I am so tired of this lie -- that a woman's shaven vulva looks like a child's.

Time and time again you hear this from people who don't like to shave -- that the modern craze for pubic grooming is some deep-seated, pedophilic lust for children because it makes the area look identical to a child's.

This is just plain wrong.

Now I don't think anyone should feel forced to shave -- my own pubic region stays unshaven and usually, at least, untrimmed, which is also becoming rarer in men as it is in women. I have yet to hear complaints from a partner. I might consider it if I did. I think everyone should make this choice for themselves, based on -- polite! -- input from their lovers. I have been with women who shaved, as well as women who were hairy, just as I have been with women who did or did not shave other parts of their bodies such as their legs and armpits. None of the options are disgusting, all are erotic in their own way. A shaven cunt is pleasurable, just as is an unshaven one, even if the sensations are a little different.

But anyone who says a grown woman's balded private parts look like a kids has not been around children, nor actually studied an adult woman's body. The region changes during puberty in ways additional to the growth of hair, ways which are visible to those who care.

Anyway, tired of it.

I just remembered a bit of a naughty dream I had this morning. I met a really hot couple at a party -- I remember the girl having nice curves, and the guy was a skinny hippie/freak boy just like I like them (I think he may have had some piercings too, whee) and they invited me back to their place. I took them up on it, and we ended up in their bedroom. The girl got up on the bed (she was acting kind of dominant) and partially undressed so she could tease us with her body and touch herself. The guy and I got undressed on the floor and started teasing each other and kissing between watching the girl. Then I think the alarm woke us up.

Mmm, I'll be in my bunk...

I don't remember my dreams much at all, and when I do they are almost never sexy. I most often dream of mundane things like brushing my teeth, so this was worth recording.

LJ has automatically set everyone's journal to moderate adult content, meaning that unless you change it yourself, you're potentially missing stuff right now. You may have to enter a birthdate as well if you don't have one in your profile now.

Go here: http://www.livejournal.com/manage/settings/ to change it.

My thoughts:

As usual, LJ has hidden a major change in policy on lj_biz. You can read more about it here and here. My sentiments on this are well summed up by 00goddess here. I have a permanent account, and I plan to keep using this journal more or less as I do now, but I definitely plan to move away from LJ for writing related posting. I'll be setting up writer blogs for both eposia and myself, and they'll be fully hosted by us rather than relying on LJ or any other service who can turn on you (other than my webhost, who I trust).

Yes, we have reason to be concerned -- both of us write about a wide range of topics, including explicit sexuality, drug use, kink, etc. If I decide to post an excerpt someday, I refuse to have it placed behind any kind of age verification wall. It is a parent's job, not mine, to police their child's internet use and I firmly believe the sexuality I was exposed to in fiction as a child was not harmful, and even beneficial. While I read at an advanced level from a young age, I remember skimming over/skipping sex scenes when I was too young to deal with them, and later when I devoured them (sometimes reading only the sex scenes in books during my horniest teenage moments), I believe they helped me shape my sexuality by helping me discover what I did or did not find erotic. I'd be thrilled if my writing helped a young person shape their sexuality in the same way, and in any case I refuse to have any potential reader scared away by an adult wall.

(crossposted to thevoluptuaries)
(thanks to flamingnerd for giving me the idea to spread the word about the search settings)

So there is high quality video of the opening of Arse Elektronika, specifically the encounter with fuckzilla and the fucks-all. Note for those watching porn at work: turn down your volume, she's a screamer.

And kink.com's video blog of the conference.

Check out this Youtube video for the Polaroid Swinger, one of the great sources of DIY porn of the 60s, with its catchy and suggestive jingle, "Meet the Swinger". Thanks to tgeller for this. Interestingly, this camera says 'yes' when there is enough light to take a photo. According to wikipedia, older versions said 'no' too, but the ultra-popular swinger only says yes... a camera that is always willing. :)

Recommended reading from the conference

Web:

Brains and Machines, Sunny Bains blog on haptics and other futuristic hardware, brainsmachines
Cyberdyke.net, lesbian pr0n and sex toy reviews
kink.com, awesome hosts of the conference
monochrom.at (in english), monochrom_atom
netporn-l, a netporn discussion mailing list
Open Dildonics
sexualinteractions.org, Amanda Williams sex forum/blog
Sharingissexy.org, free, open source answer to youporn, redtube, shufuni, etc, also a conference attendees' MFA project
Kyle Machulis' Slashdong, slashdong
Techsploitation, Annalee Newitz's blog, techspl0itati0n
vaginapagina
and of course fleshbot sex blog, fleshbot, and Violet Blue's tinynibbles, tinynibbles

Books:

The Body and the Screen: Theories of Internet Spectatorship by Michele White
Bound and Gagged: Pornography and the Politics of Fantasy in America by Laura Kipnis
Naked on the Internet by Audacia Ray
NASA/Trek: Popular Science and Sex in America by Constance Pauley
The Science of Orgasm by Barry R. Komisaruk, Carlos Beyer-Flores, and Beverly Whipple
The Secret Museum: Pornography in Modern Culture by Walter Kendrick and Steve Renick
The Technology of Orgasm by Rachel Maines
Visual and Other Pleasures by Laura Mulvey (including her essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema")

mycroftxxx recommends Pat Cadigan's Synners, for its prediction of war porn and food porn as outlined in Mark Dery's keynote speech

CNET on the Moaning Lisa. Lisa's leg had a USB port, and I conjectured with the real Lisa, Lisa Thalheim of the CCC, whether that was erotic to anyone else. I imagined a fetish for pictures of feet, legs, vulvas, penises, breasts or other eroticized body parts photoshopped to include a USB port or similar. I remember the Logitech(?) ad a while back that played up the clitoral appearance of a mousewheel, but so far my cursory searches have been unable to find any USB or other I/O port porn, making this a possible violation of Rule 34 (along with gyesika's suggestion of lesbian wookie porn). Lisa said they are thinking of having a game at the next Chaos Communication Congress where they make teams websearch under a time limit to prove or disprove Rule 34 based on audience suggestions for outré fetishes.

The last panel I attended was Amanda Williams presentation on "Sex and Computation in a Material World." Williams is a grad student in tech design.
( Amanda's presentation )

On Day 3 I deliberately slept through the first few hours, which included a screening of a documentary on sexmachines and a hour long discussion after. I did not anticipate being able to get up early(ish) for me and then stay awake in a dark movie screening for two hours. Since I was skipping the screening I also skipped the discussion. Also, I left after dinner break to attend Burning Man decompression. The evenings programs were more porn focused than tech or sex focused, and all the panels will be available for online viewing within a few weeks to a month. Here are tyrsalvia's notes on a panel I missed but would have liked to see. I look forward to seeing the video!

Annalee Newitz spoke on 'a futurist's history of sexual technology'.
( and a fascinating discussion it was! )

After the Kyle Machulis (qdot)'s presentation on alternate sexual interfaces, Violet Blue spoke on online sexual privacy.
( Violet on sexual privacy, aka Ceiling Cat hates your porn )
( Tina Lorenz on tech in porn )
( tyrsalvia on sex ed )

Kyle Machulis is the awesome operator of Slashdong, which covers future sexual technology and teledildonics. This is my notes on his talk.
( Kyle's talk )

This is an edited version of my notes for thevoluptuaries. I've removed a bits only of interest to those of us in the group. I took a LOT of notes yesterday so more will follow.

Wired's summation of the first night: http://blog.wired.com/underwire/2007/10/so-who-wants-to.html -- this article is interesting since it reveals that Binx, the girl who got fucked by the Fucksall and Fuckzilla robot, had never used a vibrator before. I find it somewhat fascinating that an attendee of a conference on sexual technology would never have used that seemingly most basic of sexual toys before. Enjoy the photos. Photos accompanying article may be triggery for those whose families were killed in the robot uprising of 1985.
( pornotopia inside )

First I revised it, then kiki39 revised it, then I tweaked it a little more based on some teaser-based feedback from not_so_nicegirl, and gave it a final readthrough. And so, the first draft was born from out of the ashes of the 0th (and the .5th and .75th) drafts.

Honeycutt Tales: The Doomsday Toy, 1st draft
Openoffice wordcount: 16,301 words
Manuscript wordcount: 18,000 words

The story has been sent off to the Society of Voluptuaries and our readers for feedback. Kiki and I are already brainstorming the sequels.

Next immediate project: final readthrough on "Borrowed Time" before prepping it for submission to magazines

p.s. yes you may steal my icon (but tell me if you do :)

At last, the 0th draft of my collaboration with Kiki (kiki39) is complete. It took us a bit longer than we hoped, but it's also a bit longer than I expected. It's amazing to think this all started with a single sentence Kiki wrote for a Society writing exercise.

"The Doomsday Toy" (working title, "Locke and the Pale Maid"), 0th draft
Openoffice wordcount: 15558 words
Manuscript wordcount: 16,000 words

Wow, we wrote a novelette! The story, for those who don't know, is humorous, kinky SF which liberally spoofs Star Trek.

Now we are each going to take a turn at revising it to turn it into a first draft, ready to be shared with our fellow Voluptuaries, first readers, and the merciless pen of eposia.

Awesome rant on the sexual Politics of the Bush administration from susiebrightfeed

I feel like a lot (though not all) of the liberal blogs often ignore this aspect of the current administration. I think undermining the rights of consenting adults, and leaving children and teenagers dangerously miseducated about sexual health is really as dangerous to our future as anything being done in Iraq or to the environment. That's not to say those aren't important issues, but how can we hope to have a healthy and well-adjusted government without healthy and well-adjusted people to run it?

Tonight we went to Revolution for their open mike. I used to read at poetry open mikes in Austin all the time, and definitely had some people who recognized me and enjoyed having me come to their venues when I was doing it regularly (this was years ago now). It was something I enjoyed for a long time but I think I got burnt out by some personal fallout involving the reading I and a lover ran so I stopped going after a while. Last week, gryphynshadow stumbled onto the open mike at Rev, and got to listen to some good poets and play a short poetry game led by the host. I had hoped to get her, eposia, and myself out there this week, but Jennifer is caught up with inventory at her job so it was just Reesa and I.

We got there a little late but that was cool because the reading started late as well. I signed up later in the show so I'd have a few people ahead of me while I prepared. We were each allowed to read two poems, and I had brought along three, inspired roughly by the very loose theme of the week's reading (aftermath): After, A poem about the past, and ghosts are spirits who died with unfinished business (writing filter links). The rules of the reading are "respect the poets," and "respect the audience," so I was unsure about doing a sexy kinky poem like "After." I decided against it when a very straight-laced parent came in with their young kid.

I got up and did "A poem about the past" and "ghosts are spirits who died with unfinished business." It was interesting that I felt more confident reading "A poem" and stumbled a little near the end of "ghosts ..." Reading aloud can be usedful for this kind of thing, so I might try looking at ghosts and seeing if I can revise it so it is less stumbly. I had felt that ghosts was mostly done but I may reexamine that now. I got polite applause for my poems but nothing spectacular. I felt like my reading skills were very rusty but for a first time back in years it was a good experience. It was also fun to give Reesa her first exposure to an open mike.

There were some good poets and some bad poets. It sucked that the only two women who read did awful rhyming fundamentalist Christian poems. It made me wish I had read "After" after all. The week before I might have done it -- the only kid was mostly playing outside, and other poets were doing edgier stuff like pro-drug use poems. We'll see if I get bolder as I get used to the venue and the crowd's tastes. Next week is the area poetry slam championships; we will probably attend that (as spectators). I was looking forward to reading again, but I can wait till the week after and will enjoy hearing some good slam-style poetry. I am curious if any of the poets will do sex-based poems along the lines of Ernest Cline's Nerd Porn Auteur; it would be nice if the only(?) open mike venue in town was open to that sort of thing.


Got some decidedly mixed feedback from my mom on "Borrowed Time." I'm hoping some other people on my writing filter will give me their honest feedback about the story soon so I can see how common her reaction is.

I think I drank too much caffeine before leaving the house and at Revolution, and then we shopped at Walmart while they were using the floor waxer. For some reason that is the sort of sound (along with the vent hood on the stove to a lesser extent) that makes me feel edgy, so that with the caffeine made me feel stressed out and brainfried. We came home and ate some food and now writing this entry has helped calm me down.

My writing is going well these days. eposia gave "Borrowed Time" a thorough critique -- very thorough. The manuscript is 26 pages long and after several days of work she managed to put comments on nearly every line of it. She's one of the best proofreaders/editors I've had, and the most ruthless; another reason to love her. Tonight after "waxing the cat" a while, I finally dived into fixing and tweaking and polishing and the hard work of making it into a second draft, which I hope to do this month.

At this point, if you are on my writing filter and haven't read it yet, I'd almost rather you wait to read it and comment until the second draft is posted so I can have some fresh eyeballs.


As a reward for finishing my first short story in years, I dove right into my next project but made it a fun one. Last month's Society of Voluptuaries monthly writing exercise was to write first lines of stories. kiki39 contributed a naughty piratical sentence, and I responded with a second sentence and she responded in kind. It was so much fun I suggested we collaborate on making it into a real story. So far it's been altogether too much fun; we both giggle madly as we write and read each other's latest contributions. The working title in my head is "Locke and the Pale Maid," and so far, about 5000 words in, it's a kind of naughty space opera with pirates and Tesla technology. It's also the first time I've collaborated with a Voluptuary other than Reesa, and a great experience so far.



I've decided to postpone the Austin trip again; my goal is to put a lot of time into selling books online (been slacking way too much there) and make some money in the next couple weeks so I'll have a nice full wallet for the end of the month Austin excursion. I'm looking forward to getting back but I don't want to be strapped for cash when I do.

Susie Bright on cunts, Britney's and others

via susiebrightfeed

Welcome back to my continued celebration of I'll Never Be A Father's Day! For those of you just joining us, I am reflecting on (and recuperating from) my recent (Friday) vasectomy. I seem to be healing at about a normal rate and hope to be back to 100% in time for Decomp!

When I tell people about getting a vasectomy, I get a lot of reactions. From some who hope to be sterilized themselves, I get strong support (mixed with friendly envy from many women who feel this way, but hate how much harder it is for them to get it done). Some men I tell wince and cross their legs protectively. A few are curious as to whether it is hard for someone under 30 to get one (it wasn't). But the most common reacton is wanting to know why I decided to do it. Something this important is not a simple decision, and there are actually lots of reasons I had this done.

1) Children/childfree -- well, I consider myself 'childfree' in the sense that I don't wish to father children, but not in the sense that their very presence drives me into fits of disgust as it does with many of my more militant friends. My attitude towards them has softened a lot over the years, and these days I can stand to be around the better behaved amongst them and even enjoy their company at times for short periods of time. I can even envision myself acting in a sort of uncle or godparent type role someday, a friendly nonparental adult who comes by to visit. The important thing is I can't be responsible for children, longer than a short time anyway. I need to be able to put them back with the adult they belong too and go back to my nice, normal, childless life where I have other things to do. I want to write novels and poetry, not raise children. If someday I end up in a poly commune full of other people's kids, awesome, as long as I have my own childfree space to retreat too.

And I kind of feel like there's enough gasoline addicted Americans already on the planet, but this won't stop me from being supportive of friends who choose to breed.

2) Genetics -- I am smart and I know my genes contribute to that. But also, depression runs in my family and quite possibly a propensity for Fibromyalgia (there is certainly reason to suspect it could be genetic). If I change my mind and decide I want to directly be a father, I know from my experience with my adopted sister that adoption is no less meaningful than making kids the old fashioned way, contrary to what so many people (to my disgust sometimes) seem to insist. Again, there are many ways to be part of a child's life without fathering them -- biologically or otherwise and these appeal to me far more.

3) Control -- I discuss my wishes with all my lovers. Everyone I have sex with knows that if something happens I don't want to be a father. But in the end, I can't control what happens in the event of just such an accident. It is their body, and they choose what to do with it and the fetus forming inside. I wouldn't have it any other way -- but while a woman can absolve herself of responsibility for a fetus by getting an abortion, or carrying it to term and putting the resulting sprog up for adoption, a man has no choice in the matter but to accept, at the least, financial responsibility. While I trust and respect my lovers' and trust them to respect my wishes in the manner, this does relieve a certain amount of anxiety by forever closing that unhappy possibility.

4) Politics -- This is more of a reason to have it now, rather than wait. I have been sure about getting a vasectomy done for a number of years, but what I am less sure about is the continued easy availability of surgery like this in the current unpleasant political climate towards sexual freedom. Maybe it's paranoid, but given that the New York Times is covering the "war on contraception" and the gov't tried to block a vaccine that could all but eliminate cervical cancer because it might encourage sexual behavior, I have little faith in the continued availability of many current options, much less the futuristic forms of male birth control we've been promised "on the horizon" ever since I can remember. I am relieved to have this done and soon never have to think about birth control again (safer sex of course is another matter!).

5) Sex appeal -- ok this is the silly one, but I know a number of women who find sterility downright hot. Obviously this would be a poor reason to get a vasectomy without the others', but hey since it's true I'm going to enjoy it. See the subject line for my new pickup line of choice.

I guess that about sums it up, from most to least important. I'm happy to entertain questions about the surgery or my reasons for doing it in comments or private email (you can always reach my by my livejournal address) or by IM -- see my profile.

I respect those of you who have made the choice to be father's. I am glad to be here, thanks to my father. But right now I am celebrating I'll Never Be A Father's Day! So Cheers, everyone! Happy celebrating, whichever you choose. Raise a glass or a smoke to the deliberately sterile, won't you?

"You're beautiful and curvy, but unless you're kinda pervy, there's no way you and me are going to last." --The Wet Spots, "Do You Take It"

I mentioned this to some people at Poly First Wednesday, so here is the link to the video Do You Take It. Hilarious and wrong, and not even remotely work safe. Also, a bit of an earworm -- You've been warned.

(via susiebrightfeed)

A collection of quotes from The Sexually Promiscuous Male by Benjamin Morse, M.D., published June 1963 from Monarch Books, always a tasteful publisher: they also published I Am A Teenage Dope Addict along with Morse's other fine works, The Lesbian, Sexual Surrender in Women, The Homosexual and The Sexual Revolution (those damn hippies!). Although the occasional progressive statement slips in (usually a statement by one of the "morally bankrupt" in a case study), Morse is quick to squash every one.

The cover promises "A Penetrating Case-History Study Of The Rising Tide Of Sexual Misbehavior In Modern Man".

"Because of social attitudes and prevailing moral standards, it is virtually impossible for a woman to lead an actively promiscuous sex life without placing herself beyond the pale of normalcy." (emphasis mine) -from the chapter "Male Promiscuity -- Normal and Abnormal"

Sluts, watch out!

"The desire to share one's wife with another man stems often from latent homosexuality.In giving one's wife to another male, a husband may unconsciously identify with his wife and symbolically have sex himself with the other male. In many instances a husband will question his wife closely about her sexual activities after an evening of wife-swapping. When he does this, he is a vicarious participant in her actions and is in essence having sex with the other male without violating the strong taboos he feels against overt homosexuality.

"Transference of this nature is quite often implicit in cases of strong latent homosexuality. The man who wishes to watch lesbian sexual activity may also be motivated by latent homosexual desires, although other forces can also have the same effect. For the man who participates in wife-swapping, his wife serves as a medium through whom he has symbolic relations with other men." -from the chapter "The Wife-Swappers"

( More wife swappin' and sexual deviance )
What I learned from giggling over this book with nightshaderose: Swingers used to meet through Canadian tabloids, even if they lived in Chicago. Paedicatio is a fun word for anal sex -- use it in a sentence today! And, I need some more four- and six-person orgies in my life. Maybe someone can suggest a good Canadian tabloid?