Venus in Fur calls itself with perfect accuracy “a seductive comedy about love, lust, and literature.” The play was adapted by David Ives from the novella of the same name by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (from whose name comes the term “masochism”). The award-winning director Sheriden Thomas has once again brought theatrical excellence to Tufts with this edgy, complicated treat.
The two Tufts seniors, who comprise the entire cast, play both actors and the characters themselves, moving in and out of the mundane and the imaginary, of the dominant and submissive, and of the antagonist and the flirt.
Tyler Beardsley does a nuanced job of playing Thomas, the writer who is transformed into the director and actor, pushed past his straight-laced personality into the depths of his buried kinky desires. Tessa Barlow-Ochshorn is riveting and exciting as Vanda, the name of both the disheveled, distracted actor coming to audition and the role she is trying to secure. Tessa’s performance is stunning.
Sheriden Thomas, a senior lecturer in the Department of Drama and Dance is also an actor who recently won Best Actress at the 20th Annual Independent Reviewers of New England Awards ceremony for her work in a Play Small Theater (Fringe). Her directorial decisions in Venus in Fur are flawless. For years she has chosen risky and daring plays for her students. Full disclosure – Sheriden and I are friendly.
Forgive me for repeating myself from previous reviews, but we do not sufficiently support regional and university theatre in Boston. I remember this every time I am inspired or tickled by just such a production as Venus in Fur.
"Her risks are as great as her gifts." If we didn't know that already, we can read all about it in Susie Bright's brilliant memoir: BIG SEX LITTLE DEATH.
Everyone’s got their own particular curiosity about the life of Susie Bright– the author, troublemaker, sharp-penned and fearless sexpert who did so much to advance the art and understanding of nooky. Having been abroad during the “sex-wars” – which reached out and entangled me wherever I was living from the Middle East to Europe, I was gratified to finally hear, among her many crucial projects in this book, the inside story of the infamously delicious magazine "On Our Backs." Home to pioneering lesbian and other erotica – both visual and written – it became a vibrator to feminist movements everywhere, causing each of us to tremble with delight or shock. BIG SEX LITTLE DEATH starts and ends with that complicated institution called “family” – Susie’s childhood informs her parenthood. Along the way she acts up and acts out at the intersection of justice and sexual expression. Her risks are as great as her gifts and this memoir is a tool for understanding her prolific writing, her profound principles, and her willingness to speak “dirty” words so persistently that they become the vocabulary of freedom.
For several years and for varied publications I have reviewed the annual Fetish Fair Fleamarket (FFF). Both the weekend-long winter FFF and the one-day summer FFF are organized by NELA (New England Leather Alliance), a highly respected civil rights group for kinky people. There are many dozens of workshops and a renowned marketplace. This year I attended as a civilian, so I was less interested in weaving a story than in enjoying myself. Here are my five favorite impressions from last weekend’s FFF:
1. FREE THE GARMENTS The FFF takes over a whole hotel, giving people a holiday from the alt-sex closet – or rather from hiding their favorite rags in the closet. People get to wear their lovingly constructed outfits – from the expensively attired leather or latex crowd to the flowing, tutu, lacy types. Women of every shape and age – and a few men too - sport a bounty of corset-induced cleavage. It’s a wonderfully snuggly sensation to be surrounded by so much amplitude. A personal highlight? I wore a very non-kinky but quite bright black and red satin jacket from China with a high stand-up collar and at least five generous women complemented me. If you could only see the context – all these gloriously dramatic sexy people – you’d understand why I was over the moon.
2. THE PUBLIC AREAS KEEP IT LIGHT The atmosphere is playful and respectful. Bathrooms are gender-neutral with explanatory signs posted outside establishing a trans-friendly environment. For people-watching alone, the entrance fee is worth it. Bootblacks are glad to service your shoes. A short confident dominant leads her giggling collared submissive around the hotel on a leash, stopping a moment for a kiss. A poly family clusters around one of their members as he tries on some ass-less chaps. A budding domme gets a lesson in wielding a whip from a volunteer as her friends cheer her on. In the bondage lounge you can sit and watch or try out a knot or two.
3. ACCESS IS ASSUMED The FF is clearly welcoming to the kinky members of the disability community. I saw perhaps a dozen people using wheelchairs or crutches or a white cane integrated in the scene. For example, one striking woman in fetish gear rested her stiletto-heeled boots on the foot supports of her wheelchair.
4. HARASSMENT-FREE ZONE Security is effective but good-humored. A dramatic gender-bender in a flowing silver sparkle wig is perched at the top of the escalator and if someone ascends without the requisite blue wristband, they are guided right back down the descending moving stairs. A beefy guy with a thick pewter nose-ring checks again at the entrance to the retail market. A young reedy woman – a canvas of piercings and tattoos – checks at the exit door to the stairs. As far as I could see, no one was able to crash the event. It was truly a kink-safe space. Negativity was prevented in the coolest possible way by the hottest possible volunteers.
5. THIS AIN’T NEWBURY STREET Overflow vendors spilled out of the big halls where some of the booths are nearly the size of a store into individual hotel rooms transformed into shops. What’s available to buy? You can stock up on lube; learn the finer points of floggers of which there are infinite weights, lengths and styles for sale; and explore the world of electricity play equipment. There are dozens of designers making their own corsets and latex nurse outfits and leather dildo harnesses. Vibrators, clit pumps, nipple clamps, blindfolds, cuffs, harnesses, chain mail shirts, talons, jeweled collars, stainless steel cock-rings and 5-finger vibrating gloves are everywhere to be found. Photographers will provide you with a glamour shoot. Painters offer portfolios of erotic images. Authors are signing books – some erotic fiction, some how-to do one fetish or another, some on the legal implications of being a player. This ain’t Newbury Street, but this is one rich gathering of artisans, artists, craft folks and leather workers who are deeply entrenched in the community and trying to eek out a living from the world they love.
Non-gay? Not gay enough? Why oh why is the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance witch-hunting its own members? The LGBT community has plenty of problems without cannibalizing itself: there are attacks from religious fundamentalists of all persuasions and from Fox Snooze; there is inaction around LGBT issues by the Obama administration; and then there is the Catholic Church blaming its criminality on queers.
Three Bay Area amateur softball players are suing a national gay sports association for alleged discrimination after officials questioned their sexuality and disqualified them following a 2008 championship game.
In a rare instance of an LGBT legal advocacy group suing a gay organization, the National Center for Lesbian Rights on Tuesday filed suit on behalf of the players in U.S. district court for the western district of Washington. According to the complaint, NCLR alleges that the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Association (NAGAAA) broke state public accommodations law by enforcing a discriminatory rule that only two heterosexuals can play on each team.
So one team accuses the other team of having too many straights. Let me pause there, because this concept boggles the mind. What’s the issue? Do straight athletes give a team an advantage? Are they likely to be superior to gay athletes? Short of a sophisticated deconstruction of how homophobia in sports and the bullying of gay athletes affects that group of sportspeople overall, we can only wonder at the self-hatred contained in that assumption. Next the NAGAAA hastens to grill the accused. How is this witch-hunt conducted?
Following the game, five D2 players were summoned one by one to a windowless room filled with more than 25 people and questioned by NAGAAA delegates about their sexuality. “There was a six-person panel, but the rest of the people there had no business being there,” Rowen said. “This was a room of people assembled because they wanted to see this go down.”
Charles and co-plaintiffs Steven Apilado and Jon Russ said that NAGAAA officials read definitions of “heterosexual” and “gay” and asked which word applied to them. When Charles answered both, an official allegedly told him, “This is the Gay World Series, not the Bisexual World Series.” When asked the same set of questions, Russ declined to answer.
Of course the packed room and the nasty interrogation in front of a couple of dozen onlookers is a bit macabre, but my curiosity is aroused by the idea of any group being confident of knowing the precise “definitions” of straight and gay. Seriously, there is no agreement whatsoever on these categories, not the least because they can be fluid. The nature/nurture (born/made/choose) debate over sexuality is far from resolved. The outlaw/assimilationist concepts of non-straightness will always remain a fault-line in queer discussions.
This issue of what constitutes “straight” got exposed for the slippery identity it is during the days of community outreach around HIV prevention. Organizers found that many men who got off with other men totally identified as “straight” – they were often married to women, had children and lived their lives as pure heterosexuals. The problem was that they were also having anonymous sex with men in parks or restrooms or club backrooms. A whole new concept of sexuality was developed in order to try to reach those guys with information about staying safe. They were known by the literal if awkward phrase: men who have sex with men. Would they fit into NAGAAA’s concept of “straight?”
Women, too, fudge the idea of straightness. In many countries (including sections of the USA), homophobia prevents women from acting on their real lesbian feelings. Many women marry because of heavy social pressure. In some cases, gay men and lesbians agree to marry in order to act as each other’s beards – their cover for secret queer lives.
Narrow identity politics may be good for kick-starting a new movement and raising a formerly unknown consciousness, but it ain’t a vehicle for the long-haul. Human sexuality simply does not adhere to “narrow.” A single-issue perspective blocks out very real social intersections. Perhaps that’s why many LGBT groups appear unable to live up to the B (bi) and the T (trans) and the L (lesbian). That leaves a very particular G group.
But wait! Unsurprisingly, the plot thickens:
The three plaintiffs in the case were voted to be “nongay” and were subsequently disqualified.
Two white players from D2 were also questioned about their sexual orientation but were not disqualified. NCLR alleges that race may have been a motivating factor in the decision to disqualify its clients (two are African-American, and one is of African-American and Filipino descent).
So, only the people of color couldn’t make the queerness grade, is that it? I have seen the distasteful line: “This is the Gay World Series, not the Bisexual World Series” quoted dozens of times on Facebook and in articles, but nowhere have I seen a discussion of this sad saga’s racial element. Just as so many women and men homos seem to have trouble embracing bisexuals and transgendered people, and as a portion of gay men forget there are lesbians on the earth, so too is this movement reluctant to look seriously at the racism that queers of color face within it.
As I searched for images to accompany this posting, I found a series of posters (left) for what appears to be a very gay softball team in California, where all of this came down. There were posters of individual models – hunky men caressing their softball bats, and there were posters (left below) made of a collage of the various gorgeous guys. All of the models appear to be white. Was race the real issue in the first place?
Some interplay of race and gender and sexuality seems to have short-circuited the sanity and principles of the North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance. Get a grip, people.
There are so many challenges to holiday air travel - not the least the weather, the stale cabin air and getting your dildo through security.
I remember the first time I entered Israel in the late 1970s. Their airport security had that sensibility of post-9/11 Homeland Security decades before 9/11, racial profiling and all. I had reluctantly stored all of my sex toys with a friend in the States (who sold them for a fix, I found out later) and had only packed a modest bullet vibrator - I didn't want to be alone on another continent, utterly bereft of stimulation.
They did go through every item in my bag and when the security wonk found the candy-stripe battery-operated vibrator, I explained that as a professional athlete (I was a martial arts instructor at the time), it was essential therapy for my muscular health. That story worked.
Things are so different now than those days in the 70s when you could assume a lot of people didn't know from sex toys. There weren't stores (or those that existed were considered too sleazy for "nice" folks.) There was no internet. Sex workshop were not ubiquitous. It was a different world. People were still perplexed by the question of what two women might do together sexually, for gawd's sake.
"The stern, older woman watching the screen backs up the belt and
stops my bag under the x-ray. She points at the screen, showing her
young, blonde assistant what to look for. I'm in a good mood, not too
close to flight time, and find myself smiling to a traveling companion
who's taking the same flight, and looking forward to a little good
theatrical fun.
"Is it all right if I look in this bag?" the attendant asks with measured politeness.
"Sure, if you really want to," I answer.
I watch her face as she digs through the cuffs, the latex straps,
the blindfold, the ziplock bag with condoms, rubber gloves and lube,
the ziplock bag with miscellaneous nipple clamps, butt plug, and so
forth, Mark Chester's wonderful spandex full-body bondage bag (if you
don't have one, you should, but that's another story), the wonderful
soft leather scratch gloves with the sharp metal points scattered
across the palm and fingers. Her face stays 100% deadpan throughout, an
impressive show of professionalism...
...Finally she finds what she's looking for -- what I knew she would
get to sooner or later -- my springy little whip with the 6" metal
handle..."
Steinberg goes on to describe his amusement, especially when he was ordered to drop the whip into a plastic bag and check it as a separate piece of luggage.
What about you? Have you packed your sex toys for your holiday travel or do the holidays turn off every shred of potential desire? If you're taking something that needs power, have you been sure to take out the batteries to avoid a suspicious buzzing under your seat? Have you tried for sex toys that look more like toys than sex, like the rubber duckie vibrator in the photo? Why not just pack your toys - especially if there's any metal involved - into the bag you're checking, instead of dragging them through security? If you must carry something onboard, are you prepared to stand up for your predilictions or have you already devised a brilliant cover story?
"Those clamps? I'm a writer and they're for holding my manuscripts together."
"Those cuffs? I work on a computer and they protect me against RWI - repetitive wrist inflammation."
"That red ball on a strap? My neice is teething so my sister asked me to buy her one of these."
I'd love to hear your plans, what gear you're packing and your approach to security. Will it be as confident and in-your-face as this David Steinberg? He wrote:
"I look at all the people around me and feel like the whole airport --
passengers, ticket agents, security guards -- are giving me the benefit of the doubt on this one, at least in part because I'm refusing
to have it any other way. My lack of embarrassment, my lack of apology,
is defining the moment and telling everyone how to respond. I feel
exceptionally powerful. It is the liberation of one more level of
coming out, of refusing to be made wrong for being different, for being
sexually different."
Q: Sue, Perhaps you are the only person I can ask about this: What the hell is a 'perfect vagina'? And who are women doing this for? Anyway - hoping that you are well, and of course that your vagina is happy, or even perfect. Mike
A: I clicked the link Mike included and was appalled. The article claims a rise in labioplasty – that is, cosmetic surgery on women’s genitals. The goal seems to be to reduce the size of pussy lips for women who are embarrassed (presumably at being adults). According to the article “In studies dating back to 1950, examined by the researchers, dissatisfaction with the way the vagina looked was the primary reason for surgery, with patients also speaking of low self-esteem and sexual difficulties.”
Then why not suggest a bit of therapy or a lot of feminism to these women? Why slice them up? This is part of the tyranny of skinniness, the fetishization of Lolita-like looks and the ever-present medicalization of women’s sexuality. Blame the woman for her sexual dissatisfaction when her partner forgets where her clit is or only likes oral in his direction.
When women get to know their sexual bodies, they discover that rather than being invisible and hidden, just a miniature version of a man, our gear is really big and special. The first time I saw a shaved pussy, I was amazed at the size of the labia – how rich, luscious, full they are under their furry protection. And only in recent years have we learned how wildly extensive the root of the clit is.
So Mike, the answer to your question about what the hell a “perfect vagina” could be is: a healthy, pampered one with a proud and confident owner. A “perfect vagina” is one that has not been submitted to the surgeon for a facelift, not been doused with stinky perfume to hide its natural aroma and not been forcibly clamped into a vicious chastity belt (unless that’s part of a consensual sexual play scenario.)
As for me, I’m as well as can be expected in a country in which the Democrats have turned into Republicans and the Republicans have turned into Teabaggers. And, yes, my vagina is a lot happier than the rest of me and wants me to thank you for your kind enquiries.
Parents of young children, women of a certain age and men with puffy prostates are going to be thrilled to hear of their advantage in the realm of renewable energy. Pee-powered batteries are on the shelves in Japan. Such a battery, we are told, “can be recharged with a variety of liquids including urine and other precious bodily fluids, is supposed to last 10 years, and pumps out 500 milliamp-hours (mAh), which is equivalent to zinc-carbon batteries but a third of what an alkaline does.”
I’m not sure what all that means but I wonder if I can combine these batteries with use of my SheWee, which I discussed in "The Drip Dominatrix rules her bladder," one of my most popular blog entries (strange readers!) in 2007. Must run. All this talk has inspired me.
I have maintained my cool in the face of January’s unprecedented unemployment and horrifying economic news, until a recent announcement that made me tightly clutch my thighs in panic. But please allow me to rant for a few paragraphs on the Depression, before I get to the crotch.
So many of the companies that are withering (while their top managers moan about reduced bonuses of millions) have long offered crap products and nasty non-service. Who is paying for this? The workers, who else. According to Forbes.com, 162,962 employees were laid off in January by the 500 top American companies – from Ford (SUV guzzlers lost their appeal?) to Caterpillar (what? Israel didn’t order enough bulldozers to flatten Gaza?) to Boeing (is Obama killing the corporate jet market among bankrupt companies?).
OK, big capitalism sucks and this Depression – which in contrast to the country’s experts I predicted in June, 2008, in my piece “The Next Great Depression” – will hurt us more than it will hurt the wealthy. In fact, as you watch some companies quietly acquiring so many other companies, you wonder if this whole thing was not engineered. And then you remember that even moguls don’t understand capitalism, that it is unplanned, uncontrollable and massively unregulated.
In any event, things have now gotten out of hand – as it were. I just heard that Hitachi is predicting a loss of $7.7 billion for this fiscal year and will be firing 7.000 employees. Hitachi makes many home appliances, medical equipment and IT systems, but I’m thinking of one product without which life is hardly worth living.
The Hitachi Magic Wand.
For 30 years women have been plugging in for the most intense (think: jackhammer) vibration ever to stimulate an erogenous zone. In the succeeding decades other companies have come up with their bullets and their rabbits and their other weak imitations, but nothing that runs on batteries is ever going to match the love I get from my Wand.
And it’s not just me. Every sex expert worth her clit has lauded the Wand – giving Hitachi flushed and free promotion in all the right places. The country’s leading masturbation genius, Betty Dodson, has been buying it by the case since the early 1970s to give to girlfriends and students. Margaret Cho, the righteous comedian (at left), is convinced that every woman can orgasm with the Wand’s help. Susie Bright, the true Sexpert, is a believer, as is Rosie O’Donnell.
In 2000 there was a hiccup between Hitachi and their American distributors and for a while Wands were impossible to find. The panic this deprivation brought to women throughout the developed world was only relieved by a new distribution company, but in the meantime none of the substitutes that were explored lived up to the heavy-duty standards set by the Magic Wand.
At 1.28 pounds and with its gooseneck flexibility, that funny tennis-ball head hones in obediently every time. Magic Wands have always been a part of a lesbian’s overnight kit, to be used alone or in company. Straight women have taught their men how to integrate the Wand into their nooky, and now a lot of erotica (oh, you know, porn) includes the one, especially bondage images.
Here’s a promo clip from Babeland, a sex toy emporium, in which the lovely Vanessa caresses her Magic Wand:
Life without my Magic Wand would be shockingly stressful. Believe me, no one wants me stressed out – it’s not a pretty sight. I’m already struggling to cope with being underemployed, suspending all my international travel and feeling helpless in the face of how all this is affecting the 1.4 billion crushingly poor people of the world.
I’ve been complaining and explaining for years, but now I have to put my foot down. There’s a reason why it’s called a magic wand. Please, oh please, don’t send me back to the Stone Ages of childhood when all I had at my disposal was a balled-up pillow and the wonder of discovery. Cross your fingers, not your ankles, for Hitachi.
Perhaps it’s time to get together to lobby Obama’s economic team. While the Republicans are saving their tax cuts for the wealthy, we should spell out our priorities:
Last year for World AIDS Month I wrote a blog entitled “Seniors Get Infected, Too (Often)". I pointed to the growing incidence of HIV/AIDS among people over 50 and complained about the lack of outreach to them. Because these were new ideas, the piece drew a lot of comment. In last year’s piece, I was pretty pissed off at how few resources were aimed at safer sex education for older people because I knew that the underlying assumption was that we weren’t getting any. That those doling out the funds for developing educational programs figured that older people not only didn’t engage in risky sexual behavior, they probably didn’t engage in any sexual behavior.
It has taken a big scholarly European study to get the mainstream press to note this problem. The scientific journal “Sexually Transmitted Infections” published news of research demonstrating that STDs (sexually transmitted diseases) have doubled among older people in the last decade. The researchers blamed the lack of programs addressing this demographic.
So why is this happening? Here are four of the many assumptions keeping us from getting the attention around safer sex that we deserve:
1. People assume older people don’t bonk all that much. The truth? As the sexual revolutionaries of the 60s enter their 60s, they are reinventing the ageing process and reject the mythologies about “shriveling and drying up.” After all, with the assistance of Viagra, lube, toys and most importantly experience and imagination, older people never have to stop getting it on.
2. Older people have been married for decades and therefore aren’t at risk. The truth? Many people in long-term relationships sleep with other people – whether as part of an understanding with their partner or on the down-low. Many middle-age and older adults find themselves back in the dating pool due to losing a partner to separation, divorce or death. Lots of people never settled down, out of choice or not, and continue to play the field. Because of online dating, in which older people are heavy players, it’s much easier than ever before to make sexual connections.
3. Boomers grew up in the age of AIDS so they know all about it. The truth? Some boomers were in fact heavily impacted by the pandemic and probably know the ABCs of safer sex as well, if not better than, most young people. But many other people over 50 think of condoms as a birth control device and assume, post-menopause, that rubbers are irrelevant. Besides, safer sex education needs to be repeated and repeated; lessons learned in the 1980s or 90s might not be automatically applied in retirement. And don’t forget all the other risk factors like sharing needles (whether illegal drugs or prescription medications).
4. Seniors and elders aren’t into talking about sex. The truth? We boomers invented open talk about sex when we tried to find ways to protect our community during the worst of the AIDS crisis. To stay safe we had to talk about what we really – no, really – do in bed. So we brought a whole sexual language into the public sphere. But it’s younger people who seem to have a problem talking to and about sexually active seniors. Doctors, care workers, educators – many may be younger than their patients and clients and may be suffering the yuck factor (Not my mother/grandmother!) at the idea of old people pinching nipples and trying it doggie style.
You probably can add other counterproductive assumptions – send them to me – but it is worth keeping in mind how bad things are. Today the BBC said that AIDS is still killing 6,000 people per day in the world. Six thousand people every day. I’ve been talking about people 50+ because that’s a group I write about a lot, but things are dire for all folks whose lives are invaded by HIV/AIDS. One month each year does not a movement make, but it’s good to remind ourselves of the mess we’re in, especially as resources for all social needs are evaporating into this global depression.
The truth? Good sex as often as we want it is a very inexpensive high, a cheap thrill, a great way to take your mind off of all the crap. Do it – but do it safely!
Few like working the night shift for years on end, even someone 77 whose job entails licking dildos. So one could understand why sex educator Sue Johanson, to the disappointment of all those viewers who like their sex advice clear and enthusiastic, wrapped up her call-in show on the Oxygen channel this month. Even though her popular show was at the top of the midnight ratings, the late-night slot was getting to be a drag on Johanson’s life.
The real question is why Oxygen ghettoized such a successful live show in the midnight slot and why they didn’t move it to an earlier hour. Apparently the TV bosses (in contrast to Johanson herself) believe that sex is best conducted in the dark when no one is watching.
After her 1996 Canadian talk show was a huge success, Oxygen started this USA version in 2002. Johanson is not retiring: she’ll probably move to radio and she still maintains her own website. I found most of her advice there – from Anatomy to Yeast Infection (with Anal/Bum Sex and Jelqing/Stretching the Penis – in between) lively and accurate. But strangely enough, like Dr. Ruth (80), another older sex education personality, Johanson’s views about Senior Sex are a bit too tame for my taste:
"Sexual activity changes. The urge to have wild, pounding intercourse fades. You settle into nice, comfortable manual stimulation and oral sex or vibrator use. Males and females may not feel the driving need for orgasm - if it happens, great. But if there is no orgasm, the body contact, the warmth and intimacy all make for a great sexual relationship."
I can’t argue with manual, oral or vibrating stimulation, but I guess it’s the “nice, comfortable…” picture that doesn’t really reflect the style of a number of untamed seniors I’ve interviewed.
Here’s a compilation clip that gives you a sense of the Talk Sex show, in case you haven’t seen it:
Recent Comments