Posts Tagged ‘reviews’
… or whatever the text symbol is for “kinky fun awesomeness.”
Expect reviews from The Stockroom to come soon. Paddles, leather things, cuffs, hopefully one of those shoulder spreader bars like they featured in the film Secretary (those are hard to find!). I’ve got all kinds of things on my wishlist.
The Lambda Literary Award nominees were announced today, and as usual I’m making a checklist of ones I’ve read, ones I’d like to read, and the ones I think will win be finalists. And, as usual, the only transgender content is in the specific “Transgender” category, though the “Bisexual” category has split into fiction and non-fiction because, it seems, there are finally enough nominees to warrant it. Are there really that few books on trans and bisexual issues? Puzzling. Overall this year, there are 112 finalists in 23 categories. I’m sure there’s got to be a book or two or five in there that you’d love to read. Check it out.
Special congratulations to Nairne Holtz, whose book This One’s Going to Last Forever (Insomniac Press) was nominated in the Lesbian Fiction category. Holtz has a short story called “Bait and Switch” in Best Lesbian Erotica 2009, an anthology in which I also have a story, and when we were both in New York City at the end of 2009 for the annual Best Lesbian Erotica reading at the Drunken! Careening! Writers! reading series at KGB bar, hosted by Kathleen Warnock (who is coming to read at the very first Sideshow!), and I have had a chance to read This One’s Going to Last Forever. It is a collection of short stories and a novella. Here’s the description:
This One’s Going to Last Forever reflects both the naive optimism of those who have yet to learn about love and the cynicism of those who feel that by now they should know better.
Clara, a university student working at the McGill Daily, discovers that in love and politics, commitment is often more imagined than real. Kelly and Sonya share a bond that has less to do with love than with their dependence on each other and a succession of friends who supply them with heroin. A middle-aged man who performs drive-through weddings dressed as Elvis realizes, as he marries his first same-sex couple, that the only domestic partner he is ever likely to have is his ailing father. But when he ends his latest relationship, an unlikely friendship results.
The characters in these darkly comic stories and novella may be searching for love in all the wrong places, but they are also able to find love in the most unexpected places.
The Lambda Literary Foundation recently relaunched their website and it’s quite spiffy, by the way.
I was lucky enough to catch the book release party for Erin Bried’s new book How to Sew A Button and Other Nifty Things Your Grandmother Knew this past week, which was much fun. Erin interviewed grandmothers to gather all this knowledge, and the result is a lovely little book, easy to thumb through and includes useful and interesting things for any reader.
Though it’s marketing seems to be pretty girly, there are plenty of tips for butches like me. (I did pick up a copy for myself.)
Here’s Erin’s first little blurb from her website’s blog, which I think sums it up well:
If you’ve thumbed through the first couple of pages of my book, How to Sew a Button, then you know that until recently, I was pretty hopeless on the home front. Case in point: I actually once baked a strawberry-rhubarb pie, using strawberries and Swiss chard. (I mean, chard does look a little bit like rhubarb, right? Let me tell you, it sure doesn’t taste like it.)
Anyway, after baking that lousy pie, I had an epiphany: Not knowing how to do stuff for myself is not only disempowering, but also, especially in this crap economy, downright irresponsible. So, in writing my book, I set out to learn everything I needed to know to feel confident, simplify my life and save money.
And who better to turn to for that advice than our grandmothers, especially those who’ve survived The Great Depression? They certainly know how to make due with what they have. From interviewing them, I’ve learned important lessons about cooking, entertaining, saving, and loving—and I’m going to keep learning more stuff everyday.
She also has some video demos! I thought some of you might particularly like these.
How to Wear Red Lipstick:
How to Tie A Tie (on somebody super cute):
Pick up How to Sew A Button on Amazon.com, or your local independent bookseller (if you’d like them to be around next holiday season too).
Are you getting sick of harness reviews yet? I hope not, because I still haven’t found The Perfect Harness (which may or may not actually exist).
This is the Black Cat G harness by Aslan Leather, sent to me from Eden Fantasys. Let’s break it down by the basic harness features:
Material
The Black Cat G is vinyl, which is why I picked it up, actually. Seems like most harnesses – the really nice ones, anyway – are leather, but I’ve been having trouble keeping my leather harnesses clean, so I thought I might try a waterproof material instead. It’s alright – definitely easier to clean, and I’m less worried about it, but the straps are pretty wide and the material is not very pliable. I recently reviewed the new one-strap version of the Jaguar harness, called the Jaguar G, also from Aslan Leather, and the leather is just so buttery and soft and beautiful, something this thick and dense and kind of, well, hard, is fairly unpleasant, especially when it’s between my legs and pressed up against my, ahem, slightly more delicate places.
Shape
The front panel of this harness is pretty big. I much prefer minimalistic harnesses (like the Bare as you Dare, though the buckles are weak and it slips a LOT) and the excessive material gets in the way of being pressed skin-to-skin, which I don’t like. I want the harness and cock to feel like part of me, I don’t want it to cover up my skin and make me less sensitive and less feeling of the experience.
This is especially a problem in the triangle front panel part, where the O-ring resides, but it’s also a problem with the straps. It’s kind of nice to have wide straps around my hips, they don’t dig in as much, but the wide strap between my legs pinches and is rather uncomfortable. It’s not so bad in the front, but especially in the back, it’s way too wide.
Buckles & O-Rings
The buckles are standard, locking, and very decent; it doesn’t slip around and since it isn’t leather, it doesn’t stretch with body heat, and stays tight. I like that.
The center strap, that goes through the legs, is connected with snaps instead of buckles, which means that there are only a few options for how tight it can get – I tend to wear harnesses very low on my hips and very tight between my legs, and that’s not possible with this one, because in order for the center strap to be taut it has to be much longer, and the tautness is ultimately most important. So, I don’t like that it snaps instead of buckles (or instead of having D-rings to make the length more variable).
The O-ring is rather difficult … it has two snaps, at the top and bottom, so the ring itself is interchangeable, so you can use any size O-ring (and thus any size cock), but there is also a hole in the front panel behind the O-ring. So you can either put the cock through the panel AND the O-ring, or just put it through the O-ring. The hole in the panel is only 1 3/4″ (and thus not big enough for my favorite go-to cock, the Maverick by Vixskin), and if trying to get a rather big cock into the O-ring without putting it through the panel, it’s hard to get the snaps closed. It’s not really made to use with a cock that is outside of the back panel – but again, Maverick, the cock I use 95% of the time, is too big for the panel, so I this harness isn’t The Perfect Harness.
One Last Thing …
I do like the vinyl material though – I expected it to be kind of squeaky and weird, but I would try another harness that is not leather in my quest.
In going over the Sugarbutch tag for “harness”, I noticed there are some harnesses I’ve reviewed but haven’t posted about here yet, like these two:
Buy the Black Cat G harness from Aslan Leather at Eden Fantasys or your local independent feminist queer-friendly sex-positive sex toy shop. Thanks to Eden for providing me with one to review.
It’s time for a little video review from VOD.sugarbutch.net!
This one is Strap On Motel, directed by Maria Beatty and produced by Bleu Productions (same with Post Apocalyptic Cowgirls and The Black Glove & The Elegant Spanking).
After I reviewed Post Apocalyptic Cowgirls and was, ah, less than enthusiastic about it, Dylan Ryan mentioned (on twitter? I can’t remember) that Strap On Motel might be more my style. And I mean, just right there it’s got a lot going for it – strap ons, and Dylan? – YES PLEASE. Definitely sounds like my kind of porn.
Here’s the description:
2009 Feminist Porn Award Nominee – LA, on the west coast, along a humid motorway enlightened by the red neons of the strip clubs. London, a gorgeous and wild brunette, arrives. An erotic dancer in a club, she remembers this particular night where she has been struck by her desire for another dancer, Dylan Ryan, tall sculptural blonde who knows exactly what she wants and how she wants it. Hallucinated flashbacks of their nights of fever at the clandestine and muggy Strap On Motel, haunt her. The chemical reaction of their bodies is explosive, and their desire insatiable! Their mouths devour each other and their burning hot caresses explore all the lesbian kama sutra spiced with dildos. Strap on lesbian sex will never die.
Okay, that sounds alright … I don’t like all the fluff really, “devour” and “burning hot caresses” and “spiced with dildos” … uhwhut? But, whatever. Beatty’s asthetic is beautiful, and Dylan is beautiful, and yay lesbian fucking.
Aside from Dylan, this film also features London, who was also in Post Apocalyptic Cowgirls.
The film opens with a shot of Dylan walking outside, at night, with some commentary that is a little ridiculous and rather forgettable. There are some beautiful scenes. I love the blow job in the beginning. But then, the commentary starts in, completely unnecessarily, and kind of ruins the moans and heavy breathing that was building.
For example, during that gorgeous blow job scene, the narrator says, “She was exciting me so much that she made a huge sticky cock grow from me, erect and ready to satisfy her. A man would have died under her sucking and devourous mouth. But, my cock was the best cock in all the galaxy.” (9:34)
Sorry, but no. I really don’t find that sexy. Later she describes someone’s “deep vagina” and that nearly made me cringe (and made Kristen and I laugh). Tight, yes; wet, yes; deep? Makes it sound like a well or a cavern or crevasse or something.
So, I muted the sound when the narration came on, which unfortunately means I couldn’t really hear the kissing or the gasping, but generally worked to not completely lose my boner. The narrator has a fairly distinct accent, so perhaps it’s a translation issue?, though I think it is more just trying too hard to be sexy.
Regardless, there are some really sexy scenes, and it’s beautifully filmed, as seems to be Beatty’s style. Dylan Ryan (who doesn’t have a website yet, but you can be a fan on Facebook or follow her on twitter, not that I’m stalking her, I’m not, really) is fantastic – it was filmed back when her hair was still blonde, and she even has it back in pigtails in one scene, kind of like how it was in episode 1 of the Crash Pad Series (which still is my favorite porn scene of all time), and I just love that style on her, probably because that’s how she looked when I was introduced to her work.
Strap On Motel is worth seeing, definitely my favorite film from Bleu Productions that I’ve seen so far, though you might have to put up with the unsexy and slightly annoying narration now and then. It’s occasional, though, and only lasts for a few sentences, then it gets back to the very good and rather beautiful fucking.
Watch Strap On Motel at Sugarbutch’s Video On Demand site through Hot Movies 4 Her.
Oh, Vixskin. (Sigh & swoon.)
I often get questions about which cocks I recommend, and I always say Vixen Creation’s line of Vixskin material. They are very realistic, made with or without balls, in lots of different sizes, and come in three colors: chocolate, caramel, and vanilla. I find the vanilla matches my skin tone best, but I do have a caramel which is not far off, and still feels like mine.
The one I am going to tell you about today is Buck.
Material
Like Bandit, Lonestar, and oh, EVERY SINGLE OTHER cock in the Vixskin line, the material for Buck is fantastic. It’s high quality silicone, which means it is completely sterilizable and one of the safest materials available on the market, but the Vixskin type of silicone is also much more pliable than regular silicone.
(But if you’ve been following Sugarbutch, or are aware of materials already, you probably know this.)
Shape
This one’s pretty typically shaped. It is a bit veiny, which I don’t actually love, but I suppose I don’t mind. Maybe it’s some leftover hesitations about having something realistic, and though I now definitely crave something realistically shaped (like with a head and corona) and colored, but all the veins are a little bit too … skin like? fake? Something, I’m not sure what. No balls on this one, and not quite as floppy as something like Lonestar.
Size
Buck is a very lovely size, I gotta say. It is 6″ x 2″ – I thought it might be a bit small, since the Vixskin cock Maverick (7″x2″) is my very favorite, but that extra inch is not as missed as I expected. Holding Buck next to Maverick, it seems like Buck is a tiny bit smaller around, but they say it’s the same girth. Maybe it’s that Buck has a 2″ head but then tapers a bit smaller and has a 2″ base, but Maverick is pretty much the same width all the way down.
Maverick is just a wee bit too big for good blow jobs. I kind of like that it’s a wee bit too big, I kind of like seeing Kristen try and gasp and gag a little, which she is very willing to do. But Buck is just about perfect. I thought it was the girth that was too much, but perhaps the way Buck tapers that eases that issue. And because it’s a little bit shorter, she can take it closer to all the way down. (Something I always love.)
Buck has quickly become my go-to (after Maverick). My second favorite Vixskin cock, and works for just about all the kinds of sex I might be craving to have. Definitely recommended, especially for folks who think the 7″x2″ of the Maverick is a little intimidating.
Buck was sent to me by Eden Fantasys for review. Buy Buck at Eden Fantasys or your local queer, feminist, sex-positive sex toy shop.
On Friday, Kristen and I sat down to watch No Fauxxx‘s latest DVD from Reel Queer Productions, Seven Minutes in Heaven: Coming Out. And we decided to “live tweet” our reactions – so we were updating my Twittering account as we were watching.
(When comments are in italics, that’s someone else making a comment directed at me.)
- watching @nofauxxx’s seven minutes in heaven with kristen. we’ll be live-tweeting our reactions.
- “hi, I’m carson …” oh yes. we know. #livetweetingporn
- “she’s cute” – kristen, about joline parton #livetweetingporn
- mmm we both like the black dress with polkadots. “I’ve got a carson crush.” – kristen #livetweeting porn
- first scene: nice black gloves & slapping. #livetweetingporn
- @TeresaIkard: @mrsexsmith @nofauxxx’s Seven Minutes in Heaven was filmed in my flat and I still haven’t seen the hotness. Porn party soon at my house :)
- @TheresaIkard kicked out of your own apartment! how rude. #livetweetingporn
- @TeresaIkard: @mrsexsmith I was there but @courtneytrouble is great at respecting performers that some scenes were closed. She takes care of them well!
- whoa I dig carson’s top. and that redhead is cuuute! #livetweetingporn
- @audaciaray: @mrsexsmith ok, I love my job, but feel slightly jealous of watching hot queer porn in the middle of the day
- @audaciaray I have a hunch you’ve had more than your share of watching good queer porn in the middle of the day
- “who’s that?” (ie: who’s ass is that?) “that’s the redhead.” “ooh, nice.” still into the redhead. also, great music! #livetweetingporn
- “I want to see her come! I bet it’ll be pretty.” – kristen #livetweetingporn
- oh, yuck, they’re smoking. definitely a turnoff. #livetweetingporn
- “I’ll show you my cocks.” – puck goodfellow. hahahah yes please! oohh very nice collection! #livetweetingporn
- oh damn what harness does puck have?? @courtneytrouble help! #livetweetingporn
- @courtneytrouble: @mrsexsmith as for puck’s amazing harness, i don’t know where/what it is… maybe its even custom?
- “oh she’s got a whip now does she? okay … well then … ” – kristen, about carson #livetweetingporn
- damn who’s that moaning in the background? also, carson is good with the dirty talk & instructions. #livetweetingporn
- I like carson’s jaguar harness, very hot. “am I doing good?” – puck, aw sweet. #livetweetingporn
- @courtneytrouble do you have a list of cocks used in this somewhere? can’t quite tell … #livetweetingporn
- shoot, music swells & can’t hear what they’re saying. love the dirty talk in carson’s scene, kind of hard to find on film! #livetweetingporn
- “oh my god she’s so hot.” – kristen, about carson. “somebody’s getting off in the other room, a lot!” #livetweetingporn
- love the blue curtains in the bedroom! & the mirror, pretty. @theresaikard #livetweetingporn
- carson + joline parton. yes I’ve been waiting for this scene. you can just tell joline is a good submissive/bottom. #livetweetingporn
- (“hold on, I have to check my work email.” – kristen) #livetweetingporn
- niiiice pink flush on joline’s ass & cheeks. “look how cute she is!” – kristen #livetweetingporn
- @jolenestarshine: Watching @mrsexsmith livetweet about 7MiH, and about me especially, is VERY surreal. Thanks for the compliments!!!
- @jolenestarshine oh! you’re on twitter! now I’m embarrassed. hi. #livetweetingporn
- gagged (with a washcloth?) … with a lelo in the bathtub … left her boots on … damn. #livetweetingporn
- “I wouldn’t leave that in my mouth if it were me. but oh I’m not a bottom.” – me #livetweetingporn
- oh it’s not a washcloth, it’s her panties! (duh) #livetweetingporn
- are those vampire gloves on tina horn? ow. also, how’d joline get those awesome marks?? #livetweetingporn
- mmm very nice flogger work, & flogging mini-lesson, by tina horn, I like that inclusion. #livetweetingporn
- a little truth-or-dare with the whole cast … looks like they’re having fun #livetweetingporn
- I really like @jolenestarshine’s cute laugh & smile in this truth or dare scene. #livetweetingporn
- whoa … I think this is about to turn into a gang bang … three cocks out … “this is good.” – kristen #livetweetingporn
- sarah lee sinful looks HOT with that cock on. #livetweetingporn
- puck goodfellow is using mr. bendy/silky! VERY NICE. #livetweetingporn
- “oh this is great!” – kristen “yeah but somebody should put their cock in her mouth … ” – me #livetweetingporn
- we both got a bit distracted by the finale – “I want to wear a strap on or get fucked by a strap on.” #livetweetingporn
Highlights of the live Tweeting included: Theresa mentioning that the film was filmed in her apartment, discovering that Jolene, the hot redhead Kristen & I kept mentioning, is on Twitter and was reading us as we live-tweeted, and Courtney Trouble‘s comment at the end: “and thats not even the finale!” Oh. Oops. It kind of was the finale for us, we got a bit … um, distracted.
The last scene, though, that we definitely paid attention to, was Carson and Tina Horn. I loved how they got a bit rough and tumble with each other … definitely seemed like two tops goin’ at it.
Can you tell that Carson kind of stole the show?
Photo from CourtneyTrouble.com; see more photos from 7MiH
All that running commentary doesn’t really tell you that much about the film, though, does it. Well, here’s the premise:
Reality porn is coming out of the closet in this first ever gonzo queer film. Award-winning director Courtney Trouble invites 7 diverse, fresh-faced performers to a kinky slumber-party for fun and games… only tonight there are no rules, no limits and no bedtime! The amateur cast picks their own partners, their own sex toys and their own ways of getting off. Spin the Bottle inspires an unscripted fuck-fest and first-time fantasies come true during a Truth or Dare strap-on sex scene. With honest video confessions, authentic orgasms and natural bodies, Seven Minutes in Heaven is the real queer deal.
Cast: Carson, Puck Goodfellow, Joline Parton, Sophia, Tina Horn, Sarah Lee Sinful, Jae
And here’s the trailer:
That should tell you all you need to know.
Buy Seven Minutes in Heaven: Coming Out by director Courtney Trouble from Good Vibrations, or through your local feminist, queer, sex-positive sex toy shop. This DVD was provided to Sugarbutch Chronicles directly from Good Vibrations for review purposes.
You may have run into this little site I co-run with Hot Movies For Her called VOD.sugarbutch.net … it’s up there in the “Mr. Sexsmith Recommends” link in the top navigation. Hot Movies For Her hosts streaming porn videos with a focus on women as the consumer, including queers, lesbian, trans, and girl-on-girl stuff. Working with them, I picked some of my favorite porn producers, like Pink & White, Madison Young, Blowfish Video, Trannywood Pictures, Buck Angel Entertainment, Reel Queer Productions, and Bleu Productions.
Bleu Productions you may recognize from the recent review of The Black Glove & The Elegant Spanking DVD – it’s a company run by Maria Beatty, who I actually hadn’t heard of until about a year ago but who has made quite a few lovely lesbian porn films.
So, I sat down to watch Post Apocalyptic Cowgirls through the Sugarbutch VOD a few weeks back.
Here’s the premise:
After the Third World War and global warming have transformed the planet into a desert, what remains? Two post-apocalyptic cowgirls in leather and Stetsons! A delicious submissive hitchhikes on a bleak Arizona highway. A car stops. A tough exotic Amazon with a gun and boots invites her into the car. The chemistry between these two sexy, dangerous lesbian chicks is gonna make you hotter than the desert sun. They spank, lick and play with boots, guns, snakes, and cacti in the dust. Their sex is a dripping wet oasis from the heat!
Which, I admit, is a little silly and unnecessary – but the chemistry and sex is really quite good. I liked the knifeplay. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen someone pee into someone else’s hands before (clearly I am still not an expert on porn, if that’s true), but Maria Beatty does seem to like that as it’s in another film of hers, too. I love the stockings. In fact, this film may have been the direct inspiration for some of my recent dirty thoughts about stockings. I dig the cowboy hat.
This film features the same two girls throughout, in five different scenes. They aren’t butch/femme, they aren’t particularly gender-anything, but, despite that that is probably my primary fetish, I didn’t mind its lack of presence. There is not a lot of power play – dom/sub or top/bottom – going on here either, which I also find pretty much a requirement of what I’d call good sex these days. One of the girls is more in charge than the other, and could perhaps be called the top or the dominant in this film, but the tables do turn and she does get fucked in the end.
I didn’t love her top/dominant presentation in this film, which is probably another reason I am saying that the power dynamic was lacking. Perhaps those of you who like their tops like her would find this very power-heavy and totally satisfying, but I didn’t think she was very inspiring. The sub/bottom was pretty good, but neither of their power roles felt particularly inhabited or inspired. (Plus, the toppy girl kept doing that sucking-air-through-her-teeth thing that really bugs me.)
The best thing this film has going for it is it’s aesthetic. It’s artsy. After seeing The Black Glove & The Elegant Spanking, it doesn’t surprise me that the setting, costumes, and filming are another element of seduction for Bleu Productions. They are paid attention to in ways that other porn films seem to overlook – as long as there’s a place to fuck and sexy clothes to take off, others tend to think that’s enough. I like how Bleu and Beatty put together something beautiful to look at.
If you’re a fan of Pink & White, as I am, this film doesn’t really compare. The queerness, gender, power, and skill in Pink & White is so well done and precisely what I love about sex – nobody’s as good as Pink & White. But looked at on its own scale, Post Apocalyptic Cowgirls is fun and sexy, with a bit of unusual edgeplay.
And don’t forget the sexy sexy stockings. Mmmmm.
(images from cinekink)
Rent or purchase Post Apocalyptic Cowgirls from Sugarbutch’s Video-on-Demand site through Hot Movies For Her.
S. Bear Bergman has a new book out, The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You, which is a collection of personal essays, mostly on gender. And to celebrate, Sugarbutch is helping to kick off a virtual book tour! Thanks, Bear! Thanks, Arsenal Pulp Press!
Bear also wrote the book of gender essays Butch Is A Noun, which I’ve mentioned on this site more than a few times. It is one of the only books written about butch identity in the last ten years so it’s certainly influential to my work and philosophies on gender in general. There are some clips and excerpts from Butch Is A Noun available online and I highly recommend them. That first essay, “I Know What Butch Is,” I quote from often and go back to frequently, I just love Bear’s writing and style in that piece.
When I published Top Hot Butches in the Spring earlier this year, Bear was listed as #48 and was one of the factors of me including trans men in the list of butches in the first place. If I excluded trans men, I would have to exclude Bear, and Bear wrote pretty much the only book on butches in the last ten years – did that make sense? Not really. I thought it was extremely important to include Bear, specifically, which opened up the door to include other trans men as well. Of course, not all trans men identify as butch, but at the time I didn’t think I could include some trans men and not others … and the inclusion was problematic. I do not want to start hashing through that here, this is about Bear’s work, after all, but I really appreciated Bear’s supportive emails and contact around the list and that controversy.
Lots has happened for Bear since the publication of Butch Is A Noun. Ze addresses this right away, in the second essay: whereas during the first book, ze was for the most part perceived as a dyke, partnered with a woman, and lived in the suburbs, and now Bear is pretty much perceived as a fag, partnered with a guy, and living in a fairly big city. This transition from “suburban-dyke-me” to “city-fag-me” seems to have altered Bear’s relationship with masculinity a bit, and many of the essays in The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You address this unpacking of masculinity, tracing it back through history and family (I especially liked the discussions of masculinity through the lens of Judaism and his particular family experience of ‘being a man’), and discussing what it means in some new life contexts.
Arsenal Pulp Press provided this lovely little blurb:
Alternately unsettling and affirming, devastating and delicious, The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You, is a new collection of essays on gender and identity by S. Bear Bergman that is irrevocably honest and endlessly illuminating. With humour and grace, these essays deal with issues from women’s spaces to the old boys’ network, from gay male bathhouses to lesbian potlucks, from being a child to preparing to have one; throughout, S. Bear Bergman shows us there are things you learn when you’re visibly different from those around you―whether it’s being transgressively gendered or readably queer. As a transmasculine person, Bergman keeps readers breathless and rapt in the freakshow tent long after the midway has gone dark, when the good hooch gets passed around and the best stories get told. Ze offers unique perspectives on issues that challenge, complicate, and confound the “official stories” about how gender and sexuality work.
I’m still working my way through the book, I haven’t finished it yet, partly because I’m savoring it. I could zip through it a bit faster than I am, but I really appreciate Bear’s perspectives on all of this and I love having access to someone’s inner thoughts about gender, masculinity, queerness, transitioning, love, life … all of those little things, ya know. Sometimes it feels like my own mind eloquently written down, sometimes the concepts are a bit foreign and I have to stop and go over it again. I don’t agree with everything, and there’s some tension between butch and trans here that I am finding fascinating and particularly hard sometimes, but I am so grateful for Bear’s work.
Aside from the virtual book tour, Bear is on an actual book tour, too! Check out the schedule on sbearbergman.com for dates and appearances in Columbus, New York, San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, & more.
Pick up The Nearest Exit May Be Behind You, Essays by S. Bear Bergman from Arsenal Pulp Press, or from your local independent (feminist, queer, radical) bookstore.
A while back Kristen decided she’d like to try some different nipple clamps. I had one set, a very basic tweezer set, which she liked to wear but which slipped off fairly easily.
I started looking into other options and whoa there are a lot of different types. I didn’t even know where to begin.
So I approached Eden Fantasys and we picked seven different clamps from their wide selection for me to review, compare, and contrast. Kristen & I have needed about a month to get through all of them, but at this point the winners are clear.
As I go over the clamps I reviewed and some other clamps which are available, you might notice that most of these clamps are made by Spartacus Enterprise. I didn’t choose them on purpose, though I do know that their products are generally very high quality. They make great leather goods, too.
My rule is, if I can’t put the nipple clamp on my finger (usually my pinky finger, as they usually don’t have wide enough opening to get other fingers into), I won’t put it on my nipple. So two of them were unfortunately ruled out right away:
Endurance Clamps by Spartacus
Butterfly Clamps by Spartacus
Next, we’ve got some decent clamps, which work well, but have some flaws.
Tit Clamps by Pipedream
Butterfly Clamps by Spartacus
Adjustable Clamps by Spartacus
What the hell: Last but not least, I threw in a couple nipple clamps with attachments because I thought they might be fun.
Y Style With Clamp by Spartacus
The biggest surprise was the Collar with clamps by Spartacus. 
Kristen doesn’t like her neck restrained and actually actively dislikes choking in porns, usually, so I knew this would be a bit of a stretch, and that she might not even want to try it, but I asked for it anyway because I think it’s damn hot. I know collaring means lots of things in BDSM scenes, but I was hoping Kristen would be willing to try it once, and from all her love of bondage and restriction I suspected that she would like the feeling of restraint.
And she did. We both liked the ways that the clamps fall and curve under her breasts and create this nice curl of chain, the visual is beautiful. I like to be able to pull on the chain and both pull her neck and her nipples. It’s incredibly hot when she wears it around without a shirt. The collar with clamps is the one we’ve gone back to most often, and it’s introduced the collar to us as an option, and as a potential symbol, something that I didn’t expect at all. We haven’t explored this in too much detail yet, but I can tell we both like it.
The clamps that came with the collar are probably the type I would most recommend – what they call the bull nose type, fully adjustable with a rubber tip to protect the nipple from the metal. These are available in clamps that do not include a collar, too.
There are plenty of other nipple clamps out there, but these cover most of the basic types. If I missed one or two, let me know! I’ll still be on the lookout for types I haven’t tried.
Lenore on 
Shereen on 
