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Susie Bright's Sexual Reality: A Virtual Sex World Reader
Discusses politics, erotics, and the human sexual condition, with the premise that human fantasies and fears, especially the sexual ones, are more real than the real forces we have reckoned with historically
154 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
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About the author
Susie Bright
119 books359 followersSusannah "Susie" Bright (also known as Susie Sexpert) is a writer, speaker, teacher, audio-show host, performer, all on the subject of sexuality. She is one of the first writers/activists referred to as a sex-positive feminist.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
July 4, 2019
A blast back to the 90s. Damn, I'm getting old, but quality never goes out of style.
March 1, 2023
I picked this up at a used book store remembering how much I liked Susie Bright’s funny, intense and direct way of writing about sexuality. This was published in 1992 and it’s a little dated but still amazing. The interview with Camille Paglia was great. It was fun to read someone lasering through Paglia’s grandstanding without any real ill intent. Made me want to revisit and seek out more by Bright.
July 17, 2022
Like all books on queer theory, it shows its age. That said, it is brilliantly funny, deeply moving, and devilishly insightful
June 19, 2016
I used to work in a library that had a few of Susie Bright’s books on its shelves. I was curious about them, so when I saw this one on a free book cart, I snapped it up.
Reading this book, I had to constantly remind myself that it was written in a certain political era. It was interesting to read, and interesting for me as a lesbian, but ultimately in 2016 does function more as an artifact than anything else.
Because unfortunately, the past 25 years have shown us that Bright was simply wrong about some things. “I don’t want to believe that fantasies lead to literal reinactments [sic]. That’s why I reject the thesis that porn “causes” violence.” Regardless of what Bright wants to believe, studies and the lives of women my age and younger have shown that increasingly easy access to violent pornography has had a detrimental impact on both young people, especially young women in heterosexual relationships, and pornography as an industry is extraordinarily abusive to its workers.
This kind of encapsulates my issue with Bright’s writing. She’s writing from a personal perspective, of what she wants, feels, and thinks. Which is fine, but she wants it to apply to everyone – she expects her experience to be universal (for instance, refusing the possibility that any woman might not be interested in sex during pregnancy. Nope, you’re just unsure of how to handle your changing body, same as Susie Bright!). I understand that she was writing from a particular period and context, especially regarding sexuality. But I don’t think she (at the time of writing this book) demonstrates actual consideration of how everything in society is interconnected, and how not everything that feels good is harmless and lacking consequence.
My frustration with this reminds me of some of my frustration in reading Lillian Faderman’s description of the sex wars in Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers. There’s too much one-sidedness, too much of the idea that things are one way or another that ultimately harms large chunks of the population. Instead of Bright’s sometimes expressed contempt for “prudes” or anyone who doesn’t experience sexuality in the same way she does, why not accept a diversity? Same goes for the homophobic feminists who basically discouraged sexuality at a huge detriment to lesbians/bisexuals. We should be critiquing the myths about sexuality that do harm to our lives, of course, but I wish we could do that without prescribing to everyone what the proper way for all of us to be is.
It got especially bad when I got to the chapter Men Who Love Lesbians, when Bright, who is bisexual rather than being a lesbian herself, derides lesbians for having boundaries about our sexuality, not wanting to have it on display, and enables men who fetishize or harass lesbians without any real critical thought about what any of this means beyond sexual pleasure. It was really disappointing to read this, especially since Bright goes so far as to claim the first person who voiced disapproval of out-and-proud lesbians was probably a closeted lesbian herself. I’m not going to get into why this is a homophobic thing to write (as well as a usually false accusation). It’s also really weird how Bright didn’t seem to consider that lesbians might be uncomfortable with men accessing images of lesbian sexuality because we see it as an extension of the harassment we’ve received from men in the past. I wonder what kind of world Bright lived in that she seems so disconnected from the lived realities of homophobia.
Or maybe things have just somehow changed and gotten worse since this was written in 1992. “It’s been years since I’ve heard anyone wonder out loud what two women could possibly do in bed together,” Bright writes. Really? Because we still hear it regularly in 2016. We’re still told lesbian sex isn’t real sex in 2016.
And there’s the chapter where Bright gets flippant about date rape, and makes students at a university trying to take a stand against date rape about her own sexual roleplaying instead, and more or less says that doing something about rape culture is less important than her own orgasms.
Long story short – too much homophobia, too much of Bright’s inability to understand that her experience is not universal, not enough critical thought about sexuality and society, too much wishful thinking about “well it feels good so it’s fine and I don’t want to believe this could be negative in any way.” And Bright is weirdly in denial of bisexuality for a lot of the book, despite most of the book being about bisexuality (eg in one of the last chapters, playing along with the homophobic talk show about gay conversion – referring to your bi friend as a gay guy dating a woman does more harm than good for both bi and gay people). I went in expecting to enjoy this book, but I finished it with a lot of frustration and disappointment.
Reading this book, I had to constantly remind myself that it was written in a certain political era. It was interesting to read, and interesting for me as a lesbian, but ultimately in 2016 does function more as an artifact than anything else.
Because unfortunately, the past 25 years have shown us that Bright was simply wrong about some things. “I don’t want to believe that fantasies lead to literal reinactments [sic]. That’s why I reject the thesis that porn “causes” violence.” Regardless of what Bright wants to believe, studies and the lives of women my age and younger have shown that increasingly easy access to violent pornography has had a detrimental impact on both young people, especially young women in heterosexual relationships, and pornography as an industry is extraordinarily abusive to its workers.
This kind of encapsulates my issue with Bright’s writing. She’s writing from a personal perspective, of what she wants, feels, and thinks. Which is fine, but she wants it to apply to everyone – she expects her experience to be universal (for instance, refusing the possibility that any woman might not be interested in sex during pregnancy. Nope, you’re just unsure of how to handle your changing body, same as Susie Bright!). I understand that she was writing from a particular period and context, especially regarding sexuality. But I don’t think she (at the time of writing this book) demonstrates actual consideration of how everything in society is interconnected, and how not everything that feels good is harmless and lacking consequence.
My frustration with this reminds me of some of my frustration in reading Lillian Faderman’s description of the sex wars in Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers. There’s too much one-sidedness, too much of the idea that things are one way or another that ultimately harms large chunks of the population. Instead of Bright’s sometimes expressed contempt for “prudes” or anyone who doesn’t experience sexuality in the same way she does, why not accept a diversity? Same goes for the homophobic feminists who basically discouraged sexuality at a huge detriment to lesbians/bisexuals. We should be critiquing the myths about sexuality that do harm to our lives, of course, but I wish we could do that without prescribing to everyone what the proper way for all of us to be is.
It got especially bad when I got to the chapter Men Who Love Lesbians, when Bright, who is bisexual rather than being a lesbian herself, derides lesbians for having boundaries about our sexuality, not wanting to have it on display, and enables men who fetishize or harass lesbians without any real critical thought about what any of this means beyond sexual pleasure. It was really disappointing to read this, especially since Bright goes so far as to claim the first person who voiced disapproval of out-and-proud lesbians was probably a closeted lesbian herself. I’m not going to get into why this is a homophobic thing to write (as well as a usually false accusation). It’s also really weird how Bright didn’t seem to consider that lesbians might be uncomfortable with men accessing images of lesbian sexuality because we see it as an extension of the harassment we’ve received from men in the past. I wonder what kind of world Bright lived in that she seems so disconnected from the lived realities of homophobia.
Or maybe things have just somehow changed and gotten worse since this was written in 1992. “It’s been years since I’ve heard anyone wonder out loud what two women could possibly do in bed together,” Bright writes. Really? Because we still hear it regularly in 2016. We’re still told lesbian sex isn’t real sex in 2016.
And there’s the chapter where Bright gets flippant about date rape, and makes students at a university trying to take a stand against date rape about her own sexual roleplaying instead, and more or less says that doing something about rape culture is less important than her own orgasms.
Long story short – too much homophobia, too much of Bright’s inability to understand that her experience is not universal, not enough critical thought about sexuality and society, too much wishful thinking about “well it feels good so it’s fine and I don’t want to believe this could be negative in any way.” And Bright is weirdly in denial of bisexuality for a lot of the book, despite most of the book being about bisexuality (eg in one of the last chapters, playing along with the homophobic talk show about gay conversion – referring to your bi friend as a gay guy dating a woman does more harm than good for both bi and gay people). I went in expecting to enjoy this book, but I finished it with a lot of frustration and disappointment.
June 4, 2012
Susie Bright interview of Camille Paglia AND her Story of O birthday tale were delightful. In one of the multiple universes that constitute my current idea of heaven, I am Susie Bright.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews