot, that could be described as queer, at least by some.

And given that the Kinsey scale sees an awful lot of people having at least some feeling of attraction toward their own sex/gender, suddenly “queer” is rather a broad term indeed.

At the conference I also picked up the vibe that engaging in kinky or non-monogamous or non “heteronormative” behaviour could also be considered queer.

That expands the term again. Suddenly, half the population is queer.

Still, it’s not me, right? I’m definitely on the outside of this particular party.

And yet, I don’t quite fit into the straitjacket prepared for me.

Yes, I’m a monogamous, married, heterosexual, fairly vanilla woman. I choose to be this way. I don’t swing or do kink or have sex with other women because I’ve made a conscious choice not to do so, based on a knowledge of myself. That’s not to say that I’m NOT attracted to other women or don’t find the idea of kink or swinging to be appealing. It’s just that I put my relationship first and I do that through monogamy. It just works for me and my husband.

A lot of the negativity I was hearing about monogamy and marriage is based on the assumption that it’s an unthinking state, that those who get married are simply following a cultural script and repress their real desires and thus end up missing out on a wider world.

I don’t doubt that a lot of people do just that. Marriage and monogamy and family are the yardstick by which society likes to measure sex and relationships and there’s no doubt that people slot themselves into that life without questioning it, often with negative results. But that’s not always the case. Monogamy is not for everyone… but some of us do willingly and happily choose it.

At the conference I got the vibe that part of being queer is essentially the idea of rejecting the white picket fence and embracing the diversity of human sexuality. Dare I say it, there was a certain sense of superiority behind this, as though being queer was a more authentic or more emotionally honest state of being.

I find myself sitting on that white picket fence.

I live a very strange life. I make porn. I meet and talk with a lot of people who are queer or kinky or swingers or polyamorous or trans or porn stars. Almost everyone in my professional life doesn’t fit into that little box called “heteronormative”… except for me, apparently.

And yet beyond the sphere of porn and sex blogging, I don’t fit in. I am child-free, I have no “real” job. I’m an atheist. I don’t wear make up or care about fashion and I’m not good at conforming with the “feminine” idea of being female. I have an extensive knowledge of sex and all things sexual and tend to forget not to talk about these things in “nice” company. I write dirty stories and edit dirty movies and I go off and make porn films or take photos of naked men occasionally. I have rather varied tastes in porn – I find all sorts of things sexy – and none. To my family and friends, I’m rather strange.

I don’t really consider myself “normal”. And yet, within the porny kinky sphere, I’m boringly “normal”. There doesn’t seem to be a space or a community where I do fit in.

To use a concrete example: I’d love to be able to take part in the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras this weekend because it’s a public celebration of sexuality and I feel very much aligned with the politics involved. (I’d also love to get dressed up in spangles and be an over-the-top drag queen.) Nonetheless, I’m not queer, I don’t self-identify as such and I’m not accepted by the queer community so I can only be a supporter on the sidelines.

Last week Imogen, commenting on this post, said:

As a hypersexual straight woman, I’m bloody jealous of the queer community and I wish I *could* belong to it. Highly sexual straight women don’t fit in to mainstream sexual culture or the queer subculture, we don’t have our own community.

Imogen’s comment is spot on and it made me realise why I started asking myself if I was queer. I too am jealous. I’m not invited to the queer party but there isn’t an equivalent straight shindig going on next door. On the straight side of the equation sex is reduced to Cosmopolitan and porn, commercialised ideals of beauty and religious “morals” systems. There’s no straight mardi gras because parading down the street celebrating straight sexuality is always reduced to a “boobs on bikes” parade – and immediate concern for “the children.”

Part of being queer is rejecting that kind of sexual culture.

Is there room in “queer” for people like me and Imogen? Or is there some other subculture that we can belong to – or create?

And, more importantly, is there some way I can parade down the street in a ridiculous spangly bikini on a float shaped like a penis yelling “Orgasms for everyone?” without getting arrested?

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Abortion is back in the headlines here in Australia because in Queensland a woman has today gone on trial for procuring an abortion. This is the first such prosecution in the state’s history, even though the law banning abortion was first introduced in 1899.

There were several pro choice rallies held around the country in support of Teagan and her boyfriend, although I’m disappointed to say they weren’t well attended. This might just be because people feel protests don’t achieve much. Despite this, the majority of Australians do support a woman’s right to choose – see here and here and here.

Technically a court ruling overturned the law in 1986, although this case appears to completely ignore that legal precedent. The Queensland government, with its first female premier, has been remarkably cowardly on the issue, refusing to repeal the 1899 law and instead wallpapering over the cracks with a few changes to legislation that seemingly make it OK to take RU486. But the case has had a huge chilling effect on the ability of women to obtain an abortion in Queensland and, if they are found guilty, will no doubt cause further erosion of a woman’s right to seek a termination.

I don’t want to go into too many details about this case as it’s already been covered elsewhere. The two SMH opinion pieces Abortion law stuck in the 19th Century and Abortion trial not just about women do an excellent job of summing up the case.

What’s inspired me to blog about this case, apart from the obvious feminist interest in the whole disaster, are the comments on those opinion pieces. Specifically, the way the pro-life/pro-choice arguments keep boiling down to the idea of “Is it life?”

I am pro choice, of course. I completely support the right of women to make choices about their reproductive health and about whether they want to have children. My body, my choice. Raising a child is a huge responsibility and if someone isn’t ready to be a parent, they shouldn’t have to be.

I honestly think that “Every child a wanted child” is the fundamental reason why we should support legal abortion. Kids deserve to be loved and raised properly. Given the plight of so many unloved and unwanted kids in this world, I think it’s better that women be able to choose whether they want to be a mother or not. If you are not up to doing the job, you shouldn’t be forced to do it.

The anti-abortionists (”pro-life”) are all about the rights of the child, and only the child. They don’t seem to take into account what happens after the birth of that baby; all they see is a life, a potential person who has a right to live.

Here’s the thing: I do see their point. But it doesn’t mean that I agree with them.

All the arguing about “when life begins” is essentially ridiculous. An egg is alive. A sperm is alive. When they join, they create a new cell. And that cell has the potential to go on and become a new conscious human being. But there is never a moment when that entity isn’t alive so it’s a moot point. And I am not going to deny that a zygote or embryo or fetus is a human.

Nonetheless, it is a bundle of cells that requires the womb of the mother in order to grow.

The question then becomes: when is a child viable? Or, perhaps more importantly, when do we say that a baby is a baby and not just a bundle of cells?

And this is where the various arguments get a little bogged down because you can probably argue all day about spinal cord growth and brain development and nerve endings and so on. The anti-abortionists say that the moment of conception is most important because that’s when the new individual begins. The pro choice argument is a little more vague on this topic. It seems the closer you get to birth, the more viable the child becomes and the less acceptable an abortion is.

I’m just going to come out and say where I stand: I understand that abortion involves killing a bundle of cells/embryo/fetus/baby/potential person. And I don’t have a problem with that – even when it involves late term abortions of disabled fetuses.

My reasons are this. It comes down to conflicting rights; the rights of the mother versus the rights of the potential child. And for me a grown, conscious woman’s life takes precedence.

An embryo/fetus/baby is not conscious. Even a newborn child is not fully conscious. For me, consciousness is the most important thing. Obviously I’m not advocating infanticide but it really does come down to that fact. Consciousness makes us who we are. We don’t have a soul, all we have is a brain and when the brain is not fully developed, there is no consciousness.

Anti-abortionists are arguing that an unconscious fetus is exactly the same as a grown adult and that it has a right to life. But that life is solely dependent on the mother, on her body, her time, energy, attention and care. They demand that the mother make physical, emotional, mental and financial sacrifices -for years – against her will for the benefit of the unborn child. Put simply, it’s not a fair transaction.

And not only is it unfair for the mother, it’s also unfair to the child. Better that the kid be wanted and properly looked after than a source of ongoing regret, spite and anger

I think I could take the “right to life” arguments more seriously if babies were instantly independent the moment they’re born. But they’re not and that’s exactly the point. A child is 20 years of your life. That’s a massive undertaking and it should always be done willingly and happily.

And it seems that most right wing “pro-lifers” are also against welfare for single mothers, sex education and contraception. They want the babies to be born and then don’t give a damn what happens afterwards. They also seem to hold the view that women who have abortions are all callous sluts (see The Only Moral Abortion is My Abortion for examples of this attitude – where pro-lifers have abortions and are back picketing the clinic the next day).

But having an abortion is never an easy or simple choice. I’m sure that most women give it serious thought before they undergo a termination. And while the pro-life movement likes to make up statistics about “abortion grief”, the fact is that most women who have abortions feel relieved afterwards. They usually go on to have a family a little later, when they’re ready (although some don’t, and that’s fine too.) There are, of course, women who have finished having children and who choose to terminate a late-in-life accident. It’s not only young women who have abortions.

The reason it’s called “pro choice” is because it’s about trusting women to make the right choice. About understanding that unwanted pregnancy is a very stressful and difficult situation to be in, a situation that no woman takes lightly. It has to be about individuals making decisions according to their own needs and circumstances, independent of any religious authority that wants to dictate “morality” to them.

Nobody wants to have an abortion. It is ultimately a very sad thing. But it’s better to terminate an unwanted pregnancy and start again than to continue on and have an unwanted child.

On a personal note, I have never had an abortion. I think it’s mostly a matter of luck, although I have been fairly meticulous in my pill taking, simply due to my strong desire not to have children. My husband and I said from the beginning that we would terminate any accidents; thankfully I’ve never been confronted with the actual decision. I do know that it would have been hard, in spite of the beliefs I’ve just outlined. But I think that if I discovered I was pregnant tomorrow, I would be OK with having a termination.

I do have plenty of female friends who have had abortions. All of them say they don’t regret it. Some went on, built up their lives, relationships and careers and then had much-loved children. Others remain happily child free. None of them wanted to be in that situation but accidents happen, as they always will. They made a choice that was right for them at the time and I would never say that it was a wrong choice. And it makes me angry that others would judge them for it.

I suspect that this long blog post hasn’t covered any new ground. Still, it’s been useful for me to write it and to articulate exactly where I stand on this issue.

In looking for an image to accompany this post, I typed “abortion” into Google images. I then scrolled through the many gory and confroting images that anti-abortionists use to argue against abortion. And while I found the pictures horrific, I don’t resile from my position. Yes, termination is an awful thing. But the rights of the mother are greater than the rights of the unwanted, unborn, unconscious zygote/embryo/fetus/baby.

Every child a wanted child.

It’s the 21st century and it’s time the law reflected the modern-day ethical choices of women – and acknowledged reality.

Abortion should be legal.

Pic came from here.

Note:
I also recommend Leslie Cannold’s excellent book The Abortion Myth for a more thorough exploration of the issue.

“The women I interviewed, no matter what side of the abortion fence they were on,” writes Leslie Cannold in The Abortion Myth, “were clear that the fetus is alive, and abortion kills it. None of them, however, believed these facts proved that abortion was wrong.” Cannold criticizes pro-choice feminists for denying the fetus in an effort to bring the woman back into focus as the locus of pregnancy and the agent of decision-making. In her view, women are moral persons for whom the decision to abort derives less from a sense of rights or privacy and more from a broader evaluation of what the “right” thing to do is. This evaluation speaks to their attitudes towards pregnancy and motherhood, and the real difference between pro- and anti-choice women is their level of trust that other women will “act morally.”"

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The Sydney Morning Herald today has an article discussing the Brazilian wax, declaring it to be “here to stay.” While the article doesn’t offer any new information, I found the 100+ comments to be rather fascinating. Specifically, the apparently overwhelming enthusiasm of male commenters towards waxing – and some serious negativity towards female body hair. Some examples:

“Brazilians are literally the best thing that has ever happened to the world. May it always be so.”

“Personally, I find it much nicer playing on a barren pitch than trying to navigate the Amazon. In fact – it’s a deal-breaker.”

“If I want to see hair on a womans body I will grow a moustache.”

“Women should at least trim their pubic hair, it’s a huge turn off when you see a forest down there.”

Perhaps the worst comment was this:

“A small landing strip is fine but in this day and age any more than that is just basically unkempt. You won’t hear many men saying that they want more hair down there and I can assure you in my circles (early 40’s) more than a landing strip is frowned upon by the boys. So to those who are living in denial, stop being lazy and SORT IT OUT.”

I find it rather disturbing to think that, according to the standards of these men, a woman should regularly pay large amounts of money to have her pubic hair ripped out, otherwise she’s unattractive, unclean, lazy and unkempt. I’m really hoping that this attitude is not becoming widespread amongst men. Pity younger women who may not have the confidence to deal with that kind of sexual expectation and so accede to requests to depilate, even though it may not be their preference.

And I should say, I’m not against pubic hair waxing per se. Many women say it makes the pubic area feel more sensitive and they feel more confident about receiving oral sex. Some men also say they prefer bare skin because it’s easier to give cunnilingus and that does seem to be a reasonable claim to make.

But jeez. We’re meant to have body hair. It’s natural and normal. And it should always be a woman’s choice whether she keeps it or removes it. Any guy that says its a “deal breaker” is obviously so selfish he’s not going to be much good in bed anyway. And any guy who considers natural body hair to be a sign of laziness or lack of hygiene is clearly someone who has bought into the impossible ideas of the beauty myth, is ignorant of reality and will be impossible to please, therefore also crap in bed.

And I believe all such demands for hair removal should be met with a strong reply of: “You first mate. I hear the local salon does a great crack, back and sack wax.”

Interestingly, the comments section of that article has thrown up anecdotal evidence that women aren’t so keen on depilation after all:

“I’m a doctor and I can tell you that Brazilian waxes are not as common as the media portays. I see human bodies in all shapes and sizes, across all age groups and it is only a very small minority (in my experience at my clinic) that follow this trend. Perhaps a lot of people talk the talk but do not walk the walk? Another observation I have made (again from my own personal experience in my clinic) is that it is generally only undertaken by young woman (up to the mid twenties). Even amongst the young woman in their thirties that I see, the number of Brazilians are very low.”

It would seem there’s a discrepancy between the hype of the media (and porn) and what is happening in the real world. I hope the wax-eager studs of this world realise they’re in for a lot of “deal breaking”.

In case you’re wondering – I’m a furry princess. I hate pain and I don’t even wax my eyebrows, let alone anything else. Sometimes I shave my legs and armpits and sometimes I don’t. Thankfully my equally furry spouse loves me just the way I am, so this issue doesn’t come up often. But if I was single, I think I’d be echoing the thoughts of these female commenters:

“Nope, never getting a brazilian done. If the sight of trimmed & maintained pubic hair sends a man running, good riddance.”

“And as for getting rid of pubic hair – what a load of marketing bunkum. If you have to rely on hairless pubic bones for good sex, then you can’t be doing it right.”

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The Girl Effect is a new project that aims to break povery through the education of young girls. It says that if we can keep a 12 year old girl in school and regularly seeing a doctor, she’s less likely to end up poor or with HIV and that will help to break the poverty cycle.

This is a great video, simple but compelling.

I should add a link to the Akimbo blog by my friend Audacia Ray who is working in a NGO on these kinds of issues.

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I was trawling about Youtube and found myself looking at male strip show videos. And while I’m quite partial to a good male strip show, they can also be a bit cliched and sometimes the attitude of the dancer can be a bit too agressive or cocky.

And then I found this video. Lord Dashwood is a male burlesque dancer whose routine is a mix of drag and more masculine dancing. He’s quite softly spoken and seems to be an all-round nice guy. His Myspace page says he’s married… and Jewish, in case you’re curious. He won Best Newcomer at the Ministry of Burlesque awards in 2007.

Alas, he’s now retired, if the comment on this news item is to be believed. “I organised a stag do at a burlesque night a few years back, but only because the groom-to-be fancied a go at being one of the acts. He then set up a successful part time stint as burlesque act Lord Dashwood, stripping down to stockings and corsets and what not. He’s retired now because he and his wife have a son.”

I went looking for more male burlesque videos but there’s very few of them and most seem to be performed for gay audiences.

I occasionally have this mad idea that it would be cool to open a male strip bar and host upmarket events for straight women. Sure, I’d feature the Manpower type acts but I’d also love to encourage guys to do something a little different. Cross a few boundaries, wear suspenders, do a Frank N Furter, do acrobatics or pole dance (I think guys who pole dance are sexy). And of course, I’d want to see a range of body shapes, not just the buff muscle bound types, nice as they are.

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Gorgeous cartoon from Stuff No One Told Me, via Erika Lust.

I think we need to make this point a little more often. Romance novels are often derisively called “porn for women” and, while this is inaccurate in a lot of ways, it does make a point about unrealistic fantasies. Both porn and romance/fairytales offer a fantasy version of the opposite sex and depict sex and relationships in a very unrealistic way.

Interestingly, there isn’t the same moral panic about girls reading teenage romance novels as there is about boys looking at porn. But maybe it’s something we need to talk about more.

Just speaking from personal experience, I used to love Sweet Dreams and similar girly romance books when I was 14 and it led to plenty of confusing experiences when I finally got boys to pay attention to me. I expected them to act a certain way and floundered when they didn’t. I wouldn’t say it was a major problem, really, but it meant I was somewhat deluded about how this whole “love” thing was supposed to work.

Thankfully, it all worked out OK for me in the end and I did marry my Prince Charming. I just had to get used to the fact that he farts.*

Still, it’s a question worth asking: do romance novels encourage girls to have a warped view of men? Of relationships? Of sex? And does it feed into the general world view that sells Men Are From Mars-type books? Does it encourage the Cosmo-style idea that men are mysterious creatures who are afraid of committment and must be seduced with feminine wiles?

Or is this another case of not giving young women enough credit? Are romance novels, like porn, just a bit of easy entertainment?

And since I’m asking questions, here’s one: why don’t boys (in general) read romance? Is it because, like porn for women, there are no books that actually dare to offer male-friendly stories that focus mainly on love and relationships?

It’s an intriguing idea, romance for men. I’m now wondering what it would look like. Excuse me while I go away and see if I can find anything like it on the net.

* As do I!

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It keeps popping up on TV talk shows and is used as a debate silencer by right-wing pundits. Religious groups use it to put pressure on politicians to create greater censorship. It’s the term “sexualisation of children” and I suspect that it’s bullshit.

I’ve been meaning to write a blog post on this for a while but today I’ve found that Australian researcher Catherine Lumby has pretty much summed things up. Catherine is part of a new research group called Onscenity which is looking at the new climate of sexual openness in the media and researching its effects – without the usual moral hysteria.

The Register reports on a recent conference held by the new group. I’m going to get a bit quote-happy with this as it has a lot to say:

The real problem, though, is that no one knows what “sexualisation” is: it is a convenient label used to position the child as always the victim, and then to pile every problem imaginable on top, including paedophilia, body image, sex trafficking and self-esteem. Once that particular juggernaut gets rolling, it is almost impossible to have a sensible debate about what’s really going on.

Too many so-called experts – most famously, Dr Linda Papadopoulos – were speaking well outside their field of expertise. Eating disorders get ascribed to “sexualisation”, despite the fact that most dietary experts would question that conclusion. Worse is the way in which this debate is almost always framed in moralising terms, and a key question must be what political motive lies behind such framing.

Equally of concern was the way in which “healthy sexuality” is so often equated to “non-commercial” – as though sex alone can be an activity free from all commercial influence.

[David] Buckingham’s contribution was echoed closely by Professor Catharine Lumby, Director of the Journalism and Media Research Centre at the University of New South Wales. She warned that a key driver to debate in this area is a parental view that “it must be possible to stop information getting out”. The current panic in Australia has its roots in a report – Corporate Paedophilia – which set the ball rolling in terms of claiming that children were being “sexualised”.

However, the report lacked all scholarship, being based on an inadequate sample, and contained no definition of sexualisation – or even what was meant by “child”. It was dominated by vox pop submissions from the Christian right, feminists and high-profile social commentators.

The entire debate was a trap, since as soon as someone declares an image erotic, it is then analysed in that context, as opposed to being viewed for whatever it is. In fact, Lumby suggested, it is arguable that analysing images by imposing an adult viewpoint on childhood activity is itself abusive.

Like Buckingham, Lumby felt that it was necessary to look at the political motives and context of the current panics. Buckingham suggested a concern with female working class sexuality, which was viewed as dangerous and in need of control. Absent from most debate was any view of boys or their sexuality, other than as a threat.

Lumby went further, expressing her utter surprise that some of the main proponents in this arena claimed the title of feminist, since in practice the whole debate was about policing how femininity should be performed. Moral critiques of imagery are highly normative – and therefore not in the interests of most women.

Finally, Clarissa Smith, programme leader of the MA media and cultural studies at the University of Sunderland, took issue with terms such as “pornification” and “pornographication” which, like sexualisation, are rarely defined, but assumed to be universally understood.

I do recommend you read the whole Register piece. I applaud these researchers for trying to see past the moralising bullshit and actually properly study this whole thing.

The word “sexualisation” really needs to raise a red flag because it is so regularly used by religious people, anti-porn feminists and conservatives. It’s a word that has an agenda behind it and it’s a word that is used to inflame emotion; it’s a “somebody think of the children!” diversion, a way to derail sensible discussion by creating fear.

The pic above is the book by Maggie Hamilton called “What’s Happening to Our Girls” which is often used to back up these moral panics (and it should be noted, Maggie Hamilton is a Christian who conducts “spiritual healing” workshops). I haven’t read it but I do have one critique already: the use of the words “our girls”. This book is saying that todays girls and young women are “ours”, not their own selves. Apparently it’s our job to make sure they conform to a certain sexual stereotype, one of virginity and “niceness”. The panic over “slutty” clothes, drinking and promiscuity is laden with expectations about how “our girls” should behave. We expect them to keep a social norm. “Sexualisation” is somehow breaking that norm.

The other thing about “sexualisation” is it assumes that children are sexless and that they should somehow be kept in a state of perfect innocence until they’re 18. Either that or there is a set age at which they should discover sex; “growing up too soon” indicates a standard that is not being met. And yet we know that children are sexual from the moment they are born and all children grow up differently. And, indeed, different cultures, societies and religions demand that this growing up occur at different stages. So “sexualisation” is also a culturally relative term.

One more thing that gets me about this particular moral panic: we see the “experts” calling for greater censorship of adult material (e.g. Australian group Kids Free 2 B Kids demanding that R-rated magazines like Playboy only be sold in adult shops) but they don’t seem to have a problem with “tween” magazines that encourage young girls to conform to a certain idea of femininity: fashion and makeup, to be specific. Surely teaching girls to paint their faces and obsess about the “right” clothes is teaching them to be sexual as well? Where are the calls to ban Dolly magazine?

If we are going to be concerned about “sexualisation”, where is the outrage over the “Shine” program, a fundamentalist Christian outreach program that is currently being introduced into Australian schools? The program sees older women teaching girls as young as 9 how to put on makeup and make themselves “nice” for the boys. It also re-enforces stereotypical gender roles and, of course, seeks to “bring girls to Jesus” through the wonder of fashion. We don’t see Kids Free 2 B Kids campaigning against that.

The question is, what is the “right message” about sex that girls and young women should be receiving? As a sex positive feminist, I’m always on the side of education, not censorship. You can’t blindfold kids or put them in a burka. They’re living in the 21st century and the media is part of their everyday lives. So, talk to them about it. Teach them how to interpret images and think for themselves. Encourage self esteem so they are more confident and able to cope with the conflicting information offered by advertising, TV, films, magazines and the internet. Don’t create expectations of rigid gender roles or physical or mental conformity.

And don’t react with panic when the topic of sex comes up. If there’s one thing that is GUARANTEED to harm kids and teenagers with regards to sex, it is negative parental attitudes and a repressive home environment. Indeed, it’s entirely possible that the ongong drama about “sexualisation” is actually doing more harm than good.

Update 22nd July
Dr Petra Boynton has written an excellent post called Sexualisation of Young People report released. How useful are the findings? Here’s your chance to find out. She urges the media and anyone else who’s interested to read the reports and take the time to analyse the findings. There’s a lot of reading to be done but Dr Petra does make an interesting summary of the Scottish research which seems to have started from a less biased background. Maybe it’s confirmation bias but this paragraph stood out at me:

‘Sexualisation’ is not an issue that immediately worries parents or teens, but when prompted it seems parents are far more worried about it than young people, and are often more concerned about the sexualised behaviour of other children rather than their own child. Indeed their work suggested a lot of parental anxiety over Sexualisation manifested itself in parents talking about how girls should behave and act in appropriate and modest fashions. Young people, meanwhile, seemed more aware of the media and potential sexualising influences than expected, although the authors acknowledge there are still issues about sexuality needing addressing. In short they concluded sexualisation is a complex issue that can’t be fixed with simplistic suggestions for policy change.

It does seem to be a feature of much of the discussion about “sexualisation” that young women are assumed to always be victims without any agency or media savvy whatsoever. It’s obviously a flawed idea, especially when so many young people are completely immersed in their own media environments and aren’t wide-eyed babes in the woods. One of the wonderful things about the internet is that is that it has been able to provide a wealth of educational content about sex and also a wide variety of opinion and criticism of mainstream culture.

As always, education and critical thinking are the key.

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