Sue Katz: Consenting Adult

Gina Ogden: August 9, 1935 – November 2, 2018

My friend Gina Ogden has died at age 83 of stage IV lung cancer at home surrounded by her long-time lover Jo Chaffee, her daughter Cathy and son Philip, and her close friend and nurse Tina, who came from Sweden to care for her.

After her diagnosis in January, Gina consulted a variety of medical and healing folks and decided to forgo traditional Western treatment, so that she would live out the time she had left as joyfully as always. She used complimentary medicine to build herself up for this last period and palliative care to get her through it. We went swimming this summer at Walden Pond. We met for our traditional bi-weekly teas at the Porter Square Independent Bookstore. She gifted me her most sparkling shirt so I’d have a new outfit to wear to the holiday party we always went to together.

Gina and I were writing buddies: she did close readings of my manuscripts and I did the same for her. We met through a mutual friend, a very successful writer, the late Sarah Wernick. We were all in a writers’ union together, although I did not then know Gina. Sarah and I had an additional connection: she was a student in my senior fitness group. Sarah offered to help me with my proposal for a non-fiction book in exchange for my working privately with her husband, who had Parkinson’s Disease. Even after he no longer wanted to train, Sarah continued to mentor my proposal, right through her diagnosis and treatment for cancer. When she became too ill, she asked Gina to take on me and my proposal for the last round. Gina read the entire proposal and sample chapters that very night – she was a super-fast reader – and we immediately began a tradition of mutual support.

Although we both wrote about sex, our approaches were as different as our personalities – but somehow it all worked brilliantly for us. Once we finished getting out her last book, just weeks before her death, she told me that she had said all she had to say and was ready to go. 

Gina was an award-winning pioneer in the field of sexology and a tireless advocate for everyone’s right to sexual well-being. For her 1994 (blockbuster) book Women Who Love Sex, she conducted qualitative instead of quantitative research. What that means is that instead of asking, as male sexologists always had, How many orgasms did you have? Gina asked, What gives you the most pleasure? Even Oprah Winfrey was curious about Gina’s groundbreaking work and hosted her on her show.

Gina went on to publish 13 books and countless articles, and to create a unique therapeutic system called the 4-Dimensional Wheel. She built a large international community that supports its teaching and growth, the 4-D Network (www.4-DNetwork.com).

As soon as she died, her closest people performed a ritual that Gina had arranged with them in detail, and then several others of us were invited to come break bread, listen to the gentle drumming of her drumming circle, and look at her body. She was wrapped in the expensive linen sheets she and Jo had splurged on decades ago, only to discover that they weren’t comfortable. Jo pulled them out of storage for the occasion and the linen wrapping was closed with several of Gina’s favorite scarves. This was the first time I was ever in the same room as a dead friend, chatting with others who loved her, and it seemed just right.

To learn more about Gina and her work, visit her website here: www.GinaOgden.com

Activist at Any Age: A Cross-Generational Discussion on Politics, Gender, and Feminism

On Sunday I moderated a cross-generational panel of five speakers representing lesbians in their 80s, 70s, 40s, 30s, and 20s. This was one of the monthly events put on by our Boston OLOC (Old Lesbians Organizing for Change). The audience too covered this age range, as we had advertised it in Meet-Up groups of all sorts. This is a departure from our usual events, for and about old lesbians.

I was surprised by how similar our experiences were. Some of us faced nasty resistance when we came out and some managed to escape brutal reactions – regardless of age. Both of the youngest women felt most comfortable with themselves after meeting and bonding with older – or old – women. All of us were hot to trot over increased contact among the generations.

Evolving language was interesting. We ascribed varied meanings to the word “queer,” and each of us used different self-descriptors. Dyke, butch, lesbian, queer. Whereas in the early days we used to identify as “working class socialist feminist dyke” or “anti-patriarchy radical feminist lesbian.” Today there’s a different range which involves identifying one’s preferred pronouns and sexuality: pansexual, demisexual, celibate, gender non-conforming queer woman. Our conversation about dating habits (serial monogamy/non-monogamy) was fascinating.

And then there’s the issue of sex toys. Some of us reminisced about the bad ole days of hard hollow plastic dildos in “harnesses” like wonky elastic sanitary pad belts bought in sleazy porn shops. The younger women didn’t know a time before Good Vibrations and Eve’s Garden that featured women-produced equipment.

We talked about being lesbian in the vile age of tRump and expressed various levels of optimism that we’d build a strong, wide movement. Several of us talked about how important it was to overcome age barriers and to stick together. Young and old agreed. I have personal knowledge of how essential that can be. If it weren’t for my young friend Bren, it might have been another five years before I found someone to flip my mattress.

The Cuban Missile Crisis and My Virginity

The Cuban missile crisis in October, 1962 almost made me lose my virginity.

When all hell seemed to have broken loose so that the cold war was now on the edge of boiling over, we formed a club called NOSDAV: No One Shall Die A Virgin. NOSDAV. I was a sophomore in high school and that was the month I turned 15. I was very much a virgin, despite the efforts, from about age 10, of my uncle Saul, married to my aunt Eleanor, who felt me up whenever I escaped from my mother’s violence to their house. Later he unsuccessfully tried to get me to drink liquor so that he could do more. That was also the year before I met the first love of my life when she joined our homeroom class.

But in 1962 when we were all on the brink of nuclear war – and oddly enough it turns out that we actually were on that brink – all we kids could think about was the tragedy of expiring with our cherry intact. There were a bunch of us, boys and girls, and we made buttons that said NOSDAV and wore them around school. As things worsened on the international level, we huddled and made secret plans.

We were in Pittsburgh but not so far away was Wheeling, West Virginia. For us it had the reputation of being a wild place. When boys in my high school turned 16, they would be driven to Wheeling to pay a woman to take their virginity. In Wheeling you could also buy near-beer at our age. So we decided that we’d pair up and drive to West Virginia, to sin-city Wheeling, to get motel rooms so that we wouldn’t die as virgins.

I don’t remember who I paired up with, but the whole plan fell apart when the person who was old enough to drive (16) and thought he’d have the use of his parents’ car was grounded and we weren’t able to get there. It took a few days before it occurred to anyone in NOSDAV that we could actually fuck right there in Pittsburgh somewhere somehow. But by that time Kennedy and Khrushchev had figured things out and to my great relief I didn’t have to do it with what’s-his-name.

Cartoon on top by John D. Clare

VENUS IN FUR at Balch Arena Theater, Tufts University

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.

Memoir Review: Susie Bright: BIG SEX LITTLE DEATH

"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.

FIVE THINGS I LOVED AT THE FETISH FAIR FLEAMARKET

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.

Not Gay Enough? Or Not White Enough?

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.

Let the Advocate introduce the story:

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.

Will Your Sex Toys Pass Airport Security?

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.

So how do things stand now, here? I've just read an article by David Steinberg telling the story of how airport security searched his sex toy bag. I was turned onto this piece by Joan Price, whose important blog "Better Than I Ever Expected: Sex and Aging" I've mentioned a number of times over the years.

Here's an excerpt from Steinberg:

"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&A: Step Away From my Crotch with that Scalpel

I received a note from my dear friend Mike – a multi-talented gay man who follows my blog. He was perplexed by an article about pussy surgery on the BBC website and he wrote:

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.

Pee-Powered Battery: Be the First on Your Block to Have One

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.