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highlyeccentricI haven't got any deep insights into Literature this fortnight. All I've got is that I was deeply amused when reading Snatched, a book by Helen Vnuk on the adult publication and video industry in Australia (up to 2003). In a chapter where Vnuk interviews women running online porn sites (many of which are now defunct - pornforwomen dot com redirects to ratemycock dot com), one Australian woman who ran a bunch of these video and literotica aggregation sites aimed at women complained that, in mainstream porn, lesbian porn is unrealistic, for the male gaze, and with no idea what women like. Her evidence: she watched some, and it had two women, one wearing a strap-on, the other fellating it. No idea what women like, asserts the (presumably straight) interviewee, and this is passed on by Vnuk.
Meanwhile, I've been reading Say Please, the Sinclair Sexsmith edited collection of lesbian bdsm stories, in which strap-ons and the fellating of feature in more than half the stories. My criticisms are a. only one femme strap-on-wearer in the entire collection, b. the wearing of a strap on dick is consistently conflated with being DOMINANT (seriously, does no one order their sub to strap up and deliver? Surely they must. But they don't ... write about it???), and c. a vanishing few of the stories involving strap-ons and dildos feature them as accessories, with quite specific traits - almost all of the stories invest deeply in the fantasy that the dildo *is* a cock. Which is a fine and good fantasy, but I would not have expected it to be so deeply standardised.
In short, straight people have no idea what lesbians like, but if what lesbians like is what Sinclair Sexsmith likes (... they have edited Best Lesbian Erotica for time immemorial so presumably yes?) then I am a little disappointed.
Currently Reading:
Fiction for fun: Girl, Woman, Other - some progress. Meanwhile, 'Outside the Lines', Anna Zabo (re-read).
Non-fiction for personal interest: Still slowly puttering through 'Feminist Theory from Margin to Centre'.
Lit Mag: 1.5 issues behind on the TLS. Still interested, though.
Poetry: Finally at the end of Paradise Lost bk 11.
For Work: Started 'Wahala Dey O', a Nigerian theatrical version of the Miller's Tale. It's really cool! I'm reading MF's copy, because it's out of stock pretty much everywhere.
Recently Finished:
Teaching Rape in the Medieval Literature Classroom: Approaches to Difficult Texts by Alison Gulley
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
THIS IS A REALLY GOOD AND VERY USEFUL BOOK, and I feel vindicated about Lancelot.
Say Please by Sinclair Sexsmith
My rating: 3 of 5 stars
Extremely... patchy. Editing quality poor in places (some stories had exceedingly dull prose; a really basic continuity error about whether underwear was on or not, in a story by an award-winning author). A fair range of gender expressions and roles, although very very few femme tops and only ONE fem with a strap on (and zero strap-on-wearers who aren't the dominant partner). Some of the stories had really fascinating engagements with gender, but needed work to work as porn - the one that most interested me, one with a mid-scene gender-role switch, unfortunately tried to pack in SO MANY acts of sadism / masochism in one short story that it was like reading a sports report.
Others, however, were extremely Relevant To My Interests in ways I shan't detail here.
Online Fiction: Karen Joy Fowler (Lightspeed Magazine) Persephone of the Crows. A nifty little story, and good podcast recording.
Up Next: Oh so many things. It's time for me to reread the entire CT's, if nothing else.
Some links:
Jonathan Barnes (TLS), Review of: The Mystery of the Parsee Lawyer, by Shrabani Basu. Gives a neat little overview of the life of George Edalji, the son of a Zoarastrian convert who went on to become a country vicar in England. Edalji did not have an easy time of it, as you might imagine for a mixed-race kid in rural 19th c England.
Clare Harman (TLS), Notes from Neverland. Did you know JM Barrie wrote weirdly obsessive borderline erotic letters to RL Stevenson? Now you do.
Jane Caplan (TLS), Review of: Nazis and Nobles, by Stephen Malinowski.
Esther Hayes (Guernica), Lineal Gaps. A family history memoir involving two adoption stories.
Jules Gill-Peterson (Jewish Currents), The anti-trans-lobby's real agenda: goes through the Christian supremacist basis of current US anti-trans bills.
Swikriti Kattel (Archer Magazine), The need for reforming sex education: my formative years. Not an easy read but a good one.
Emily Hodgson Anderson (The Rambling), Shadow Work: on academic writing, and the link between writer and work, and the ways that shapes up when you *don't* share an identity axis with your topic.
Nina Sharma, interview with Melissa Febos (Electric Lit), It's time to reckon with everything girlhood did to us.
Gabriel Novo, profile of Robert Cohen (Unicorn Magazine), How building a space for bi men helped my find my own voice.
Meanwhile, I've been reading Say Please, the Sinclair Sexsmith edited collection of lesbian bdsm stories, in which strap-ons and the fellating of feature in more than half the stories. My criticisms are a. only one femme strap-on-wearer in the entire collection, b. the wearing of a strap on dick is consistently conflated with being DOMINANT (seriously, does no one order their sub to strap up and deliver? Surely they must. But they don't ... write about it???), and c. a vanishing few of the stories involving strap-ons and dildos feature them as accessories, with quite specific traits - almost all of the stories invest deeply in the fantasy that the dildo *is* a cock. Which is a fine and good fantasy, but I would not have expected it to be so deeply standardised.
In short, straight people have no idea what lesbians like, but if what lesbians like is what Sinclair Sexsmith likes (... they have edited Best Lesbian Erotica for time immemorial so presumably yes?) then I am a little disappointed.
Currently Reading:
Fiction for fun: Girl, Woman, Other - some progress. Meanwhile, 'Outside the Lines', Anna Zabo (re-read).
Non-fiction for personal interest: Still slowly puttering through 'Feminist Theory from Margin to Centre'.
Lit Mag: 1.5 issues behind on the TLS. Still interested, though.
Poetry: Finally at the end of Paradise Lost bk 11.
For Work: Started 'Wahala Dey O', a Nigerian theatrical version of the Miller's Tale. It's really cool! I'm reading MF's copy, because it's out of stock pretty much everywhere.
Recently Finished:
Teaching Rape in the Medieval Literature Classroom: Approaches to Difficult Texts by Alison GulleyMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
THIS IS A REALLY GOOD AND VERY USEFUL BOOK, and I feel vindicated about Lancelot.
Say Please by Sinclair SexsmithMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Extremely... patchy. Editing quality poor in places (some stories had exceedingly dull prose; a really basic continuity error about whether underwear was on or not, in a story by an award-winning author). A fair range of gender expressions and roles, although very very few femme tops and only ONE fem with a strap on (and zero strap-on-wearers who aren't the dominant partner). Some of the stories had really fascinating engagements with gender, but needed work to work as porn - the one that most interested me, one with a mid-scene gender-role switch, unfortunately tried to pack in SO MANY acts of sadism / masochism in one short story that it was like reading a sports report.
Others, however, were extremely Relevant To My Interests in ways I shan't detail here.
Online Fiction: Karen Joy Fowler (Lightspeed Magazine) Persephone of the Crows. A nifty little story, and good podcast recording.
Up Next: Oh so many things. It's time for me to reread the entire CT's, if nothing else.
Some links: