My Marie Claire interview with feminist pornographer Erika Lust is online

While I highly recommend the print edition of November's Marie Claire (Sleater-Kinney's Carrie Brownstein has a guide to Portland, Oregon a few pages past my porn articles), I'm happy to share that my interview with feminist pornographer Erika Lust is now online. It's part of the issue's women and porn package.

3 bylines, including my first in Marie Claire

I'm heading to Maine today, to visit an old friend, and will be there for most of next week to teach erotica writing Wednesday in Portland at Nomia. Therefore, I'm going to quickly link to and mention my latest writings. First and most exciting: I have two short pieces in the new November issue of Marie Claire, with Lea Michele on the cover. It's part of a porn package with articles by Amanda de Cadenet and Cindy Gallop (founder of Make Love Not Porn), and there's a piece I tore out by Carrie Brownstein about fun things to do in Portland. See pages 236 and 237 for my interview with feminist porn director Erika Lust and my porn picks. After you read my interview, if you're in Chicago, you can hear Erika Lust speak at the Chicago International Film Festival. I don't know if my pieces will run on their website, but if they do, I'll share them.





In the online world, this week I wrote about Playboy's decision to stop publishing nude photos for Salon, with musings by a Playboy contributor, the former executive editor of Penthouse and others.

Lastly, I got personal at Lady Smut, musing about my "vanilla" sex life and my very much not vanilla, kinky book of BDSM erotica, Dirty Dates: Erotic Fantasies for Couples, which pubs on my 40th birthday, November 10th. Yes, I love dropping that tidbit because over 50 books in, I've never had one come out on my birthday!

Working at Philadelphia porn company HotMovies.com

This week I profiled Dee Viant of HotMovies.com about working at a Philly porn company.



Here's an excerpt:

Has Viant ever felt discriminated against because she’s a woman in a business largely focused on naked ladies? “Never,” says Viant, “but I’ve definitely felt that in more formal workplaces. At the office, it’s a business environment; we have to be mature about sex.”

Yet she can appreciate some of the more absurd aspects of her job. She gets to travel to Las Vegas for the annual AVN (Adult Video News) convention, where Ron Jeremy signs DVDs — and body parts — at their booth. Her most surreal ex-perience? “At AVN, it’s known that if you’re interested, Ron will lift up your top and fondle and/or kiss and suck your breasts. This year, one of the AVN staffers told me, ‘You’ve got to tell Ron the nipples have to stay covered.’ That was just hysterical. I thought, ‘What the fuck is my life?’”

Read the whole thing, check out the column archives and pitch me or tell me what I should cover at rachelcitypaper at gmail.com

Porn star jessica drake's educational video line wants to improve your sex life

This week's Philadelphia City Paper sex column is on porn star jessica drake and her educational video line jessica drake's Guide to Wicked Sex. I met her several years ago at CatalystCon West and was incredibly impressed with what she was doing by merging porn and sex ed, and this column is the result of that. Want to read my column archives? They're here. Want to pitch me a new column topic? Email me at rachelkb at gmail dot com with "City Paper" in the subject line and a detailed pitch, including URL, description, etc. As you can see from the archives (hopefully), I'm interested in a wide range of people, events, fetishes, identities, sexual practices and more.

"Yes, Fat Women Are Sexy" is my latest at DAME

It's one thing to write something in the plain old Times New Roman font I use in a Microsoft Word document, and another to see it in bold type on a website I contribute to. My first instinct when I saw "Yes, Fat Women Are Sexy" was to think, Duh. I mean, obvious town, right? But it's still something that needs to be said and reinforced with word and image, and the women I spoke to and quoted, namely April Flores (about her soon to launch site Fat Girl Fantasies), Substantia Jones, Kitty Stryker and Brittany Gibbons, are doing just that. Please check it out, and see the full archive of my DAME columns here. Suggestions for future topics related to women and sex? Email me at rachelkb at gmail dot com with "DAME" in the subject line.

"How to Come Out Like a Porn Star" Q&A with genderqueer porn star Jiz Lee at Salon

My latest at Salon is a Q&A with genderqueer porn star Jiz Lee about their forthcoming anthology How to Come Out Like a Porn Star. As I say in my introduction, although the book is specifically about coming out about involvement with porn, I think the book has larger relevance for those who deal with sex in their work or have any sort of sexual secret (or really, any secret) they want to come out about. Thanks for reading.

Duke porn star Belle Knox talks breaking into XXX, sex workers rights, Catholic school sex education and more

I interviewed Duke University freshman and porn star Belle Knox at Elle.com - we discussed how she got into porn, sex workers rights, her Catholic school education, her porn role models, her relationship status and more. If you like it, I'd love it if you'd pass the link on in some way. I had a tight word count so didn't get to include every interesting thing she said, but she was very articulate, passionate and, in my opinion, fascinating. I know I certainly was not as eloquent at 18.

My favorite Tumblr porn

My dirty little secret is that sometimes I'd actually rather look at lingerie than sex photos. And by sometimes, I mean most of the time. I'm trying to purge myself of all the ridiculous assumptions I've absorbed about "how to be a sex writer," because I'm not a sex writer, I'm just a writer, but still, ever since I left the road to a "respectable" career and fell into one that even I whisper about and evade (like when the doctor the other day asked what I write about and I said "dating and relationships, books, pop culture," which is true, but not, you know, the whole truth), I've had to reckon with the disparity of how not depraved I actually am, most of the time (I'm depraved when the situation warrants it). Sortof like for fun I read YA and cozy mysteries because I read smut all the time for work, though I am always on the lookout for a good juicy novel of any genre. I guess it's my own silliness that's even inspiring a disclaimer, but it's true. I packed a box of VHS and DVD porn because I was afraid to throw it away in Brooklyn. Some of the VHS tapes I actually want to watch but have no means to, so I'll just keep them as souvenirs, probably until my next move, unless I somehow come to own a VCR. My point being, I'm in now way a regular porn watcher, although the DVDs I bought at the Feminist Porn Conference I do plan to check out. But I do have a few naked photo Tumblrs I follow and I shared my favorite Tumblr porn at Salon and also my favorite non-porn but pretty photos Tumblr The Lingerie Addict, which recently featured this photo below, of a dress from Uturn Utopia.

My review of The Feminist Porn Book

My review of The Feminist Porn Book, edited by Tristan Taormino, Celine Parreñas Shimizu, Constance Penley, and Mireille Miller-Young, is up at The Hairpin, and I will be covering next month's Feminist Porn Awards and Conference, so stay tuned!

Fifty Shades of Grey: A XXX Adaptation porn parody trailer, to be released September 20th

Yes, it's true: on September 20th, Smash Pictures will release Fifty Shades of Grey: A XXX Adaptation starring Allie Haze, Alexis Ford, Julia Ann, and Jaslene Jade. To me it begs the question of how the mainstream version of the film about a bondage and BDSM-themed novel will approach sex once it's all out there and on the table, though something tells me the hardcore (pun intended) E.L. James fans won't necessarily be watching the XXX parody version. A while back, I'd wanted to write about porn parodies vs. theatrical parodies in light of David Adjmi's play 3-C and its legal woes, but I didn't get all the answers I need to properly write about it, but it is an interesting comparison, in my mind, anyway. My review of the parody DVD is coming (another pun, ha!) as soon as I watch it!




Allie Haze starring as Anastasia Steele, via Porn Valley News

And the official trailer with its own take on Anastasia Steele and Christian Grey and "kinky fuckery:"

Former porn star Jennie Ketcham talks sex addiction, masturbation and healthy relationships

I interviewed Jennie Ketcham, author of the new memoir I Am Jennie and formerly known as porn star Penny Flame, about sex addiction, masturbation, reality TV, healthy relationships, female friendships and more at The Daily Beast. Here's one of the questions she answers: "Your recovery process for sex addiction included not masturbating, and making a masturbation trigger list. Why was that one of your rules?"