Xan West's Blog, page 9

Links of the Week 6/8/16

Here are some of the great things I have read this past week, my recommendations to you.

So one of the best things on the internet recently was Annabeth Leong’s Many Note Challenge, which occurred over a series of posts and is explained in the excerpt below. First post. Second post. Third post. And a blog post where she talks about bondage and some thoughts that emerged from the challenge.

“Today, I got into a conversation on Twitter with @TGStoneButch (who writes incredible erotica under the name Xan West) about the way that representations of kink can sometimes feel one-note, as if there’s only one way to react to certain sensations and experiences.

I commented that this phenomenon feels isolating to me. As someone who always worried that my sexual reactions were “wrong,” sometimes the experience of reading kink erotica or hearing presentations at cons can make me feel alone in an environment where I had hoped to be included.

I think it’s really important to think about how the same actions might be given and received from very different perspectives.

Indeed, what kicked off that conversation was something from the Forbidden Fiction release party last night. There, I was talking about how I initially got a thrill from seeing trangressive words or actions in erotica, but that over time that faded. Now, what gets me—interested and/or aroused—is characterization and psychological intent. All of which depends on the opposite of that one-note approach.

It’s serious, important stuff, and I want to think a lot more about it. That led me to an idea for a fun exercise.

I want to show this variety of characterization and intent in action. So I’ve written a series of short snippets about the same simple activity, each one demonstrating a different mood. I’m calling it the Many Note Challenge.”

This list of non-sexual forms of intimacy is awesome.

Brook Shelley on door policies that admit everyone but cis men and why they are problematic.

“For starters, and this should be obvious, not everyone that appears to a party door person as a cis man is a cis man. Many of my fellow trans women are often erased and hurt by the assumption that — perhaps because of the choices they’ve made about their body, their inability to use HRT, or their lack of access to surgery due to gatekeeping or finances — they are actually men. The rule to not allow cis men often means we trans women are required to pass a cis lady gaze test, presenting our gender in a way that is “woman” enough for the door folks. The idea that anyone besides ourselves can judge our gender is a painful falsehood. And if we dare to be butch or choose not to take hormones, we are likely to be barred or policed in a very uncomfortable manner from events that purport to be safer spaces for women like us.”

This post by the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective on the use of pods in addressing violence in our lives (with downloadable pod mapping worksheet).

“Asking people to organize their pod was much more concrete than asking people to organize their “community.” Once we had the shared language and concept of “pod,” it allowed transformative justice to be more accessible. Gone were the fantasies of a giant, magical “community response,” filled with people we only had surface relationships with; and instead we challenged ourselves and others to build solid pods of people through relationship and trust. In doing so, we are pushed to get specific about what those relationships look like and how they are built. It places relationship-building at the very center of transformative justice and community accountability work.

“Pod people” don’t fall neatly along traditional lines, especially in situations of intimate and sexual violence. People don’t necessarily turn to their closest relationships (e.g. partner, family, best friends), especially because this is often where the violence is coming from, but also because the criteria we would use for our pod people is not necessarily the same as what we use (or get taught to use) for our general intimate relationships. We have different and specific kinds of relationships with our pod people, often in addition to relationship and trust, they involve a combination of characteristics such as, but not limited to: a track record of generative conflict; boundaries; being able to give and receive feedback; reliability. These are characteristics and skills that we are not readily taught to value in U.S. society and don’t usually have the skillset to support in even our closest relationships.”

This resource list on queer misogyny compiled by femmes has some amazing and necessary links.

 

Casey Plett’s beautiful review of Meredith Russo’s If I Was Your Girl.

“When I read If I Was Your Girl, I can feel my teenage body as I read it. It’s a strange, prickling sensation, a deeply internal and physical thing that reaches into my specific flesh and bones, the kind of sensation that cis writers, for all they annoyingly try (and try, and try, and try) can just never get across.”

This list of links to posts about ableism in Me Before You, collected by Ridley on Love In The Margins.

Sam Reidel’s article about trans women getting period symptoms. Trigger warning for mentions of transmisogynist violence and threats of violence.

“Whether it’s in a conversation with our medical providers, friends, or even immediate family, trans people—AMAB folks in particular—have historically been met with violent opposition when discussing their feelings and medical needs. We’re often told we’re exaggerating things, seeking attention or sympathy, and that our reality can’t possibly be as we describe it.”

This poem about pain play by Mat Joiner.

This roundtable on sex writing with Larissa Pham, Amy Rose Spiegal, Ashley Reese, & Arabelle Sicardi.

“I think there’s a misconception for people that (writing about sex) is a sex-positive thing. With Cum Shots, people would text me (saying), ‘Oh my God, you broke my heart again.’ This isn’t happy writing a lot of the time. Sex is just a way to talk about other things. You poke sex and a bunch of stuff comes out: power comes out, abuse comes out, emotions come out, trauma comes out, race relations come out.”

 

Tagged: ableism, asexuality, bondage, community, disability, femme, gender, gender policies, intimacy, kink, menstration, misogyny, oppression, pain, queer, relationships, sadism, sex writing, trans, trans exclusion, transmisogyny, trauma, violence, writing, writing erotica

Links of the week 6/1/16

Here are some of the awesome things I have read this past week, my recommendations to you.

This advice column by Rachel on Autostraddle feels like it explains something critically important about trauma and ways we go along with other people’s realities. It’s focused on biphobia in an intimate relationship, and it feels like it ends up going much wider than that in it’s frame. TW for brief descriptions of child abuse and longer descriptions of the long term impact of childhood trauma. (including the quote below)

“If my partner is in the next room over and hasn’t spoken to me in 15 minutes, I can easily convince myself that it’s not just because he’s reading but because the last thing I said to him was wrong somehow, and he’s stewing and ready to scream at me any second now about how awful I am. This belief, though, is wrong. He doesn’t get upset about infinitesimal things, and when he is upset, that isn’t how he handles it. He’s not my father.

It absolutely makes sense for me to process information this way — in many situations I’ve been in, that instinct would have been correct, and helped me stay safe. But it isn’t correct anymore, and it would be unhealthy — and unfair — to act as if it were. I’m not wrong for feeling the way I do, but if I forced my partner to treat my feelings as reality — if I called him five times a day while he was at work to have him reassure me he wasn’t mad at me, if I forbade him from ever taking time to himself without reminding me it wasn’t about me, or ever being outwardly upset about things like having a bad day at work because it makes me anxious — that would be a terrible relationship for him to be in. I’m not wrong for feeling how I do, but it’s on me to make a plan for how to cope with it: to remind myself to look at the evidence and ask whether there’s any suggestion that I’m actually about to be harmed, to develop my own coping strategies, to be self-aware of my own history and the way I map it onto my present. I can certainly ask my partner for support in this, or to make some concessions to my history that he agrees are both fair and healthy for him, but I can’t ask him to bend over backwards for me because I’m not willing to do the work at all. We can’t justify harmful things we do to others by pointing to the ways they’re related to how we ourselves were harmed — a reason isn’t a justification. Even when bad things have happened to us, and even when those bad things influence how we see the world, we’re still capable of respecting other people’s autonomy, their needs and wants and identity, and treating them as they deserve. To think otherwise is, I think, to insult ourselves a bit.”

This post by Tobi Hill Meyer on pushbacks against discussing dating politics.

“When people talk about dating politics, nobody is saying you should get involved with someone you don’t want to be involved with.

When I suggest that social prejudice is a factor in someone having a “preference” or a “rule” that they will not date people of a marginalized population, I don’t want that person to start dating folks from that marginalized population! Think about it for a second. If you are acting from social prejudice, the last thing I would want is you impose that upon someone who is vulnerable to it.”

This post on writing while autistic by the Autistic Academic.

“Writing is a compulsion for me, but not in the way one means when one talks about obsessive-compulsive disorders – although the difference can be hard to explain. It’s a need the way food, sleep, and exercise are needs: basic to my fundamental health. I don’t write to avoid feeling bad; I do it to feel well.”

This post by Camryn Garrett on antiblackness and anger is amazing and you should read it.

“I’m angry. Whether or not I’m allowed to be angry shouldn’t even be a question. I hate the stereotype that black women are always loud and angry, because most of the time we are taught to shove it back, deep within us so that we don’t bother white people. Grief isn’t pretty, nor is it quiet. It’s the sound of a mother sobbing as she buries her child. It’s the co-founders of Black Lives Matter Toronto camping outside to protest.”

This post by Delilah Dawson on how to make a book playlist.

“I learned very early on that music is a great way to build books and preserve sanity.

That means that for each book, I have a specific playlist. When I’m building up the idea, writing the first draft, or editing, I listen to that playlist exclusively– in the car, while on walks, while cleaning the kitchen. I behaviorally condition myself to be in that world with those characters when I hear that music. That means that if I need to switch between projects– say, stop a first draft halfway through to revise a book for my agent or editor– I can easily switch gears and reimmerse myself in the book that needs attention.”

This post by Cat Graffam on intersex identity. Trigger warning for discussion of genitals, coercive surgery, depression, self harm and suicide.

“I remember sitting on the floor of my first apartment late at night, secretly researching the “deformity” that I had kept hidden throughout my life. I felt alone in my experiences, and almost never discussed what I had been through with anyone. It goes without saying that I was still very emotionally scarred from my traumatic medical history. One click lead to another and I found myself reading The Intersex Roadshow, a blog by Cary Costello. The particular post I read pointed out the ways that society hides intersex identity from people who are designated male at birth and have intersex traits, and instead labels these bodies as “deformed” or merely “inadequate” rather than somewhere along the spectrum of sex. I could barely finish it, being met head on with ideas that shook the foundation of my identity. I began rapidly shuffling through my experiences and the ways I thought about myself.

Staring blankly at my laptop screen, I realized…shit, he was talking about me. “How could I have not known about this?” I kept asking myself.”

This interview with Tiq Milan has some lovely stuff in it.

“Well, I think the reason that there is more visibility around trans women and their issues really comes down sexism and misogyny, really. So one, it’s important to understand that like 97% of the decision-making in media is coming from men – and mostly heterosexual men. So we have to deal with male gaze. Femininty and feminine people are always going to be a part of that male gaze. There’s something, I think, in media where they look at femininity as something that’s performative whereas masculinity just is. So there’s that aspect of it, and also femininity is policed more than masculinity. Somebody will see a woman who is 6’3” and will be looking for indications of her femininity, questioning her femininity. But nobody is going to do that to a guy who is 5’4”. So we walk in the world differently because masculinity isn’t as policed and people don’t have this feeling that they want to control masculinity in the same way — people want to control femininity and feminine folks. So I think that’s where it comes from.

Even if we look at these “bathroom bills” — no one wants to meet in the ladies room. But we are still saying that I would have to go into the ladies room, which lets me know that this was never about trans men! It wasn’t about trans-masculine people. This has always been about controlling who is feminine and who has the authority to embody femininity. And I think that’s the issue. All of these violent attacks — don’t get me wrong. I definitely know of trans men who have had to deal with sexual assault and sexual violence at the hands of gay men and men in general. And I think that it’s not reported on a lot and I know this has happened to indviduals and it didn’t get reported at all because the stigma of trans men and being in your trans body and having to experience sexual assault is something that’s traumatic in and of itself. So there’s that that’s happening, but the rate of murder and the just insidious hatefulness that’s spewed towards trans women is really at an epidemic. More trans women have been murdered this year than in all of 2015 and it’s only May! And the thing is that’s happening because of misogny! This is just coming out of a hate for women that is coupled with homophobia in a weird way. So it leaves trans men out of the equation, but oftentimes I think people try to pit trans women and trans men against each other, like who is going to fight for more visibility — and that’s not what it is. What we have to understand is the problem is the sexist patriarchy this is putting trans women and feminine people in general in a more vulnerable place than me.”

This post on The Uninspirational about stone sexuality and autism, which responds to my stone sexuality blog series, is really worth a read, folks.

“In most parts of my life, I have a hard time shifting focus. I want to focus my mind and my energy on one thing at a time because shifting focus requires a lot of effort from me. Sometimes shifting focus from one thing to another is so demanding that when I’ve managed to do the shift I need to recharge for quite some time before I have the mental energy to commit the my new focus. This can include sex. Often, it actually does include sex.”

Tagged: anger, antiblackness, autism, dating politics, identity, intersex, misogyny, music, queer, racism, relationships, sexism, stone, trans, transmisogyny, trauma, writer's tools, writing

Links of the week 5/25/16

Here are some of the awesome things I have read this past week, my recommendations to you.

This nuanced, complex conversation between four non-binary folks (Meredith Talusan, Jacob Tobia, Tiq Milan, and Nico Fonseca) about gender, bodies, & the concept of “born in the wrong body” is brilliant and everyone should read it.

“Growing up as a fat queer person, my body has always been something I should not be allowed to identify with, love, or accept. Being trans meant that too. The more I wanted to explore my body, and push the socially imposed boundaries of presentation, the more I was encouraged to explore a hypermasculinity in order to validate myself, my identities and my journey. For me, coming into myself is to unapologetically let myself be what I want to — the radical self-determination and to reclaim the agency over my body, my hair, my voice, and my skin.”

Lin Miguel Miranda’s speech at the U Penn graduation, which you must watch if you have not seen it. While you are at it, take a look at Reina Gosset’s speech at Hampshire College graduation, too.

This week has been full of reading about writing and mental illness, and I am so grateful for that.

Kristine Willis tweeted at length about being bipolar and how it intersected with her writing and publishing experience. Those tweets are worth a read, as is this post of hers about coming out of a depressive episode.

“I’m having to pull the words from somewhere deep and almost forgotten and, at times, it hurts to do so. But I’m getting them out and that feels like something. Something significant. It feels like hope.”

There is also this storify by Kate Elliott with tips for how to write while depressed.

And Veronica Roth wrote about her experiences with anxiety and writing and in particular, medication.

“I was never the kind of person who was even open to the suggestion of antidepressants– I thought that was a sign of weakness, something other people needed, not me. I was strong. I would fight it on my own.

(Right?)

I’ll never forget what my therapist said to me the day I finally raised the subject of brain chemicals to her. It was pretty simple, just, “you don’t have to fight so hard.” Meaning: you don’t have to go it alone, do it without help. You don’t have to try to be so strong.

I burst into tears. She had released me, somehow, from the obligation of working so hard just to get out of bed, and put on clothes, and interact with other people.”

This interview with Vivek Shraya is amazing and you should read it.

“The first time I learned about transness, I was in my early/mid twenties. I remember wishing that I had been presented with the option when I was younger. It felt like a ship that had sailed.

After a solid decade of experiencing daily genderphobia and homophobia that I experienced in school, my early twenties was also a period of time when I was very focused on adopting masculinity. I often talk about how it was my mother’s love that prevented me from killing myself as a teenager, which is true, but choosing to live was an act of surrendering to masculinity. I even told myself that becoming a man could be a kind of fun challenge.

But the longer I have lived, the more painful the enforcement of masculinity has felt, especially as I have developed friendships with people who have been eager to celebrate me for who I am. So in a lot of ways, I see my transition as more of a “de-transition,” trying to undo the work I did to survive.”

This madness and oppression guide from the Icarus Project is worth a look.

This advice column on how to have hot nasty hookup sex as a QTPOC.

“So the short version is: I don’t think we can fuck as QTPOC in our tender, resilient, complex bodies the way the white bois in Queer As Folk do. I think we can have all kinds of public and non committed kinky sex, but not if we try and fit ourselves inside their model of anonymous sex. I think we’d all be dreaming our way closer to the decolonial rebellious sex our hearts want if we located ourselves here, in these miraculous scarred bodies. As not burden or broken, but as the gifts we have.”

This tumblr that’s focused on offering resources that counter queer & trans oppression:  “The messages we need to tell us that who we are is important, magnificent, and necessary.”

Tagged: anxiety, art, bipolar, decolonization, depression, gender, hookup sex, mental illness, non-binary, oppression, queer, queer communities, trans, Trans non-binary, writer's tools, writing

Elust 82

Welcome to Elust #82 –

The only place where the smartest and hottest sex bloggers are featured under one roof every month. Whether you’re looking for sex journalism, erotic writing, relationship advice or kinky discussions it’ll be here at Elust. Want to be included in Elust #83 Start with the rules, come back June 1st to submit something and subscribe to the RSS feed for updates!

 

~ This Month’s Top Three Posts ~

Take Me

How Do I Love Thee:On Comparing Relationships

Asking all the questions…

 

~ Featured Post (Molly’s Picks) ~

Erotic Fiction: Fishnet Queen

I Manage My Expectations

~Readers Choice from Sexbytes ~

*You really should consider adding your popular posts here too*

Wanna Have Sex With Me? – Here’s how

All blogs that have a submission in this edition must re-post this digest from tip-to-toe on their blogs within 7 days. Re-posting the photo is optional and the use of the “read more…” tag is allowable after this point. Thank you, and enjoy!

 

Sex News, Opinion, Interviews, Politics & Humor

Maybe I’m not a pervert after all

Bad Excuses

Engaging with Sexuality: A Personal Perspecti

I wish there were more porn

Cock Size: Does it matter?

Blue is not a “boy color.”

Erotic Non-Fiction

Watching My Wife With Another Man Story

Afternoon Cunnilingus & Birthday Sofa Sex

Why You Should Shave Your Partner

Oct 2014 Session – Mistress Claire

Two Days Later

Roping a cougarling

Divining Rods

Dorabella’s pink-velvet spanner

Erotic Fiction

Puppy Love

Quick & Dirty

She Says My Voice Changes for Her

THE BLINDFOLD – fear of the unknown

U is for undress…

Stay Baby…Stay.

kink of the week–glasses

Thoughts & Advice on Sex & Relationships

Slutfest Reflection

Love and Fairness

Winnowing

V is for……..

My heart turns blacker: the new rules

 

Thoughts & Advice on Kink & Fetish

Blast from the Fetish Video Past

The whole person approach to Submission

Down on my knees

Dominant Doppelgangers, Dominant Opposites

Four eyes

BDSM and Depression: Therapy or Self-Harm?

Poetry

Eden, Revisited: A Lusty Limerick

Writing About Writing

Stepping Stones

Centering Disabled Characters in My Erotica

Tagged: elust

Links of the week 5/18/16

Here are some of the brilliant things I have read this past week, my recommendations to you.

This interview with Esmé Weijun Wang totally blew me away. So much in there about language, interracial relationships, mental illness. Really worth a read.

“I chose to use English as well as Chinese in two ways: Chinese characters and pinyin, which is the romanization. There is some Taiwanese, but it’s mostly Chinese characters and pinyin. Part of my thought process in using the two has to do with levels of opacity. With the Chinese characters—the pictograms—there’s basically nothing you can do there if you don’t know Chinese. It’s unlike something like Junot Díaz’s work, where he uses Dominican Spanish without translation and you can at least type it into Google Translate and get a very basic understanding. With Chinese characters, there’s nothing you can do to get that translation, and so there are parts of my book where, unless you’re “in,” you’re not going to understand what the character is saying. And I did that deliberately.

You mentioned the blank spaces—the blank spaces are the correlation to that. Daisy Nowak, the Taiwanese main character, often uses the blank spaces to depict parts of conversation in English that she doesn’t understand. And I wanted there to be times when Daisy got to be the insider, where her use of language takes a primary stance. That’s when I used the Chinese characters. I actually came up with a number of rules for using the Chinese characters, versus pinyin, versus English. One of those rules was that I would use Chinese characters if she was speaking to another character who also spoke Chinese, and only if that particular portion of speech were about something the two of them shared in a very close-knit cultural space.”

Forge Forward’s self help guide to healing and understanding for trans survivors of sexual violence. (downloadable PDF)

Brandon Taylor on fem-shaming and gender tropes in M/M romance.

“But before the proclamation of love, Cityboy has to endure a string of homophobic and misogynistic diatribe from the town and even maybe from the Lumberjack himself. There may even be a direct plea from Lumberjack (after they fuck, mind you) for the Cityboy to straighten up his walk and maybe be a bit manlier. Lumberjack will often marvel to himself at how beautiful Cityboy is but still not understand how he can love a man so soft.”

Ella Dawson, on STI’s not being a consequence.

“I also started to hear something else, something I liked a lot less. And I hear it on a daily basis. I hear it from my coworkers, from my friends, from really hot guys in bars, which is that I am so brave. I am so brave. ‘Ella, what you are doing is just so brave.’ And the thing is, when you tell someone that they are brave, you are recognizing really hard work that they’re doing. You are giving them that validation and that respect for the risk that they are taking. But you’re also telling them something else, which is that you think what they are doing is unthinkable. That you yourself could never do that. It turns me into this weird superhero. And the fact is, that is not what I want.

Because in the world that I want, and in the world that I’m hoping all of you help me build, telling someone that you have an STI should not be brave or shocking. It should be normal, and kind of boring.”

Charlie Glickman’s post on consent accidents vs. consent violations has some useful stuff in it. Writers, I would love to read more stories with consent accidents in them, so I urge you to take a look.

“A consent violation happens when someone chooses to ignore or cross someone’s boundaries. People do that for a lot of reasons, including selfishness, arrogance, not caring about their partner, getting off on harming someone (which is distinct from the consensual experience of BDSM), or being somewhere else on the douchebag-rapist spectrum.

Consent accidents, however, are different because they happen because of error, miscommunication, misunderstanding, or not having all the information. That doesn’t make it less painful. If you step on my toes, it hurts whether it was an accident or on purpose. But how I approach the situation and what we do to resolve it might look very different.”

Dahlia Adler has this great storify with tips for author websites. Worth taking a look, folks.

This interview with Heidi Heilig that focuses on representation of mental illness in her novel, The Girl From Everywhere.

“I’ve never felt an obligation or a responsibility to include mental illness in my writing, possibly because I avoid responsibility and obligation wherever I can. But being bipolar, the disorder has shaped my life so fully that Slate’s entire personality came very easily to the page. Of all the characters I’ve written so far, he is the one who most closely resembles me.”

Larissa Pham on selfies, mirrors, and masturbation

“When I started taking dirty pictures I quickly learned that nudes taken without the front facing camera were disastrous. To take an arousing photograph I needed to be both object and witness, desire’s body of evidence. I had to know how it looked as I was enacting it. How I could be golden, lush.”

Lime Jello on why you should not study sex workers.

“How do you repay this help that we are giving you? You make your research matter to us. Since just doing the research doesn’t help anyone but you, you need to do some extra work to make it useful to us. A direct benefit to sex workers is the necessary condition of doing research on sex work. Period.”

I really appreciate Lyric Seal’s sex advice column at Crash Pad. This most recent one covers questions about demisexuality, relationship with genitals, and staying in the moment during sex.

I wrote at the Erotica Readers and Writers Blog about how erotica about group sex often centers couples and assumes that jealousy and conflict are inevitable, and other options for writing group sex.

“I really think it’s worth exploring group sex stories that don’t have this built-in assumption of competition, jealousy, threat, and interpersonal conflict. When I read stories that are rooted in these things, they frequently feel boring, depressing, stuck, and flat. I am not rooting for the couple or finding the group sex hot, I’m mostly just sad for everyone involved. I vastly prefer stories that center openness, abundance of possibilities, collaboration, exploration of internal struggle. I experience those stories as full of hope and possibility, and infinitely hotter. I encourage you to consider possibilities outside this box that our genre is so often in, even just as an experiment in pushing your own thinking and practice as an erotica writer.”

Tagged: ableism, ace spectrum, consent, consent accidents, consent violations, demisexuality, erotica writing, fem-shaming, gender tropes, group sex, herpes, language, M/M romance, masturbation, mental illness, misogyny, self help, selfies, sex worker centered thought, sex workers, sexual assault, STI's, trans, trauma, writer's tools

Reading this Sunday in San Francisco: As Queer As You Want To Be

As you know, my first solo collection, Show Yourself To Me: Queer Kink Erotica, was released in the fall. I am excited to be reading from it this coming weekend in San Francisco!

When: Sunday May 22, 3pm

Where: The Center for Sex and Culture in SF. 1349 Mission St. between 9th and 10th

Who:

Avery Cassell is an older genderqueer San Francisco writer, poet, cartoonist, and artist who grew up in Iran. They live with their Maine Coon cat, Lulu, and bake yeasted waffles every Sunday morning. You can find their erotic short stories sprinkled in various anthologies, including Best Lesbian Erotica 2015 and Sex Still Spoken Here. Avery is currently working on a book of more of Behrouz and Lucky’s shenanigans, transcribing a collection of aerograms from Iran to the States in the early 1960s, and an illustrated early reader children’s book about a eight year old transgender boy and his family.
Sinclair Sexsmith is a genderqueer kinky butch writer who teaches and performs, specializing in sexualities, genders, and relationships. They’ve written atnet since 2006, recognized numerous places as one of the Top Sex Blogs. Sinclair’s gender theory and queer erotica is widely published in anthologies and online, and they are the editor of Best Lesbian Erotica 2012 and Say Please: Lesbian BDSM Erotica, both published by Cleis Press.
Wickie Stamps is a widely published writer whose work has appeared in The Advocate, OutWeek, Gay Community News and over a dozen short-story collections. Wickie has won accolades for her writing of the staged drama Fugue State (Fringe Festival, San Francisco) and the multiple-award-winning film Foucault Who? Prior editor of both the notoriously hypermasculine Drummer magazine and the equally infamous Socialist Review, Wickie continues to make films, zines, and other work as part of San Francisco’s Heads Will Roll Studios. Keep an eye out for the upcoming Zeboiim, a queerly Southern tale of trauma and crime, and for Io Facc’ l’Omm, a disturbing crossroads of gender and obsession.
Xan West refuses pronouns, twists barbed wire together with yearning, and tilts pain in many directions to catch the light. Xan adores vulnerable tops; strong, supportive bottoms; red meat; long winding conversations about power, privilege, and community; showtunes; and cool, dark, quiet rooms with comfortable beds. Find Xan’s thoughts about the praxis of sex, kink, queerness, power, and writing at xanwest.wordpress.com.

What: As Queer As You Want To Be. Four local smutty writers, Sunday afternoon, and you!

A free gift bag of sexy goodies from the fabulous folks at Good Vibrations for the first 15 folks at the show!

Suggested donation ($5-20) — No one turned away for lack of funds!

Avery Cassell will be reading from Behrouz Gets Lucky, a romantic, literary, kinky, and political novel about two older San Francisco queers – a butch dyke gardener named Lucky and a genderqueer librarian named Behrouz.

Sinclair Sexsmith will be reading from Sweet and Rough. Sweet, sensual adoration and dirty, rough sex meet in this anthology of queer smut.

Wickie Stamps will be reading from Io Facc’ l’Omm, a disturbing crossroads of gender and obsession.

I will be reading from Show Yourself To Me, a queer kink erotica collection where you meet pretty boys and nervous boys, vulnerable tops and dominant sadists, good girls and fierce girls and scared little girls, mean Daddies and loving Daddies and Daddies that are terrifying in delicious ways.

I am going to read from my story, “Willing,” which is by far my most romantic story yet. It centers a jaded vampire dominant sadist who meets the willing boy of his dreams, and includes knives, canes, rough body play, and blood sports, some of my most favorite things. Here is a tiny taste.

“I have been watching you a long time, Sir. I have seen how you play. I see the beast inside you. I know what is missing. Those boys at the Lure don’t know how to give you what you really need. They don’t see that they are barely feeding your craving and not touching your hunger. The boys here at Gomorrah don’t see you. They just see their own fantasy. They are simply food. I am strong, Sir. Strong enough for you. I can be yours. My blood, my flesh, my sex, my service. Yours to take however you choose, for as long as you want. To slake your hunger. I would be honored, Sir.”

I take a deep breath, stunned, studying him. This boy offered what I never really thought was possible. He has surprised me again. That alone shows that this boy is more than a meal. He just might be able to be all that he has offered.

I almost leave him there. I am ready to walk away. Fear creeps along my spine. With the centuries I have lived and the things I have seen, this boy is what scares me. There is nothing more terrifying than hope. I rake my eyes over him. He is standing quietly. He looks like he could stand in that position for hours. He has said his piece and is content to wait for my response. Oh, he is more than food, this one. What a gift to offer a vampire. Can I refuse this offering when it’s laid out before me? I step back, looking him over, and decide.

I breathe in possibility, watching the pulse in his throat. My senses heighten further as I focus my hunger on him, noticing the minute changes in breath, scenting him. I want to see him tremble. I want to smell his fear. I want to devour his pain, without holding back. Forget this public arena. If there is even a possibility that I might truly let go and move with the beast inside my skin, his growl on my lips and his claws grasping prey, I know exactly where I need to take this boy.

I do hope to see you this weekend at this awesome event!

Tagged: D/s, kink, readings, sadism, SF Bay Area, Show Yourself To Me, trans, vampires, vulnerable tops, willing, writing erotica

Links of the Week 5/11/16

Here are some of the brilliant things I have read this past week, my recommendations to you.

First I need to start with the amazing online poetry anthology Hard Femme Poetics: A Poetic Anthology of Femme Literary Brilliance, ed. by Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha. I am taking this in slowly, a few poems at a time. So very glad this is out in the world.

On the fiction side of things, I fell hard for S.L. Huang’s beautiful story, “Hunting Monsters”.  Here is what Strange Charm Books had to say about this story:

“Considering Hunting Monsters is only a few thousand words long, you get a lot of fairytale for your money. Beauty and the Beast, Snow White, Little Red Riding Hood, and Snow White and Rose Red all make an appearance here. However, each of these stories is presented slightly differently to how you’ve seen them before, and I really enjoyed the way that in doing so, the reader is forced to confront some of the more troubling aspects of fairytales. In the author’s own words: “How would Little Red Riding Hood react after what happened to her as a child — what kind of woman would she grow up to be?” And what if Beauty and the Beast wasn’t a love story (as in the Disney version) but rather about psychological manipulation and Stockholm syndrome — how would Beauty deal with this afterwards?”

Janet Mock’s piece about Beyoncé’s Lemonade

“It is in the telling where the fairy tale begins. Living and loving, hurting and surviving is not enough. Being able to give testimony to the burden, to “spin gold out of this hard life” and “conjure beauty from the things left behind,” is the fairy tale for the black woman. We improvise a way with our own lives. We refuse the sentencing of silence by giving testimony. This testimony provides blueprints that free us and the sisters and daughters who come after us.

Lemonade  is the recipe we pass down to our black girls bearing witness to testimony. It is a cold, stinging truth; sweet and tart.”

Anne Leckie on writing omniscient point of view

“Specific advice for handling POV is nearly always advice for handling 3rd person limited, though it’s often articulated only as advice for handling POV, period. Writers who use that advice as their default template for handling POV will find themselves faced with difficulties if they attempt omni–hence, perhaps, the common wisdom that omni is hard to do, though once you realize that your POV technique isn’t POV technique but 3rd person limited technique, it becomes much easier. And then, of course, writers trained up on the features of 3rd person limited as ‘good POV’ will read through that framework as well, which makes pieces written in omni look like they’re just full of incompetent POV slips and if it works anyway, well that’s because the writer ‘knew how to break the rules.’

***

Excuse me, I had to take a few calming breaths after typing the ‘know how to break the rules’ thing. Look, if you can break it and the story still works–if lots and lots of writers break it and those stories still work–it is not a rule. There are not actually any rules. Okay? Okay.”

Andre Shakti gives some advice about responding to transmisogynist microaggressions between metamours in When Your Boyfriend Tries To ‘Bro Out’ with Your Girlfriend.

“even if Dan has the best intentions and is reaching out to Layla to connect ‘the only way he knows how’, his methods are still illustrating that he relates to her in a masculine way, instead of acknowledging, respecting and validating her feminine (and uniquely individual) identity. He may not realize that his ‘bro code’ hurts, but fortunately that’s where you can step in.”

Megan Erickson on writing and anxiety

“I have been thinking a lot about my anxiety lately now that I took a short breather. I released a lot of books last year and wrote a lot too. I was constantly on deadline. I told myself I’d take a break in April of this year. And you know what? IT SUCKED. It was like my brain didn’t know what to do now that it didn’t have that dedicated focus time every day. It neeeeeds it. It fuels it. It allows me to sort out everything else when I have that time to spew out everything that’s circulating in my brain. Writing is like my brain’s every day spring cleaning.”

Mallory Ortberg on fat oppression in publishing

“‘We would have paid her the same money if she weighed 500 pounds and was really hard to look at.’

This is such a telling quote in so many ways, and says a great deal about what types of writers so many of the gatekeepers in publishing are looking for – often, although not in this case, unconsciously. The ‘if she weighed 500 pounds’ part is so clearly a hyperbolic flourish, as if Herr was thinking, what’s something really outrageous, something that no great writer would ever be, to make it clear how much we don’t let someone’s looks influence the size of their advance, as if to say, Can you imagine a brilliant writer who also weighed 500 pounds. It’s the ‘or purple’ of ‘I don’t care if you’re black, or white, or purple’: This would never happen, but even if it did, I wouldn’t care.

‘We’d have bought this book EVEN IF – I don’t know – the writer were 500 pounds, as if that could ever happen.’ But that could, and does, happen! People of that size both exist and write. They sometimes write tremendous and valuable things.”

Karrie Higgins writes about growing up disabled and connecting with Prince as a fellow disabled person. (TW: detailed descriptions of sexual abuse)

“As a kid growing up with epilepsy, I made myself colorful as a survival strategy.

Age 14, a sharp, distinct, intentional before and after: Before seizures, I was the shy, quiet girl drowning in baggy kitten sweatshirts and Wrangler jeans; after seizures, I showed up to school in fishnets, combat boots, heavy black eyeliner, and dyed red-platinum-orange-pink-black (whatever fit the mood that week) hair. While the other kids whispered Karrie is on drugs, Karrie is nuts, Karrie pisses her pants, Karrie is faking, Karrie is a freak, I said fuck it. I will show them a freak. My clothes got weirder. My writing got weirder. My musical tastes got weirder. My art got weirder. I got weirder.

I didn’t know until years later that Prince did the same damn thing. Prince had epilepsy, too. Prince got freaky as survival strategy.

In 2009, he talked about his epilepsy publicly for the first time on PBS with Tavis Smiley. “From that point on,” he said, “I’ve been having to deal with a lot of things, getting teased a lot in school. And early in my career I tried to compensate by being as flashy as I could and as noisy as I could.”

Prince was a walking disability poetics.”

An interview with Tobi Hill-Meyer about trans erotica

“You can’t understand how incredibly valuable a moment of being accepted for all that you are in the midst of a positive healthy sexual experience can be for so many trans people unless you have a sense of the despair that can come with the fears that such a moment will never come.

When every story is about how incredibly hot people have incredible sex together with incredible orgasms, it becomes flat. Compare that to a submission I received in which you’ve seen the traumatic past that causes a woman difficulty having any sex at all, and now she’s masturbating in her lover’s arms, who gently pets her forehead to ward away flashbacks, finally shuddering in gentle release to an orgasm she hasn’t had in who knows how long—that story legitimately moved me in a way that would not be possible without room for a fuller emotional pallet. That’s what sets this work apart from typical cis-centric erotica.”

Vivek Shraya on how to give good readings (which is definitely timely for me as I’m doing a reading in a couple weeks!)

“In the music world, singers are often told to “eat the mic,” which basically means sing right into the microphone, almost like you are making out with it. This is because singers are often competing with a multitude of different sounds. Book events tend to be less sonically competitive, but because writers are often shy and introverted, we tend to fear the microphone, and therefore stand far from it, as though it might eat us if we step too close to it.

I am here to tell you that the mic is your friend. Walk right up to it, and speak into it. You don’t have to yell. Like a good friend, you can rely on it to help amplify your voice. But first, make sure the head of the mic is pointing directly at your mouth—not your chin, not your neck. You shouldn’t have to hunch over to speak into the mic, and your mouth shouldn’t be further than two inches away from it. Don’t hesitate to adjust the mic or the mic stand, or to ask for help from the organizer with this. People want to hear the beauty of your words. It’s worth spending thirty seconds to get the mic properly positioned for you, so the audience can hear you without having to strain.”

Tagged: anxiety, Beyonce, disability, erotica, fairy tales, fat oppression, femme, mental illness, microaggressions, omniscient, poetry, polyamory, POV, Prince, publishing, readings, trans, trans erotica, transmisogyny, writing, writing advice

Links of the Week 5/4/16

So I’m enjoying sharing links to awesome things I’ve found,  discussing the things I often write about here: kink, trauma, writing, polyamory, representation of marginalized folks, oppression, sexuality, disability, queerness, fat activism, erotica, trans and non-binary daily life. Here are the ones I found this past week.

Neve Be’s beautiful piece, “Virgins in Time” on time travel, claiming desire in the midst of trauma, queerness and being a sixteen year old virgin again many years later.

“It is possible and necessary to alter time when you are queer. Our temporality is simply not a heteropatriarchal ciscentric one. But time itself is spun out through the mouths of the bodies that are not ours. How can we see or hear or fuck as ourselves when we use their language and method of timekeeping? How to re-remember who we have been and who we might have been and who we can still be if we do not shift our perception of our lived reality in a queerphobic world? What I’m trying to say is, as radical queers, we are gifted with the ability to time travel. And it’s time to tap in. You can sacrifice this ability, or you can run with it. Fuck with time. Unfuck yourself. Fuck love into yourself. Become yourself. Visibility means nothing if we are not also reflective and pursuing inner growth. Growth inside our bodies. Growth inside our own paradigms. You have choices. If this analogy is so obvious to you that I have hurt your feelings by writing it out, I’m sorry. If it is so new to you that I have blown your wad, welcome to the void.”

Ada Hoffman on worldbuilding about, through, and with autism.

“Whatever your worldbuilding flavor, there’s a way to work autism in—and whatever kind of story you want for your autistic characters, there’s a world for it. Utopian and dystopian writing can use concerns about disability as the basis for a whole world. Autism can intersect in fascinating ways with the technological and cultural details of your world. Or autism can be treated the way it is here and now—which can be an opportunity to comment directly on real-world disability issues, or to focus on including autistic characters in a more universal experience. Either way, speculative fiction gives us a full box of tools to write exciting adventures for all sorts of autistic people—in any possible world.”

Kathleen Burdo on 9 steps to coming out to health care providers about being queer, kinky, poly, or a sex worker.

“Instead of potentially being shamed or refused care, a lot of queer folk just go without. And while we don’t have reliable stats on kinky people, poly people, or sex workers, I hear that same sentiment echoed in those communities: “I just go without.” Or: “I just don’t tell my doctor.””

Delilah Dawson on how to take an idea and make it into a story. This series of tweets takes a concrete example and draws it through a process of building a story.

Mikki Kendall on depicting diversity in fiction and the necessary work that goes into preventing harm.

“There’s this weird myth that bigotry only looks like physical violence, and yes that’s awful, but deep down the physical violence is only a symptom. Bigotry, real harmful sustained across generations bigotry is much more covert. It lends itself to creating fictional characters that paint Black people as violent thugs, it lends itself to Black motherhood being depicted as loveless, it lends itself to trans characters that are villains, to killing lesbians off for loving, to disability as a burden on families, to a million and one seemingly individual stories that paint a comprehensive picture of anyone who is not cis, white, straight, and able bodied as unworthy of existence”

Mark Hay interviews Rebecca Moller about having sex with Ehlers Danlos syndrome.

“Whoever I’m with as my partner, I’m worried how they’ll react. If I dislocate, is that going to be a problem or is that OK? I could dislocate my jaw for instance and then put it back and be quite willing to carry on. But for some people, that’s too much. It would kill the mood, understandably. I have to talk through things with people much more and say, ‘you need to be aware that this might happen, but you don’t need to worry about it unless I tell you to.’”

Sinclair Sexsmith’s list of 10 best erotica books for butches. Some of my favorite erotica collections are on this list; it’s definitely worth checking out. (It includes my collection, Show Yourself To Me, which I’m deeply honored by.)

This interview with queer erotic romance writer Kris Ripper on Just Love Romance

“If you’re a writer, sit down right now and write a character who intimidates the hell out of you. Not to publish it. Just to write it.”

Zetta Elliott on self publishing as a Black feminist act of radical self care.

“For me, self-publishing is a radical act of self-care because it redirects my energy away from a toxic engagement with those who are oblivious to the “urgencies” of my community (I am indebted to Robin Bernstein for this definition of obliviousness: “not merely an absence of knowledge, but an active state of repelling knowledge”). Self-publishing stops me from knocking on a door that will never open—or only open grudgingly.

Telling my own stories in my own way is also, for me, the ultimate act of self-love because it is an act of resistance. It is a rejection of the implicit messages editors send along with their “Thanks, but no thanks”: you’re not worthy, you’re not one of us, you have nothing meaningful or important to say.”

Stella Young’s letter to her younger self about sex, dating, and disability

“All your worries about love and sex and relationships are reasonable and real. I’d be lying if I told you none of your fears are justified. Let me just allay the strongest of those fears upfront: you will have sex. A lot of sex. Relax.

The truth is, there will be people who will overlook you, who will pass you over and ignore you. There’ll be people who are really attracted to you, but whose feelings are squashed by the social pressures of what the media and society tells them is acceptable attraction. That’s ok. It’s just the way it goes. The good news is, it’s nowhere near as bad as you think it’s going to be. Not even close.

Those things are bound up in some other stuff you need to deal with first. You need to stop fantasising about being able-bodied, just for starters. I know it’s hard. All the people around you occupy the same kind of physical space. It’s hard not to imagine that you look just like them, because you feel just like them on the inside. But you don’t look like them; you look like you. And the sooner you start surrounding yourself with people who look different, the more comfortable you’ll be with your own difference.”

I wrote about my process and experience of centering disabled characters in my erotica.

“This project was an integration of my own transformation with regard to my own disabilities. I had been moving in a new direction around my own experience of disability and illness, and my writing was catching up with me, so to speak. These processes of embracing disability, in my life and in my writing, have had a tremendously important impact, created huge change for me, and they have intertwined and played off of each other in many ways.”

Tagged: autism, Black feminism, butch, coming out, competition, decolonization, disability, disability representation, erotica, oppression, queer communities, queerness, self care, self publishing, sex, time travel, virginity, worldbuilding, writing, writing erotica, writing the other

Centering Disabled Characters in My Erotica

This post has been written for Blogging Against Disablism Day 2016.

In 2012, I started a new phase of writing. I decided to deliberately center disabled and sick characters in my erotic writing. This project began with the initial writing of my Tam Lin retelling, “The Tale of Jan & Tam,” in which I imagine both Tam Lin and Janet as disabled genderqueers who meet at Carter Hall, a public dungeon committed to accessibility. (You can find an excerpt here alongside a post of mine where I give advice about writing disabled characters in erotic fiction.)

This project was an integration of my own transformation with regard to my own disabilities. I had been moving in a new direction around my own experience of disability and illness, and my writing was catching up with me, so to speak. These processes of embracing disability, in my life and in my writing, have had a tremendously important impact, created huge change for me, and they have intertwined and played off of each other in many ways.

Mia Mingus draws a useful distinction between folks who are politically disabled, vs. folks who are descriptively disabled. One of the big things that has sparked changes for me is being in close relationship with folks who are politically disabled. I write my stories with that intimacy in mind, for us. I could not have changed my life, my thinking, or my writing, alone.

I have also been writing about my own process of changing my writing to center disabled people. I wrote a post for Blogging Against Disablism Day (BADD) a couple years ago when it felt like I had solidified some strategies for how to change my erotica writing to center characters with disabilities. At that time, I had a solid group of erotica stories that centered disabled characters, and began to try to sell them, in the same way I had been selling my other work, submitting the stories to anthologies that seemed like a good fit, and responding to solicitations for stories from editors that enjoyed my previous work.

Last year, I wrote a post for BADD, about being a disabled top in kink community, where I discussed how writing these stories is part of how I navigate access to kink life as a disabled top. I discussed my difficulty selling the stories, but also how much I wanted to get them out into the world. I began to consider a new strategy: including the stories in a collection with reprints of my other work. Several months and a few more rejections later, a publisher asked me to put together a manuscript for a collection of my erotica. That manuscript became Show Yourself To Me, and was released last October.

When I was putting together the manuscript, I edited a number of my other stories to more clearly mark characters as disabled, and also did edits to show more vulnerability in my top characters. (I see these things as connected projects—centering disabled characters and illuminating the vulnerability of tops—because one of my struggles as a disabled top has been with the fantasy of the top as invulnerable and having no needs.)

In the midst of the editing process, I got some feedback about a few of my stories that center disabled characters that had me thinking deeply and critically about what sort of feedback to take in, particularly around how much to explain about disabled daily life. One of my stories has a group BDSM scene where a superfat femme trans guy bottom is tied to a sling that is rated for his size and a bunch of disabled fat tops of varying genders and sizes on mobility scooters are circling him, poking him with their canes. One of the pieces of editing feedback I received about the story was that this particular reader could not picture this moment in the scene, and wanted more description, more explanation. The reader wanted me to help them see the action more clearly, because they could not picture how the people would look as they were moving. This story is an insider story, particularly written for disabled fat activist queers. It intentionally does not make a big deal about how people move on scooters, because it’s a regular part of daily life for the intended audience. Centering disabled readers as well as characters changes how stories are written, and getting really clear about my intention around that has helped me tremendously, especially when grappling with feedback. It also has me thinking a lot about who I seek feedback from, and how I vet those people.

I also got some other feedback about my depiction of disabled characters during the editing process that felt like it really missed the mark, and had me thinking about the intensity of our erasure as disabled people. One reader thought that the disabilities I wrote about were metaphors! As if it was not possible that I might be writing about actual disabled people in erotica. Another reader said that my depiction of a diabetic character was unrealistic. Ironically, the particular moment that was termed unrealistic was deeply reflective of my own daily life as a diabetic—injecting insulin around other people without fanfare or asking permission. I was told that something I regularly do is simply never done!

I’m particularly excited that reviewers have talked about the way I write disabled characters, because I hope that will help disabled readers find my work. I wrote my stories with disabled readers in mind, and I know how rare it is to find erotica that centers disabled characters, much less queer erotica that centers us, so I really want readers to be able to find it. I am also very pleased that one of the stories I had so much trouble selling on its own, “The Tender Sweet Young Thing”, the one with the group scene I described above, is by far the most popular of the stories in the collection.

This work—centering disabled characters—has had to be incredibly conscious and deliberate, for years. I kept slipping back into old habits. I needed to catch myself, go back and edit, because I would lose this intention. Would automatically write nondisabled characters.  Would automatically write invulnerable tops. Would struggle in including the kinds of internal experience and thinking about access that are part of daily life as a disabled person in the world.

It is not easy to change. It takes lots of repetitive work. It is not linear. It takes a long time to integrate learning into doing. Praxis is not easy. But sometimes, eventually, it becomes easier. More integrated. Needs to be less labored. It starts flowing more.

I seem to have happened upon more flow recently, with regard to centering disabled characters, writing for disabled readers. Which I’m very grateful for.

I’m working on a theory about why this work is flowing more for me these days. I think it’s partly because I’ve been reading stories by disabled writers, centering disabled characters. I haven’t found much erotic fiction or romance by disabled writers that centers disabled characters, but I’ve found these stories in other genres. I treasure them when I find them, in any genre. In particular, I’ve been reading more SFF, YA, and NA by disabled and sick writers, and have found that both reading and discussing these stories with other disabled and sick readers and writers has had an impact on how I think about writing, and characterization, and worldbuilding.

Of course that’s not the only reason. I’ve been working hard for a long time. I have been working on a novel that centers disabled characters, and I think the long form characterization really helps. I participated in a writing workshop led by disabled queers specifically for disabled queers, and that space really helped. I’ve been connecting more with other disabled writers to talk craft, and that has helped tremendously. I’ve been reading a lot more essays and blog posts that critically analyze fiction centering disabled characters, and that definitely helps.

That said, I do think that reading is a huge piece of this new flow. For me, reading fiction can help me integrate things, strengthen connection. Particularly fiction that I get to discuss with others. I’m so grateful to disabled writers who are centering disabled characters, especially when writing for disabled audiences. And I’m also deeply grateful to connect with disabled readers who write about and discuss these stories. Disabled readers and writers help to make me a better writer.

Tagged: disability, disabled characters, editing, insider stories, kink, vulnerable tops, writing erotica

Links of the Week 4/27/16

I’m trying out sharing a short list of links to things I’ve found on the internet that I think are particularly worth reading, about the things I often write about here: kink, trauma, writing, polyamory, representation of marginalized folks, oppression, disability, sexuality, queerness, fat activism, trans and non-binary daily life.

Queenie on grey areas of sexual experience. This post focuses on consent, compulsory sexuality, and sex normativity and how these things impact the experiences of asexual folks.

“I get the sense that asexuality and sexual violence is at the edge of this massive grey area of sexual experience that no one’s really exploring…from my limited perspective, I can see that we need more words to talk about (or just more conversations about) the motivations behind sexual decisions (whether you want to call that consent or not), about sexual experiences (good, bad, weird, undefinable), about coercion and harassment, about regret and second-guessing.  What I’m mapping out below is only the tiniest corner of that grey area–specifically the place where consent, compulsory sexuality, and sex normativity intersect.”

N.K. Jemisin on the damned if you do/don’t fallacy, focused on the ways privileged (especially white) writers talk about writing diverse characters.

“You aren’t damned if you do; you’re damned if you do badly or in a way that hurts people. You won’t be damned if you don’t think and do research and do all the other things that good writers are supposed to do, but people will probably hesitate to apply the label “good writer” to you. You aren’t even damned — look, I like a hyperbole as much as the next storyteller, but what we’re talking about here is literary criticism, not the Spanish Inquisition. You will not be subjected to eternal hellfire, or even an internet “hate mob,” if you include a stereotype in your fiction. Have you ever really paid attention to how anti-bigotry shitstorms work? They don’t start simply because somebody fucked up; they start because the person who fucked up doubled down on it or got defensive rather than listening to the critique being offered.”

Captain Awkward on interrupting shame spirals with friends who have depression

“There is a ritual happening here, where they vomit their horrible feelings and you reassure them, but they don’t believe it and they don’t become more reassured. If you give yourself permission to stop completing the ritual, over time the ritual may become much shorter or even stop entirely, making room for more intentional conversations.”

Rose Lemberg on writing, privilege and marginalization

“I think that positioning writing as a privilege does us a HUGE disservice by overlooking those of us who write without privilege. Every time we look, we see that there is a literature of the marginalized, literature of resistance and struggle, literature that persists due to the sheer necessity of voice, the voice that proclaims our existence, our vitality, our wisdom, our pain, or histories, work that creates and maintains communal ties that help us persevere despite overwhelming odds.”

This article by Kai Cheng Thom about trans women’s sexuality and orgasms.

“When it comes to the mystery of trans women’s sexuality, here’s what I’ve learned: We fuck in all kinds of ways, some of which you may have to look up on the internet. We fuck all kinds of people, for all kinds of reasons. Fucking us doesn’t necessarily make you gay/straight/lesbian/bisexual, and it doesn’t make you a fetishist either. It may make you nervous, sad, embarrassed, ashamed, terrified, anticipatory, curious, delighted, wondrous, awestruck. It definitely makes you human. Just like us.”

Akundayo Afolayan on Prince as a disability icon

“Visibility is really important to me; especially because positive representation of Black folks, femmes, and people with disabilities is rare. We typically aren’t seen as desirable or worthy of love. But Prince helped to inspire my self-love by exuding his confidence and being celebrated for it. I’m taking a cue from Prince. I’ve learned to be extravagant and myself not despite the seizures, but in the active acceptance of them.”

Alaina on solo submission

“Throughout my journey, I’ve tried — and keep trying — different things that allow me to please myself and submit, even if the person I’m submitting to is me. Headspace is key. A lot of it is talking to myself, roleplaying by myself or imagining myself in more exciting configurations than in my bedroom under my covers hoping my roommate won’t hear me when I come.”

Riptide Publishing has offered an apology and an action plan to address a racist scene in a book they published. This is notable as one of the more in-depth responses to critical feedback about racist representation that has come from a romance publisher.

Daniel Jose Older about love and revolution

“You told me to write this essay to our future children, but I’m writing to you instead. You said to tell them about how their mom worried, how she wasn’t sure if it was a good idea bringing black life into a world that doesn’t value it, but that she landed on hope amidst all the despair. Tell them, you said, about why their father does the work he does, what kind of world you hope to help build for them.

And I will, love, I will. But this moment right now—the night is quiet and I write while you sleep—this moment with all its weight and responsibility, this turning point in the world and our lives, is ours, and these words are for you.”

For a link to my own writing, let me draw your attention to one of the stories from Show Yourself To Me, that is available for free, “Baxter’s Boy”.

 

Tagged: apologies, asexuality, BDSM, compulsory sexuality, consent, D/s, decolonization, depression, disability, kink, love, marginalization, mental illness, oppression, orgasms, Prince, privilege, racism, revolution, sex normativity, sexuality, solo sex, submission, trans sexuality, trans women, whiteness, writing, writing the other