There are a few things coming up for Cheryl.
The Last Sideshow, Tuesday, July 12th, at the usual time and place (8pm, The Phoenix, East Village, NYC). Lineup TBA.
I still don’t know what to say.
Here are a couple videos of Cheryl reading her work. I have some clips of her from an event of mine a few years back that I want to convert and put on YouTube too, haven’t done that yet. Maybe this weekend.
Hope you can make it to Sideshow or the memorial.
Cheryl B. died yesterday, Saturday morning. I’m not sure what I can say yet. A couple other people are able to be more articulate than me: Sassafras Lowrey at Lambda Literary.org, Kathleen Warnock at Too Many Hats. Edit: Here’s a few more, Anne Elliott on Ass Backwords, Rachel Kramer Bussel on Lusty Lady.
We made a little video for Cheryl at April’s Sideshow.
Sideshow Loves Cheryl from Sinclair Sexsmith on Vimeo.
I’d like to post some videos of her poetry soon. I miss her.
EDIT: I scheduled this piece to publish today last week, when I was going through my drafts folder and discovered I’d never published it here (it originally appeared on Good Vibes Magazine). It seems a bit trite, after this weekend. More information about Cheryl is coming in the next few days, as we start planning what’s next.
Kristen and I drove to Philadelphia in February to see the piercing master Elayne Angel, to get Kristen’s nipples pierced and to have her pierce one of my cocks.
In all of the talk of piercing in the last few months since we both decided these piercings might be something we wanted to pursue, I started thinking about my tongue piercing again and that I would like to have it again. I had it pierced first in 2001 (ten years ago … is that right?! I think so) and then took it out in early 2006, only to have a piercer re-open the hole (which was only a tiny bit closed, so much easier the second time) in late 2007, and then took it out again in early 2009, which was before Kristen and I got together. So she never got the chance to kiss me with it. She said she’d kissed other people who have had one, but nothing more than that. And I had developed a few tricks with it, believe you me.
Of all the piercings I’ve had—and I’ve had 11 different ones, three below the neck, some of which I have had pierced more than once—my tongue is the one I like the most. But I have, as I tend to say, “a teeth thing,” which has in the past been a pretty serious dental phobia and now it just a former phobia (I think) and a general fear of breaking teeth or damaging teeth. So that doesn’t go very well with a metal bar through my tongue.
I took it out last time on a whim and then regretted it, wishing that I’d instead bought a spacer bar to keep it open instead of removing it entirely, or a bar with flat ends instead of the silver balls so it stays closer to my tongue and doesn’t click on my teeth when I talk or eat.
With all this talk of piercings, I started wishing I still had the bar in my tongue, and I decided about a week ago to see if I could get it through—and I could! It was quite easy, and while it was tender for a day or two it wasn’t more than adjusting, no actual damage. I found that I had actually bought a bar with flat ends (why didn’t I use that before? Not sure) and now that it feels back to normal, not swelling or sore, I slipped that in with the ball on top and the flat disc on the bottom just this morning.
It feels good. I like it.
I’ve noticed, in the week since I’ve had it in my mouth, that I am much more inclined to kiss Kristen with tongue, to touch it to her tongue, to get it into her mouth in some way than I was before. I wouldn’t say I dislike tongue kissing (at all!) but I do think generally people use their tongues too much when they kiss and that the lips are the good, best parts. But Kristen really likes tongue kisses generally … so this is a little bit different.
I’m also noticing that since Kristen got both nipples pierced that I want to touch them more. I can’t, really, yet, as they heal, for at least a week or so, but I find myself wanting to ask her to take her shirt off so I can see them, and wanting to touch or kiss or play with them already. She loves attention toward her tits, and probably generally I could do more of that, so this is a happy side effect of the piercing for her.
This morning, over breakfast, as we were discussing what we had to get done (on Kristen’s first real day off since her job started in early February), she mentioned she was going to get her pussy waxed. Which I love. Not because it’s something I expect her to do or require her to do or think is more feminine or part of any sort of beauty standard—I believe everyone has the right to sculpt or play with or explore their own body hair in whichever ways they want to, and that they can change that at any time—but because I love touching, kissing, playing with her pussy after she gets it done.
A friend of ours had hers waxed for the first time recently, and when I asked how it went she said, “My girlfriend could not keep her face out of my pussy for four days.”
Yeah. It’s like that. I see it all bare and I want to suck her lips into my mouth. Same with her nipples—I see them all pink and pert and I want to pinch them, lick them.
To Kristen this morning I said, “Between the waxing and the piercing, I’m going to have a hard time keeping my hands off you.”
Which, I expect, is at least part of the point! And which feels like a really good place to be in, given some of our recent complications.
It’s not that I expect any of these things—pierced tongue, pierced nipples, waxed pussy—to be something that anyone does, and if Kristen had showed no interest in nipple piercing or pussy waxing I never would push her to do either. But she was enthusiastic, interested in exploring what it would be like to modify her body in those ways, and personally, I think those are some significant ways to play with this amazing sexy tool of a body that we all have.
I don’t believe it should be a double standard, either—I too am responsible for the maintenance and upkeep of my own body hair, and in doing things that make her want to touch me or pleasure me. I’ve started to think of my gym routine as directly related to our sex life, because while it not only helps me build strength and stamina physically, it makes me feel stronger and more alive, with more confidence, something that can only help in the bedroom.
And I’m interested in enhancing my own body for sexual pleasure. I’m not sure if I’ll get another piercing. If I do, it’d be a clit piercing of some sort, probably a triangle, though I’m not sure about that. I’m especially not sure what it would be like to strap on and have a clit piercing, though I would hope it would make things better, which would be part of the point.
I often think of piercing as a way to enhance both sensation and attention toward a particular body part. Similarly to getting a tattoo—You may not notice someone’s forearms, but if they have a ring around it or a visual symbol of some sort, it draws much more attention to it. Plus piercings certainly give exhibitionists an excuse to take their shirts off (or lower their pants), since people are generally interested in how these things look and eager to say yes to an offer of, “Would you like to see?”
She’s definitely more willing to let out her exhibitionist these days. And given that she quite enjoyed the needle going through her nipples, I think she’s coming along quite nicely as a masochist, too. I referred to her as such at the dinner table last night, after the experience, and she protested. “Okay, a masochist-in-training, then,” I responded. That might be more accurate.
Rachel Kramer Bussel has a great recent piece about her experiences with waxing. I like looking at things like waxing that our culture files under “obligatory beauty regimens” as things that we actively choose, knowing full well what we are choosing (like the amount of time it takes to maintain hair removal is quite a lot), and that we choose because we like the way it looks or feels or the way it enhances our sex life. That is a perfectly valid reason to choose something.
A couple notes from around the blog world that you may be interested in. Have a lovely weekend, all. More updates here are in progress.
BUTCH Voices folks are gearing up for the second bi-annual national conference in August, and they are looking to put a list of queer bloggers in their program, “open to all our Masculine of Center and Queer allies much like the conference“.
To have your blog listed, DM or @-reply their Twitter account, @BUTCHVoices with your linkand contact information and they will be in touch with you.
Madison Young has launched her newest addition to her Feminist Porn Network, Perversions of Lesbian Lust. I’m helping her with the structure of the site and having a lot of fun with it so far.
Here’s a shot from one of the first galleries, featuring Bettina Doll:
I suspect you’ll hear more from me about Perversions in the future.
I wrote a review of Boi Meets Girl: Brett & Melanie on Amazon for Tony Comstock & Comstock films. I caught a screening of that film at the LGBT Center a few months ago and it was fantastic, as was the Q&A with Tony after. I highly recommend it if you’re a queer porn collector. It’s real and fun and hot, and the interviews with Brett & Melanie are so familiar. It almost felt exposing, but I think that meant that it was incredible effective.
Tristan Taormino’s latest anthology has been announced, and this time it features transgender and genderqueer smut stories.
In mainstream media, the erotic identities, sex lives, and fantasies of transgender and genderqueer people are often oversimplified, sensationalized, or invisible. Take Me There is an erotica collection unlike any other that celebrates the pleasure, heat, and diversity of transgender and genderqueer sexualities. The power of seeing and being seen is a central theme in the anthology; it’s not simply about passing or not passing (an idea often explored with transgender characters), but about being acknowledged and desired in a sexual context.
The book takes you from San Francisco to Israel, from heartache to lust, from stranger sex to a 10 year anniversary, from ballet shoes to butt plug bondage tables, from fumbling teenagers to leatherclad bears, from MTF and FTM—and in between and beyond.
There is an incredible line-up of writers who have contributed to this anthology, including Kate Bornstein, S. Bear Bergman, Ivan Coyote, Patrick Califia, Julia Serano, Rachel Kramer Bussel, Toni Amato, and many more. I’m really thrilled to have one of my stories included in here. More details on the book are available on Tristan Taormino’s tumblr.
If you’d like to support this book, the best thing you can do is to pre-order it on Amazon. Amazon bases its in stock copies on the amount of pre-orders, so it would significantly help to make it widely available if you can spare the $11 on the pre-order copy.
At the LGBT Center, 8pm. She’s teaching Tell Me What You Want, What You Really Really Want:
“Often, when we try to tell our partners what we like or want, those words are filtered through things like expectations, projection, fear, shame and verbal shortcuts. Play a little card game with Laura and push your flirting talents up a notch! Expand your creativity and verbal skills beyond “I like flogging” or “anything you want” through an interactive game and exercise. Learn how creative communication and courageous risk-taking can make your relationship and play more intimate, satisfying and fun. Say what you mean, and mean what you say – and make it seductive.”
Where: LGBT Center, 208 West 13th St. (7th/8th Ave)
When: Friday, June 17, 2011; 8:00-10:00PM (Leather Pride weekend)
Cost: $5/LSM members, $10/Non members
Laura Antoniou is the author of the well known Marketplace series of erotic novels. As a presenter, panelist, and keynote speaker, Laura has appeared at dozens of conferences over more than twenty years, both entertaining and delivering an occasional verbal indictment. She has also appeared at colleges and universities, including NYU, Rutgers, Columbia and the University of Washington. Laura lives in Queens, NY with her wife Karen, and happily serves as boy to Kim Attica. Friends have called her all sorts of names. Current favorites being “Renaissance Perv” by Midori, “Good Boy!” by Kim and of course, “best thing that ever happened to me” by Karen.
There is more to you than this identity. It makes everything make more sense, and without it you might be lost, but with it you are only ever on one path. You contain more multitudes than that.
Dance. Cook. Read. Make peace with your body. Look at the stars.
Don’t make everything about you. Willingly admit you are wrong, even if sometimes you know you are right. Eagerly say “I’m sorry.” Easily say “I love you,” but learn to recognize your own worth. Keep the borders of your kingdom well-watched and flexible. Keep your muscles flexible. Climb mountains. Pick wild flowers, even though they wilt. Because they wilt. Don’t let people make you wilt. That’s doesn’t have to have anything do with you. Listen to their stories. Remember that we yell because we do not feel heard.
Make a list of ways you feel heard.
Learn how to partner dance so you can make your partner look beautiful, spinning and open-mouth laughing on the dance floor. Cook. Read. Make peace with your body.
Elevate the discussions over brunch with your buddies and use them to try out your date outfits. Downgrade your tee shirts to workouts and loungewear and upgrade your presentation. Make a list of places you can wear your very best suit that are not weddings or funerals. If you don’t have a suit, invest in a suit. There’s a reason it’s a classic. It’s okay to get it at a thrift store. It’s okay to stop shopping at thrift stores now that you know how to use money. Practice rocking a tie on special occasions. Make a list of special occasions. Thursdays can count as special occasions.
Remember that your lover craves your skin and friction and kisses not despite but because of your masculinity.
Dance. Practice cooking at least one impressive date meal and, if you like watching them put something you made in their mouth, teach yourself more. Read. Make peace with your body.
Get a traffic cop vest, because you are stuck directing and deflecting in the middle of the intersection between male and female, and though the fifty-car pileups have mostly ceased, though they have cleaned the rubble from the ditches, though the seasons have faded the bloodstains on the concrete, you are still there, in the middle, while a pickup truck brushes past close enough to touch the hairs on your calf and a Mazda full of machismo is threatening you from the window.
Know you can survive this. Your body crosses borders most of them never question.
Dance. Cook. Read books like Stone Butch Blues and Dagger and Butch is a Noun and learn where you came from. Learn who else is out there in the world with you. Suspend your own stories and practice seeing another’s perspective. Make peace with your body.
Learn to recognize femmes, even if you don’t date them. They recognize you. When a girl on the subway gives you The Eyes, she’s a femme. When the only straight girl in the dyke bar says she likes your tie, she’s a femme. When your waitress jumps in on your conversation with your buddies to ask “so what’s a good drag king troupe?”, she’s a femme.
But two femmes in bed are not just waiting for a butch to come along (necessarily), so don’t laugh when someone tells misogynistic jokes in bad taste. Be a gentleman. Practice the art of consensual chivalry, always be on time, and remember: it’s better to have a cock and not need it than to need a cock and not have it. Always be prepared.
When the girl you thought you’d spend your life with leaves you, know you can survive this. Pour the whiskey down the drain, keep your stovetop spotless, and delete her number from your phone. Move your best friend up to her speed dial spot and call just to say hi. Cultivate your friendships before your breakups so you are not alone.
You are becoming more like yourself than you’ve ever been. Trust in your own deepest experience. Trust in your own evolutions.
Dance. Cook. Read. Make peace with the supposed conflict between your breasts, your inner folds, your monthly bleeding, and your cufflinks, your swagger, your monthly boy-cut #4 and the razor-shave on your neck. You possess this innate ability to contemplate apparent opposites and hold them both; to dance with two seemingly contradictory things simultaneously—a talent most people can never perfect. But you can. And you are not alone. These mentors, this legacy, this lineage, this heritage, this style—this is where you fit, this is where you are not dismissed, this is where you finally get kissed exactly how you’ve always wished.
This is the process of blooming into whatever multitudes you are at the core of your being.
Look at the stars. Remind yourself how small we all are, how big your life is, how many paths you are exploring. You can do more than survive this—you can thrive in this.
Don’t forget! Join us at Sideshow TONIGHT, June 14th, for our second PRIDE month celebration of butch and femme. Readers include Rachel Kahn, Alicia Greene, & Maggie Cee from Boston’s Femme Show, Susan Herr from DapperQ.com, and Grace Moon from Velvet Park Media.
Sideshow: The Queer Literary Carnival
Hosted by Cheryl B. & Sinclair Sexsmith
Tuesday, June 14th
at The Phoenix
447 East 13th Street at Avenue A
Doors, 7:30pm. Reading, 8pm
Free! (We’ll pass the hat for the readers)
RSVP on Facebook
I’ve had these two DVDs sitting around for months now and finally had a chance to watch ’em.
The first is Crash Pad Series #6, the continuation of the DVD releases of the Crash Pad’s online queer porn empire, crashpadseries.com. This one features Carson, Casey Grey, Cyd Loverboy, Dylan Ryan, James Darling, Jiz Lee, Princess Donna, Ray, Tina Horn, Syd Blakovich.
I particularly love Tina Horn’s scene in this one, she’s hot and funny and having a great time while not taking herself too seriously. And there is a reason she is famous for her ass—it is gorgeous, oh my Gaga.
Good Releasing has taken over (limited?) release of the Pink & White films, which I’m happy to see. Crash Pad, and Pink & White in general, are hugely cutting edge in the world of porn, but it can’t hurt to get a signal boost from the Good Releasing folks.
I’m really behind on the Crash Pad series! Clearly I should make more time to keep up with the amazing short films (but there are so many). Crash Pad #6 was nominated for the 2011 Feminist Porn Awards—as was Roulette Toronto, the next flick I’m going to mention.
Roulette Toronto features April Flores, Jiz Lee, Dia Zerva, Dylan Ryan, Courtney Trouble, Tina Horn, Drew DeVeaux, Judy Minx, Scout, Lascivia Liberty, River Turner, and Wordman—and many of these stars are my absolute favorite.
The scene with Trouble and Judy Minx is sultry and edgy and hot, with saturated color and sexy sensation play. The trio of Drew DeVeaux, Jiz Lee, and River Turner is in a dance studio where they all get to show off their moves, before moving on to every possible combination. April Flores and Dylan Ryan get it on femme-style, complete with high heels and April’s amazing bright red hair.
And the music! Queer and dirty radical goodness. It is an impressive collection of scenes from director Courtney Trouble (as if we’d expect anything less of her).
And if that description isn’t enough, here’s the trailer. Do I have to warn you that it’s NSFW?
We haven’t had a #pornparty in a while … do y’all miss it? If I did another one, would you come? What if it was free to tune in and watch that film at that particular time? Would you join us? Are you interested in that continuing?
Crash Pad Series #6 and Roulette Toronto queer porn DVDs were sent to me from Good Vibrations for review. Check out more sex toys, vibrators, and other lovely items at your local feminist queer sex-positive sex toy shop, or online at goodvibes.com.
You get really emotionally and sexually candid (even graphic) in some of your writing. I’m wondering if any member of your or Kristen’s family reads this blog. Do they even know it exists? How much do your families know about this part of both of your lives?
My youngest sister also writes a sex blog (though we’re not really out about being related), so she knows. My other (middle) sister (I’m the oldest) also knows, though I don’t think she reads it regularly. I’m not sure how much either of them read, because, I mean, how much do you really want to know about your sibling’s sex life? I do read my sister’s blog, but I tend to skip over the sex parts—we don’t talk a lot these days, since we both have busy lives in big cities. So this is one way for me to kind of keep up with what’s going on with her. I imagine she reads my blog similarly, though I don’t really know.
My parents know that I write lesbian erotica, and that I’ve been published—I was on the phone with my mom once while she searched for my name in Amazon and was, well, a little surprised with the results. I don’t think she really wants to know about the details of my sexuality, though, so I doubt she has read any of the works that are under my birth name.
My parents also know that I lead workshops, though I usually play up the gender aspects and play down the sex part. Though sometimes I’ve said that I’m doing a class at a sex toy store. So there’s some openness about what I do, but I tend to gloss over the details.
As far as I know, they don’t know my pen name, so they don’t read this. But it really wouldn’t be very hard for them to figure it out, thanks to Facebook—I do tend to promote my events, like Sideshow, on my personal Facebook page, so if my parents really wanted to they could figure out that name, find my Sinclair Sexsmith Facebook fan page, and link it back to this site pretty darn easily.
I don’t know about my extended family, though I think some of them know. My uncle runs a small publishing company and lives in New York City, and he published my most recent chapbook and knows about Sideshow, so again, it wouldn’t take much digging for him to know.
And Kristen’s family … I don’t know. Likewise her sister and parents could probably do some digging from Facebook and figure it out, and I suspect they are more inclined to do that than my family is. Her mom did email me at my mrsexsmith gmail address once, which kind of freaked me out. I’m not sure how she got that address or what it means. But Kristen and I have decided to ignore it, basically—either she’s read all the archives or she hasn’t, and until she brings it up and decides to make an issue of it (which I don’t think she will, since that would involve having a direct conversation about things like sex and, moreso, the lesbian relationship her daughter is in), I’m not going to speculate.
So, now that I’ve gone down the laundry list of relatives, there’s one more thing I want to say about families and sex lives.
Dan Savage on the Savage Love podcast (which is the only podcast that I really keep up with), on the February 1, 2011 show, had guest Amy Lang from BirdsandBeesandKids.com on to field questions about parenting, kids, and sex. (I’d link to it directly but it appears the direct links don’t work, so you’ll just have to find it by date.)
At about 30:30, they play a call from someone with a question about nudity and polyamory, and Amy an Dan use it as a way to explore “the line” between what we should and shouldn’t talk to kids about. What is “too open?” What is appropriate, and what is crossing the line?
Dan: We all had a friend whose parents were too open about sex with their kids and their kids friends, which made us uncomfortable.
Amy: Too open about their own sex lives, which is where I’d like to draw the line. American parents are so worried about giving their kids too much information—it is virutlaly impossible for us to give our kids too much information about sex and relationships. The TMI point? Is THAT. Your sex life! Your kids don’t want to know!
Dan: No!
Amy: Do you want to know that your parents had a sex life?
Dan: My parents had a sex life?!
Amy: No! They didn’t!
Dan: Good! Phew!
Now, I think there should be some acceptance that our parents have a sex life, but I do maintain that I don’t want to hear about it. They go on to discuss polyamory and how to go about being open about that to your kids. But I’m less interested in that conversation and more struck by this TMI point. It has influenced the way I think about this stuff, and its easy for me to then draw there : they are not invited to read it because it is too much of my own sex life.
In my experience, writing about my own sex life worked best when I was (more) anonymous. It was easier to write and be open about what I was doing in bed. It’s harder now, not just because I’m more exposed but also because I’m 2 1/2 years into a relationship, and though we are still having great sex, we’re not as exploratory as we used to be—not in a bad way, there’s just less to xplore now that we’ve been exploring for 2 1/2 years (though we did have foot sex for the first time just the other night … and I have two ‘squirting dildoes’ on my desk that we have yet to try out … )—and the edgy stuff in our relationship is the emotional stuff, the fighting and the growth struggle and hard times we’re going through as we’re building our longer term life together. And while I have written about that (a little), it’s hard because it is deep and sometimes too vulnerable to reveal to such a broad (and sometimes unnecessarily critical) audience.
I would like to continue to write about it, though, despite the challenge.
That’s kind of a side note.
There’s one more thing I’m chewing on, related to families and sex, and it’s the daddy/girl play and the taboo eroticism that keeps families together. But I’m not sure how to express that yet. I’ll keep chewing.
Just Jess (From the Beaver Bunch)
mentor, vlogger, activist
www.youtube.com/user/beaverbunch, www.youtube.com/user/cautiousplay, @JessfromBB
1. What is your relationship with the word or identity “butch?”
I’m not sure that I identify with the word “butch”. I mean, people may see me as butch, but I wouldn’t say that I am. I absolutely love my butch sisters but I just don’t feel like it describes me the way that I see myself. I think that stems from the misconceptions that come with being labeled as butch. I don’t wear the pants always, nor do I want to. Although I do have a butch attitude… does that count?
2. What kind of words and labels, if any, do you use to identify yourself?
I typically use “queer” to identify; sometimes I’ll go so far as to say genderqueer, but even that puts me in a box that I’m not completely sure of. Although I am sort of a guy and sort of a girl, so it does make sense. I’ve lived in and visited big cities and the queer/genderqueer communities are vastly different. I’ve felt more comfortable visiting Portland, OR than I’ve ever felt living in San Diego as a queer person and I’ve been here for almost five years.
When it comes down to it, I’m just a sensitive kid with a gang of bike tools and a love for romantic comedies. I’m just Jess. Mostly masculine on the outside and feminine at my core.
3. What do you wish you could tell your younger self about sex, sexuality, or gender?
I would tell my younger self to be more open to gender and sexuality. I came out very early and immediately called myself a lesbian before I really knew what that would entail. I love women and enjoy being a woman, of course, but it took me several years to come into my own as queer and to not feel the need to identify as a lesbian. I just wish that I had given myself more of an opportunity to learn about who I was at an earlier age – it gets harder once you establish yourself within a community.
I would also tell myself to slow down a bit and be more present. I was sort of a crazy kid when I first came out, always running around looking for a cute girl to kiss. I guess some things never change :)
Lastly: I love butches and the history that comes with them. The struggles and triumphs hold a beautiful place in my heart. And thank you, Les Feinberg, your words are inspiration.
A few weeks ago, Autostraddle wrote a long post on bras: What the F Should I Do With These Boobs?—particularly, bras for folks who don’t really want the standard lace-and-bows versions that are the most common at stores. They linked to one of my old posts, More On Butch Bras, where I talked about getting properly measured and how life-changing that was. I’d like to write more about that—and I still think everybody, EVERYBODY, should go get properly measured, because there actually is a difference between a 34D and a 36C, and if you say you wear either one, you are probably not wearing the most comfortable bra for you that you could.
That’s my size, by the way. Or rather, that’s the size I thought I was for a long time. Turns out I’m more of a 34DD, though right now, given the amount of biscuits I’ve consumed in the past year, I’m probably more like a 36DD. Knowing that helped—though that’s also assuming that you’re buying bras which have separate ribcage measurements and cup sizes, which sports bras generally don’t.
I resisted sports bras for a long time. I didn’t like the uni-boob look, something I finally identified as left over from my first girlfriend, who used to say that all the time (who has since transitioned and had top surgery, by the way, so I suppose found a solution for that). But when I started doing “drag nights” in college and wearing more button-downs, the advice from my friend was to wear a one-size-too-small sports bra as a binder, and that ace bandages were really not the way to go.
Still, it took a while before I went through my underwear drawer and got rid of ALL of my traditional back-clasp two-cupped bras in favor of more of a binder. I found this Adidas back-clasp sports bra that gave me enough of a bind, and quickly bought four of them, tossing everything else out.
These dozens of suggestions that Autostraddle posted are great, but for larger breasted folks like me, there was not a single bra on there that I would wear. Though perhaps that’s not so fair, really, because there’s only one that I really wear anyway: the Enell bra (you can get ’em on Amazon too).
There is an Introduction to the Enell bra on YouTube, but it’s so cheesy that I can’t bear to embed it here. I will however embed the fitting and measuring video so you can see how to wear it:
It has significantly changed the way I look in shirts, and I have yet to find anything better. I used to have a size 1 that I would use for extra-tight binding and a size 2 that I wore for everyday stuff, but I can’t fit into the size 1 anymore. Hitting 30 really has changed my body, my metabolism. I’m trying to be more careful about what I eat and hope I can fit back into the size 1 someday … but that’s kind of another post.
So you’ve heard about Babeland’s new “Gender Expression” category, which I for one thing is awesome. But I want to call your attention to a couple comments on that post, because I think it’s important, and it crossed my mind as well:
Perry wrote:
Not to be rubbish, but shouldn’t it be called “female-assigned or potentially mtf-post-op-folks-i-suppose expression” instead?
And Krista from Babeland responded:
It is our intention to make this category a place to find products for expressing any and all gender possibilities. We welcome suggestions of other products that you think might fall into this category. I hope that helps. Feel free to contact us with any other questions.
To which perry replied:
thanks for your comment, Krista. I don’t really have any suggestions per se, I’ve just been noticing that often when female-assigned queers talk about “genderqueer” and “transgender” they often seem to be talking about female-assigned folks who express a certain masculinity via clothes, hair, and yes, toys. I rarely meet male-assigned folks id’ing as genderqueer. 20-30 something college educated white female assigned people who have sex with the same seem to be “the” face of trans/gender and genderqueer movements in a way (if you look at profiles on genderfork and on lots of tumblrs you’ll see what i mean), and i think it’s important to make other identities visible. Thanks for selling great stuff babeland, this is not a dig at you.
And I really see perry’s point here. I don’t really mean to drag Babeland into this, because really this is just something to point to indicative of a larger issue, and, well, I like to link to the gender expression category, which is why I’m using this conversation as an example.
Thanks, by the way, to perry and to Krista for this conversation. I don’t have a lot to add, but I want to highlight this issue because I’ve thought about it frequently myself, and I’m interested what we can do about it. I guess this is the part where I ask for your opinions on the subject. Thoughts?
I do want to say, in Babeland’s defense and in defense of many other sex toy stores which have “gender expression” type of categories, that I think there are just a lot fewer sex products for trans men and masculine of center folks than there are for trans women. Maybe I’m wrong about that and I just don’t know as much about it—correct me if I’m wrong—but my understanding is that a lot of the products for (feminine) trans women are things found in traditional feminine departments, like bras and lingerie. I suppose there could be binding underwear or stuffed bras? I don’t know much about those products, and I certainly don’t see a lot of that—hey Babeland, maybe you should look into those.
I have met some men who identify as genderqueer, though not many. I’ve often mused about this subject, mostly in terms of the myriad words we have for masculine of center identities, and how frequently it seems that people who identify as genderqueer or androgynous are people who were assigned female at birth, who would not express traditionally feminine markers like make-up and dresses—folks who “express a certain masculinity via clothes, hair, and yes, toys,” as perry put it.
I think there might be some misandry in that, to be honest. Or, at the very least, some feminist and queer skepticism about masculinity and maleness in general. And probably some internalized misogyny, as a commenter pointed out.
Let me state for the record that I think people should identify however they feel most comfortable, and I’m not trying to change that, for anybody. But I have noticed it as a trend and I’m curious how we, as people who are doing work on expanding gender categories, can support the widening of these identities, and to continue to build movements that include ALL gender identities and expressions, and not just masculine of center queer folks assigned female at birth.
So, what other products should Babeland add to their gender expression category that are not aimed at masculine of center folks? Any ideas for what they can add to their category?
Q asked:
do you have any ideas for what to do with lightly used sex toys and accessories? They don’t seem like the kind of thing you just sell at a yard sale! But it seems a shame to just chuck something so expensive and that someone else could get a lot of pleasure out of. If you don’t think it makes sense to give them away (and I mean give, I certainly don’t want to sell), is there a way to recycle them or otherwise dispose of them properly?
Thanks!
Yes, generally you’re right, people don’t want used sex toys, even if they can be sterilized. There are some—glass, metal, silicone—that I would say you can offer to good friends, or people you might think could handle a little use. Some leather/BDSM gear you might be able to swap or give away, but it depends on the condition. But if they’re very broken in (you know how silicone gets after it’s been used a bunch, it kind of starts disintegrating) I think it’d be best to recycle them.
The jelly plastic or other plastic insertables or vibrators … probably there’s nothing to do with them except recycle them.
There is a sextoyrecycling.com place, but it looks like it’s not legit. I haven’t been able to contact anyone from there to get confirmation that they are running.
I did hear from ScarletGirl.com, they have a sex toy recycling program that will give you $10 credit, but more importantly, they won’t end up in the landfill.
Dan Savage has recommended sending your old sex toys to representatives in states where sex toys aren’t legal, which I think is a good idea for activist purposes, but what happens after the politicians receive those toys? Probably they will end up in a landfill. So if your purpose is to be green moreso than to have some impromptu activism, you might want to just write a letter (or an email! Save paper) and send your sex toys off to be recycled.
Some of the sex bloggers who do a lot of toy reviews have set up the Toy Swap Network for toys that are not old, broken, worn-out, etc., but are new and that you just don’t want to keep around.
It is by invitation only, so you can send in a request, and the network itself is on Ning.
Any other recommendations for what to do with old sex toys? Perhaps Folsom East has some leather swap events, anybody know?
Oh, hello June, I almost didn’t see you there. I’ve been kind of out of it since the retreat, though I finally feel like this week I am actually catching up and getting ahead of my to do list. Finally.
So—June is pride month! And as such, there are thousands of things going on in New York City and elsewhere. Thankfully, most of them are NOT things that I am doing, and I am attempting to get my loose ends tied up such that I can take as much of the summer off as possible and do some serious writing.
Here’s the stuff you really should not miss.
| Tuesday, June 14th, 8pm | Sideshow: The Queer Literary Carnival: Join us at Sideshow on June 14th for our second PRIDE month celebration of butch and femme. Readers include Rachel Kahn, Alicia Greene, & Maggie Cee from Boston’s Femme Show, Susan Herr from DapperQ.com, and Grace Moon from Velvet Park Media.! Details on QueerLiteraryCarnival.com, RSVP on Facebook | at The Phoenix, 447 East 13th Street at Avenue A in New York City |
|
|
||
| Thursday, June , 8pm | Red Umbrella Diaries, www.redumbrellaproject.com | Happy Ending, 302 Broome Street between Forsyth and Eldridge, Manhattan, NY |
|
|
||
| Friday, June 17th, 8-10pm | Lesbian Sex Mafia presents: Tell me what you want, what you really, really want with Laura Antoniou, lesbiansexmafia.org | LGBT Center, 208 West 13th St. (7th/8th Ave) Manhattan, NY |
|
|
||
| Saturday, June 25th, 10pm | Submit Party, submitparty.com, a BDSM play party for women and trans folks only | Brooklyn, NY. For exact location call 718.789.4053 or email Red@submitparty.com |
|
|
||
Queer Memoir is still on hiatus, and it looks like Ruckus might not be happening this month, but keep an eye out for their date if they announce it. is back! And happening on June 24th.
I’m also looking forward to the FREE NYU Queer Social Theory class this month, and the Sophisticated Agressive Gents meeting at the LGBT Center. If you need a pride kick-off I recommend the Dykes on Bike-Cycles party. The Lesbian Herstory Archives, located in Brooklyn, is having a book sale the same day as Brooklyn Pride, Saturday, June 11th, so that I must stop by and see. I’m sure I can find at least a dozen or so $1 books that I must adopt. There’s a cocktail party How Long Til My Soul Gets It Right: Benefiting Trans Women Belong Here, which is “an informal organization of past, present, and future attendees of the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival (MWMF) who are taking active steps towards welcoming all woman-identified women to the festival.” This event will benefit their scholarship fund. And there’s Folsom Street East on June 19th!
I am also really stoked that Kristen’s and my Community Supported Agriculture share is starting this month. And … if you promise not to make fun of me, I’ll tell you that I have tickets to see The Monkees in concert on June 16th. People seem to have mixed reactions to my coming out as a Monkee fan, which I am … we had all the good episodes from the MTV marathons in the ’80s on VHS and my sisters and I would watch them over and over. In fact, my sister and her boyfriend are coming with me & Kristen to the show. I’m really excited. I have quite a few tracks on my “if I ever do drag” playlist, and She is at the top of that list. I always liked Mickey best.
My favorite pride event, thus far, aside from Sideshow’s epic Butch/Femme Pride, was hanging out in the air conditioning, drinking my perfected white wine sangria recipe and ordering take-out. I hope to replicate that this year.
Also! I am now booking fall events for colleges and traveling nationally. I’ll be working at home and writing through June, and then doing more travel in July, August, and September, including some travels to Seattle in early July, the Butch Voices national conference in Oakland in August, and Dark Odyssey Summer Camp in September. My schedule is kept up on mrsexsmith.com/appearances if you want to see if I’m coming your way.
Last but not least, here’s my 2011 workshop offerings in a PDF so it is easy to download, you can also download my one sheet PDF or high res photos in my press kit). Get in touch if you’re interested in booking me, you can contact me directly—mrsexsmith(at)gmail—or my booking company, PhinLi, at bookings(at)phinli.com.
Somehow in May I had two beautiful photographs of me, both taken by professional photographers, published. And in case you aren’t following me in the regular social media places, or by my RSS feed on mrsexsmith.com, I figured I’d share ’em here.
The first is by Bill Wadman who first took my photo for 365Portraits.com in 2007. (I wasn’t ‘out’ as Sinclair then so I kept it under my other name.) A few weeks ago, he tweeted that he was bored and wanted to take portraits, and I replied, how about me? And it was on. He came over and we chatted about what I was planning to do that weekend, which was to attend a BDSM erotic energy retreat. He paused a second: “You’re into that?” Me: “Yep. In fact, I have some good equipment if you’d like to see it …” and out came my flogger. After he saw my new (since his last shot of me, anyway) tattoo, the shot soon made itself.
Speaking of the tattoo: many people have asked me what it is. It’s a ruler, it measures 6″, and if you measure from the flat palm of my hand, it measures 8″. There are numerous meanings to it (as with all the best tattoos, don’t you think?): I’m a graphic designer, for one. I’ll always have 6″ with me (ha ha) and I can measure high heels a lot easier this way. I can now measure how far into you I can reach. I’ve been thinking about this tattoo for a while, since I saw a photo of someone who had one on Flickr years ago, but the thing that made me go and do it was taking the Buddhist Refuge Vow in spring 2010. During the meditations, it came to me that this path, the Buddhist path, is actually incredibly linear, and has been walked hundreds of thousands of times for thousands of years. Considering that so, so much of my life is about forging my own path, making my own direction, this felt so incredibly comforting and I knew it was time to get the tattoo.
This next shot was for the DapperQ He Said/We Said May edition, the shoot for which happened in April, with photos by Yi Ching Lin. I was there with four other models, all of whom were reinterpreting a current high-fashion men’s runway look in our own way. The photos turned out beautifully. Susan Herr, DapperQ hirself, has called this photo “the best butch photo of all time,” and I am very pleased with how it turned out.
There are others over at DapperQ.com from this shoot, and there’s a video of all 5 of us models talking about our fashion inspiration as well.
What was your first time strapping like? What advice do you have for strap-on virgins? My butch just placed the online order for her first cock, and I have no idea of what to expect.
Go slow. Use lots of lube. LOTS of lube. More than you think you might need, especially at first. It’s just a little messy, which is always better than having not enough. DON’T use silicone lube, as it’ll screw up your silicone toys.
Talk to each other, be as vocal as you can—even “ooh yeah ooh yeah” type of vocalizations will help give cues to each other about what feels good and what is not quite working.
Don’t be afraid to slow each other down or stop. It might just click and work and be amazing, but you also might want to just do it as something to try and to play with, at least for now, so don’t expect one or both of you to get off, especially not at first.
If you’re not used to penetration during sex, you might want to mess around with getting yourself off (or her getting you off, using her hands on your clit I mean) while she’s inside, but without much in-and-out motion, at least for now, while you’re getting used to the feeling of her cock.
The typical porn positions are the best, in my opinion, which is why they are so frequently used—missionary, and doggy style from behind (in various incarnations, like leaning over the bed, or with your head down on the bed instead of on all fours). In missionary, also try it with her sitting up on her knees, with her thighs under your thighs, that is often a really good angle.
Don’t be afraid to touch it, kiss it, lick it, suck it—that stuff can be really hot, though that can also be kind of delicate, so see how your girlfriend feels about it. Sometimes it seems to me, as the strap-on wearer, that I am expected to be the one who does all the action once I put it on, but my point is that you can do things, too. If you aren’t sure if she wants you to touch it (or kiss it or suck on it), ask. “Would you mind if I …” “Wow, I didn’t expect to want to … , but I do, please may I?”
Personally I think just about any sex act is all the more hot with someone saying what they are doing (or want to do), regardless of what it is. Maybe that’s me—I really love language.
Most women can’t come from penetration alone, which I assume the two of you know, but just a reminder that you both might want to start practicing touching your clit while she’s fucking you, either with your hand or, if she can reach comfortably, with hers. It takes some practice to be able to fuck with a cock and use your hand at the same time, but it’s possible! And worth figuring out how.
And from her side … it is possible to get off while strapped on, but that might take some time and practice. For me, I like the harness to be VERY tight, tighter than is all that comfortable around my hips, because I like to be able to feel every stroke against my cunt while I’m fucking. I like the stimulation of a one-strap (g-string style) harness better than a two-strap (jock strap style) harness, but that seems to be the minority opinion, so your milage may vary. She can try adding bullet vibes or butt plugs or the We-Vibe to increase stimulation, though I find those are more distracting than helpful. But if she really likes a vibration on her clit or something in her ass, that might be just the push she needs to be able to fuck and come.
Other than that, in my experience, to be able to come while strapped on, just following the sensation—when you find a spot that feels good, rub up on it, over and over, and see how far that can take you.
Consider anything you do in playing with it an experiment, and collect the data of that experiment. Did it work? Would it work better if one variable was different? Would you try it again? Or was it a complete fail and did not feel good? Gather the data and figure out what you like and don’t like, what was luke-warm and what you might try later if things were a little different.
Did I mention lube?
And … the first part of that question was, what was my first time strapping on like? Well, to be honest, my first time strapping on was to peg a guy, my boyfriend of about 5 years that I was with in high school. I bought a strap-on when we broke up, and I came out as a lesbian, and it was a tiny silicone thing that was very hard silicone and black and narrow. I do still have it, actually, I keep thinking it might be a good size for anal sex, but then again, now that I have the Spur why would I use a cock that was so hard?
We then went cock shopping together and bought a cock that was roughly the size and shape of his, which was what I pegged him with. It was fun enough to peg him, but it also made me realize that I was (really really for sure) a dyke and wasn’t that into it.
I did fuck my first girlfriend with a strap-on, but we were more of the I-do-you-you-do-me type of couple, so we took turns. It took quite a few more years before I felt like I had a cock that was mine—really not until I ended the relationship with my college girlfriend and started dating femmes exclusively. Which I have widely chronicled here!
It’s been a long journey to claiming my cock-centricity and cock confidence. Actually, I teach workshops on Cock Confidence now, in case you’d like to attend one—I’ll be doing it next at Good Vibrations in San Francisco in August.
Anything else y’all would recommend? Any other tips for first-time strap-on users?
Can you tell us about your most favorite spanking you have ever given?
Hm. I’m not sure I have a favorite spanking that I’ve ever given. That’d be like choosing the best time I had sex or something. Some of the spankings that come to mind were early on in my kink life, when I started figuring out how to be kinky with women (after spending much of my teens being kinky with men. Or rather, boys). I went to a spanking workshop at Babeland once, probably in 1999 or 2000, which was very memorable and awesome, and I very strongly remember the Power & Surrender workshop (much like the recent one) that taught me how to flog. That was probably 2002.
Recently, though … well, I did some flogging at the recent Power & Surrender retreat, which was lovely. I like to spend a long, slow time on warm-up, then use my whole body to whomp for a while. I noticed I was even doing a little bit of a jump to get more of my body weight behind the flogger. I still want more practice flogging—every time I see Lolita flog I want to take classes from her.
Also, Kristen’s birthday was last weekend.
So of course there were spankings. I even got my heavy wooden paddle out. But there could perhaps be more spankings. I’d like to figure out how to leave big heavy bruises on her ass, I don’t tend to do that, but I think it’s time to try.
I’m a FAAB genderqueer pansexual in a long-term monogamous relationship with a straight cissexual guy. I adore him, he accepts who I am and we have a wonderfully fulfilling and communicative relationship overall, but I occasionally feel strange and almost guilty that I’m in a relationship that masks my queer identity, one where I can “pass” as a straight girl.
That was setup. My question is, how can I best nurture and feel fulfilled and at peace with my queer identity within the context of my relationship with my straight, cissexual sweetie?
Cultivate and celebrate your queerness and queer identity in contexts other than your monogamous relationship, since that is not visibly queer. Become involved in other ways, with a queer book group or queer activism or queer arts or whatever particular flavor of queer culture strikes your fancy. Make friends with other folks who have this difficulty so you can compare notes and identify with each other.
I bet there’s a Fetlife group or two out there for folks in this position.
The guilt and the “passing” is an indication that you’ve got a little bit of privilege, even if you don’t want it. It’s not real privilege, but it is perceived and therefore given to you. This culture will validate your relationship and see you as a certain kind of person in the context of your partner—call it a sort of orientation attribution, the orientation that others attribute to you, even if that’s not how you identify.
So the trick is a reconciliation of the orientation attribution that others perceive and your true orientation, which are different.
There are two big pieces to it, I think: internal and external. Externally, in order to have some peace with this, you’ll need to accept that you will get critique and criticism from queers, who constantly police identity (sad but true). It’s not that you are wrong, though; it’s that they are going along with some very superficial understandings about how queer identity works. And being that you are trying to broaden and radicalize this queer identity label (as being more than just who you sleep with), you will probably be in the position of being attacked for that, for a long time. I think in order to make peace you’ve got to radically accept that, decide how you’re going to react when folks do this, and then let it go. If it really bugs you and gets under your skin every time it happens, you won’t get to a place of peace about it.
Internally, aim to cultivate a place in yourself that deeply knows how queer you are such that their critique won’t knock you off center when it comes, which, sadly, it inevitably will. Practice a couple quick and easy responses when someone criticizes your identity or claims that you aren’t “queer enough” for one thing or another—to be in this queer space, to be consuming queer culture, whatever. If you can stand firm in your response—that they are the ones with a mistake, not you—they’ll look silly. But when you waver and let their attacks bother you, you will appear as if they have a reason to critique and question your queerness.
Internally, ultimately, you’ve got to deeply know that it is their problem, not yours. There is more to a queer identity than just who you’re sleeping with, and while many people don’t understand that, many others do, and you’ve got to understand that deeply in order for others to take what you’re saying seriously.
This is part of being in a (perceived) privileged position: the constant correcting of those around you, and the constant use of passing as a tool for change and deeper understanding. And there are ways to use passing as a tool, despite that it is also incredibly frustrating and invisibilizing.
The bottom line, I think, is that you’ve got to build some Radical Acceptance around your identity: to deeply accept that you are in a radical position, that you are pushing the edges of what it means to be queer, and that most people probably don’t and won’t understand that, so you’re going to get attacked and critiqued because of it. So cultivate your queer identity in areas other than your relationship, since no matter how queer the sex between you or gender roles within that relationship, you’ll probably have an orientation attribution of straight. Cultivate all the dozens of other areas of your life that are and can be perceived as queer, and build those up strong and solid. Work on your own sensitivity around your queer identity, too, so you can feel strong in it.
Like Tuesday, I also have a question about strap-on sex. Whenever my girl and I use a strap-on, the cock always falls out because I move entirely too much. We’ve tried numerous positions and restraints (we rarely have sex without them). Got any additional solutions?
The first thing that comes to mind is that you might want to get a bigger cock—at least a longer one. Which one are you using right now?
And maybe she would say she doesn’t want or need any more length inside her, but that’s okay—just because it is 8″ or 10″ doesn’t mean you have to put all of those inches in her. And if you have a longer shaft, you can pull out farther and move around (which is what it seems like you want to and like to do) and still not pull all the way out.
I would suggest one like this one, Bandit, which is 7″ long. It does have balls, but they are very flat, so I think it’s still about 6 3/4″ insertable. It’s made by Vixen Creations and it is one of my favorites.
But, if getting a new cock is not an option, for whatever reason (her comfort, your wallets, etc), here’s a few other ideas.
Try keeping your hand on your cock most of the time while you’re fucking. I do this a lot, also because I don’t want to slip out and can easily do that sometimes, especially when I get going. I find it’s most comfortable for me to either have my hand loosely on the base, or up against her, where the cock is going in, loosely. Sometimes it is very good in this position to be able to stimulate her clit, too (or finger her asshole, or whatever). This is so you can feel when you’re about to come out, you can feel the ridge of the head of your cock if you pull out that far, and you can keep yourself inside.
Try moving less! Seriously. I understand it probably feels good when you do that, but there are other ways to move so you can still feel good and you aren’t slipping out as much. See if you can get a side-to-side movement working well. Practice moving your hips in a circle rather than in-and-out. Or go in-and-out but use a different angle, so you don’t pull out so far. Try five quick strokes in-and-out at about half-length, not all the way, and then five excruciatingly slow strokes where you pull pretty much all the way out.
Try tightening your harness so you can feel any movements better, maybe you won’t need to move around so much that way.
You said you’ve tried other positions, but try more. If she’s on top, she can control the depth and it’s a lot harder to pull all the way out. If you’re on top, try drawing your knees up instead of having your legs splayed out straight so you have more control with your hips.
If none of this works to prevent slipping out, well, maybe you can just accept that you’re going to fuck and buck wildly, and you’re going to slip out. I mean, does that really matter so much? Just put it back in. You might want to create a script that you say—or a couple different scripts—so that it becomes part of the play, and also so that she has a way to tell you that you’ve slipped out without embarrassing you or you feeling silly for having continued to fuck without being actually inside (it’s one of the downfalls of not actually having nerves there). She can say, for example, “Wait, I want you inside me, come back, you’ve slipped, put it back in.” You can tease her and say, “Do you really want it?” and make her beg or say please. Or she can order you around and make YOU beg to put it back in, if that’s more like your dynamic.
Okay, what say you out there reading this? Any other ideas for staying inside? Any more thoughts or suggestions?
Join us at Sideshow on June 14th for our second PRIDE month celebration of butch and femme. Readers include Rachel Kahn, Alicia Greene, & Maggie Cee from Boston’s Femme Show, Susan Herr from DapperQ.com, and Grace Moon from Velvet Park Media.
Sid
eshow: The Queer Literary Carnival
Hosted by Cheryl B. & Sinclair Sexsmith
Tuesday, June 14th
at The Phoenix
447 East 13th Street at Avenue A
Doors, 7:30pm. Reading, 8pm
Free! (We’ll pass the hat for the readers)
RSVP on Facebook
Rachel Kahn is a freelance writer, poet, and performer, but spends the vast majority of her time pretending to be a therapist. Her work has been heard at a variety of venues, including the Apocalypse Lounge, the Ear Inn Poetry Series, and The New York Writers’ Coalition ‘Writing Aloud’ series. She has performed at the HOT Festival at Dixon Place in New York City, and makes trouble on and off stage up and down the East Coast. Rachel is not ashamed to tell you that she wrote a young adult novel, but will never let you know what name she used.
Alicia Greene has been a performance-loving, femme dyke diva since she was 10 years old. Spoken word, dance, comedy are some of the stages you may have seen her on. She trained at Kansas State University, the Improv Asylum, Improv Olympic and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts-NYC to just to name a few. Some past performances include: The Chicago Improv Festival, Montreal Fringe Festival, Company One, Big Moves dance troupe, street corners, comedy clubs and open mikes near you. She has also been an announcer for the Boston Derby Dames Roller Derby League as “Lady Oshun-The Announcing Orisha” since 2007. www.bostonderbydames.com
Maggie Cee is an artist, activist, and teacher committed to community, social change, and wearing things in her hair. She is the founder and artistic director of The Femme Show, a ground-breaking touring variety show about queer femme identity. Publications include anthologies Girl Crazy and Second Person Queer and journals Gertrude and Common Ground Review. www.thefemmeshow.com
With dance, spoken word, burlesque and performance art from award winning artists, The Femme Show is the country’s only ongoing touring show exploring all aspects of femme identity. This is queer art for queer people, with a variety of diverse perspectives on femme identity that can be thoughtful, sad, funny, sexy, and fun. The Femme Show is available for performances and workshops at conferences, schools, and community events. www.thefemmeshow.com
Susan Herr is a 48-year-old butch dyke who founded dapperQ.com to build transgenderational bridges between her ilk and younger genderfabs. What will all the photos and videos and narratives contributed by pioneers transgressing men’s fashion — building on the work of folks like Mr. Sexsmith — it’s working! She used to be mad butchphobic and now she can’t get enough of the magic conveyed by simple swagger. Can you?
Grace Moon is the editor in chief of Velvetparkmedia.com an arts and culture social media site for queer women. Moon is also an exhibiting artist and professor of fine arts. She is currently working on a compilation of her columns to be published in an upcoming book.
What’s your advice on positions that work for strap-on sex between people of very different heights? especially taller person receiving
Well, if your torsos are different lengths, especially if the one receiving is much taller, it’s going to be pretty difficult to be in the missionary position—or just about any position where you are strapped on and fucking and also simultaneously kissing (on the mouth) and holding each other close.
If your thigh heights are different, then fucking from behind on hands and knees is going to be difficult too. If both your torso and your thighs are different heights, it’ll be almost impossible to get into a position where your entire bodies are pressed up against each other and fucking at the same time.
There are still many other positions you can fuck easily in, but that one is going to be hard, maybe impossible.
Try these:
1. Strap on wearer (giver) seated, receiver on top, straddling
2. Receiver bent over a bed which is at the giver’s hip height
3. Receiver with their knees tucked under them, but leaning forward, so they can hold themselves up at the right height by their thighs; giver behind them
4. Giver on their knees, with the receiver on the bed (or floor or etc) on their back, receiver’s thighs up over giver’s knees; giver stays upright. (I particularly like this one for rough and deep penetration because I can grab on to their thighs and move them against me.)
You may just have to try any or every position, until you find a few that seem to work most of the time, and go for those. Try glancing through one of those positions for sex books—you probably don’t need to buy it, just glance through it—and see if any of them strike you.
You also might want to think about getting some sex furniture. They’re much more solid than regular bedroom pillows, and the microsuade material means that you don’t slip or slide. Sometimes those are excellent for angles and positioning, it might be worth trying (though they are expensive). Take a look at the Liberator Wedge, Ramp (which is the best for multiple positions), or the Ramp & Wedge combo.
Anyone else have suggestions?
It’s Kristen’s 28th birthday tomorrow!
I am as ever grateful for her in my life. I’ve never been so in love, I’ve never been in a better relationship, and though we are in some rocky growth struggles, I am confident we’ll get through it and be better people because of it.
This is the third birthday I’ve been able to spend with her so far, and I love the ways that she is growing and blossoming and stepping into her power and doing amazing things in the world, and I know it’s just going to be more exciting to be with her as all her adventures continue.
Love you, darling. Happy birthday.
Porn star, JizLee.com, @jizlee, Facebook
Photo by Nikola Tamindzic (homeofthevain.com) for Fleshbot.
1. What is your relationship with the word or identity “butch?”
My relationship to the word “butch” was integral to my current identity as genderqueer. It’s a verb I like to visit now and then to describe my experiences within androgyny. My butch is generally easy-going, and brings me closest to my casual, gender-neutral life-style. Dress-up occasions tend to bring out the more flamboyant parts of myself, depending on the context, my butch helps me stand apart and express genderqueer visibility.
2. What kind of words and labels, if any, do you use to identify yourself?
Lately I have been enjoying the flexibility of the words genderqueer and queer. I feel like the fluid nature of identity can allow me to feel free and open with others about the complexities of my gender as well as the variations of my lovers’ genders. Also, I’m falling in love with the word “androgyne” again.
3. What do you wish you could tell your younger self about sex, sexuality, or gender?
I wish I could teach my younger self about sex ed and open relationships, so that my younger self could not only be more responsible, but also help my peers around these issues. I don’t regret anything of course because it’s all added to who I am now, however I wonder what might have changed had I even known the difference between sex and gender as a youth. I’ve met some young adults who were raised in progressive educations and it is so wonderful to observe this openness. It makes me optimistic for a more sex-positive culture.
Babeland has launched a Gender Expression category! Which includes products for packing, dildos for strapping on, harnesses, accessories like chest binders and stand-to-pee devices, and more.
I’ve got a couple of these products lined up to review, including the clit pump and the new Tantus Realdoe, and hopefully a STP (stand to pee) review roundup … and maybe a few others. I’m excited this is being offered and I look forward to the rest of the new things that get added to this category!
I’ve returned from retreat, a three-day workshop at Easton Mountain called Power, Surrender, and Intimacy (PSI) through the erotic energy school that I have studied with for more than ten years. I’m producing these workshops these days, as well as assisting, and while our numbers were a little bit low, the workshop was beautifully smooth and overall very successful. There are some shifts happening at the school, so I’m not sure how many more of these I will produce, but I’m really glad to have done this one.
I’ve done PSI twice before, once as a participant in about 2002 and once as an assistant here in New York in about 2007. The first one I remember vividly—many of the different pieces of it—and I easily can point to that workshop weekend to say that that is when I discovered I was a top. The entire workshop centers around exploring dominance and submission, power and surrender. I found the surrender parts fairly easy but not particularly heated, and I was shocked to discover not only how I liked to be in charge, channeling power, but also that I had an inner sadist ready to be cultivated.
I couldn’t remember the second workshop very well. In the week up to this one I was trying to think of what I had taken away from it, what it had shifted for me, and as this weekend went on I realized that PSI was a huge tipping point in my study as an assistant, as a leader of this work and as someone who is able to hold, ground, and move erotic energy.
The difference between what I am capable of doing now and what I could do then is significant—I felt so connected, and so able to move the overwhelming emotion that came up for the entire group at various times. There were certainly moments where I nearly panicked with the expectation (that I set on myself, mostly) that I would be able to hold or move something, but generally when faced with that responsibility I could meet it gladly and capably.
The most significant moment of this was during two rituals on Sunday, when we started out with a wand of light tantric meditation (which I can’t seem to find any description of online) in order to raise some of our energies so we could go into the next ritual, which was transformative and about shadow, and very intense. The wand of light meditation starts at the root chakra and builds all the way up to the third eye, one chakra at a time, and I could feel it so intensely, especially toward the end, that I was kind of certain my head was going to come off as energy shot skyward and began exploding things.
I, as an assistant (and having had experienced this ritual before, which the other two assistants had not), was expected to go first in the second ritual. The facilitator described that we shouldn’t calculate what we were going to do, but that we would know it was time to come up when we felt a quickening. Oh, I felt it alright. I knew I had to go up there, and do something with this energy which was pulsing through my spine, but I wasn’t really sure what to do or how to do it.
I sat back up, and tried to ground in other ways.
It dawned on me that this wand of light, this energetic connection to the earth, was there all the time, not just now—it’s something that I’ve dropped into numerous times at tantra workshops in recent years, and it always surprises me that it’s still there, and in fact it’s easier to access the next time around.
Realizing and deeply feeling this connection made me think of something another assistant had said on our ride up: that we are not living on the earth, but living in the earth, since the atmosphere is not actually part of space but part of our unique planet. We swim around in it. We would not survive outside of it. We are held upright to the earth by this magical gravity, but we are not separate. In fact, I felt like a puppet, like this wand of light was actually the earth creating me, coming up into me and animating me.
That is what I would have liked to express when I got up in front of the whole group to open the second ritual. But I couldn’t form words. As a writer and poet I find that extremely frustrating. The facilitator even asked: Are there words to go with this? I was shaking with every breath. Filling up with light and energy and then feeling it pour down my spine again as I breathed out, or pour up through the crown of my head. My hands jerked and felt electric.
“I feel like a column,” I managed to say. Really this energy felt penetrative. It felt like I was being fucked by spirit. It felt like it—and I—was rising out of the earth. It felt like the earth was using me to fuck the sky. I had no idea how to form words, it was all I could do to sit still and not explode.
“I don’t know if I can say more.”
And that was just about it. Three minutes were up, quickly, and I sat back down, unsure if my head was still attached. And then I started to panic. Oh fuck. What if I stay like this? What do I do with all of this energy? What is it going to do to me? It doesn’t seem to be working to just let it flow through me—and by “working” I mean it doesn’t seem to be calming me, but rather ramping me up. How do I calm this quickening? I have to work now, I have to assist and support others in their reveal, how am I going to do that?
Words from another facilitator came to mind: When you feel you can’t handle something, give it to the earth. She can handle anything. I would have tried anything right then. So I redirected all that energy that was coming up through me and thought of it pouring down into the ground, and immediately my head cleared. Immediately I felt so solid and stable and grounded. Immediately I no longer felt crazy but powerful, and powerfully alive.
The ritual poured through me, one person after another, and mostly I was so intensely connected and moved by it that tears just streamed down my cheeks for person after person, and I gave it all back to the earth. Help me hold this, thank you, thank you.
I feel like my reveal was sloppy, and that I was in a little bit of a state of panic when I went up there, but it’s clear that the energy was present and that I was a conduit for it. And the ritual happened, successfully, with the transformative energies we were seeking, so clearly something went right. I don’t know what I would have done if I’d been able to see outside of myself a little better, and it’s clear to me that what I did was the only thing I could have done at that moment. Perhaps it’s the performer in me who would have liked to have a better translation of my experience into my expression. But I can—or will try—to let that tiny sliver of regret go, and to not let it drive me.
What I learned about grounding was powerful, and I think that will stick with me.
There were a couple other fascinating things I’d like to report to you about, though they were not workshop content so much as things around the workshop that came up, like the debate over where female ejaculate comes from (the urethra) and where it is stored (the paraurethral sponge, I discovered). And the conversations around female/feminine sources of power and how easily that power can be mistaken or misused as manipulation instead of power, and how that flavor of power is even encouraged to be manipulation in this culture. And the conversations about butch identity with the facilitator and the other assistant—how there is a constant butch scale in our heads which compares and contrasts us to each other, and fears that we are the least butch of the group. There are many more things I could write about.
But it’s day three of being back, and I have so many things I need to accomplish, my email inboxes are too full, and I’ve been avoiding some regular tasks the last two days as I have been trying to take good care of myself for this re-entry. Perhaps I’ll write more about those things later, I promise I’ll try.
Meanwhile, I’ll get back to the Ask Me Anything questions, and start working on the next retreat, which is my favorite one (a five-day advanced retreat in New Mexico in late July).
I’m curious if you all might have questions for me about this retreat … do you want to know more about it? Which parts?
My girlfriend totally knows how to get me off, but I’m nervous that I’m not doing enough for her sexually. We’re very honest with each other, but I worry that she’s not saying anything because she’s afraid of hurting my feelings. What kind of sexual activities would you recommend for the relative novice? What did you “start” with when you were just beginning your sex life with women? I think my biggest problem is (lack of) confidence.
I think you’re probably right, that more than anything it is a lack of confidence. My best advice for building confidence is: a) come up with a small script you can say when you get nervous, where she will reassure you in a way that makes you feel more confident and builds you up (this also might involve a post-fucking script with lots of praise over what you did); b) ask her what she likes, let her direct you until you get it right; c) fake it till you make it—not with the moves, but with the confidence. Just pretending you have confidence will get you pretty far, since usually confidence is actually about a mental state rather than any physical action that you do (or don’t do).
This also kind of depends on how toppy or switchy you are—it’s harder to fake topping, I think, and harder to let her direct you if you’re also trying to build dominance too. But you said she knows how to get you off, so perhaps that isn’t a factor with you two.
You also wrote: “We’re very honest with each other, but I worry …” See if you can work on that. You can flat out tell her, “Hey, I know you said it’s okay, but I have the impression for some reason that maybe you just don’t want to hurt my feelings. Now if you tell me that I’m wrong and just worrying too much, I will believe you, but I also want you to know that I can take it, and I’m interested in getting better at fucking you, so I hope you’ll help me do that.”
And if she tells you that it’s okay, then you can choose to believe her. (She can also choose to change her mind later, and hopefully you won’t take that as an affront, or that she was lying—just accept that sometimes feelings about things change, and that she’s being as honest as she can be right now.)
Another issue at play here might be the difference between how many times she wants to touch you vs how many times she wants to be touched (or how many times you want to be touched vs how many times you want to do the touching). Conventional lesbian wisdom says I-do-you-you-do-me, but that doesn’t necessarily jive with everybody. I, for example, am a top bordering on stone, so I don’t want to be touched, barely ever. Maybe 1 time out of 20. But perhaps you are a five-out-of-ten person, or an eight-out-of-ten person. It sounds like her desires—to be the one who mostly touches you—is driving your sex life right now, but that can (and should) be co-created by the couple to figure out what’s best for both of you. Maybe you want to do more of the touching, but your confidence is holding you back? Maybe she’s not so good at asking for what she wants, or giving you permission to just explore and play? Maybe you are both too goal-oriented here—just because you don’t know how to get her off in two seconds, like perhaps she does to you, doesn’t mean it isn’t still a good idea to touch her, kiss her all over, make her feel good.
And yes, it’s possible that she’s overcompensating because of your nerves, being more of the actor than the receiver because you aren’t stepping up. So if you want to step up, do it. I would TALK to her about it—out of the bedroom, on a random afternoon where you’ve had a lovely morning together and you are both feeling loose and open. Say, “Hey, I know I haven’t been stepping up in the bedroom much, but that’s because I’ve been kind of nervous, but I’d really like to work on that. Can we talk about ways we can play so I can try to build my skills?”
And, speaking of skills. You asked for advice on activities for a sexual novice. Ultimately, it all depends on what you like, and what she likes. There are activities that I think are kind of basic and beginner that other people think are really advanced and edgy, and vice versa. Like cunnilingus—going down on a girl—that is something that I do not do with a new lover, mostly because it’s so intimate (and the whole fluid-bonding thing, since I much prefer it without a dam). It takes time to build up to, for me. But then again I can top someone and be dominant on a first date, spanking or using restraints or pulling hair, which some people would think is a much more advanced thing to do.
But, generally? I think to be a good lover, you should be good at these things: 1) kissing, 2) finger fucking, 3) going down, 4) toys, whichever toys you might be in to, be they vibrators or strap-ons or bondage equipment, 5) quickies.
Of course, there’s plenty more things to get good at—anal, bondage, squirting (if either of you tends to do that—or if you don’t, you can experiment and see if you can make yourselves do it), percussion play, penetration, dirty talk, role play … but generally I think those take longer to learn and experiment with, and if you get those others down, you’ll be golden.
Kissing: check out Violet Blue‘s book Seal it With A Kiss (or her ebook, How To Kiss) if you doubt your abilities. Go slow, make it luscious, make it last, don’t use too much teeth or tongue or saliva. You probably know the basics.
Finger fucking: Practice on yourself. I assume you’re good at getting yourself off already. Watch her masturbate so you can see what she does to turn herself on: does she always have her fingers on her clit, and never go inside? Does she start with a lot of fingers in her cunt and only put her fingers on her clit at the very last second? Does she use tons of force, or very light strokes? Are the strokes long and circling, or slow and jerky? Watch closely. Take notes. Try to duplicate it. Ask her for help—”There?” “No, lower, lower—YES. Harder. Left-right instead of up-down. Like that. Don’t stop!” (And then, whenever a lover says don’t stop, for goddess’ sake, DON’T STOP.)
Going down: Check out Going Down: How to Give Her Mind-Blowing Oral Sex which has some excellent tips, or Violet Blue’s Ultimate Guide. I have a whole class on this, so I have more things to say than I will go into here.
Toys: Consider adding a vibrator to the mix if you are worried that your skills aren’t getting her off. Have her hold it and use it while you fuck her, while you kiss, while you talk dirty in her ear, while your fingers are inside of her. I am not huge on vibrators myself, but I do love the Hitachi, and there are a lot of really beautiful high-quality high-class vibes out there these days. Experiment! Ask your favorite sex toy store for advice, I’m sure they can help. I just noticed that Babeland has 20% off of Jimmyjane vibrators this month—that might be worth looking into, those are beautiful (and expensive).
Quickies: For lots of reasons, this is a great thing to work on, to be able to do as a couple. For one, it says to her, “I can’t wait, I have to have you RIGHT NOW, I don’t care if we only have ten minutes,” which is flattering and good for the bond between you. But also, it is good practice for getting her (or your) arousal up to the point where you can come quickly. It takes skill and practice and enthusiasm! If it was me, trying to get better at something like quickies, I would lay it out directly: “Hey, I really want us to be able to fuck quickly. Are you game to try that? Say, every day this week we’ll try to just work in a really quick fuck somewhere other than the bed (or maybe in the bed, too, if that works). Are you up for that?” And see how she feels about that kind of thing. Maybe daily is too much, but maybe it could be daily over a three-day weekend? Or every other day? I like setting specific guidelines or goals around things like that, because then if we both consent to it, it makes it easier to follow through with. But—your milage may vary, do what feels good for you.
Last but not least, you asked how I got started, when I started fucking women. I went to a women’s erotic workshop, one of those that I have been pimping out lately because I’m now coordinating the workshops, before I’d ever slept with a girl. That most certainly helped.
But, thought I had (quite a bit of) experience fucking guys, I didn’t have much confidence and I wasn’t sure what I was doing. The first girl I slept with hadn’t actually slept with a girl ever either, so in that we kind of figured it out together. I remember very vividly how nervous I was, how we both knew what was coming, but neither were sure how to start or, once we’d started, how to proceed. She actually said, “I don’t know what to do,” which, for me, was the permission slip I needed to just go for it, to follow my instincts and to stop holding back what I wanted to do to her, how I wanted to touch her. When she admitted she didn’t know, well, then, there wasn’t much I could do that would be wrong, would there?
We only dated for about a month and slept together only about three times, partially because my mom was in town for a week and partially because I got my tongue pierced the day after our first date. Um, whoops.
Well—that was longer than I intended, but I hope that is helpful!
And now, what about you all out there? What’s your advice for this babybutch? How do you build confidence in the beginning? What were your early experiences fucking women like?
This month’s Sideshow: Queer Literary Carnival is the biggest yet! We have three poets, three comics, three guest judges, one musical guest, and one host who will be joining us on Tuesday—tomorrow night!—and telling dirty jokes and funny poems for your pleasure.
If you didn’t see Cheryl B.‘s previous reading series, Poetry vs Comedy Variety Hour, you’re in for a treat!
Join us at Sideshow on May 10th for a special revival of Cheryl B.’s previous reading series, Poetry vs Comedy Variety Hour! PVC is not a typical poetry slam nor a regular stand-up comedy show. PVC is a battle of wits and Rhymes where the stanzas and the stand-ups collide.
Performers include Kit Yan, Molly “Equality” Dykeman, Sinclair Sexsmith, Paul Case, Emma Willmann, and Jessica Halem. Celebrity guest judges include Shawn Hollenbach, Livia Scott, and Amanda Goad, Esquire. Hosted by Carolyn Castiglia, this special PvC features musical guest Leibya Rogers!
Sideshow: The Queer Literary Carnival: POETRY vs COMEDY
Hosted by Cheryl B. & Sinclair Sexsmith
Tuesday, May 10th
at The Phoenix
447 East 13th Street at Avenue A
Doors, 7:30pm. Reading, 8pm
Free! (We’ll pass the hat for the readers)
Now, that’s on Tuesday.
On Thursday, there is a very special Lesbian Sex Mafia monthly workshop, which features my tantra mentor.
Genderqueer Tantra with Alex Jade
Thursday, May 12 8:00pm
LGBT Community Center
208 W 13th St, New York, NY
RSVP on Facebook
Tantra is a school of thought and spiritual practice that allows us to explore the multi-dimensions of spiritual energy in our bodies. Though it often emphasizes the relationship between masculine and feminine, Genderqueer Tantra allows us to PLAY with masculine and feminine energies without getting caught up in rigid gender limitations. Join Tantra and SM practitioner Alex Jade for an interactive workshop that will introduce you to the basic Tantra concepts and invite you to deepen your sexual experiences, increase awareness of the body and mind using sensations from subtle to bold.
Alex Jade, MSW is an erotic educator, sacred intimate, psychotherapist, and student of Tantra. She is on the faculty of the Body Electric School and she has produced and taught independent workshops in Seattle for over 15 years. She has mastery in clothes-off hands-on experiential erotic education and the use of ritual as a healing tool. Alex’s specialties are gender exploration, classical Tantra, SM, and exploring with an open heart and mind.
This coming weekend, after these two (HUGE) events, I will be off in the mini-mountains of the Hudson Valley exploring some shadow through some bdsm and erotic energy play. I’m really thrilled to be doing another erotic energy retreat, and so glad it has come together. It is ever hard to get people to come out to events! Women especially, it seems.
I have more to say about that, and about a dozen other topics, but my brain is kind of fried with these events. They are so time consuming. More writing soon.
Looks like this came from the Dallas Slut Walk—but I’m not sure of its exact origin. I found it on Tumblr.
Since I feel like we’ve been pretty good at actually creating some language after having a need for a word that means something specific in the past, that I’ve incorporated into my vocabulary, I wonder if y’all would like to brainstorm some words with me.
Seriously, what words to we have to describe women in a sex-positive way? Slut, whore, cunt, pussy, seductress, mistress, vixen, cougar … they all have some sense of sexual manipulation in them. I would argue that some of those words are AWESOME, and that there’s been some serious reclamation done with many of them. But still, I want to know: when you meet a woman who owns her own sexuality, who plays with it how she wants to, who has unashamed sex and unabashed desire, what do you call her?
That there is not even a word for that type of woman in our language says something.
So, poet and armchair linguist that I am, if there is not the exact right word for something, I say we make one. Or we reclaim one. What can we use for this?
For the record, it looks like Toronto was the first city to do a Slut Walk, and there is a Slut Walk NYC Saturday, August 20 at 1pm, kicking off at Union Square. There are quite a few in other cities on the list too, if you want to get involved. I’m going to be at the Butch Voices conference in Oakland that weekend, but Kristen already has it on her calendar.
I’m excited for the anthology and your turn at editing. I’ve read some of your other published pieces and of course this blog so it begs the question: What is YOUR favorite smut to read? Got a favorite anthology? Author?
Oh sure, I have a few thoughts about that.
My Secret Garden by Nancy Friday changed my life and was significantly formative to my sexuality. I hunted down a copy in the last year or so and was pleasantly surprised that her opening introduction is still amazing and relevant, though that’s also kind of sad—it was published in 1973, it is almost forty years old, yet the limitations, stereotypes, and restrictions placed on women are still relevant. I wish I still had my teenage copy with the spine broken at all the best places.
Amazing single-author smut books are hard to come by, so the anthologies are easier to mention. I love Doing it for Daddy edited by Patrick Califia, Back to Basics: A Butch/Femme Anthology edited by Therese Szymanski (especially “The Trick” by Amie M. Evans), and Sometimes She Lets Me: Best Butch/Femme Erotica edited by Tristan Taormino—but those are very specific to my butch/femme and daddy orientations, so they might not be your favorites. I adore the stories “Poster Boy” by Carol Queen and “Dress Leather” (one of my favorite short stories ever, of any genre) by Robin Sweeney in Switch Hitters: Lesbians Write Gay Male Erotica and Gay Men Write Lesbian Erotica, edited by Carol Queen & Lawrence Schimel. The stories “Clash of the Titans” by Karlyn Lotney and “Ridin’ Bitch” by Toni Amato in Best Lesbian Erotica 1998 edited by Taormino were very formative for me, as I started obsessing over lesbian erotica in the late 90s while I was working up the nerve to leave my boyfriend and come out, and they are cock-centric and butch/femme in a way that made me realize that I still had a lot more to explore.
I’ve also been really into the “sudden sex” stories lately, the super short ones. Often the longer short stories feel like they just drag on to me, especially when I just want to pick something up in order to get off and I’m not leisurely reading. Got a Minute?: 60 Second Erotica edited by Alison Tyler and Frenzy: 60 Stories of Sudden Sex edited by Alison Tyler are great, and Rachel Kramer Bussel just put one out called Gotta Have It: 69 Stories of Sudden Sex (which I have a story in, but the book is good regardless). I’d pick up just about anything Rachel publishes, she has great taste and her anthologies are always well done.
It’s harder for a single author to sustain an entire book, so there aren’t as many of those that I go to when I want inspiration (for writing or for getting off). I am kind of in love with Mr. Benson by John Preston and The Leather Daddy and the Femme by Carol Queen. I have read them both many times. I can’t believe it took me this long to read Mr. Benson.
Cherry by Charlotte Cooper, Breathless by Kitty Tsui, and Macho Sluts or Boy in the Middle by Patrick Califia (or just about anything by Califia, really) are also amazing and worth reading. It’s been a while since I read Cherry but it comes to mind immediately as fun and readable and great.
I also really love Jack Stratton’s stuff at WritingDirty.com, especially What’s in a Name. He’s got an eBook of Writing Dirty volume 1 which I haven’t purchased yet (I should go do that right now), but I’ve read all the pieces on the site (seriously I’m sure I’ve read every single one), so I highly recommend the collection if you’d rather read it on your reader than in a blog-form.
Other things I read online … well, I read a lot of Daddy/girl stories these days. I’ve been quite enjoying the recent Bedtime Stories blog. I still think The Provocateur has some of the best writing ever, but it’s generally more literary and fancy than I turn to when I want to get off. For that, I like the quick and dirty stuff.
Many of these books can be found on my smut bookshelf … and there are more of my favorites in my Amazon A-store.
And now, what about you all? What are your favorite books of smut? Got any recommendations for things that I perhaps haven’t read? What is your go-to story when you want to get off? What do you love in an erotic story?
… I’m just kinda speechless. If we do another list, she’ll have to be #1 with a bullet.
(Thanks Sassafras, who was the first one who sent me this link!)
Where did ‘Sugarbutch’ come from? Is it a nickname? A term of endearment? A random word paired with ‘butch’?
And, because I’m feeling greedy/generous, another question, this one a little more serious. What is one piece of advice you’d give to a newly identifying butch. Would it be something about relationships? Or maybe fashion related? Something deeper about identity, gender and sexuality? And if you don’t want to be limited to one piece of advice, go for it.
I’m not sure I have explained “sugarbutch” before. It is a term my first girlfriend used to say, as in, “You’re not really butch, you’re kind of sugar-butch,” as a way to soften the “butch” part. When I started this site I knew I was butch, but I was still having trouble claiming it without any qualifiers or clarifications, which is why I used the “sugar” part. It makes it sweeter (ha ha), less harsh. Five years later, I don’t think “butch” needs to be made sweeter or less harsh, or rather I think the stereotype of butch may need to be, but that I don’t need to present it that way. I can let the complications of butch identity come through just by being who I am rather than qualifying my language.
Secondly … advice. Actually I have a somewhat recent performance poetry piece called “Unsolicited Advice to a New Butch” (also known as The Butch Poem) which I’ve been performing a bit, I did it first at Butch Voices Portland last year (which is why I thought for a second that that was a trick question, Kyle, since you were there! But you couldn’t stay for the spoken word performance, I think you were already headed back to Seattle by then). I haven’t posted it online yet. I’d like to post it as a video instead of as text, but I haven’t had the chance to record it yet.
One piece of advice is hard. I could have one piece of advice on all the topics you mentioned—relationships, sex, fashion, identity. But I’ll just jump into it by saying: Examine your identity alignment assumptions. Examine your misogyny and masculine privilege. Make the label conform to you, don’t conform to it. Gender should not dictate your personality, hobbies, emotional landscape, or interests, so like what you like and don’t worry that it’s not “butch enough.”
Ultimately: do what feels right to you. Deconstruct societal restrictions and listen to your own inner self. Date who you want to date, sleep with who you want to sleep with, keep your hair how you want to keep your hair, wear what you want to wear. Give yourself permission to experiment (especially with fashion and adornment—hair and clothes are very temporary!). Don’t be afraid to expand the definition of a label if you feel like it has some resonance. Don’t be afraid to experiment, collect the data, and then change things as needed in the future. Whatever or whoever you are right now, it could be the same in five or ten years or it could be completely different, and that’s okay. Don’t take it all so seriously. There is more to you than just this identity, this is just one part of who you are. Work on all the parts (like in the integrated life matrix) and commit to evolving into your Self over and over.
I’d be curious to hear other folks’ answer to that question, though—what advice would YOU give to a new butch? What advice do you wish you had? What’d you learn the hard way? What was the best piece of advice you received?
It is my pleasure to invite you to another event this May in NYC: Genderqueer Tantra at the LGBT Center through the Lesbian Sex Mafia.
One of my favorite mentors, Alex Jade, is going to be in town doing a retreat through the tantra school with which I study, and I asked her to make a stop off in the city and do an event with the Lesbian Sex Mafia before she heads out to the retreat center. I’m thrilled she’ll be doing an introduction to tantra.
A lot of folks aren’t quite sure what tantra is, or a cliche and stereotype comes to mind. Broadly, it’s about energy, often as applied to sexuality—but it is bigger and deeper and much more complicated than that. I’m not a tantra teacher (yet) so I’m not even sure how to describe or explain it, but hey, that’s why workshops like this are fantastic.
Plus, it’s tantra in a queer and BDSM context, which makes it all the more awesome. Hope you can come.
Genderqueer Tantra with Alex Jade
Thursday, May 12 8:00pm
LGBT Community Center
208 W 13th St, New York, NY
RSVP on Facebook
Tantra is a school of thought and spiritual practice that allows us to explore the multi-dimensions of spiritual energy in our bodies. Though it often emphasizes the relationship between masculine and feminine, Genderqueer Tantra allows us to PLAY with masculine and feminine energies without getting caught up in rigid gender limitations. Join Tantra and SM practitioner Alex Jade for an interactive workshop that will introduce yo…u to the basic Tantra concepts and invite you to deepen your sexual experiences, increase awareness of the body and mind using sensations from subtle to bold.
Alex Jade, MSW is an erotic educator, sacred intimate, psychotherapist, and student of Tantra. She is on the faculty of the Body Electric School and she has produced and taught independent workshops in Seattle for over 15 years. She has mastery in clothes-off hands-on experiential erotic education and the use of ritual as a healing tool. Alex’s specialties are gender exploration, classical Tantra, SM, and exploring with an open heart and mind.
About LSM
Founded in 1981 by Dorothy Allison and Jo Arnone, the Lesbian Sex Mafia (LSM) is the oldest continuously running women’s BDSM support and education groups in the country. We are located in New York City, with a membership primarily in the tri-state area of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut. However, we also have members along the East Coast, across the country and even in Europe!
LSM is a support and information group for all women 18 years of age or older, including transexual and intersexed women who live their daily lives as women and all female-born transgender people who feel they have a connection with and respect for the women’s community. And, who are interested in fantasy and role playing, bondage, discipline, S/M, fetishes, costumes, alternate gender identities and uninhibited sexual expression in a safe, sane, consensual and confidential way.
College season is over! I’m still traveling a little bit during the summer, but I am thrilled to be at home and doing more New York-based things for the next few months. There’s still a lot going on, though I have way fewer events than I have had in the last few months.
Here’s the stuff you really should not miss.
| Thursday, May 5th, 8pm | Red Umbrella Diaries: The Boss of Me, www.redumbrellaproject.com | Happy Ending, 302 Broome Street between Forsyth and Eldridge, Manhattan, NY |
|
|
||
| Tuesday, May 10th, 8pm | Sideshow: The Queer Literary Carnival: Poetry vs Comedy Variety Hour! Performers include Kit Yan, Molly “Equality” Dykeman, Sinclair Sexsmith, and Jessica Halem, with special guests TBA. Celebrity guest judges include Shawn Hollenbach and Livia Scott. Hosted by Carolyn Castiglia, this special PvC features musical guest Leibya Rogers! Details on Sugarbutch, RSVP on Facebook | at The Phoenix, 447 East 13th Street at Avenue A in New York City |
|
|
||
| Thursday, May 12th, 8-10pm | Lesbian Sex Mafia presents: Genderqueer Tantra with Alex Jade. $5 for members, $10 for non members. Women & trans only. RSVP on Facebook. | LGBT Center, 208 West 13th St. (7th/8th Ave) Manhattan, NY |
|
|
||
| Saturday, May 21st | Kristen’s birthday! Also the end of the world, or rather judgement day which counts down to the end of the world on October 21st, according to some Christian evangelicals. So we’re going to party like it’s 1999 and dress up like superheroes. (I am considering bleaching my hair so I can be Spike.) | |
|
|
||
| Thursday, May 26th, 6pm | Lambda Literary Awards ceremony! Can’t wait. | School of Visual Arts Theater, 333 West 23rd Street, Manhattan, NY |
|
|
||
Queer Memoir is on hiatus, and it looks like Ruckus might not be happening this month, but keep an eye out for their date if they announce it. I’m looking forward to Red Umbrella Diaries, I haven’t been there in the last few months.
Also! I am now booking fall events for colleges and traveling nationally. I’ll be working at home and writing through May and June, and then doing more travel in July, August, and September, including some travels to Seattle in early July, the Butch Voices national conference in Oakland in August, and Dark Odyssey Summer Camp in September. My schedule is kept up on mrsexsmith.com/appearances if you want to see if I’m coming your way.
Last but not least, here’s my 2011 workshop offerings in a PDF so it is easy to download, you can also download my one sheet PDF or high res photos in my press kit). Get in touch if you’re interested in booking me, you can contact me directly—mrsexsmith(at)gmail—or my booking company, PhinLi, at bookings(at)phinli.com.
Well folks, Sideshow time is rolling around again—the next of my monthly reading series that I co-host and co-produce with the lovely Cheryl B. happens one week from tomorrow, on May 10th.
This one is a special one. Cheryl is still in the hospital, where she’s been for almost a month now, and we’re not sure if she’ll be able to attend next week or not (I would guess it is unlikely, but I know how badly she wants to be there!). But this show is a special revival of Cheryl’s former reading series, the Poetry vs Comedy Variety Hour, which was a genius combining of both poets and comics in a hilarious “competition” where the top poet and the top comic go head-to-head in a bonus improv round. Of course, the winning is not the point (but it didn’t stop me from being extra-nervous when performing in this series—I guess it brings out my inner competition that I try to keep managed).
I competed in Cheryl’s series three times, and won twice! I was the first poet to ever win, too—usually the comics were much more of a shoe-in. (But not this time, right Kit? We’ll give ’em a run for their money!)
I dug this photo out from the shoot with Syd London when I was making the graphic for this event, not sure I ever shared it with y’all (unless you went through the Flickr set).
I miss Cheryl’s company. I visit her as often as possible, but it’s not the same as kicking around for a day at a coffee shop in Brooklyn and talking about our lives and writing and girlfriends and sex and jobs and goals and whatever. I don’t know if I would have undertaken this Sideshow project if she wasn’t at the helm with me, and I’ve been so grateful for her guidance and help with this show.
So while we’ve been planning this special Poetry vs Comedy Sideshow for a long time, I’m also glad it’s coming along now, and it’s become a bit of a tribute to Cheryl as a community organizer, reading series host, poet, writer, and performer. We’ll be donating what we collect to Cheryl, and hopefully we’ll have someone there videotaping the evening in case she can’t make it. She is doing MUCH better (which is such a relief), but she still has some rehabilitation to go through, and some care and healing for her poor lungs.
I’d really like to rally and send some good energies her way during this difficult healing time. I hope, if you are in New York City on May 10th, you’ll come.
—
Join us at Sideshow on May 10th for a special revival of Cheryl B.’s previous reading series, Poetry vs Comedy Variety Hour! PVC is not a typical poetry slam nor a regular stand-up comedy show. PVC is a battle of wits and Rhymes where the stanzas and the stand-ups collide.
Performers include Kit Yan, Molly “Equality” Dykeman, Sinclair Sexsmith, Paul Case, Emma Willmann, and Jessica Halem. Celebrity guest judges include Shawn Hollenbach, Livia Scott, and Amanda Goad, Esquire. Hosted by Carolyn Castiglia, this special PvC features musical guest Leibya Rogers!
Sideshow: The Queer Literary Carnival: POETRY vs COMEDY
Hosted by Cheryl B. & Sinclair Sexsmith
Tuesday, May 10th
at The Phoenix
447 East 13th Street at Avenue A
Doors, 7:30pm. Reading, 8pm
Free! (We’ll pass the hat for the readers)
POETS
Andrea Alton aka Molly “Equality” Dykeman has performed her poetry/burlesque and comedy all over New York with appearances at Comix, The PIT, Arlene’s Grocery, The LGBT Center, The Knitting Factory, Dixon Place, The Bowery Poetry Club and The Stonewall Inn. She’s also performed at The Chicago, DC, San Francisco and Toronto Sketch Comedy Festivals as well as at The Miss Fag Hag Pageant (a benefit for The Harvey Milk School) and Murray Hill’s Miss Lez Pageant. Molly’s play The F*cking World According To Molly was just accepted into the New York Fringe Festival and will be premiering in August. www.mollyequalitydykeman.com
Recently Featured in the HBO Documentary Asians Aloud, Kit Yan tell stories through slam poetry from the lens of a transgender Asian American from Hawaii now lost in the big city of New York. Through touching love poems, dirty sex accounts(optional), and comedic tales of his childhood –Kit takes you on a journey that is raw, real, heart-wrenching, and unforgettable. New York Magazine describes his art as “knockout spoken-word” while Curve magazine says “incredible slam poetry” and Bitch magazine states that: “The eloquence of Kit’s spoken-word delivery lies in the anti-racist, anti-homophobic, gender-inclusive, language that ties his lyrics together.” Kit’s work has been taught at universities coast to coast, from San Francisco State to Harvard. He spoke to over 200,000 from the stage of the 2009 National Equality March, performed on the San Francisco Pride main stage, and earned a spot in as a top three finalist at the National Queer Slam. Kit Yan is the reigning Mr. Transman 2010, the first person to ever hold this national title.
Sinclair Sexsmith really loves sandwiches, daisies, spiral notebooks, and bourbon. She has performed in dyke bars, libraries, community centers, college campuses, and once, topless in a burrito line. She co-hosts and co-produces Sideshow with Cheryl B., and writes at Sugarbutch.net.
COMICS
Called “bawdy and brave” by Time Out Chicago and “Righteous and Chipper” by the Times-Picayune, Jessica Halem was raised by hippie Jewish artists from the East Coast which was anything but normal – or easy – in small-town Ohio, but did help to foster this very funny “on-your-face” comic who puts her queer spin on everything from Sudafed to Feminism to Glory Holes. Jessica Halem was trained in femme queerness at Sarah Lawrence College; earned her chops as a social justice activist working for Bella Abzug; and as a LGBTQ health guru running the Lesbian Community Cancer Project. Jessica Halem performs at every college, Pride, and bathhouse where she can help find the funny in even the toughest of times.
Originally from rural Maine, Emma Willmann began performing comedy in late 2008. In 2009 she was a finalist in Catch a Rising Star, and in 2010 she won first place in The Boston Comedy Riots. In 2011, she was featured in The Women in Comedy Festival, a finalist in Mohegan Suns Funniest Comic in New England Competition, and became a regular at The Broadway and New York Comedy Clubs. When not doing comedy, Emma is getting a Masters in Media Studies and Entertainment Management at The New School, where she also co – host’s the radio program, “That’s My Theory,” on WNSR New School Radio. Tweet with her @EmmaWillmann.
& special guests TBA!
JUDGES
Actress, comedian & character powerhouse Livia Scott was recently named “One of our favorite 53 comedians” by The Huffington Post. Credits: Honesty on Comedy Central, 7 different characters in National Lampoon’s Dirty Movie, Law & Order and Conan. Currently you can see her on Atom.com playing Courtney Love in the web series Saving Love.
Shawn Hollenbach is a stand up comedian, actor and the gay next door. Shawn is the producer of Closet Cases, a Critics’ Pick from Time Out NY, a Homo Must in HX Magazine and can be heard on Broadcastr. You may have seen him on VH1 or on Gayest Week Ever on Logo’s NewNowNext.com. He’s also been featured on two episodes of Hot Gay Comicson the here! Networks and you may have seen him as the host of Busted, a celebrity gossip podcast. He’s also creator and co-producer of the Miss Fag Hag Pageant. featuring such talents as Caroline Rhea, Leslie Jordan, John Cameron Mitchell, Michael Musto and Hedda Lettuce. Shawn is also a contributing writer for 365gay.com
& special guest TBA!
MUSIC
Mindy Raf (BUST Magazine, Bridgetown Comedy Festival, Women in Comedy Festival) is a writer, comedienne, and musician out of Brooklyn, New York. She will be performing music as her popular alter-ego, chick rocker, Leibya Rogers. Mindy is currently finishing up her first novel which is set to be published by Dial Books for Young Readers, a division of Penguin. http://www.mindyraf.com
HOST
Carolyn Castiglia is a stand-up comedian, writer and hip-hop superstar. You may have seen her on Comedy Central’s Atom TV, NBC’s Last Comic Standing, Nick-at-Nite’s Funniest Mom in America 3, The Maury Show, ABC World News with Charles Gibson and heard her on Sirius/XM Radio. She is best known for her appearances on VH1/ego trip’s The White Rapper Show and Miss Rap Supreme as the lovable and hilarious Miss CKC. Her funny freestyle has won her numerous championship titles at The BEATdown, a monthly showcase at New York’s UCB Theatre.
J-femme wrote:
Happy Anniversary! I think I’ve been reading almost that long!
You posted something that looked like a pie chart once. It dealt with something like life goals, or values, or time management as it relates to life goals or values–that I remember being really interested in and haven’t been able to find since on your site.
It was like a non-cheesy “self-help” book (sort of). So my question is– do you have any idea what I’m talking about and what the name of the book is? And barring that or with that what are some nonsmut, nonfiction books you use for personal betterment? thank you muchly!
Thanks!
I think I know the chart you mean—it is from the book How to Be, Do, or Have Anything: A Practical Guide to Creative Empowerment by Laurence G. Boldt, called the Integrated Life Matrix. I posted it in 2007.
It’s a lousy title for this book, it is actually better than the sensationalized “how to have anything!” style that the title suggests. It is a step-by-step guide for creating your life the way you want it to look, in many arenas, not just professionally, but also personally, which is where this matrix above comes in.
My favorite non-smut non-fiction book recommendations for personal betterment I have mostly compiled into a self-awareness section of my Amazon A-store, makes it easy to keep track of in a list that way.
I’m a big fan of these kinds of books, actually—I know it’s a huge industry and many of them (70%? 90%? A LOT) are complete crap and useless for me, but even if I just pull one tool out of reading a book like this, that can be helpful and I’m glad I read it. At their best, they can be fantastic personal guides combining spirituality, philosophy, and psychology, three of my favorite subjects. I think it’s kind of silly that we don’t value self-improvement or self-knowledge very much, to the point where these books are put into a very easily dismissible category of “self-help.”
I used to call it my embarrassing indulgence, reading these, or my guilty pleasure. But I’m not so embarrassed about it these days. I’m very picky, and there are terrible books out there in this genre, don’t get me wrong. But there are also some very amazing writers and teachers in this genre who have significantly changed my life and world view.
Cheri Huber’s The Depression Book was completely life-changing for me. I credit Sharon Salzberg with a lot of the sparks of my committing to the Buddhist path and learning to meditate, she is incredibly down to earth and easy to follow, and she is phenomenal at teaching beginning meditation. David Richo has excellent psychology books with a Buddhist bent about healing and relationships. Charlotte Kasl’s book If the Buddha Dated really helped me make good (well, better than I would have otherwise) decisions through the recent period of dating. Many of the books in my A-store are also about creating your own career, carving out your own career path, and figuring out what it is that you want.
All of these have brought me here, to the teaching, writing, studying, and performing that I do now.
How are you going to celebrate official smut day?
By finishing this anthology! Or at least, finishing the manuscript to send to the publisher so we can go on to the next stages, which are probably critique and more editing and contracts and accounting and marketing and all that. Which means editing my introduction and finishing one of the pieces I’ve been writing as possibilities for inclusion in this anthology, but I am feeling way stuck and not sure which one to pursue. I want it to be dirty dirty dirty and quintessential BDSM and unlike anything else in the anthology and good. No pressure, right? Maybe I should work on it being a shitty first draft, first. Right now I’m going to go back to the knife play piece that involves cutting holes in her stockings until I rip them off and fuck her.
So that probably means I’ll be taking breaks to “gather my energy and inspiration,” which means jacking off.
But now that you ask that, maybe I should make it more official and fun and do something, like getting Kristen to read smut aloud to each other when she gets home. I’m just hoping she’ll bring some cupcakes in honor of Sugarbutch’s anniversary.
I finished More of This World Or Maybe Another by Barb Johnson recently for the monthly queer book group I’ve been in for almost five years, and it was phenomenal. At April’s meeting we all agreed it’s one of the best books we’ve ever read in book club—even the usual folks who hate all the books or don’t generally like fiction really enjoyed it.
It is incredibly well written. I was at times in awe of her sentences. It’s a collection of short stories, but they are all linked with the same characters, switching perspectives and sometimes decades to show the interconnectedness of a small southern community in New Orleans.
It is at times violent and heartbreaking. The abuse is awful. A child is forced to slaughter a pig and I found that part unreadable, because it was so well done. The lovely relationship between Delia and her partner is so real. I kind of miss these characters, now that I’ve finished the book.
I have much to do today, so I must cut this short and get to it. Just want to encourage you to pick up a good book over the weekend, be it this one or another.
Oh, one more quick bit of news: The Publishing Triangle’s annual award ceremony was last night, you can check out all the winners over on their website if you need more recommendations for good stuff to read. Wish I’d attended but my week was too busy (it’s free and open to the public!). Lambda Literary’s award ceremony is coming up on May 26th and I wouldn’t miss it, I was a judge this year and I just interviewed Val McDermid for the program (!!). I’m especially excited to meet Amber Dawn who wrote Sub Rosa.
Pick up More of This World or Maybe Another at your local independent bookstore, or over on Amazon if you must.
Oh so much has changed since then!
Though while I’m going back to see what I wrote last year, for the 4th anniversary, I’m still on that same path as I was then. Though my columns at CarnalNation.com and SexIs have ended, I’m still writing for AfterEllen.com, the Lambda Literary Foundation, and Good Vibes Magazine. I’m still keeping up with MrSexsmith.com for my speaking gigs, travels, and tracking my guest posts and interviews elsewhere, and still playing with Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, and other social media. I’m trying to figure out what it is I’m trying to build, and where I’m going, but I have some ideas and things are coming together, I think. I’m still writing about my main relationship and the turmoils—and thrilling joys—of constant intimacy.
The biggest news, perhaps, is that I’m editing a book of lesbian BDSM erotica for Cleis Press, which I am thrilled about. Actually, that manuscript is due this weekend, so I have officially declared today “Smut Day,” because I’m editing and compiling and putting all the last minute details together.
I woke up wondering whether Cleis includes a dedication standard in their book, so I flipped through some books from my smut library to see what I could find.
(You’ll just have to buy the book to see whether I am able to include one or not.)
I’m really enjoying this erotica anthology editing process, and I think the collection is going to be fantastic. I can’t wait to share the final product with you all! I don’t have a publication date yet, but you will be the first to know as soon as I do. I hope to do more of these, but I don’t want to get ahead of myself—this one isn’t even done yet. (Getting closer!)
I’ve got some other things in the works, but I’m mostly just focused on writing columns elsewhere online doing some more editing, and traveling to do workshops and speak. I’ve got some exciting gigs coming up this summer!
And now, on to the Sugarbutch anniversary tradition: Ask Me Anything.
I get a lot of emails asking for advice or help or clarification or what my opinion is on something, and though I’ve never formally written an advice column (though I would be interested in doing so—anybody want to hire me for that?), I have kept up this “ask me anything” tradition for a few years now, so perhaps that’s where y’all get the idea to email me questions. I always put those emails in a special folder that I swear I will get to, when I have time, but y’all, I never have time. I’m sorry. I feel bad not replying to your personal crises, and sometimes I write back to say “I’m sorry I can’t answer this,” but there are only so many hours in the day and any of those extra ones I would like to spend kissing my beautiful girlfriend rather than answering even more emails.
This is why I do not have an “ask me anything” on tumblr. They are very time consuming.
But! This is your opportunity! Got a question you crave to hear my advice about? Did you email me and I never answered (sorry)? Here’s the deal. Leave a comment on this post and ask me whatever you like. You can ask anything, from personal details about my life that you’ve always wondered, to questions about advice for sex toys or your relationship, to philosophical musings on identity, gender, or sexuality theory. The shorter and more specific the question, the better.
I will answer every single question asked by the end of May. That is my vow to you, especially since last year they dragged on and I didn’t answer them until the end of October. Read back on some of the former “ask me anything” questions if you like.
Apparently the 5th anniversary tradition is wood, so, well, try not to make too many jokes about that.
So go ahead—what do you want to know? What are you curious to read my thoughts about? What have you always wondered? What kind of dirty things will you get me to reveal?
And along with myself, I’ve brought some jam from Lucille’s Kitchen Garden, thanks to Lori‘s suggestion. I am devouring the garlic pepper version right now on a grilled cheese sandwich. I would be eating the raspberry pepper kind, which apparently is the star of the bunch (their website quotes a fan saying, “I would eat my own arm if this was on it,” which I find hilarious), but we’ve already gone through more than half a jar since I brought it back on Saturday afternoon and I’m trying to save it for more goat cheese, or the garlic & brie recipe that uses it.
Apparently the jam is made by queers, too. Bonus! Midwest, I am very jealous that you have access to this at all times.
So of course, since I was gone for a week and really intently focused on the events and workshops and performance I was doing (I was only late to my own workshop once!), I have a million things to do now that I’m back in town. I have many deadlines coming up in early May, so forgive me if things are quiet around here for a bit.
Meanwhile, there are some great things to do in NYC if you’re nearby:
Special queer literary night:
Queer Literary Night (free!)
Wednesday April 27, 2011
8pm
Phoenix Bar, NYC (447 East 13th Street)
RSVP on Facebook
Come hear the wonderful queer literary talent of the Columbia University Writing MFA program, including poets, fiction writers, and nonfiction writers: Josh Edwin, Nadia Waggener, Eliza Schrader, Muna Gurung, Stephen Moles.
Also, our featured reader is David Ebershoff, author of “The Danish Girl,” “The Rose City,” “Pasadena” and “The 19th Wife” and Professor at Columbia University.
The event is free and open to the public.
For all of you butch appreciators out there:
L Boogie Productions Presents:
Boxers Off! An Evening of Butch Burlesque
The Spring-Has-Sprung April Show!
with emcee Lea Robinson as L Boogie
Stonewall Inn (53 Christopher St .)
Saturday, April 30th, 2011
7pm-10:00pm
Admission $10
RSVP on Facebook
April showers, may flowers, and pagan revelry! Which hot performers will help you shake off the winter chill? Performances will include new work by Drae Campbell, Laura Turley, Cal Trumann, Daddy TYE, Molly Dykeman, Susana Cook, Susan O’Dea, and Shelly Mars… And Mieke’s Go Go dancers will be there to get you in the mood.
And not to be missed in NYC in May:
New York launch of Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme
Saturday, May 14, 2011
The Stonewall Inn (53 Christopher Street)
8:00PM
RSVP on Facebook
Hey folks! I’m here in beautiful (rainy, snowy) Milwaukee, had a great time at The Tool Shed last night. And did I mention the cheese plate I had for dinner? These folks know how to do cheese.
I’ll be at UW Madison tonight in Madison, Wisconsin, and since I didn’t ever post the info, here is it:
Fucking With Gender writing workshop (bring a pen & paper!)
with Sex Out Loud
8pm
University of Wisconsin Madison
Humanities building, located on Park Street
I don’t know which room exactly but I assume there will be signs. I’m looking forward to it! This is one of my favorite workshops to do.
Big day ahead of me, better get going—see you tonight!
Kristen and I lucked out and got tickets to see k.d. lang and the Siss Boom Bang at Le Poisson Rouge last Thursday night. I love that venue, it’s small and classic; we saw Amy Ray play there a few months ago and that was my first time there, but I hope more queer folks come through there.
The concert was kind of last minute, and we already had a big week planned, with another concert on Saturday night (Coyote Grace & Girlyman!), a day-long workshop on Saturday, and of course full days of work during the week, but we couldn’t pass it up.
She ran down there and got in line early. I joined her just before they opened the doors and we hustled to the stage the moment we got inside, and stayed there. We were far right, isn’t that stage left?, in the very front, and I snapped some good photos.
Kristen and I ducked into the photo booth after the show. k.d. was SO CLOSE. The show was fantastic. Even The New York Times says so. I was a little giddy and high after, being so close and her amazing voice and awesome performance. I’ve seen her once before, but I was in the eighteenth balcony at Radio City Music Hall, and could barely see her, aside from the shape of her white suit and bare feet moving on stage. It was so different to be so up close. She looked even more familiar, like family, with her sweet and awkward and hot butch dancing and her shy smiles and flirty attention to the audience.
I’m still kind of obsessed over her newest album, Sing It Loud. I wrote about her evolving masculine style over at AfterEllen last week:
I have lots more to say about that, actually, but I haven’t had any time to organize my thoughts. And I’m about to leave for Milwaukee, Minneapolis, St. Paul, and Madison tomorrow! I’ll update details on that “What’s Happening in April” page and on mrsexsmith.com when I have more of the exact details (I know the Madison workshop is still TBA—working on it!).
I’m loading up my ipod with k.d. tracks for the trip. I haven’t listened to Watershed in a while.
And while I got some pretty decent photos, I did notice quite a few folks around me taking video too, and lo and behold, the entire show is on YouTube. I remember these folks, with their phones and tiny cameras held up throughout the show—I was kind of hoping they would put them on YouTube, and kind of thinking they were being rude. At one point k.d. sang right into someone’s little device. I haven’t seen that one yet (maybe they were taking photos, not video?)—I don’t recall which song it was.
Almost all of the songs she did were from this new album, with the exception of “Constant Craving”, which sounded a bit different than it used to. I suggest listening to “I Confess,” “Constant Craving,” and “Sugar Buzz,” those three were especially amazing. But if you’ve got some time, and since I snagged the setlist from the electric guitarist’s station right in front of us, I know exactly the order she performed them all in, so you can watch it all, if you’d like, and pretend you were there with us. Continue reading →
I have to go move the car, and I only have about an hour of battery time on my computer so I can’t really be online today until I go swap out my power cord, it looks like my old one is dead, and I have about ten hours of work to do, and Sideshow is tonight, and we’re planning to do something special for Cheryl who is still in the hospital, and I’m already dressed to go to the gym—so what I’m saying is that I can’t sit here and write you a post, but then I got this via email and I just had to share it, because Kristen is a huge Stevie fan.
And hey look, her first album with new material in a decade. And it’s beautiful. The first single is already out—Secret Love—and the full album is due May 3rd. Now, to get tickets to the New York City release show!
from Shelby at godshomemovies.org
I posted way too much on Friday, so while the Butch Lab’s second Symposium topic went live on Friday too, I waited until today to cross post it to Sugarbutch.
I challenge y’all to comment on every single post. They’re beautiful, and I think this conversation is important.
Butch Lab’s second Symposium is about Stereotypes and Misconceptions around butch identity.
Ali Oh at Made of Words: Bottoms Up, Thumbs Up:
Now apparently masculine-of-center people aren’t supposed to be bottoms. In fact, one of Jae’s former girlfriends called her appearance misleading. Um…wtf? How Jae responded and responds is by making her sexual preferences really obvious and open. Have I mentioned that we met on OKCupid? “Bottom” was in the first sentence of her profile. I think she should have responded by leaving that tool. … If we’re talking about who wears the cock, that’d be me. If we’re talking about who has shorter hair, that’d be her.
Madeline Elayne: Butches Don’t Wear Pink (and other fallacies):
It’s actually a fairly simple thing to avoid, too, though it takes a conscious effort. DON’T ASSUME. It’s just that easy. Just because K is butch doesn’t mean that she will bristle or bite your head off if you open the car door for her. The fact that she doesn’t like acts of chivalry directed toward her means that she might just bristle or bite your head off if you open the car door for her. G loves pink. Doesn’t mean she isn’t butch. That hot pink cowboy shirt she had on yesterday was WAY masculine, and super hawt, too! The only cure to making assumptions about people is not admit to yourself that you don’t know what they like ,what they don’t like, or how they’ll act in a specific situation based on any group that they belong to. You only know these things about them once you get to know them personally, as people, and not as gender identities.
Victoria Oldham at Musings of a Lesbian Writer: Misconceptions
The misconception: Butch is a dirty word. Something less than, something too extraordinarily ‘other’ to be acceptable. Butch is threatening as an in-between, an indefinable and therefore unknown entity. Our hair dresser keeps trying to give S a softer haircut, until we explain that S identifies as butch, and expects to look butch. The hair dresser laughs and blushes a bit, but starts getting the cut right. The truth: Butch is hot. Butch is cocky and shy and gorgeous and loving. Butch is an identity one can be proud of.
Wendi Kali at A Stranger in This Place: Butch Stereotypes, Cliches, and Misconceptions:
I am far from being a stone butch. I have my moments of weakness both physically and emotionally. I feel all kinds of emotions and most of the time I have absolutely no way of hiding them. I wear my heart on my sleeve. I definitely want to be touched, bitten, kissed, licked, penetrated and everything else when it comes to sex. … While it’s true that I can fix a lot of things, I definitely can’t fix everything nor do I want to. I am, sadly, not the owner of many tools, although I really would like that assumption to be true some day. I like tools. I like them a lot. I certainly am not threatened by a strong, independent femme. As a matter of fact, I’m really turned on by them. I mean, think about it. A femme fixing things or building things, knowing how to use her hands and get dirty? Yeah. So sexy.
RM at Letters from Titan: Butch Isn’t Ugly:
Being butch doesn’t, or at least shouldn’t, mean I have to have certain interests (e.g., sports, which I largely don’t care for), skills (e.g., Patty changes lightbulbs and deals with tools because I am largely useless at these things), and social and sexual roles (my own being unnecessary to describe for the sake of this entry). And it certainly shouldn’t require me to be misogynist, which is something I see more and more gay women complaining about lately — butches that assert their butchness by denigrating femmes in all the same ways that women get denigrated by men in het culture. But, if I reject the external assumptions of what a butch is, what’s left to define me as butch, at least on the days where I would consider myself such? The answer, is, simply, that I don’t know.
Kyle on Butchtastic: Butch Stereotypes, Cliches and Misconceptions:
We are inundated by images and stereotypes equated with masculinity. As a young queer person wanting to express my masculinity, it seemed to me there weren’t a lot of options. If I wanted other people to recognize my butchness, I had to copy the attitudes and behaviors of the boys, and other butches, around me. I played along for a while during high school, ending up with a combination of chivalrous and sexist behaviors. I was sweet to my girlfriend, holding the door for her, doing all I could to be the gentleman. However, I also went along with my butch buddy and other guys when they spoke in not-so-complementary terms about their girlfriends and girls in general. As time went on, it was clear to me that if being butch meant being sexist and chauvinistic, I would have to find a different identity.
EST at A Lesbian Christian on Butch Stereotypes:
Butches hate men. Butches drive motorcycles. Butches wear leather jackets. Butches are the “man” in the relationship and perform all the “male” duties. Butches work with their hands. Butches aren’t intellectuals. Butches can only have short hair in a men’s style. Butches like beer and sports. Butches are mean. Butches cannot access their feelings. Butches want to be men. Butches will only date Femmes and do not date other Butches. Butches are (always) the sexually dominant ones. Butches only wear masculine attire. Butches under the age of thirty do not exist.
Joliesse Soul at This Side of Changed on Butch Stereotypes:
I’ve heard a range of cliches, misconceptions, and flat-out assumptions that would make your hair curl. Butches are sexist, chauvinistic, misogynistic. They’re all blue collar. Butch and stone are the same thing. Butch is the queer equivalent of a “strong, silent type.” Butches are only attracted to femmes and straight women. … It’s almost like the image of butch, even (and maybe especially) among gay and queer society is some kind of adaptation of the Marlboro Man, crossed with Rooster Cogburn. … I’ve written a zillion blog posts about how these stereotypes annoy, irritate, and generally piss me off.
For many people that I know, “Butch” means man. To identify as butch would signify an identification with men, and therefore would want to be a man. I run into the assumption that I’m actually trans, due to my supposed “strong desire to be a man.” The difference is that my gender identity is female, rather than an identity as male. When I finally settled into a masculine style of dress, I felt like more of a woman than I ever have in my entire life.
Harrison at How to Be Butch on Stereotypes, Cliches, and Misconceptions:
My academic background is in math: specifically, probability, and a growing knowledge base in statistical theory. … Gender is pretty much THE example of a binary variable in introduction to statistics classes. I can’t tell you how many times I sat through an explanation of a binary variable only to hear, “The categories are male and female: each person belongs to one, and one alone.” And every time, it really really hurt. But it doesn’t have to. Consider that there are different types of variables. We, readers of gender blogs, already know that gender does require interpretation. How are you measuring it? Self-reporting? Survey collector’s impression? How are you accounting for error or bias? The truth is that gender alone could be its very own statistical model. To us, it is vastly complex. Why is that? I’d argue it’s because of something that a professor once said in lecture: No model performs well on its boundaries.
Lenore Louhi at Twenty Pebbles, from a piece titled “Smoke”
“Well,” I replied, “I have a pretty good sense of people. But mostly, you were by far the hottest butch in that bar, and I wanted you.”
“Oh,” she said, smiling, “I’m not butch.”
“Yes, you are,” I said, eyebrows raised. Is it possible that she doesn’t know? It’s not like she’s some college kid, she’s old enough to have figured out at least some of this identity stuff.
“No, I’m not,” she said again. “I used to think I was butch. I lived in the city after college and I played pool with all the butches at the lesbian bars, and they thought I was one of them. I thought I was one of them. And then I realized, spending all that time with those butches — that wasn’t me. I’m not that kind of tough. I’m a faggy genderqueer.”
Cody on Cowboy Coquet on Stereotypes, Cliches, and Misconceptions:
For years, I was afraid to appear masculine; I struggled with feminine gender presentation, referred to myself as a ‘lesbian’, and felt totally…awkward. I also grew up in a conservative town, where any woman seen as not being feminine (i.e. passive, submissive, quiet, etc) was sometimes referred to as ‘butch.’ This word was bad, it meant nasty, un-feminine, not to be trusted, disgusting. … In the gay community, I think that stereotypes of butch-ness exist too. Specifically in communities where there may not be a lot of masculine gender presenting folks. … There was a lot of ‘dabbling in butchness’ going on. People just barely sticking their toes into the masculine gender presenting pool, afraid of being seen as butch but unable to control it, and judgment of these presentations ran rampant. People in the bar (not that I had a fake-id or anything) would openly state that they ‘didn’t want to date butch girls.’
Butch Lab Symposium #2: Stereotypes, Cliches, and Misconceptions on Butch Lab:
Want to contribute next time? Keep an eye on the Butch Lab Blog and the Symposium page for the future topic, to be due in June.
“Done quick and dirty, but that’s how I like it.” —Nico
I started this over the last week of March, but this week has been so nuts that I couldn’t get it done.
In sum: April is busy! Lots of events! The most exciting of which is a week-long trip to Minneapolis, Madison, and Milwaukee toward the end of the month, as well as a return visit to Drew University, and the one year anniversary of Sideshow!
| Thursday, April 7th, 8pm | The Gay Ol’ Opry: Queer Country Music Festival! I’ll be in the DapperQ Fashion Show | Public Assembly, Williamsburg Brooklyn, NY |
|
|
||
| Tuesday, April 11th, 8pm | Sideshow: The Queer Literary Carnival: Siblings with Anne-E. Wood, Katie Liederman, and Kay Ulanday Barrett | at The Phoenix, 447 East 13th Street at Avenue A in New York City |
|
|
||
| Tuesday, April 19th, 8pm | Cock Confidence at The Tool Shed | 2427 N. Murray Ave, Milwaukee, WI |
|
|
||
| Wed, April 20th, 7pm | Workshop at UW Madison (TBA) | Madison, WI |
|
|
||
| Thursday, April 21st, 4pm | Radical & Responsible Gender workshop | Hamline University, Minneapolis MN |
|
|
||
| Thursday, April 21st, 8pm | Spoken word performance featuring some of my most requested pieces, including “Butch Poem,” “How to Survive Your First Year in New York City,” “Me in a Nutshell,” “For the Record,” and others | Hamline University, Minneapolis MN |
|
|
||
| Friday, April 22nd, 8pm | Cock Confidence at Smitten Kitten | 3010 Lyndale Avenue South, Minneapolis, MN |
|
|
||
| Wed, April 27th, 8pm | Advanced Gender & Kink Through Feminism (a new workshop!) | Drew University, Madison, NJ |
|
|
||
I’ll update this if any other events get added.
I’m still booking some spring events! I am mostly planning to be writing in May and June, but I do have some travel days possible if you would like to bring me to your college or organization. And I’m already beginning to book some of my fall travel—I’ll be working at home and writing through May and June, and then doing more travel in July, August, and September, including some travels to Seattle in early July, the Butch Voices national conference in Oakland in August, and Dark Odyssey Summer Camp in September. My schedule is kept up on mrsexsmith.com/appearances if you want to see if I’m coming your way.
I’d love to post other community events happening this month, but I don’t even know what’s going on aside from my own events, since the month is so busy. I’m sure Queer Memoir and Red Umbrella Diaries are happening, and Ruckus is a new queer reading series and looks amazing too.
I do have tickets to go see Girlyman at City Winery along with Coyote Grace, I’m thrilled about that. It’ll be a great peaceful date event in the midst of a lot of travel and chaos. I’ve never seen Girlyman live but I adore their live CD and I’ve heard they are an amazing show. And have you seen their music video for Young James Dean, directed by Margaret Cho? The song is described as “a meditation on butch identity” and the video is full of queers, some you’ll probably even recognize like Amos Mac, Rocco Kayiatos, Ian Harvie, Madison Young, and Tomcat. I really love Doris’s voice though, here’s one of her songs:
Doris was recently diagnosed with leukemia, the same month that Cheryl was actually, and she’s been writing about it in a separate blog from the Girlyman site. Sending love her way, and I’m thrilled to be able to see them all in concert.
Last but not least, here’s my 2011 workshop offerings in a PDF so it is easy to download, you can also download my one sheet PDF or high res photos in my press kit). Get in touch if you’re interested in booking me, you can contact me directly—mrsexsmith(at)gmail—or my booking company, PhinLi, at bookings(at)phinli.com.
I won’t lie: Cunt: A Declaration of Independence, Inga Muscio’s first book, changed my life. In fact, when I got Rose: Love in Violent Times in the mail last week, it made me want to pick up Cunt, and I started talking about it even as I was reading Rose. Kristen picked up Cunt this week (can you believe she’s never read it? I would have gifted her a copy two years and four months ago had I known that, I just assume everyone has) and has enjoyed reading it on her morning subway commute (and then I get to hear the stories later—love that).
While Kristen has been reading it this week, she remarked on how dated it seems, and I realized that it was published 13 years ago. Not only that, but it’s a very western American perspective, which struck me from reading Rose, how western Muscio’s voice and perspective is. It makes me a bit nostalgic, to be honest, and homesick, missing the culture on the west coast.
Rose is a bit different. Just released by Seven Stories Press, they describe the book with this question: “Rose breaks new ground in answering a fundamental question in most feminist and antiracist writing: how do we identify, witness, and then recover from trauma—as individuals, as families, as communities, and as a country?” I love this, it is fascinating and deep and hits on many of the things that I’m interested in exploring, especially around queer and gender stuff, but Muscio tackles larger (primarily US-focused) questions of war, rape, and abuse. I found it hard to read, because it was so direct and descriptive in the wrong-doings that surround us in this (western, US) culture. Of course, that’s also precisely the point, so though it was difficult to read, it was also quite successful.
I wish I could say that those questions of witnessing and recovering from trauma were addressed, though I think the “love” section of this book was a bit lacking. Maybe I just read it too quickly, maybe I wasn’t taking it to heart the same way I took in the “violence” section. I do think it’s important to participate in the healing process, not just for myself but for the culture, and Rose did a great job of inspiring more hard work towards those lofty goals, which I appreciate.
I’d be less inclined to pick it up again, however. Not like I am inspired to pick up Cunt or even Autobiography of a Blue-Eyed Devil, Muscio’s second book. Still, all of her books are worth reading, and I adore her style and tone. But Cunt is the one I go back to again and again. As soon as Kristen’s done with it, I may just re-read it myself, it’s been a few years.
Rose: Love in Violent Times by Inga Muscio was sent to me by Seven Stories Press to review. Pick it up at your local independent queer feminist activist bookstore, or directly from the publisher, or order it online from Amazon, if you must.
