I figured that Film Night 8 at my sex-positive film series, which I mentally dubbed Masculine Sexuality Night, would be one of our least-attended nights; so I was glad to see that we still pulled in something like 30 people on May 12. I think about masculinity and the stereotypes and boxes that define it a lot, but it’s not a traditionally hot topic ….

The films we showed included a short called “Forever Bottom!”, about one gay male bottom and how much he loves bottoming, and the feature-length “Private Dicks: Men Exposed”. I had originally assigned “Forever Bottom” to the night we covered BDSM, but there was a problem with the DVD player and we couldn’t put it on. The mistake was serendipitous, though — the short was far better suited to Masculine Sexuality Night!

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Let me just start by saying — it was hard to find a documentary about masculine sexuality! My initial film list had one that seemed tangentially relevant, but I wasn’t able to find anything directly about masculinity until a month or so into the series. That was when I first talked to Marianna Beck, an awesome sexologist and Art Institute professor who used to edit the sexuality magazine “Libido”. I confided my woes — “Why, why isn’t anyone making documentaries about masculine sexuality?” I nearly wept — and she suggested “Private Dicks”. (I mean, I wasn’t actually weeping, but I was frustrated. I would love to see something approaching a critique of masculinity and masculine sexuality reach the mainstream, like those of femininity and feminine sexuality that have become generally understood and accepted.)

Part of the problem is that many men themselves aren’t interested in analyzing masculinity — often because they consider themselves unaffected by society’s preconceptions around sexuality — or even because they think that everything about society’s current conceptions of sexuality is only bad for “other people”. Just a couple months ago I had a conversation with some fellow BDSMers on this subject, and when I complained that I was having a hard time finding anything analyzing masculine sexuality, one gentleman said: “Well, male sexuality is the default. It’s everywhere.”

I agree that conceptions of sexuality in America tend to be male-centered, and I agree that this is damaging and problematic. (Believe me, I’m furious that it took me many years after becoming sexually active to reconceive “proper” sexuality around things other than good ole penis-in-vagina penetration!) But … firstly, it’s strange that anyone would take this as an argument that male sexuality doesn’t need to be examined — to me, it seems like the opposite is true: if American stereotypes and ideas of sexuality are male-centered, then that makes it more useful for us to be thinking about masculine sexuality, not less! Secondly, those American male-centered ideas of sexuality are centered around stereotypical men … a very narrow view of what male sexuality can or “should” be. And that drastically limits men in their potential self-discovery, particularly if their sexuality is rather different from the “norm” (for instance, gay men or submissive men).

But anyway, less with the general ranting and more with the films themselves. “Forever Bottom” is a cute short that simply highlights one gay male bottom — i.e., receiver — and how much he loves being on the bottom. There’s not much dialogue, and it mostly focuses on his ecstatic face during various sex acts (some of which take place in inventive places). What I love about this short is that, in a very straightforward way, it forces the viewer to question any assumptions they may hold about bottoming — about how much people like it, whether people can like it, what it means to like it, etc. (In a way, it reminds me of a 17-minute fiction film I saw this year at CineKink — it’s called “Sucker“, and it’s about a gentleman who absolutely loves giving anonymous objectified blowjobs and how he starts building a relationship. It’s got the same feeling about it for me, the same sweet “Ah, it’s so nice to see submissives being validated for once” feeling.)

I like “Private Dicks” too. One thing that slightly bothered me about the film was that, although it questions averages and norms, it centers itself around them too. For instance, the section where men talked about penis size is introduced by a screen that states the average penis size. I suppose this is useful as de-mythologizing information, but I don’t like the way it led the conversation. Again, though, it does a good job of starting a conversation that’s often sorely lacking.

One moment in the film particularly struck me, and a number of people at the discussion group: the part where it talked about the idea of how the idea that men’s sex drives are overwhelming and hard to resist. That is — that men have a harder time controlling themselves, sexually, than women do. That men “think with their penises”. I think many feminists tend to regard this as a myth created by our culture, but I’ve often wondered whether there is — in a mild way — some truth behind it. I am not saying that men aren’t responsible for their sexual behavior just as women are; I’m suggesting that perhaps on average, male sexual desire is a stronger feeling than female sexual desire, and I’m wondering whether acknowledging this could be important in our journey towards understanding the differences.

The way “Private Dicks” throws this question into relief is by highlighting two statements. One: a cisgendered man who says that he refuses to acknowledge the myth of male sexual lack of control; he states clearly that he owns all his decisions, that he makes all his decisions, that he is not controlled by his penis. The second: a trans man who says that in his previous life as a woman, he didn’t feel controlled by his sex drive, but that now he has much more trouble resisting it. He outright remarks that when he was female-bodied, he felt suspicious of male assertions that their sex drives were overpowering … but now that he’s male-bodied, he totally agrees. I can’t remember the exact quotation, but he even said something along the lines of “Women think we can control ourselves, but we can’t”.

What does it mean, if men are (on average) markedly, strongly, dramatically more powerfully affected by sexual urges than women? Or even if they’re just (on average) affected differently? I’m not sure. If it’s true, then is there some way that we can use awareness of that to affect sex education? To affect how we train people to communicate about sex? To affect how we teach people to understand and listen to their partners? I absolutely don’t think that men are entitled to sex “more” than women, or that men get some kind of pass that gives them the “right” to have sex when their partners aren’t feeling up to it … though I do think that all people need to be sensitive, always, to what their sexual partners need. But there must be a way we can discuss and describe this (if it exists) so that real differences aren’t being elided. Of course, on the other hand, perhaps it’s simply unproductive to set norms at all. It’s probably more helpful to place our focus on figuring out each individual’s needs — teaching people both to accept and communicate their own unique feelings, and to accept a partner’s unique needs without reverting to stereotype and culturally-shaped assumptions.

I could keep writing, I really could, but I’m already over 1200 words. How do I do it? In fact, it took me so long to get around to writing this post that I didn’t even make it before the next screening … which was this past evening. Oh well. That was “The Aggressives”, a film about butch queer women of color, and I’ll blog about it soon. In the meantime: the next Sex+++ film will be “Boy I Am”, June 9, about female-to-male transpeople. See you there!

Edit It occurred to me that this is a BDSM blog and I hardly talked at all about BDSM stuff around masculinity, though I think about it all the time. So I’ll give some quick links. Bitchy Jones is a female dominant who blogs a lot about gender stereotypes around submission; this post, My Hero, is a good one. The submissive blogger Maymay also talks about these issues a lot, and in fact runs an entire blog about images of male submission that don’t fall into stereotypes — a great read both for the pictures and the analysis, though it is dramatically not safe for work! End of edit

Later edit If you liked this post, you’d probably love my blog series on masculinity. End of edit

I’m behind on everything, and every time I manage to take a day where I swear I’ll catch up, I get sidetracked by some other huge thing. But this Thursday I’ll be presenting at a conference hosted by Chicago’s very own LGBT community center, Center on Halsted: “The 2009 Alternative Sexualities Conference: Cultural Competence and Clinical Issues”. I, and some other people in the community, will be speaking about the role of communities in the BDSM experience. I can’t possibly get sidetracked from that, and I’m pretty excited about it!

Now I’ve said before, and I say as often as I can, that BDSM communities are filled with many different voices — plus, there are many BDSM communities out there, not just one. I hope no one ever takes me as “speaking for BDSM” or accurately describing every possible BDSM community out there. But there are some elements common in the BDSM subculture, and some very general splits that I often find myself noticing within it. (I do welcome other voices, ideas, additions, or disagreements with what I’m about to say! Feel free to leave comments! Especially disagreements — I relish getting different perspectives on the BDSM scene and questioning my own assumptions. Absolutely relish it. Delicious.)

Right now I’m thinking about the split between people who are attracted (or partly attracted) to BDSM because it feels wicked and transgressive — and people who are attracted to BDSM entirely for other reasons. That is, some kinksters are really excited by the very fact that BDSM is illicit and hush-hush … while some aren’t.

On the face of it, I have no problem with this difference — I really don’t care what draws people to their sexuality, as long as they’re doing it consensually! But a consequence of the split is that it creates tension around the question of whether or not we should seek wider social acceptance for BDSM. Arrayed on one side of that tension are kinksters (such as myself) who think it would be totally awesome if BDSM were more widely socially acceptable, so that we wouldn’t have to worry about coming out (or involuntarily being outed) to our parents or friends or employers. We don’t want BDSM to be seen as illicit! But the divide’s other side includes kinksters who feel as though bringing BDSM into the light means disenfranchising their sexual needs, because they want BDSM to seem transgressive and scary …

… and I’m just not sure what to say to that. I had a conversation with a friend today in which he pointed out that for people who are attracted to certain forms of sexuality because they’re illicit, there will always be further horizons to explore. His argument is essentially, “Well, if someone wants illicit sexuality, they’ll always be able to find something that feels illicit. Society will simply never get over most of its boundaries around sexuality, at least not in our lifetimes; we can just move those boundaries around a little. But it’s not fair to expect BDSM-identified people who don’t want BDSM to be illicit to silence ourselves in order to preserve a transgressive quality that attracts others to BDSM.”

I think I agree with him. And more fundamentally, I really don’t like being unable to talk about BDSM with people I respect for fear of their reactions and judgments. I don’t like cloaking a large part of my life. I do not enjoy living with that stigma. And I’m not willing to compromise my efforts to work against that stigma for the sake of other kinksters who want BDSM to be stigmatized because that’s hot for them.

(As a side note: I do recognize that some kinksters feel nervous about BDSM advocacy, or oppose trying to make BDSM more socially acceptable, not because they’re actively attracted to the illicit image of BDSM but for other reasons — for instance, concerns about backlash against the community. I don’t mean to imply that everyone who resists the idea of raising the BDSM public profile is doing it because they really enjoy feeling transgressive and illicit. But I think a lot of kinksters do, and are.)

Calling all READERS within the Leather / Kink / Fetish / S&M / B&D / BDSM community:

I (Clarisse) have been asked to curate a pansexual BDSM books exhibit at the Leather Archives & Museum (your friendly neighborhood BDSM museum). I know a fair bit about books, but I still need help with this question, so I’ve created an online poll. I’m asking everyone to send in their favorite BDSM fiction title; I’ll base the exhibit on your submissions. This way, the exhibit will be firmly based within the community — please repost this WIDELY, so that we get the most comprehensive community representation possible!

To be featured in this exhibit, a book must be FICTION and it must contain EXPLICIT BDSM.

You can vote in the poll by clicking here.

NOTES!

If you really like your favorite book, then please consider also submitting a comment of 100-200 words, describing any or all of the following:
+ a brief synopsis of the book,
+ how the book represents BDSM,
+ historical significance of the book,
+ other work the author may have done within the BDSM community.

The best book descriptions might be used in the exhibit. So if you want your description to have your name or pseudonym on it, please include that name at the end of your description! Sadly, we cannot pay people if we use their descriptions.

You can vote for books that aren’t written in English, but if you submit a description of the book, then the description must be in English.

It is technically possible for an individual to vote more than once in this poll, but please don’t. I am indeed logging where the votes come from; if the data appear too skewed when the poll is done, then I might have to throw out the results. Don’t do that to me!

Again, you can vote here! The poll will close June 1, 2009 at 12AM.

Thanks for reading!

cheers,
Clarisse Thorn

DISCLAIMERS!
Clarisse and LA&M staff will give this poll as much weight as possible! However, we reserve the right not to use all the top winners of the poll, for reasons that may include but are not limited to: adequately representing a pansexual range of identities; ensuring that all books in the exhibit contain explicit BDSM; or suspicious quantities of votes from the same place. All comments submitted in this poll become property of the Leather Archives & Museum.

Cross-posted at SexGenderBody.com

I half-suspected this would happen: after our sixth screening (the bisexuality documentary) was overwhelmed with people, the seventh Sex+++ movie was far quieter. It was nice to have breathing room! The really cool thing about this is that I can now promote the film series to new groups … I’ve been afraid to do any new promotion because we’ve had so many people at some screenings, I’m nervous that we’ll be overwhelmed. So now that I can do some more reaching out, I’d love new ideas about new people I can tell about the film series!

In the meantime ….

I’ve taken a while to post about it because I went to San Francisco on the interim, but the last film at my sex-positive documentary film series was “It’s Still Elementary” — courtesy of GroundSpark: Igniting Change Through Film.

“It’s Still Elementary” is a bit of a meta-documentary: a documentary about a documentary! In 1996, a film called “It’s Elementary” confronted the question of how to educate grade-school kids about gay and lesbian issues. It showed a number of grade-school educators taking on the issue — in the 1996 political climate, they risked their jobs to do so! — and it also showed the kids in their classes creating their own respectful, honest conversations on the subject. Of course there was a firestorm of controversy around “It’s Elementary”, especially when it was broadcast on TV in 1999. Conservative religious groups did things like call it a “powerful pro-homosexual propaganda film” and mount fundraising campaigns against airing it, writing to their followers that “If we fail to take a stand to put a stop to this outrage, the sin of sexual perversion could be promoted to a potential audience of tens of millions of children” (source).

That controversy is covered in “It’s Still Elementary”, as well as the process of making the “It’s Elementary”; the progress of the :cough: “homosexual agenda” inherent therein; the way the kids who actually experienced that education feel about it today; and issues faced by leaders who tried to get the film shown to educators in their communities. One thing that particularly struck me was the apparently frequent allegation, made by people who didn’t want “It’s Elementary” shown to teachers, that gay and lesbian issues simply weren’t “important enough” to be worth covering in school. School administrators — who didn’t see themselves as at all bigoted, but simply pragmatic — frequently argued that what’s “necessary” is readin’, writin’, and ‘rithmetic. So of course, since it didn’t fit into that box, they figured training teachers to address gay and lesbian issues wasn’t worth doing.

The reason this caught my attention was that I’ve encountered that argument before. People, even open-minded people who don’t consider themselves to be anti-sex, will frequently argue that quality sex education is simply not something we “need” to be worrying about. Folks will just figure it out, right? Or even if they don’t, raising a generation of sexually confused and ashamed kids is no big deal … right? In fact, this attitude continues — for many people — into adulthood; it’s just phrased differently. As adults, the questions (sometimes stated, but almost always implied) become things like, “Does sexual pleasure really matter?” or “Is it really so important that you explore your sexual needs?”

Now, it’s not that I think everyone should be spending all their time thinking about their sexual needs. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — there is no “should”. I wouldn’t want to tell anyone their priorities, and I have no problem with freely choosing to prioritize other things over sex … I mean, I do it all the time. Sex is not the only thing in the world. But I do think that this whole idea, that sexual pleasure is unimportant, goes beyond being a crying shame — it’s positively dangerous. Sex, our sexuality, is important. It’s so deep-rooted, it shapes so many things about us, so much of our approach to our lives … whether we’re aware of it or not. How can we know ourselves if we don’t know our sexuality? How can we live as whole human beings? And why, why should we be expected to repress or subvert or twist up a powerful drive that could be such a source of pleasure and power? The idea that sex is unimportant, “not worth it”, is another manifestation of our cultural stigma against sexuality, and a dangerously subtle one to boot.

One person at the discussion group, after we showed “It’s Still Elementary”, noted that the film (and the educators it highlights) was limited — it didn’t take on bisexuality, or trans. That’s a problem. But I’d argue that there’s a bigger problem — that educators limited themselves, are limiting themselves, to orientations when it would serve us better to create a wider curriculum around general sexuality. But, gasp! We can’t have a curriculum about general sexuality for children! What would happen to kids exposed to ideas of sex?

As it turns out, they’d be fine. Unitarian kids get the best sex education in the country through the Unitarian church, starting in kindergarten, and they amazingly don’t grow up to be axe murderers. The key is that sex education really doesn’t have to be entirely about explicit sex. From the website for Our Whole Lives, the Unitarian sex ed curriculum:

Our Whole Lives helps participants make informed and responsible decisions about their sexual health and behavior. It equips participants with accurate, age-appropriate information in six subject areas: human development, relationships, personal skills, sexual behavior, sexual health, and society and culture. Grounded in a holistic view of sexuality, Our Whole Lives provides not only facts about anatomy and human development, but helps participants to clarify their values, build interpersonal skills, and understand the spiritual, emotional, and social aspects of sexuality.

This is a concept introduced by “It’s Elementary” — the idea that we can have conversations about gay and lesbian issues (which are, after all, about sexuality) with kids without edging into scary sex territory. It’s time to take that idea to the next level and create good, national, general sex education that doesn’t tiptoe around important ideas like pleasure, or self-discovery, or defeating shame. Or so I’d like to believe. In a country where — what is it, 60%? — of schools are still mired in abstinence-only sex education, I recognize that my grandiose plans to teach kids not to be ashamed of their bodies are far from implementation. At least I can do adult sex education … reverse the damage a bit, perhaps. (Interestingly, one of the people I met on this past San Francisco trip, name of Dr. Charlie Glickman, did a dissertation on proposed adult sex education among — guess who? — the Unitarians. I haven’t finished it yet, but so far it seems so good.)

It’s been a while since I linked to it, so I’ll wrap this up by mentioning my old post: Liberal, Sex-Positive Sex Education: What’s Missing. Which just goes to show that even when you’ve got decent sex education, there’ll be room for improvement.

And now I am off to bed (not in a sexy way, regrettably … I’ve worn myself out, with all this typing about sex!). Check out the GroundSpark website to buy “It’s Still Elementary”, and do come out to the upcoming Sex+++ films “Private Dicks” and “Forever Bottom” — both about ideas of masculine sexuality. May 12th, 7PM. See you there!

My friend Liza, currently living in Moravia, sent me this recently and gave me permission to post it here. In my BDSM overview presentation I refer to a few groups that do “BDSM-like” activity, such as Opus Dei (a religious society that practices corporal mortification) and Christian Domestic Discipline (spanking encouraged as part of a happy Christian marriage). I wouldn’t call these practices BDSM, mostly because I know those groups wouldn’t identify themselves that way. But there are undeniable parallels … parallels that sometimes, perhaps, shed some light on the attractions of BDSM.

At any rate, BDSM or not, this is hilarious:

I was telling my mom about Czech Easter yesterday, and I thought it would be interesting for all you traveler/cultural types.

It’s kind of a strange tradition — throughout this country and Slovakia, men/boys get up at dawn on Easter Monday and go around town brandishing whips made of willow tree looking for women to whip. In our area, Valašsko!, if the guys don’t roll out of bed early enough, the local bell towers offer the service of a special ring at 8am. Also, Wallachian guys don’t carry braided willow whips, they carry fresh branches of juniper (you know, a short pointy pine bush that stings after it pokes you) which women throughout the Czech Republic speak of in fear.

With these whips, groups of guys wander around the town visiting every female they know for a quick beating, for which they are rewarded with slivovice, treats, painted eggs and ribbons. The rationale is that a whipping with juniper is as good as a full body spa treatment to rejuvenate the skin and blood — so these guys are really just doing a favor for the women. It is supposed to bring another year of youth to the female population. Women’s health and beauty aside, most boys do it for fun and for candy, and most men do it for fun and for slivovice.

You can image that if they start early, visit a few households with about 2 shots/”legs” of liquor at each house, these groups of guys get pretty wasted before noon. I think women began to give them alcohol instead of eggs knowing that it would really just slow them down and bring the tradition to a faster close. Also, after noon the roles switch and women have the right to douse the men in ice water or toss them into the river. Around 1pm, hordes of men and teenagers start to stagger home, drunk and dripping wet.

The pleasant, P.C. Czech Easter website won’t tell you that they rub girls down with juniper (the strategy is to get up so early that girls are caught in their PJs and don’t have a chance to put on their heaviest canvas burqa or other juniper-protection-systems) or that half of the men end up passing out in the streets before lunchtime. It’s a funny tradition though, and certainly all the religious connotations of Easter are completely absent. This is totally an archaic pagan celebration — chasing women with big sticks and getting decorated eggs in return? Doesn’t that sound like a springtime fertility rite?

So, by 9:30am I’ve already had my whippings, the guys are out boozing and harassing other ladies, and I can sit for a cup of coffee and write an email. I have a bucket of cold water ready for the afternoon, but I wish I had brought a couple supersoakers.

Everybody is invited for next year! Ladies, brace yourselves for the beauty treatment, and gents, ready your livers for heavy boozing.