The Big Book of Submission: 69 Kinky Tales
Flying High: Sexy Stories from the Mile High Club
Dirty Girls NYC book party tonight!
I'm having a super fun, free book party tonight, April 10th, for my brand-new anthology with 27 HOT stories, Dirty Girls: Erotica for Women, from 7 - 9 pm in NYC at Sutra Lounge, 16 First Avenue off First Street, Free
There will be boob cake to honor the nipple on the book's cover from Moist and Tasty, readings by me (Rachel Kramer Bussel) and contributors Tsaurah Litzky, Sofia Quintero, Lillian Ann Slugocki and Suki Bishop. Plus drink specials and books for sale!
See you there! If you can't make it, the book is available for sale on Amazon or directly from me, autographed, $14 including shipping (U.S.), email me for details.
Labels: book parties, Dirty Girls, erotica
posted by Rachel @ Thursday, April 10, 2008
6 Comments:
Rachel, I think you're just propping up the sleazy straight guy fantasy. By promoting female bisexuality, that's what you're effectively doing. Female bisexuality for the purpose of male appeasement is actually dis-empowering to women. I note that you don't seem to promote male bisexuality or the women who like male bisexuality. Why's that?
Because she's not a guy. Rachel reports from her own perspective. That is her reality. That is what she knows. She never ranks any lifestyle over any other, and when she needs a different viewpoint she quotes or refers her readers to somebody else. She does that quite often in this blog.
Do you have a personal interest in male bisexuality? Then you write about it and promote it. Rachel compiles umpteen anthologies; next time she puts out (!) a call for entries write a story that is good enough to get in it. Then you can read from your published work at In the Flesh.
The best person to represent you is you.
If Rachel is going to couch female bisexuality in terms of female empowerment, she needs to think again. As I said before, female bisexuality plays right into the hands of heterosexual men. It is wish fulfilment for straight men. I hardly think that's empowering for women!!!! It's empowering for him, not her.
In a general sense, the sexual liberation movement, which was supposed to liberate people sexually, has turned out to be a disappointment. It has produced porn, one of the most selectively homophobic industries in existence today. Porn normalizes female bisexuality but marginalizes male bisexuality. This bisexual double standard is wrong.
A bisexual woman may engage in activity that most straight men enjoy watching and being a part of, but said woman is not a robot and is not doing it for the purpose of indulging men's fantasies. She is doing it because she genuinely is attracted to the women and men who turn her on. Those are her feelings. She owns them. She embraces them. She has a right to her own feelings. It is not disempowering to have the strength and the confidence to know what you are, to know what you want, and to pursue it fearlessly. She is not afraid of what anybody thinks, not that it's any of their business. What she does is private, and if she chooses to write or talk about it to a voluntary market or audience she has that prerogative. Some people, however, feel the need to be judgmental. She could cower from the criticism, or she could find her voice and speak up for herself.
Rachel does this. Proudly. With no apologies to anyone. For nobody's benefit but her own. This force of nature creates an added bonus: she gets by with a little help from her friends.
...Which looks like power from any angle you look at it.
Mike in Albany,
Give me a break! Rachel basically promotes wish fulfilment for male heterosexuals. It's the least empowering notion around. Women who fall for her shtick are hugely misguided as far as I'm concerned.
And take it from me. There is a lot of justifiable criticism brewing against the likes of Rachel and Tristan Taormino, another woman who promotes female bisexuality under the guise of female empowerment. The GLBT community doesn't like having its notions trivialized and framed in terms of male heterosexual fantasy wish fulfilment. There's been a lot of chatter on the net about it.
Who cares if male heteros have wishes, and so what if they are fulfilled? Is it ever possible for a person to fulfill the wishes of another human being, whether it is sexual or not, in a way that is not disempowering? Is there not a choice to be exercised of one's own free will? If I fulfill one of your wishes by my own choice, does that disempower me? Whose fantasies will that satisfy beyond yours and mine?
Or do you come from the McKinnon/Dworkin all-sex-is-rape brand of feminism that preached that sex is nothing but a power game invented by the so-called patriarchy, and women lose that game every time they get duped into taking off their undies? I agree with them up to a point. Yes, there was a definite imbalance of power between the sexes in most aspects of our social structure that needed to be corrected, and yes, women needed to find their voices to force that correction to happen. But to vilify the male desire, and to denigrate the women for pursuing their own desires as somehow yielding their power is counter to rational thinking about feminism. It says that if a woman does something she enjoys which also happens to be something a hetero man enjoys to think about or to do, then she really is not doing it for herself at all. What that means is that women are men's sexual puppets. That wasn't really what you meant to say, was it?
What utter bunkum, bullshit, and balderdash!
Rachel, Tristan, and their ilk aren't writing on behalf of the GLBT or any other "community," they are writing for themselves. They represent nobody's "notions" but their own. Does that scare you? Are you frightened that they explore their own sexuality, and that (gasp) they derive enjoyment from both doing what they like to do AND by connecting with a growing audience of like-minded people? Would you deny them the right to their own "sleazy" fantasies? Do you think they should squelch their feelings because somewhere out there guys are reading about it and getting hard-ons? Are their likes and dislikes a threat to your politics or your way of life? If not, then why do you care?
That old feminism served a vital purpose, and much of it is never going to stop being relevant. But since Paglia came along it has been greatly improved upon. If you really believe things are headed in the wrong direction, then don't hide behind the old dogma. There's a paper in you that needs to be published.
I know where you can find a pretty good editor.
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