Literate Perversions

The Ethics of Fantasy

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Fetish Diva Midori, who’s long been one of the smartest perverts on the scene, started a particularly interesting conversation on her Yahoo discussion group recently: are there fantasies that are, in themselves, unethical? Are there things that are such inherent breaches of morality that even if you never intend to act on them, that it’s immoral even to fantasize about them?

From a sex-positive viewpoint, the immediate impulse is to say unambiguously, “NO!” The opposite answer has always been the hallmark of the puritans who police desire, and has destroyed more lives than can be counted. The idea that we have a right to our own desires as long as they either stay in our own heads or are acted out with consenting adults is the very core of the struggles for queer rights, for the acknowledgment of transgenderism, for the legitimacy of BDSM, and for the free manufacture and sale of pornography and sex toys of all kinds. It defines the difference between the people who see sexuality as normal and natural and those who see it as a dark, animal part of ourselves that we must transcend.

But I think that for most of us, no matter how expertly pervy and kinky and open-minded we are, the answer becomes more ambiguous once you start delving into particulars. For instance:

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The Shrinking Public Square

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As you may or may not know, I’m the co-founder of a web site called Sex in the Public Square. Although the name seems straightforward enough to me, it seems to perplex a lot of people. If you want to get a good idea of what we’re on about with the title of our site and why the concept of “the public square” is so important to us, go on over to Audacia Ray’s site, Waking Vixen. You should be doing that anyway, but if you haven’t been checking her out recently, she’s had some experiences lately that illustrate neatly the realities and risks of talking publicly about sex.

  • First of all, Dacia tried last month to open an account at Citibank for her business, Waking Vixen Productions. After filling out the preliminary paperwork, she received a voicemail delicately informing her that her line of business made them unable to take her account.
  • Then, early this month, she got a similar notice from iTunes, notifying her that her podcast, Live Girl Review, could no longer be included in their directory. ITunes was less direct than Citibank, saying only that podcasts could be excluded “for a variety of reasons.” On checking out their podcast spec sheet, she found “strong prevalence of sexual content”  included among the possible reasons that Apple can kick you to the curb.
  • And just last week, Google yanked her Google Checkout account, barely twenty-four hours after she’d put her new short film The Love Machine up for sale. According to the e-mail Google sent Dacia, “the products or services [she’s] selling on [her] website are considered ‘Restricted’ per our policy- Adult goods and services.”  [Read more…]

Yes, Virginia, Perversion and Christmas Do Mix

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After Ted Haggard, and now this guy, it’s starting to seem positively de rigeur for Christian homophobes to have a nice, dark closet that they can hide in. And why not? Have you seen the way these people raise their kids? I’m surprised that we didn’t find out that Haggard liked to get rimmed by billy goats while dressed as Ava Gardner and watching reruns of Green Acres or something equally inventive.

If you really, really want to make sure your kid turns out to be the city’s biggest perv, Kids in Ministry International has just the thing for you. For a mere $124.95, you can get their Blood of Jesus Visual Kit. What do you get for your money? Well…..

  • Crown of Thorns
  • One Crucifixion Nail
  • Cat of Nine Tails Whip
  • Tabernacle Felt Set
  • Life-size Latex Heart Model
  • Kids Discover Magazine on Blood
  • Scarlet Cord with Tassels
  • Cardboard Ark of the Covenant
  • Cardboard Brazen Altar
  • Instructions to Make High Priest Costume
  • Instructions to Make a Temple Veil
  • Chef’s cap for High Priest’s Crown
  • Judge’s Gavel
  • Simplicity Patterns for Bible costumes

With stuff like this, the parents should be happy if giving blowjobs for a nickel apiece in the back room of the Mine Shaft is the oddest thing their darling little angel winds up doing. I mean, I remember getting my first flogger, and it sure wasn’t a present from mom and dad.

The best thing, though, is the accessory they offer: The Sacrifice Lamb.

Sacrifice Lamb

Adorable, isn’t he? The Sacrifice Lamb “stands 15″ tall so it is nearly life-size of a new-born lamb.” Even better, it’s made to fit perfectly on the altar that comes with the Visual Kit, so that your darlings can practice their Holy Butchering techniques. (I suppose it would be “too Jewish” for them to include something on proper Kosher slaughtering methods.)

Christianity: for when your kid absolutely, positively has to be a closet case by 16.

Smart Perverts: Selina Raven

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During my last few weeks living in San Francisco in September, 2002, I worked briefly at a now-defunct adult newsweekly called The Spectator. Despite what anyone tells you, working with porn gets as boring as any other job really quickly. Mainly I was working reception. I took phone calls, did Excel spreadsheets, sent packages, and took ad payments from the Oakland pimps and call girls who advertised in the paper.

Selina Raven One of the other people who worked at Spectator at the same time as me was Selina Raven, a local domina who was making a little pin money doing similar admin tasks as myself. As soon as I met her, I knew two things: first, that she was seven different kinds of hot, and second, that she was really fucking smart. The two things are not unrelated.

There’s several galleries of Selina at her web page, but to get a tour of her brain, I recommend listening to the two-part interview conducted by Nova and Atticus on the Fetish Flame podcast. I especially recommend this interview to people who are just getting interested in kink and fetish play. Selina talks about how she got into kink, back in the days before there was an Internets; the three parts of the term “BDSM” (Bondage and Discipline, Dominance and Submission, and Sadism and Masochism) and how they differ from each other; and the two main competing philosophies of kink, SSC (Safe, Sane, and Consensual) and RACK (Risk Aware Consensual Kink). I think the interview is especially notable for the latter point, because if you get into the kink community, you’re gonna hear a lot about these two. Just about every major mailing list or organization periodically explode into very long and very polarized debates about the distinctions between the two, and which is more appropriate for the community to promote. Usually these debates get very tiring very fast and produce a lot more heat than light. Selina explains the two in a very neutral, intelligent way that’s very rare considering the volatility of the topic. My own reaction to the RACK side of the controversy is somewhat like my reaction to pro-gun people from the NRA: I’d be a lot more sympathetic to their arguments if so many of them didn’t give the impression that they shouldn’t be trusted with anything sharper than a rubber ball.

In contrast, I’m glad to have smart and ethical people like Selina in the community, and even gladder that I’ve gotten to know so many of them. Listen to the podcast and see what I’m talking about.

Fetish Flame Interview: Part One Part Two

You Can't Fool All the People All the Time….

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A little footnote to my previous rant about the government’s expansion of abstinence-only education: although the people making the policies may be idiots and prudes (not necessarily in that order), the American people are not. According to a study recently done by the University of Pennsylvania, 80.4 percent of American adults prefer a balanced “abstinence-plus” approach to sex education. Also, according to the study:

  • 91.6 percent of liberals, 86.4 percent of moderates, and 70 percent of conservatives support comprehensive (abstinence-plus) programs, while 19 percent of conservatives, 5.3 percent of moderates, and 3.7 percent of liberals oppose such programs.
  • 47 percent of conservatives support abstinence-only programs, while 67 percent of liberals, 50.4 percent of moderates, and 39.9 percent of conservatives oppose this approach to sex education.
  • 37.5 percent of conservatives, 13.4 percent of moderates, and 9.1 percent of liberals oppose condom instruction, while 51.2 percent of conservatives support it.
  • Among all respondents, 57 percent disagree that condom instruction encourages teens to have sex.
  • Of the respondents who never attend religious services: 87.4 percent support comprehensive sex education and 57.9 percent oppose abstinence-only programs.
  • Among those who attend religious services more than once a week: 60.3 percent support abstinence-only programs; 60.3 percent support abstinence-plus programs; 52.6 percent oppose and 37.9 percent support condom instruction; 31.3 percent oppose abstinence-only instruction.

In short, Americans aren’t as easily fooled as the puritan bureaucrats would want us to be. I’m cautiously optimistic about the election results, but hopefully, between statistics like these and the backlash against the Republicans, the government will have to stop pretending that sex is something that you can just sweep under the rug.

More good news: congratulations to the people of Spokane, Washington, who ousted Brad Benson, the Republican State Senator who claimed earlier this year that Planned Parenthood deliberately distributes condoms with an 80% failure rate because “they have an interest in the follow-up product.“

Fear and Loathing and Fucking

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No matter how cynical I get, no matter how many nauseating things that I see perpetrated in the name of morality and decency, it seems that there’s always some fucktard out there whose mission in life is to show me that there’s always just a little farther they can take things.

In short, although I didn’t think that I could be shocked anymore, I am once again appalled at the fear and hatred of sexuality that those in charge of our country harbor in their hearts. Hatred of the naughty bits has been an aggressive part of the Republican party’s agenda at least since Reagan’s malign neglect of the AIDS crisis, allowing thousands to die because they were a bunch of sinful faggots and junkies while simultaneously casting abortion as a luxury item for murderous sluts who would rather kill a baby than lose their girlish figures. [Read more…]

Mark Foley: Predator or Sleaze?

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Probably the greatest irony of the Mark Foley affair is one that gets little attention: if Foley had just had the nerve to act on his urges and cornhole markfoleya few of those pretty young pages in the Congressional cloakroom, he’d be free and clear — legally anyway. (The Repubs would still eat him alive for daring to be a public homo, but that’s a whole other can of worms.)  In the District of Columbia, the age of consent is 16; but Foley is getting nailed under the Adam Walsh Chid Protection Act, which he himself toiled to make into Federal Law and which makes it illegal to solicit sex from a minor (under 18) via the Internet.  In other words, in D.C. you can fuck the pages — just don’t have Internet sex with them.

There’s plenty of room for schadenfreude here, and I for one plan to take mine in extra-large helpings.  The Republicans and conservative Democrats have made themselves both rich and powerful by plundering the American public’s fear of sex, and many people who just wanted to be left alone have paid the price.

But we’re facing a severe crisis in the fate of our Republic now, and I’m appalled that of all the things that have happened in the last six years, this is the thing that seems to stick.  People are finally paying attention to the moral rot inside the Republican party, and why?

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