miscellany

Oh, Hi

I tossed up a couple things yesterday without really giving a proper hello on my return from SXSW and Austin, Texas. Hello!

My (metaphorical) account of the weekend and what I think of Austin and such is up today on my Sex Is column, Mr. Sexsmith’s Other Girlfriend, titled Mr. Sexsmith Goes To SXSW and Takes a Lover.

The Engaging the Queer Community panel at SXSW and the Oil Can Harry’s meet-up were a big success. I hear the panel was videotaped, hopefully the video will be available online sometime soon, I’ll certainly let you know where you can find it.

But meanwhile, there’s some other media and interviews with me floating around the web and new this week:

  • The Feministing Five: Sinclair Sexsmith: “Sinclair Sexmith is a sex blogger who writes the Sugarbutch Chronicles: The Sex, Gender and Relationship Adventures of a Kinky Queer Butch Top. She’s been blogging about sex and gender for several years now, and at Sugarbutch she blogs about everything from getting past old heartbreaks to sex with her current girlfriend to her own evolving masculine identity. When I asked her about how she manages writing for a public audience about such private things, she said, “the sex is actually easier to write about than the emotional complications.” When I asked if she adheres to any ground rules for she discloses about her sex life, she said “there are no hard and fast rules,” at which point I giggled, revealing myself to be twenty-two going on twelve.”
  • Feast of Fun Podcast: Butching it Up with Sinclair Sexsmith: “For gay, lesbian, bi and trans folks telling our stories is vital to our personal growth. The internet creates a safe space for people to discover the sexier side of themselves by reflecting on their experiences with others. Today we continue our series of interviews with well known bloggers who know how make it happen. We have kinky writer, queer butch top, Sinclair Sexsmith of the Sugarbutch Chronicles. Listen as we chat with Sinclair about her journey writing erotica, coming out in your blog and New York City’s Lesbian Sex Mafia!”
  • Queerty: How Can We Shift the Focus of Queer Media From Homophobes and Lady Gaga To Actual LGBTs? – Video interviews with all the SXSW queer panelists. “Looking around the SXSW Interactive’s first-ever LGBT panel, “Engaging the Queer Community”, I saw a shrunken pink-haired woman wearing steel-toed platform boots and green stockings walking past a large-nosed horn rimmed kid with horse teeth and acne scars, and I realized that even though we’re all adults now, we very much remain the theater fags and lunch geeks we were in high school—conflicted and sightly scared people looking for a voice. But why then are our personal stories so often trumped by the like of homophobic senators and, bless her, Lady Gaga?”

I kind of miss Austin already. I swear I felt my anxiety and stress level raise to ORANGE ALERT as soon as a woke up the morning after my return to New York City. Hard not to be reminded that there are easier places to live.

Published by Sinclair Sexsmith

Sinclair Sexsmith (they/them) is "the best-known butch erotica writer whose kinky, groundbreaking stories have turned on countless queers" (AfterEllen), who "is in all the books, wins all the awards, speaks at all the panels and readings, knows all the stuff, and writes for all the places" (Autostraddle). ​Their short story collection, Sweet & Rough: Queer Kink Erotica, was a 2016 finalist for a Lambda Literary Award, and they are the current editor of the Best Lesbian Erotica series. They identify as a white non-binary butch dominant, a survivor, and an introvert, and they live outside Seattle as an uninvited settler on traditional, ancestral, & unceded Snoqualmie land.

3 thoughts on “Oh, Hi”

  1. Bettina says:

    austin misses you, too. :) i'm glad you enjoyed it!

  2. A Longtime Reader says:

    Dude. I've been reading your blog for a very long time and I usually love what I see but, in regards to the last link, what the fuck???

    Who are we to decide that Lady Gaga isn't an "actual LGBT"? She's openly bisexual, has stated in multiple interviews that she feared coming out because people thought she would exploit her sexuality, she thanks "the gays" every time she wins an award, and she fucking made out with a butch leather daddy in her last music video. What else does she have to do to prove herself as queer enough for us?

  3. Sinclair says:

    A Longtime Reader—First, I didn't write that. Things that are on other people's sites are not necessarily a reflection of what I believe.

    Second, personally I think Lady Gaga is totally queer and definitely "queer enough." But I think that the point of the article is about the constant commentary on pop culture in popular LGBT blogs, and is raising the question of when queer people will start being recognized for writing about our own lives, not just the lives of queer celebrities (or celebrities who have played queer in some form or another).

    If you have a problem with what someone writes on ANOTHER site, leave a comment over there, don't leave hateful "what the fuck" comments to me.

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