Literate Perversions

48 Hours to Go (SXSW)

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I posted before about the panel that Elizabeth Wood, my co-conspirator in Sex in the Public Square, and I are trying to organize a panel on the “Pink Ghetto” at SXSW in Austin this year. It’s about how we’re required to keep our sexualities walled off from all the other aspects of our lives — to speak publicly about what we do sexually beyond a leer or sly hints is considered a massive breach of manners and professionalism. At best, it can make your friends uncomfortable. At worst, it can get your ass fired — or never hired at all.

To get the go-ahead for the panel, we have to get it voted in, via SXSW’s online panel picker. Voting endeth tomorrow, September 21, at 11:59 pm. Please help us out by going to the site and doing some last-minute voting. And check out the other panels that I make note of in my original post, even if you’re not going.

Give Me Smut! (And Nothing But)

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“I do have a cause, though. It is obscenity. I’m for it.” –Tom Lehrer

When I first became politically aware, Ronald Reagan was in the White House, AIDS was making lunch meat out of every gay boy and leatherman within reach, and the term “feminist pornography” was an oxymoron to all but a very, very few people. What has come to be called the “feminist sex wars” was going at full bloody force back then.

Things have changed a lot since then, but not as much as I allow myself to think. Yes, Reagan has been put into his grave, but his legacy remains in the body politic like a festering tumor. Yes, gay men no longer have to bury their friends and lovers 25, 50, 75 times a year, nor are HIV-positive people classed as “innocent” or “guilty” and fed poisons disguised as medications. And yes, you can now declare yourself pro-feminist and pro-pornography without your fellow progressives staring at you like you’d just admitted that you moonlight as a contract killer.

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