Posts Tagged ‘d/s’
Today is my day on the Carrie’s Story blog tour. I devoured this book in the beginning of March as some escapist fiction, hoping for something easy to read that was easy enough to digest without a lot of deep thinking. And while it is easy to read and easy to digest, it isn’t without it’s deep thoughts. Carrie has very little experience with kink and submission at the beginning of the book, but by the end she is an auctioned slave, having gone through trainings from her (temporary) master and trainings from the Madame of the slave auction herself.
I love the little moments where Carrie submits, not because she is comfortable being taken by this person or that person, but because she trusts the woman who created the entire system. And by submitting to the system, she is submitting to that woman in particular. It’s a beautiful explanation of how M/s is larger than D/s, and how M/s is not about individual interactions.
I’ve been more and more interested in M/s theory lately. I’ve got a lot of thoughts about how D/s and M/s are different, and I’d love to write about that more soon here—mostly I’m still chewing on the differences and formulating thoughts. I’ve read through Raven Kaldera and Joshua Tenpenny’s book, Dear Raven and Joshua: Questions and Answers About Master/Slave Relationships, which is amazing and which I may turn around and re-read from the beginning right away. It’s long and detailed, well-organized and easy to read in a Q&A format. Unfortunately (and fortunately) it’s been teaching me a ton of things that I’ve been doing wrong … but I’ll leave that thought for the moment and share you some more details about Carrie’s Story. I highly recommend the read.
Excerpt from Carrie’s Story
Day one had begun with the very chic fortyish woman holding me tightly by the nipple and telling me, “We will all want to use you during these trials, but first, we will want to know how obedient you are, how much self-discipline you have. You are accustomed to being in restraints?”
“Yes, Madame Roget,” I said.
They all laughed a little at this, and she told me that they didn’t believe in that sort of thing for these trials. “We would not mar the woodwork of this pretty room with any of those little hooks and eyes, I think you call them. You will do everything we command, and you will be beaten, and bear it beautifully, without any collars or cuffs, without being tied or held in any way.”
I gulped. “Yes, Madame Roget,” I agreed, though I was terrified at the thought of not being tied down while being beaten. Too bad we couldn’t rig up something using all the hardware hanging off the jacket of her Chanel suit.
Quel jour. I had no idea if I could really do it, and I wasn’t perfect by any means. Twice, that I can remember, and maybe more times than that, my hands flew up to my breasts to protect them. This was at least one of the “technical” things Jonathan hadn’t thought of. He, of course, loved to think of crafty ways to embed hooks and eyes all over his house and so, stupidly, hadn’t realized that the rest of the world might not. I think what got me through it was that I was so pissed at him for not considering that this might happen, and so determined to best the situation in spite of him. Thanks a lot, coach, I remember thinking, seeing him out of the corner of my eye, over there on his delicate little chair. I thought of that creep who brought those terrified little four-foot-eight-inch American gymnasts to the Olympics, to be entirely outclassed by the Russians and Romanians.
That day ended very abruptly, or at least I thought so. I was on my knees in the center of the room, having just thanked the board, one by one, and very sweetly and clearly, though in a bit of a choked voice, for a brisk beating they’d just administered to my breasts and thighs. (Oh, and in French—we switched to French for the afternoons.) And, no, they didn’t hold up any cards with little numbers on them to rate my performance. They hardly acknowledged me at all, in fact, but Madame Roget turned to Jonathan and curtly said, “Bring her around tomorrow at ten, and we’ll continue.”
“Thank you, Madame,” Jonathan replied, getting to his feet and hurrying to help me up. “I will. Thank you all.” He spoke like the well-brought-up little boy he must have been once. And I realized that part of the entertainment, for him, and maybe for me as well, was that he was on trial too.
When we got back to the hotel room, he grabbed me, and, very uncharacteristically, pushed me onto the bed practically into a backward somersault, pulled up my skirt, and started fucking me. My shoes went flying, and I felt a garter unsnap painfully against my thigh. Against my cunt, my belly, my legs, I felt his pants zipper and a million buttons and buckles digging into me. It was silly, clumsy, uncomfortable, but I understood. It was what I needed, too. The long, horny, ritualistic day of trials, subtleties, pain, performing, and politesse had gotten to both of us, and what we both wanted was mindless, exhausting, low-tech vanilla fucking. In and out. Bang bang bang. Friction. I closed my eyes and came a lot, moving however I pleased and making lots of noise and trying to forget that there were such things as rules or form or sensibility.
Still, you don’t forget a year of slave training just like that, so a long while after, when I had recovered enough, I crawled to the foot of the bed and knelt there at attention (although I was unsure what to do about the skirt that was still up around my waist and the stockings down around my ankles). Jonathan looked at me for a while. Then he frowned, sighed, and finally said, “Oh hell, Carrie, I don’t think I can maintain any rules tonight, not after watching those pros do it all day. Let’s just take showers and zone out. Are you hungry? Want to do room service?”
Which was how we passed the next three evenings. We’d come back from the trials, pull off our clothes, fuck real hard, and then eat. During some break in the second day trials, Jonathan had gone out, found an English-language bookstore, and scooped up a shopping bag full of mysteries and sci fi. We weren’t following rules anymore, which meant we could say anything we wanted. But we were afraid of saying wrong or embarrassing things to each other. At least I was. So the books kept us busy during those weird, wired, exhausted, polite, and oddly companionable evenings. We’d dive into them, every so often one or the other of us finishing one, maybe briefly recommending it, or tossing it across the room, proclaiming it a “turkey, guessed it halfway through, don’t bother.”
On the fourth evening, the rock ’n’ roll/cyberpunk story I was racing through reminded me of thrash music and I thought of my Primus T-shirt, packed up with my stuff at Stuart’s. I decided that if I passed the trials I’d tell Jonathan he could have it as a good-bye present. Thanks for the memo- ries, I guess, and for the strange intimacy, even if we’d only had about four real conversations in the space of a year and a half. Good-bye, and thanks, also, for finding me a job that was not just a job but an adventure. So long, accomplice, collaborator, coconspirator.
Just then, there was a knock at the door. Jonathan went to get it. There were two European guys in suits and short squared-off haircuts, looking like the cops in La Femme Nikita. They were from the auction committee, though, and they were here to tell us—well, Jonathan, really—that I’d passed the trials. I could hear that much anyway, though the one of them who was doing the talking, the only one who knew English I think, was speaking very softly. I heard Jonathan tell him, “I’ll fax them the papers within an hour. And I’ll get her for you now.”
I hadn’t known they came for you in the middle of the night. And I don’t know if Jonathan had either. He walked over to me—I was sprawled on the bed in a hotel bathrobe and a pair of his socks—and pulled me to my feet. “You’re in,” he said, “and you’re not allowed to speak anymore.” So much for the T-shirt idea. Or for even a so long. “Take off your clothes,” he continued in an expressionless voice. “You’ll go with these gentlemen.”
They were standing by the door watching without much interest. I felt a little sorry for them; this had to be the dullest master/slave scene they’d ever barged in on. I pulled off the socks and robe, folded my glasses on top of the open book, and walked over to them. They produced a pair of high heels and a trench coat and helped me into them. Then, silently, they hustled me out of the room and shut the door behind them.
* * *
From Cleis Press:
Carrie’s Story is regarded as one of the finest erotic novels ever written—smart, devastatingly sexy, and, at times, shocking. In this new era of “BDSM romance,” à la Fifty Shades of Grey, the whips and cuffs are out of the closet and “château porn” has given way to mommy porn. Carrie’s Story remains at the head of the class. Imagine The Story of O starring a Berkeley Ph.D. in comparative literature who moonlights as a bike messenger, has a penchant for irony, and loves self-analysis as much as anal pleasures. Set in both San Francisco and the more château-friendly Napa Valley, Weatherfield’s deliciously decadent novel takes you on a sexually-explicit journey into a netherworld of slave auctions, training regimes, and enticing “ponies” (people) preening for dressage competitions. Desire runs rampant in this story of uncompromising mastery and irrevocable submission.
Molly Weatherfield, the pen name of Pam Rosenthal, is also the author of Safe Word, the sequel to Carrie’s Story. A prolific romance and erotica writer, she has penned many sexy, literate, historical novels. She lives in San Francisco. You can find Molly on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/MollyWeatherfield and on Twitter at @PamRosenthal (https://twitter.com/PamRosenthal).
Blog Tour Schedule
March 24 - Shanna Germain
March 25 - Lelaine
March 26 - Alison Tyler
March 27 – Romance After Dark
March 28 - Romance Junkies and Amos Lassen
March 29 - Sinclair Sexsmith
April 1 - Rachel Kramer Bussel
April 2 - Kissin Blue Karen
April 3 - Dana Wright
April 4 - Erin O’Riodan
April 5 - Lindsay Avalon
April 6 - Laura Antoniou
April 7 - DL King
I’ll be reading some erotica on Thursday night in the East Village with the Best! Lesbian! Erotica! reading at Drunken! Careening! Writers! that BLE series editor Kathleen Warnock runs.
And! Also! I’m still on the board of the Lesbian Sex Mafia, and Lee Harrington is teaching an amazing D/s class on Friday night at the GBLT Center. I’ll be running the workshop that night, doing the announcements and getting everyone settled to pay attention to Lee’s brilliance, and taking a lot of notes about D/s. I’ve been thinking a LOT about D/s lately, about protocols and rituals and rules and punishments … still thinking about ways to write about all the things I’ve been learning.
Meanwhile, here’s the details on the events in New York City Thursday and Friday.
Best Lesbian Erotica @ Drunken! Careening! Writers!
KGB Bar
85 E. 4th St.
NYC
7pm FREE
Rebecca Lynne Fullan
Sid March
…and special surprise guests!
with your hostess, Kathleen Warnock
copies of BLE ’13 will be available for sale
Our “special surprise guests” will be Sinclair Sexsmith and Lea DeLaria (eds of the last 2 editions), and they will be reading from their work!
Rebecca Lynne Fullan is a writer of various stripes, most of them human. She lives, writes, reads, and learns in New York City. This story is for her girlfriend, Charlotte, and written with special gratitude to the BMVCOE, who know about magic. Come visit her here: rebeccalynnefullan.wordpress.com.
Sid March is the disastrously queer daughter of Neptune, a gifted escape artist, and an excellent party planner. A nomadic being with half a dozen hometowns, Sid writes obsessively when no one is watching as a way to tame her insatiable Wanderlust.
Best Lesbian Erotica is published by Cleis Press, the largest independent queer publishing company in the United States. Kathleen Warnock is the series editor, and Jewelle Gomez selected and introduced this year’s collection.
Drunken! Careening! Writers! is a reading series based on the proposition that all readings should be by: 1) Good Writers; 2) Who read their work well; 3) Something in it makes people laugh (nervous laughter counts). And 15 minutes tops.
Lesbian Sex Mafia presents Beyond Bowed Heads: Rituals for Dominance and Submission with Lee Harrington
Rituals are a key part of any D/s relationship, whether we acknowledge them or not. From casual kisses as the door to formal slave poses, ritual objects such as collars to slave contracts, the BDSM world is rife with concepts of ritual- but what is a ritual? What are the levels of ritualistic interaction we have between one another? Let’s look at rituals for day to day life (including how to get out of work or parent space), sacred time, intense connection, erotic play, solidifying relationships, changes within our relationships, and the taboo subject of the devastating loss of a relationship or its natural end. From terminology to developing your own code of ethical interaction, this class covers a bevy of styles and types of interpersonal reactions.
Where: The LGBT Center, 208 West 13th St. (7th/8th Ave), New York, NY
Date/Time: Friday December 21, 2012, 8:00-10:00 PM. Our annual workshop at which all genders are welcome.
Cost: LSM Members: $5/Non Members: $10
About Lee Harrington
Lee Harrington is an internationally known spiritual and erotic educator, gender explorer, eclectic artist and award-winning author and editor on human sexuality and sacred experience. He is a nice guy with a disarmingly down to earth approach to the fact that we are each beautifully complex ecosystems, and we deserve to examine the human experience from that lens. He’s been traveling the globe (from Seattle to Sydney, Berlin to Boston), teaching and talking about sexuality, psychology, faith, desire and more, and has no intention to stop any time soon. He has been an academic and an adult film performer, a world class sexual adventurer, an outspoken philosopher, is a kink/bondage expert, and has been blogging about sex and spirituality since 1998.
His books include “Playing Well With Others: Your Guide to Discovering, Exploring and Negotiating the Kink, Leather and BDSM Communities” (with Mollena Williams), “Sacred Kink: The Eightfold Paths of BDSM and Beyond,” “Shibari You Can Use: Japanese Rope Bondage and Erotic Macramé,” the “Toybag Guide to Age Play,” and “Shed Skins: Journeying in Self-Portraits.” He has also worked as an anthology editor on such projects as “Rope, Bondage, and Power” and “Spirit of Desire: Personal Explorations of Sacred Kink,” while contributing actively to other anthologies, magazines, blogs and collaborations internationally. Check out the trouble Lee has been getting into, as well as his regular podcast, tour schedule, free essays, videos and more over at www.PassionAndSoul.com.
Deserthooker, @deserthooker
1. What insight about open relationships do you wish you had when you started?
I wish I had understood that relationships can take different courses than the traditional one. I struggled at first with how to navigate levels of intimacy and involvement because I was used to things always tending toward more enmeshment. Being a secondary was a completely new feeling for me, for example. I still seek deeper, more lasting relationships with my partners, but so far I’ve found that each relationship has to develop on it’s own path. Surprise surprise, not everyone wants to be married. And even more surprising, I don’t always want to be either.
The other thing I wish I understood more deeply was the “locus of control” concept when it came to boundaries. The difference between “I want you to do the dishes” and “I want the dishes done” is vast, and delicate, and understanding the difference has helped me through a LOT of difficult moments in poly.
2. What has been the hardest thing about opening your relationship, and how have you overcome that?
By far the hardest thing about opening my marriage has been navigating that while also dealing with my partner’s depression. We still struggle with that, sometimes on a daily basis. It is difficult to know what is a “real issue” and what was coming from the depressed place at times, for myself and for my partner. I’m a pleaser by nature, so I had to learn that not every problem can be fixed or even NEEDS to be fixed. I’ve also had to learn that just because someone is temporarily unhappy, that doesn’t mean I should change my plans or feel guilty for being happy myself. I had to learn to separate my partner’s happiness from my own. That remains the biggest challenge I face, both in poly and in life.
I would say the main thing that helps us through the upheaval of depression is our D/s dynamic. I act as anchor in a very stormy sea, and that helps us both stay on course. We have daily rituals, for example, that are said no matter how hurt/upset we are. Keeping my boundaries firm and clear also helps, as well as getting a LOT of down time and support. Also being sure that when things are good, we make the most of it. When a foundation gets rocked, it can always be rebuilt but I had to learn to let go of resentments and hurts and just enjoy the partner I have when I can.
3. What has been the best thing about your open relationship?
I would say the best thing is the ability to truly open up to love the way I think I was always supposed to, but didn’t understand how. I always joke that I could fall in love with a lamppost. I love people. I spent a good quantity of time in life being used, my good nature and willingness to be there for others are easy to exploit. Well, they used to be, anyway. Being in an open relationship means I can integrate my natural tendency toward loving relationships into my life without hesitation. I am safe to explore whatever avenue may appear, rather than artificially limiting myself because of convention or societal expectation. At this point I have a network of wonderful, intelligent, loving people that I can count on to treat me with respect and love me as much as I love them.
Right along side that, I have learned how to navigate many relationships with better boundaries and respect for myself in place in a way I might never have if I’d stayed monogamous. I feel I’ve gained a few levels in the game of life since poly, and I feel more confident, self-assured and grounded than ever before.
4. Anything else you’d like to add?
Just that none of that good stuff would be possible without the support of my partners and dear friends who are the backbone of everything I’ve become in the last few years, and I’m so grateful for each of them.
And also that you’re a fantastic writer, and your journal entries have also been a wonderful way to access community for me, so thank you so much :D
There have been so many things going on with Kristen for the last few months, and I’ve been doing so much traveling, that I haven’t quite had the time or focus to put this up, but I’ve meant to since September.
In September, Rife and I celebrated one year together.
Clockwise from top: Picking raspberries near Summer Camp in September; surviving the Fusion hurricane at Ramblewood in the barn; playing guitar in the hammock at Summer Camp; looking at jacaranda flowers in LA in May; one of the first shots he sent me in January of this year when I told him I took boxing lessons.
We now have a formal contract about our D/s and power dynamics, and I’ve been really enjoying how that has pushed me as a Dominant to keep exploring, to get in touch with what I want, what would feel good for me, what I may need at any given moment, which, as much as it may seem like being the top or dom or daddy forces me to be in touch with that, it’s really easy for me to get caught up in being more of a service top, doing things for the other person, doing things I know they like, focusing on them and their pleasure. Especially because I still identify pretty strongly as stone.
He and I have seen each other almost a dozen times in the last year—our visit for our anniversary at Summer Camp in September was #10, and this visit in Houston is #11. Things keep deepening in beautiful ways, and he and Kristen are friends and metamours, and I feel incredibly lucky and blessed. He’s added so much to my life and sense of self and my style of topping and dominanting, and he’s so much fun to play with, so easy to be around.
As much as it is incredibly difficult to be in an open relationship, I don’t know if I could close it again and be monogamous—at least, not at this point in my life—and I’m so grateful to be exploring with both Kristen and Rife. This summer and fall have been incredibly difficult for me emotionally, and they have both been so important as I’m trying to navigate these surges of emotions and difficult readjustments in my family of origin. I’m trying to keep bringing my love and compassion back to Kristen, too, as she keeps deepening and exploring with other people. I’m so grateful to have survived this past year, to have learned all that I’ve learned, to be moving through it deeper.
And I’m so grateful to have this sexy leatherboy submissive creature who does things like bend a coat hanger into a long U shape or strip the thorns off of a branch and then put them into my hands and say, “please.”
Happy anniversary, my sweet boy. I’m very excited to see what our second year will bring.
Have you ever been to the Submit play party? It’s a women and trans only play party monthly in Brooklyn at an undisclosed dungeon which has all sorts of great equipment, from cages to saint andrews crosses to a medical table to saw horses. There’s a social room and a bootblacking station and lots of gender-neutral bathrooms nooks and crannies if you want a little privacy and a swing and condoms and lube in every room.
I don’t go monthly, but I go often, and Kristen and I have had many great scenes there in the past (almost) four years we’ve been together. Red, the butch who runs it, is a good friend of mine and I love how they keep the space warm, welcoming, and monitored.
This week, Red asked if Kristen and I would do the demo. Usually there’s some sort of demo at 12:30am (last time we went there was a cutting demo, which was beautiful), and this time, we’ll be doing Power Blow Jobs. I don’t have a formal description for the demo, which will only be 20-30 minutes long, and more about a demonstration than about a formal class on technique, though we’ll both be piping in to talk about what we’re doing and give some tips. Or at least I will, Kristen will probably have her mouth full. Just kidding—her perspective is really valuable here and I’m looking forward to hearing what she has to say, actually, since often I’m the one talking about my experience.
It’s also been fun to, ahem, practice this week, leading up to it.
SUBMIT Party
Women & trans folks only
September 29th, Saturday, 10 – 3 am (doors close at 2 am)
$15 bucks before midnight, $20 after
RSVP on Fetlife & pre-cruise who’ll be there
for exact location call 718.789.4053 or email Red@submitparty.com
So hey, maybe we’ll see you there?
Another year is coming to a close, and aside from reflecting on my life personally, I’m reflecting on the accomplishments. I did a Year In Review On Sugarbutch for 2009 and I like it, it feels like a nice wrap-up of some of the accomplishments of that year, so I’m going to try to do this again.
To get started, here are the most popular posts on Sugarbutch during 2010:
- Desperation & Dominance
- Lipstick Blow Job
- Waking Up
- Nominations Needed for Top Hot Butches
- Sweat & Summer
- Gabrielle, Guest Star
- Best Anal Scenes in Queer Porn
- On Making Sex Last: Cheerleading & Open Relationships
- Occasional Effects of D/s
- The Relaunch of Top Hot Butches
Clearly most of these are smut stories, ya pervs. Two of the posts are about the relaunch of the Top Hot Butches project, which is now Butch Lab. And then there are a few random others, the anal sex scenes post is a nice representation of that anal week (that turned into anal month) exploration I did in early 2010.
Remember when I used to do monthly roundups? I still kind of miss that, but I can’t seem to make time for it. It was a really nice look back at the last month and what has happened here, which also told me what else I should focus on in the coming month. It made it easier to do these year-end roundups, too. So I’ve been going back through and making some notes about the year.
So, what happened.
I dated Kristen the whole year. She moved in with me in September, and we celebrated our second anniversary in December. We did manage to have a couple threesomes this year, one of which I wrote about in Gabrielle, Guest Star.
At the end of 2009, Kristen and I started exploring heavier D/s, and we still are, though I haven’t been writing about it as much. My public appearances have picked up tremendously (more about that later) and it’s been harder to put all of this in public. So I wrote a lot more password protected posts this year, and 2010 kicked off with three big ones in January: Occasional Effects of D/s, then a piece about D/s “homework” and why I was taking a break with it, and a piece about articulating what I need when I need it, which, though it sounds simple, is probably one of those life skills we all have to learn and re-learn and re-learn, something that hopefully gets easier but is never easy.
The good news is, late in 2010 I finally got the password/mailing list working, so I don’t have to do that manually anymore. If you want the password, I’ll trade you for adding your email address to my mailing list, where I (try to) send out updates on my work once a month.
Events:
February kicked off my year of travel, and boy, did I travel. After I got a booking company, PhinLi, last year, I have been doing more and more public events. I went to KinkForAll Providence in Rhode Island, Brown University in Providence, SXSW in Austin, Texas, Drew University in New Jersey, Tuscon Arizona for a strap-on workshop, Portland Oregon for a Strap-On workshop and a second time for the Butch Voices regional conference, Seattle for the Sex 2.0 Conference, Seattle and Southeast Alaska for Kristen to visit where I grew up, Albuquerque for an erotic energy retreat, The 2nd Annual CSPH Conference in Pawtucket, RI, and Northampton MA to visit Smith University. Am I missing any? I think that was it. Aside from that, I also did quite a few workshops in New York City, including at the Lesbian Sex Mafia, cunnilingus class at Purple Passion, Conversio Virium, Columbia University’s BDSM student group, and NYU for Trans Week.
The national Femme Conference was held in 2010, as well as regional Butch Voices Conferences in Portland, LA, and New York City. I was on the committee for the Butch Voices NYC Regional Conference which happened in September, which was a huge success. Some of the pieces I wrote up were: What’s going on at the BV NYC Conference?, the conference starts today!, BV NYC is over … … but BV Portland is this weekend. Syd London took photos. I did a countdown to the national Femme Conference that happened this year in August in Oakland, too, by mentioning and reviewing some of my favorite books about femme identity.
I started hosting regular porn parties on Twitter, starting with Fluid. We also watched Tight Places: A Drop Of Color (which was so good) and four episodes of the Crash Pad Series. I also hosted Butch Brunch a few different times, mostly in leading up to the Butch Voices Conference in New York City, but I’m interested to do a bit more of that. It’s fun to get together and talk about gender (go figure).
I launched Sideshow: The Queer Literary Carnival in April, a reading series I am co-producing and co-hosting with my good friend Cheryl B. Syd London took some amazing promotional shots of me & Cheryl for Sideshow’s materials, and we launched queerliterarycarnival.com after running it for a few months. We even have an intern, as of December! (More on him soon.)
Cheryl launched her own new project in 2010, WTF Cancer Diaries, after being diagnosed with hodgkins lymphoma. And perhaps as a nice counter, if you need a pick-me-up, my girlfriend Kristen started a Butches With Cute Animals tumblr. Submit your photo!
Perhaps the biggest project of my year was the relaunch of the Top Hot Butches project, which is now Butch Lab. I also put a call out for nominations and the “list” is now more of an unordered, unnumbered database, and the site is more community-based and includes a blog and a monthly writing prompt carnival called Symposium. I wrote a piece about being butch enough.
Publications:
Early in February 2010 I started a weekly column with SexIs Magazine called Mr. Sexsmith’s Other Girlfriend. I kept writing columns for CarnalNation.com until they closed in the fall. I’d love to find another place to house my Radical Masculinity column, but haven’t yet. I’ve written there basically weekly since then, with a few weeks off. I’ve also written pieces for AfterEllen and the Lambda Literary Foundation this year, and I am writing a quarterly roundup of lesbian erotica on LambdaLiterary.org, two of which were published in 2010, in the fall and in the winter.
If you’d like to follow the pieces I write elsewhere, you can follow to the blog over on mrsexsmith.com online or by RSS.
In books, I have pieces in Sometimes She Lets Me: Best Butch/Femme Erotica and Best Lesbian Erotica 2011. Stories of mine were accepted to Gotta Have It: 60 Stories of Sudden Sex and Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme, but I haven’t seen copies of either of those yet. Persistence is due out in the spring or summer of 2011, I’m not sure exactly when.
The big news for publications, though, is the BDSM lesbian erotica anthology I am editing for Cleis Press! Deadline for submissions is January 1st 2011, and it is due out in the fall. I’ve had some amazing submissions so far, but there are still a few more days and I haven’t read everything. I’m really excited to be editing an anthology, and I’ve had some fantastic submissions so far.
Reviews & Affiliates:
I wrote a ton of reviews in 2010. In fact, in looking back over the archives, sometimes the reviews were completely dominating any other types of posts. I’m sure you can understand it is really fun to get sex toys in the mail. And it’s hard to turn them down when they are so generously offered. But … I have an overflowing toy box. I have most of the toys I’ve wanted, and I’m being a lot more discerning about what I review and what I take into my (not so spacious) apartment. I haven’t completely stopped doing reviews, though I hope you’ve noticed that there are significantly fewer posts about products than there used to be.
I’m trying to review more books than I used to, so I introduced Friday Reads. I’m trying to feature a queer or gender or sexy book on Fridays, though it doesn’t seem to be every Friday so far. So it goes! But one of my own personal goals is to read more books, so this is a good way to do that.
I added quite a few affiliates in 2010, including my own store at the Stockroom, Early 2 Bed in Chicago, and Cocksexual (because everyone can have fun with cocks), as well as affiliations with the new sites Heavenly Spire and QueerPorn.TV.
Awards:
You all voted Sugarbutch as the Best Sex/Short Story/Erotica site for the Lezzy Awards for the second year in a row! And I was included on the Best Sex Bloggers list at #27.
Last but not least, after that roundup, here’s some of my favorite pieces from the year that weren’t top viewers but are worth reading, and told the story of what was going on for me.
- Consent Obsession
- How Do I Let Go of a Past Hurt?
- The Sugarbutch Birthday Tradition of posting sexy shoes. Preferably strappy sandals, since that’s what really does it for me. I’m not sure why exactly.
- Following Up: What’s Next? Queer Activism in the South
- Anal Week Starts Today (check the anal week tag for all the posts)
- There’s A Reason Why Sex Education is Radical about the controversy in Rhode Island which started after the KinkForAll conference
- Happy 4th Anniversary, Sugarbutch, with the anniversary Sugarbutch tradition of ask me anything. I finally finished all the ask me anything questions in October. I like doing this, and I’ll probably do it again next year, but I have got to do it quicker. I had a few good write-ups from these questions, including From Not Stone to Stone-ish and Reconciling Feminism & Sadism.
- Kristen’s Birthday Project included birthday wishes from Jackie Strano, Jiz Lee, Syd Blakovich, and Dylan Ryan. Not sure how I’m going to top that next year, but I’ll try.
- I added a mentor series category, and wrote about Dan Savage, Rob Brezny, & Mary Oliver
- On Processing & Analyzing
- Get a Dominant to Dominate
- The Ongoing Quest to be Sexually Fulfilled
- It Gets Better. Also, Grief. Please #stayalive & The Bullying Continues tackle the teen suicides that shook up the US this past fall, the It Gets Better project, and quite a few resources, plus a discussion on what we should do to help this
- Protected: Stone: Occam’s Razor about my own stone identity
- Protected: So, What Happened? about relationship drama
- Ten Ways I Am A Gender Outlaw
- Protected: Responsibilities To Ourselves And Others was about mental health and our responsibilities to stay as sane as we can, to not hurt those we love around us. It was a hard piece, and hard comments, but I was glad to open the discussion.
There is still two more days to December, so perhaps I’ll get something else written and up. But if I don’t, then I hope this will keep you occupied while I take my break and write like mad in January.
Happy New Year, all.







