Press!

Eugene Weekly reviews Best Sex Writing 2010 and plugs Sunday night's reading with me, Kerry Cohen (aka Michelle Perrot) and Janet Hardy!

The fury comes in specifically in one of the strongest non-personal pieces, Judith Levine’s brilliant “What’s the Matter with Teen Sexting?” Hey! That’s a great damn question! Why are (some) adults so freaked out about teen sexuality? How could anyone prosecute kids as sex offenders for sending nude photos of themselves to their friends or partners?

Well, perhaps it’s because they never read Thomas MacAulay Millar’s “Toward a Performance Model of Sex,” which takes the women’s sexuality=cow milk equivalence and knocks it back into the Pandora’s box of misogyny. Admittedly, Millar’s is a long, meandering, top-heavy argument that spends too long with the buildup and not enough time at the climax, but combined with Ellen Friedrichs’ “Sex Laws That Can Really Screw You,” the essay provides a powerful backing for reconceptualizing sexual agency.

In between these more reported, factual pieces come the first-person experience snippets. Some of these, like Perrot’s, are both literary and erotic; some of them, like Diana Joseph’s “The Girl Who Only Sometimes Said No” and Kirk Read’s “It’s a Shame About Ray,” contain moving portraits of their writers or the people closest to them. Joseph’s piece in particular illustrates sensitive, painful clashes between parent and child, between different conceptualizations of female sexuality, between the mom’s experiences of a sexual life and the junior-high-aged son’s callous dismissal of girls’ ability to define themselves. “The Girl Who Only Sometimes Said No” leads the book, and it’s gorgeous; few of the following pieces live up to its promise, and some are flat-out poorly written even if the information contained in them has value in a society that doesn’t really understand how to talk about sex and sexuality.

Brooklyn Ink podcast takes you inside my erotic writing workshops at Shag in Brooklyn - if you're on the fence about attending, listen to this. I have 2 more (see previous post), February 27 and March 6. Students get high priority with my anthologies - I'm about to announce two more which there'll be lots of spots in. Plus I'm bringing cupcakes. The last 2 workshops have been small but fascinating.

Nina Hartley's French Toast and other links

Nina Hartley shares her recipe for French Toast! (via fabulous Chicago sex toy shop Early to Bed))



Amazon's showing that Carol Queen's latest anthology, More Five Minute Erotica, is finally out! This collection of ultra-short stories features my stories "Nurse Feelgood" and "Our Little Secret" (hint: the "secret" is a butt plug).



Two more men freed in the Genarlow Wilson case: (AP)

Two more young men have been freed after serving time in jail for a case involving a 17-year-old who had consensual oral sex with a 15-year-old girl.

Ryan D. Barnwell and Cortez Robinson, both 22, were released from prison Friday morning after spending 3 1/2 years behind bars. The two pleaded guilty to child molestation after attending a 2003 New Year's Eve party with Genarlow Wilson, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison for having oral sex with the girl.

Wilson, now 21, was freed Oct. 26 after the Georgia Supreme Court ruled that that his sentence was "cruel and unusual punishment." Georgia law at the time of his trial required a minimum of a decade in prison.

Slightly old (December 6th), but..."French erotica...at the library:"

Ribald and X-rated, a new exhibit at France’s national library is banned to anyone under 16.

The exhibit that opened this week offers a peek at France’s long-secret library of libido, where, starting in the 1830s, librarians hid books and other documents from the national collection that they deemed dangerous for public morality. They called it L’Enfer, or Hell, and kept it under lock and key.

In 1849, library director Joseph Naudet described L’Enfer as “a hiding place … in which we lock up certain books that are very bad but which are sometimes very precious for book-lovers and have a great monetary value.

There's been much ado about drag queen bingo in Tampa, Florida:

The drag queens were reined in and very nearly ladylike.

Succumbing to pressure from City Hall, prizeless drag queen bingo debuted at the Canvas Cafe on Monday night, to a capacity crowd of about 100 who came out to see the suddenly famous show.

But the bullhorns were gone after neighbors complained about the volume and the profanity of the trio of drag queen entertainers.


Photo of XuXu Fontana by Rod Millington

If there's a GLBT teen in your life (or you want to keep up on issues of relevance to them), check out my friend Ellen Friedrichs's About.com page on GLBT Teens, answering questions such as How Do Gay Teens Lose Their Virginity? and interviewing Muray Hill. You may also know Ellen from her webiste Sexedvice.com (also see my Gothamist interview with her)

And Happy Holidays to everyone! Here's another shot of me in my friend's Santa hat, taken by the fabulous Stacie Joy, who will be shooting me in January. I can't wait! My dream is to do a naked shoot in the snow, but that will require snow and extra courage. We'll see what happens...