Because I am a Woman
This blog is about sex-positivity, sex-ed, feminism, reproductive rights and activism.
Feel free to send me a message with your questions about sex, sexual health, sex toys, feminism, or anything else!
For more information about any of these things please check out the resources tab or leave me a question in my ask box! I would love to talk to you!
I’ll be discussing pornography at Clark University this Monday. It’s free and my first two hour lecture on this super awesome, complicated and fascinating topic. I’ll be bringing video’s and research- yup, facts! to help people make their own decisions regarding finding good porn.
Can’t wait for this!
Barb Stuckey, “Why Eating Should Be More Like Sex.” (Huffington Post)
And our second-favorite quote from the article:
Sex is, of course, a tactile experience. Yet our enjoyment of it comes from the combination of visual, sound, smell and taste inputs. If you have trouble imagining how our eyes impact our sensuality, all you have to do is consider that porn accounts for 30% of all internet traffic. We use visual images to stimulate ourselves. Having sex in the dark employs only 80% of our sensory apparatus. Maybe that’s why my earliest experiences were so unsatisfying.
We similarly stimulate ourselves with food. After watching a gorgeous, natural light-kissed cookbook video eight times in one day, I realized my behavior was veering dangerously close to a food porn addiction. You cookbook readers out there hanging your heads in shame know exactly what I’m talking about. Yet we also cheat ourselves with food. We eat while watching TV, which is somewhat worse than eating in the dark (which I’ve done and write about in my book) because it occupies the brain as well as the eyes. True food appreciation requires undistracted use of the brain in addition to all five of the senses.
Tuesday resolution: Lights on for sex, TV off for meals. Advice to live by.
(via bedsider)
“What is feminist porn?
Feminist Porn is an empowering approach to making films with adult content directed and produced by women that are exploring different areas of sexuality that is generally not explored in most male-directed “mainstream” adult films. Feminist Porn is different from mainstream porn because the women/people making it have a different approach than a traditional male-driven idea of sex. Like queer porn, it is a movement that is showcasing new directors and performers that are breaking ground with new ideas about gender identity and sexual role playing.”
(via Feminist Porn Puts Women In The Spotlight)
I’ve gotten a couple questions about feminist porn, and I thought this link might prove of interest to those people. This article is from a little less than a year ago, but it has a great definition of feminist pornography, and some other great tidbits worth passing around. It also includes a link for a feminist porn film.
A truly historic day! For more information about AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s campaign to require condoms in adult films, please visit: www.aidshealth.org.
(via the-sexpert)
Queer Porn Star Accused of Pedophilia for Breastfeeding Baby
By Diane Anderson-Minshall
Weeks after queer porn star Madison Young had her baby, she created an art exhibit titled “Becoming MILF.” The concept, according to Jezebel.com, was to explore how Young now embodies a contradiction, the dichotomy to end all dichotomies — that of the Madonna and the whore. At the show’s opening, she served up self-made breast-milk shakes and displayed a baby quilt made of burp cloths and porn star panties. Turns out not every feminist porn star agrees. According to Salon.com, a series of sex worker Twitter wars ensued, the controversy tapping into “culture-wide mommy issues.”
Porn star Furry Girl (who is known for her, um, stage name–like features) criticized Young for publicly breast-feeding, tweeting that only “creeps and pedophiles” are interested in seeing a porn star breast-feed and insinuated that exposing her child to such an audience was abusive. Girl called Young a “a revolting person” and dubbed her defenders “baby fetishists” and “pedos.”
Of course Young (née Tina Butcher) is already a well-known feminist porn star, director, author, and the founder of Femina Potens, an ever-evolving, queer and trans nonprofit gallery and performance space in California that the San Francisco Chronicle calls “the most happening art space in the city; a revolution in art and sex.” She’s curated the gallery for years, mixing envelope-pushing women’s sexuality exhibitions and spoken word shows from lesbians like Annie Sprinkle with less kinky feminist projects from literati like Michelle Tea. Young’s shown up on such outlets as IFC and the History Channel and in MSNBC’s Brian Alexander’s book America Unzipped, which has a whole chapter on her art and work.
So what was this controversial display of pedophilia that Furry Girl imagines? According to Salon, Young posed for a black-and-white photograph dressed up like Marilyn Monroe while clutching her daughter to her bare breast, nonchalantly breast-fed on a video, and then announced that she would nurse live and in person at an upcoming event meant to promote “health awareness for our queer, kinky, and sex positive communities.”
At the event itself, Young discussed breast health, while other presenters talked about breast cancer, antiretroviral drugs, and safe sex. “It wasn’t a sex party; it was an adult sex-ed class hosted by sex workers,” writes Salon’s Tracy Clark-Florey.
Furry Girl, an actress in vegan porn, tweeted that context is at the root of her argument, though she no longer wants to comment on the debacle. Meanwhile, Young returned to social media in hopes of ending the Twitter mommy sex wars: “The only one sexualizing this image of me breastfeeding is you. Which makes me feel truly disgusted and violated.”Our society is seriously screwed up in sexualizing a female body’s parts that are being used in a way they’re meant to function, to the point it feels it needs to control and limit their use for that function, based on the last couple generations being indoctrinated to believe that babies should drink formula because it’s healthier, because breasts = sex toys, therefore breastfeeding = dirty.
(via theriotmag)
I, Megan, spoke with Nina at great length about this. Very interesting take on the issue as Nina had been a condom use during porn supporter. She found that the female performers started to develop vaginal tears, chaffing and burning due to the long hours they had sex with the condoms for. So, in effect, using the condoms actually increased their chances of transmission due to the direct pathways that were being created from shoots with condoms. Interesting and helpful perspective.
Blog of Pro-Porn Activism: Porn Panic 2011 Redux: FSC Unleashes APHSS System For Testing, Protection Of Porn Performers; But AHF/Cal-OSHA Continue Condom Mandate Plans Anyway (via thecsph)
What an interesting perspective this is.
(via thecsph)
