This week’s column, Madison Young: Bondage Model. Artist. Feminist. Snip:

It all started innocuously enough. I was having drinks at a private event at Kink.com and walked over to say hi to one of the company’s most famous bondage models, Madison Young (madisonbound.com). We’d met once before, on a panel, where she’d struck me as fiercely articulate and sharply aware of a mind-boggling spectrum of sex and gender issues.

I tried not to be intimidated by how gorgeous she always looked in the very intense porn I’d seen her in — or by her intellect. Or by the fact that she identifies as a feminist. In my experience, feminists have generally been out to get me, my porn-lovin’ sisters and brothers, and our little dogs, too.

So when I walked up to Madison at Kink, she was in the middle of a sentence that went, “So I had to ask myself: just how many anal scenes does it take to open a feminist art gallery?”

Madison was talking about the upcoming (re)opening of her cutting edge art space, Femina Potens. And of course, I had to find out the answer to her question, plus a few more.

Violet Blue: Was there any particular event, occurrence or artist that prompted you to start Femina Potens?

Madison Young: Femina Potens began in 2001 after I moved to San Francisco as an Ohio ex-pat. I was surprised when I settled into the city and found a real lack of spaces for women and trans communities and found a lack of visibility of women and transgender artists at galleries, open mics, rock shows and in the art scene in general. I wanted to create a space where women and transgender artists could cultivate new artwork and bring greater visibility to women and trans artists. We started in 2001 with just an idea, passion, and a feeling of responsibility to the community to make a difference. At that time, we had no funding and I believe that I was even in between jobs and housing. But I knew that this was something that I had to do, so I did it. Now we produce close to 50 LGBT art events each year that work toward the advancement of women and trans communities in the arts, and have just acquired a new storefront gallery space in the Castro.

VB: Who inspired you?

MY: Artists who really were an inspiration in my going through with Femina Potens are Diane DiPrima and Michelle Tea, who both have been very active in community organizing and very supportive of Femina Potens. Annie Sprinkle and her partner, Elizabeth Stephens, have also been a major influence on our gallery and very supportive of our work.

VB: Who are some of your favorite contemporary artists?

MY: Some of my favorites would have to be Annie Sprinkle, Amanda Coogan, Pipilotti Rist, and Rebecca Horn. Local artists that are probably my favorites right now are Twiz Rimer (who is creating some really powerful large-scale sculptural paintings that reflect the queer community), Tina Takemoto, Twincest (twincest.net), Laura Splan, and Rebecca McBride.

VB: What types of art will you feature in the new space?

MY: Our gallery features all mediums of work. Our first exhibit on August 18th will have a sci-fi theme that relates to gender identity featuring works by Eliot K Daughtry and Francesca Berrini. On September 28th our “Daddies and Dykes” exhibit will be part of the Folsom Street Fair celebration and will feature artists Midori, Lee Harrington, and Julie Simone (juliesimone.com). We will be paying homage to our gallery’s previous occupants of 25 years, Image Leather, by featuring women and trans artists eroticizing leather men.

A new program that we will be adding to our roster is curation of “Outside Looking In.” “Outside Looking In” will be featuring evolving installation works in our storefront windows in which passers-by can watch as an installation piece grows and develops throughout the weeks. The installation will be affected by the way the artists view Market Street. And the evolution of the piece will be determined by the interactions that the passers-by have with the work.

VB: While we were at Kink.com the other night, you joked about “how many anal scenes it takes to open a feminist art gallery.” Can you explain the context of this statement?

Link.

Image of the *superlative* rabbit vibe via my friends, Stockroom.

Sounds yucky, but it looks like it’s a “greening” of the sex toy industry in a whole new incarnation. It seems that in the UK, new recycling regulations mean all electrical equipment (like ‘novelty’ toys) must be disposed of at a designated electrical waste collection center. More than 1,000 electrical waste donation areas have been set up at recycling sites around the UK. But walk in with a sex toy, or send in a used (ew!) love bunny? My pals at LoveHoney have created a kewl program called Rabbit Amnesty.

Send your old rabbit vibrator to LoveHoney Rabbit Amnesty and they guarantee to dispose of it ecologically, donate a pound sterling (that’s like two bucks) to your charity of choice, and since it’s a pseudo-promo, they’ll give you half off a new bunny vibe in their shop. Nicely played, LoveHoney.

All ya gotta do is check out their sex toy “pledge” (which is really cute), and fill out the form. Interestingly, they take PayPal. PayPal *must* be less puritanical about who they do business with outside the US.

See also: TreeHugger’s post and video about how to buy a sustainable sex toy. Nice! And don’t miss my unsafe sex toys guide for making the right health choices with your sex toys — and ladies, this especially means us. On the guide I list shops that sell nontoxic sex toys and products. Safe means happy, fun and hot.

LoveHoney would be my favorite UK sex toy site if they didn’t sell the amazingly harmful Anal Eze product. Don’t ever, EVER buy or use Anal Eze or other butt desensitizers. They will really hurt you.

Over on techyum, apols for the xpost but it’s important:

No, really. It’s an actual Security Focus study, not some sexual compulsive religious nut ‘testifying’ before congress (I mean, another dubious study fabricated by the American Family Association). Check it out and read the whole damning thing, snip:

School kids are more careful than community officials and policy makers imagine, according to a study funded by three top technology firms and released on Wednesday by the National Association of School Boards, a group representing almost 15,000 school boards in the United States.

The survey of 1,277 students (PDF) who regularly go online found that half of the students chat about schoolwork, while almost 60 percent of online students talk about education-related topics outside of school. The study — funded by Microsoft, News Corp. and Verizon — found that more than a quarter of all students post messages online, upload and download music, download videos and update Web sites on a weekly basis.

While many school officials and policy makers worry that students put themselves in danger online, only 4 percent of the students surveyed have had an online conversation that made them feel uncomfortable and only 3 percent of the students have given out their e-mail addresses, instant messaging nicknames or other personal information to strangers. While about 7 percent of students have had someone ask them for their personal information on a social networking site, only a single student in the survey admitted meeting someone from an online encounter in person.

“The vast majority of students, then, seem to be living by the online safety behaviors they learn at home and at school,” the report stated. The study found that more than half of school boards believe that students providing personal information online is a significant problem for schools, adding that “school district leaders seem to believe that negative experiences with social networking are more common than students and parents report.”

The study comes as policy makers are increasingly supporting legislation that attempts to combat the alleged dangers posed by the Internet to children, even though students have maintained that they are better versed in Internet safety than their parents and teachers.

Link.

I have a corset fetish, and I don’t even own a corset — they’re so expensive, and never seem as beautiful and stunning as the one worn above, by Dahlia Dark. Anyone know where I can find one like this? This, to me, is the perfect corset. I want, I lust, I wish… And Dahlia, wow, whatta Goth-noir babe — look at her front page (sound alert on the inside, tho). Image found on staylace.com.

Tomorrow I get my Helio Fin — w00000ttt!!!! Now, If I could just get the same arrangement with Puimond or Dark Garden… But in the meantime, I’m working on a Helio Ocean hacks post :)

Apologies for taking a few days off around here, as I’ve been alternately *actually having sex* and doing some very, very emotionally difficult writing. For the past two weeks, I’ve been working on writing down all my experiences of living on the streets as a teen. It’s all flooding back. It’s crazy. It’s been making me want to hide a bit. Hacker Boy is taking good care of me. I’ll share some of it here in the next few days.

I’m giving myself mental breaks by blogging randomly at techyum, adding new authors there, and really having a blast writing my SF Gate sex column. (Jeebus, didja see the comments on that one? So funny to see people so mad at being unable to refute the correlation between conservatives’ obsession with sex and being compulsively unable to control their own sexual urges. And no, I do not identify with either democrats or republicans, and have never, to the best of my knowledge, ever had sexual relations with a park bench.)

In the meantime, I’m about to launch a new digital sex ed project, some troll keeps fucking with my Wikipedia page to remove me from SRL (and oh, when I find you…) — and next, I plan to pitch some juicier, more investigative pieces about sex in the good old US to major publications. I’ll also be working on my Arse Electronica talk about sexual privacy on the internet, and trying to find someone to fund/produce a weekly sex entertainment video show I really want to do.

Oh, and I’ll be doing more GETV, of course!

Wow!

Also: more wow — look at the talk schedule for porn and tech conference, Arse Electronica.

I’m sitting in the UCSF surgery center waiting to take a friend home, blogging from my Helio Ocean — because the Tyra Banks show is on the waiting room TV. Just a wee bit odd.

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Tonight, solo shots. The whole set is here.

No, really. They asked me. In negotiation, but prelim answer is yes. We’ll be talking about women and porn, and that book I wrote.

Thoughts?

Also, looks like I’m going to be on the altporn panel at the LA Erotic Film Fest. Donations of cupcakes, bandwidth, bullets and animal tranquilizer darts gladly accepted if you happen to be in the LA area… I’ll moblog and have someone pretending to be my lawyer at all times.

My friends at Tantus — tireless advocates for hygienic silicone sex toys, and makers of the best ones around — have a nice short ad/psa clip just uploaded to our favorite censorious video hosting site. Embedded after the jump, while it lasts.

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I’m kind of not surprised this week’s column is shoved down the page; it’s likely making people like “fellow” columnist Cinnamon Stillwell piss in her chastity belt. This week, I lovingly guide readers through the sexual fetishes of people like, the Murdochs, the Malkins, the Haggards, the Bushes, the Gonzales’ and those who voted for people like Santorum, or love him on Fox news. And Fox News: now we know how you get off. Basically, I felt like someone needed to stare down each and every anti-sex and anti-porn point codified in the sexual hysteria that keeps media sending the messages sex and homos and porn are bad and wrong, and to target the source of all the fake hysteria by following the logic of their beliefs to their conclusions.

And so, we have a list of conservative sexual fetishes and how conservatives make ‘em hot. Please do comment on Conservative sexual fetishes: A hardcore guide if you get a minute. Snip:

(…) Extreme conservatives have cultivated their anti-sex obsessions into some highly refined, luridly sexualized fetishes. New to conservative fetish sex? Let’s explore those fetishes, and what makes them so hot:

Homosexuality: easily caught on a toilet seat. This is the world’s best excuse for dwelling on fags and bondage, and you’re carte blanche to talk to as many people about it as you want when you “warn” them with lurid details about the homosexual menace and sexual torture. Just the threat of getting some on you is exciting all on its own, but it’s even more titillating to imagine what these leather-clad people are doing with each other. Of course, what’s imagined is as far from reality as possible, but that’s the point: the homosexual scenario is where you explore your nastiest homoerotic fantasy (Fire hydrants! Great Danes! Ralph Lauren tablecloth weights!)

BDSM (or ess and emm) is for evildoers. The BDSM exchange is where you project your wildest edge-play ideas. (Serial killers, helpless victims, and pasty guys with mullets who give the name Mistress Bitchslap at Starbucks are all possible components in your fantasy scenarios.) Everyone at Fox News knows that BDSM where consenting adults get tied up and spanked for sex is one and the same with torture. (Like in Vietnam, NOT like Abu Ghraib because “we don’t torture.”) Except the outfits, that’s the only difference, though uniforms are always optional alternatives to 1980s studs and leather. You can easily convince your minions and followers that your enemy du jour is a homosexual pedophile by bringing in the whips and chains; only bad people “force” others to do things. Especially sexual things, which you should linger over for as long as possible. Everyone knows that normal people never, ever have any hint of power exchange in their sexual encounters.

The computer is an evil voodoo box of pornography. The Internet is like the real world, except MUCH scarier. This type of edge play is for conservatives who like to feel out of control, who maybe have to be the person in charge in their everyday lives but fantasize about helplessness and surrender. It’s also a fabulous punishment tool, as guilt can be a more powerful mistress than Fleshbot.com. Naughty thoughts you have can be guiltlessly channeled into public humiliation of your enemies (those bad sex people that give you those weird feelings) in gay cure blogs, anti-porn websites, anti-sex email campaigns against cable advertisers, and the occasional reporting/expulsion of a member from a social networking site for not “thinking of the children.”

Link.

When I reviewed IFC’s uber-fabulous Indie Sex series, I mentioned their list of 50 Greatest Sex Scenes in Cinema, a list that IFC co-presented with Nerve. As I mentioned, your mileage may vary with their picks, but Josh Spero over at Guardian UK’s blogs has a really fantastic opinion post about the list, the sex scenes in it, and some interesting observations about what makes a sex scene truly erotic — or not. I love his post; and I’m hoping it’ll add to the discussion about all our hopes and dreams of someone with money and resources finally making truly hot, erotic porn (because porn valley can do nothing but fail). And the comments are well worth reading. Here’s a snip:

My computer screen was getting all steamed up as I was doing my research into a new list of the 50 greatest sex scenes in cinema, when my mother texted me the words: “In or out?” Either she’s disturbingly psychic or we were at cross-purposes.

Either way, she was asking the right question - for more than the smutty reason. Which scenes were in this list, as determined by the Independent Film Channel and nerve.com, a sex, art and culture website?

Although Premiere Magazine put it top of its poll in 2003, the scene in Antonioni’s Blow-Up where David Hemmings shoots Veruschka, who writhes around on the floor in bored ecstasy, doesn’t feature. Evidently it must have been too coy for the IFC, or perhaps it has been ruined by Austin Powers. Is it too soon to say the exclusion would have Antonioni turning in his grave?

But back to the list. Many of the scenes are marked out by the disturbing nature of the sex. Take No 1 - Julie Christie and Donald Sutherland having grief-stricken sex in Nicholas Roeg’s Don’t Look Now. It’s profoundly out of place given the rest of the film, yet it is tender, erotic and tells us about the characters, as meaningful sex scenes should.

The disturbances continue through the top 10: Viggo Mortensen and Maria Bello pound away at each other on the stairs in A History of Violence (2), with all the layers of deceit and mistrust involved; Naomi Watts and Laura Elena Harring have surreal sapphic sex in Mulholland Drive (3); while Secretary (8) and Betty Blue (6) are chock-full of odd, unhinged sex. Perhaps most disturbing is The Night Porter (12), where Nazi guard Dirk Bogarde and concentration camp survivor Charlotte Rampling reconnect.

It seems that what makes a good sex scene - according to this list - is relevance. Most of the top 50 scenes are not bolted-on attempts to sexualise some of Hollywood’s mannequins but vital expressions of character and advancements of plot.

Link.

Gorgeous image by my friend Steve Diet Goedde, at (more friends!) Stockroom. Previous (non-explicit) image was deleted from Flickr, ha.

I just love that the column got titled with one of my more outrageous quotes — You Don’t Have To Be Mistress Asscrusher or Worthless Buttslut To Enjoy Strap-On Sex. Co-written with Dan Savage, we answer lots of questions about pegging, like this snip:

Q. I am a 25-year-old bi female with a bi male partner the same age. My boyfriend likes stuff up his butt. Not being someone who enjoys anal sex, I am continually shocked by his ability and willingness to take on new challenges in this department. After a few months of playing with plugs and vibrators, I asked him if he would be up for pegging. He responded enthusiastically, so I ran out and bought a strap-on harness and a silicone cock. Our first attempt gave me a real appreciation for what guys do when they top during intercourse — all that thrusting isn’t as easy as it looks! My boyfriend appreciated my efforts, but he wants me to thrust faster, deeper, and harder. Basically, he wants to be fucked like he’s my prison bitch. Is “rough” anal sex safe? Everything I’ve read says to take it slow and easy. I want to give him what he wants, but I don’t want to hurt him. –TIMID TOP IN TACOMA

A. “Sounds to me like TTIT hasn’t seen much gay fisting porn,” says Violet Blue, blogger, columnist, and author of The Adventurous Couple’s Guide to Strap-On Sex, just published by Cleis Press. “Once she sees what looks like the equivalent of guys parking backhoes in each other’s butts, she’ll realize just how resilient this little cavity can be.”

But first, a few words about pegging — a/k/a strap-on sex — for recent high-school graduates and other new readers of this column. Once upon a time, women were doing guys in their asses with strap-on dildos, and it was good. But when a guy wanted to ask for it, or a girl wanted to propose it, they had to say, “Hey, would you be willing to do me/would you let me do you in the ass with a strap-on dildo?” Annoyed by this mouthful, a Savage Love reader suggested that I harness the collective wisdom of my freaky readers and come up with a name for girls fucking guys’ butts, and “pegging” won. It’s crisp, clean, and easily conjugated: He asked her to peg him; she loves pegging him; they pegged all night long.

However, while my readers christened the term “pegging,” they didn’t invent the act. “Pegging started showing up in porn circa 1970 and became an increasingly popular sex act for straight kids once strap-on harnesses became commercially available in the 1990s,” says Violet. “As I explain in my book, strap-on sex was so misunderstood by mainstream porn producers that indie-porn companies made films like Bend Over Boyfriend,” which walked couples through the mechanics of pegging.

But porn videos, commercially available harnesses, and catchy names can’t account for the boom in girl-on-boy anal sex, can they? What’s driving the pegging craze? “Perhaps straight guys are more interested in having women play with their asses because of increased awareness about prostate health,” says Violet. (A little butt play can improve prostate health.) “Or maybe guys are just becoming more comfortable and confident about their heterosexuality.”

Link.

I had an urge to make my tights into stockings — while still wearing them. Hacker Boy insisted on helping; I live blogged it as it happened with my Helio Ocean. The set of what happened in my kitchen is here.

It’s a very short but fun video with a variety of funny sex moments in the lives of various Adult Swim cartoon characters… Oh, Phil Ken Sebben. How I need you.

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One of my favorite kinds of erotic photos collections always include couples — it’s easy to find babes, fetish girls, porn scenes… but sexy couples are difficult to find. I return endlessly to the work of Samantha Wolov, but now I’m happy to see a very talented photographer friend of mine has a new site that I really like — Paulie & Pauline. Yes, it is indeed mostly comprised of porn performers, but in surprisingly candid personal sexual scenarios — including the kissing and tenderness that’s missing from the porn they perform in, for certain. Yay!

GETV is just getting more fun all the time — I had a wild urge to go to the Musee Mechanique down on Pier 45 (the old mechanical museum) and Eddie brought the camera. We had a blast! Then Eddie kicked my ass at pinball. Watch the episode on the show page, or embedded after the jump.

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* It’s time for indie porn film fest submissions — and bi (coastal) is the new black. My friends at CineKink NYC are partnering with LA’s Erotica Film Fest for the fest and their submission deadline is August 15. It looks less indie and more mainstream porn than I’d hoped, but looks like a lot of fun. Good Vibes just posted an open call for submissions for their San Francisco based Amateur Erotic Film Competition, with a deadline of September 10. I’m *thrilled* to see that in Seattle, The Stranger’s porn fest HUMP! is readying up for another lip-licking year for its indie porn festival — deadline for HUMP! 3 is September 10, and did I mention this was my favorite of the bunch?

* Speaking of Seattle and all things… Dan Savage. Let me count the ways I *heart* Dan. Too many! He is like a delicious human cupcake. Look for me in his column next thursday, and don’t miss the fascinating collection of letters he just posted from gay men who love to watch cunnilingus scenes in porn. I’m often asked about this, and about lesbians who watch straight (and gay male) porn as well. Cult of “the other”, perhaps.

* Over at CounterPunch, Debbie Nathan has a shocking piece about the Kurt Eichenwald trial, where his lawyers are trying to seal all documents and keep conversations behind closed doors — Eichenwald being the NYT reporter who got outed for paying for information (for an NYT story) about underage porn online. It was later revealed that the young man he paid — Justin Berry — was making and producing the porn himself. Nathan tells us, “During the time he received Eichenwald’s money, Berry revived an inactive sex site by posting freshly minted child porn images.” What are the lawyers trying to hide? Nathan reports, multiple payments from Eichenwald under a different name (via PayPal). Perhaps it was payment for Eichenwald’s website design. People have gone to prison around this case, and Berry has since made a career around public speaking and has *testified before Congress* about the dangers of child porn online.

* The Adult Treasure Expo 2007 in Japan looks like it was incredible! Yesterday we posted a fucking incredible video from the expo floor on Fleshbot (complete with demo of male masturbation machines and more). The top image in this post is from hiroshi JET-LOG. who has a few more pics on Flickr. Better yet, Kanojo Toys has great video, images and blog reports from the expo.

Image from Secretary, via.

An update on the state of sex and cinema has been long overdue. IFC did it in their excellent IFC’s Indie Sex Mini-Series, which started last night and runs through friday saturday: it’s airing in four parts on the IFC channel right now (after midnight, of course). I didn’t get to see the first one, but last night I got a chance to pre-screen tonight’s episode “Taboos” and tomorrow (friday) night’s episode “Teens” and I enjoyed them so much I’m going to watch them again. And make my sex-ed friends watch them, too. I’m so glad that this was handled by pro-independent film, anti-censorship IFC. Here, they present sex — edgy, shocking, intense sex — with fairness (i.e., lots of cultural, and somewhat political commentary, focus and inclusion on indy and LGBT film). All while making it highly entertaining, sexually graphic eye candy at the same time. Plus, when one of the main commenters is John Waters talking about sex a la Pink Flamingos, you know it’s going to be *more* than lively.

There is a *lot* of explicit sex in this series. And it’s all worth watching, even when it makes you feel uncomfortable, or turned on, or sometimes alarmingly, both feelings at once. The Taboos episode airs tonight, and it’s worth an hour of your time — and yes, it’s sexually explicit. Maybe even emotionally explicit for some people, for as they delve into John Waters films, they give equal time to the dark sexuality of David Lynch, there are lengthy comments by Atom Egoyan, and the whole thing swings overboard into horror movie sexuality, from slashers to David Cronenberg films.

For someone like me who loves horror movies, sex and portrayals of S/M in mainstream film (which they devote ample time to), the Taboos episode was purely entertaining. It was also exciting to hear seasoned film critics talk about the economics of why we don’t see sex — especially “edgy” sex — in major films anymore. We’re reminded that three movies rated “X” — that’s NC-17 — (Last Tango in Paris, Clockwork Orange, and Midnight Cowboy) were all Oscar-nominated films. But I’m leaving a lot out in this mini-review of a show that has juicy bits from all kinds of films you’ll recognize (and some you won’t, but might put on a ‘watch’ list). The only thing I found puzzlingly missing from the Taboo episode was the films of one of my personal offbeat sex taboo favorites, Ken Russell (though they showed bits of scenes from his film Crimes of Passion throughout the episode). Maybe he’ll be in friday’s show, “Extremes”. Then again, the films are distinctly American, as are the overarching sexual issues — they could have probably made a whole episode around one of my personal obsessions, Euro-horror-sexploitation films of the 60s, 70s and 80s.

Taboos was dark, crazy and entertaining, but it’s the Teens episode (airs friday) that had me riveted. Teens faces off, unflinchingly, with a topic we’re all familiar with: teenage (and yes, child) sexuality in film, and virginity. It could easily have been called “Taboos” for its own sake, as now more than ever it seems like even a mention of non-sanitized 1950 versions of sex among people under 18 becomes our culture’s current ultimate taboo — especially in media. And yes, it’s appalling and mystifying that female ( a girl’s) sexual pleasure-seeking, and female orgasm, is totally forbidden in mainstream film, and this issue is discussed (and shown) explicitly.

Teens has weigh-in from a variety of commentators, mostly filmmakers and critics, who have a lot of shocking and very valuable (though occasionally annoying) things to say about teen sex, on and offscreen. The episode covers the emergence of teen sexuality in movies — straight, gay/lesbian, and non-white — in mainstream and indy film, and uncovers a surprising honesty about kids having sex in movies, at least those made until about ten years ago. What’s happened? Well, that’s discussed quite a bit, too. But the entire show fearlessly examines the realities of teen sex on film (and shows it), and dissects just what makes everyone so goddamned uncomfortable about it. The scenes they show are extreme, shocking, funny, and healing. There are painful moments, then there’s the laugh-till-you-cry scene that is the gay spoof on American Pie.

The Teens episode is controversial. In the true spirit of indy film, IFC didn’t hold back. More than ever, to me, it shows how the MPAA and Disney are unhealthy for kids and culture, and how they need to stop “saving children” from sex — when instead, giving kids context for sex, and treating them like they young adults they are eager to be, will make them healthy adults.

The only quibbles I had with the Teens episode was the female critic who opined that young girls want to see ‘romance’ and not sex (contrasted to boys wanting to see naked girls) — this is not everyone’s experience, by a long shot. Though to their credit, that trope-baiting question gets turned inside out and upside down throughout the episode. And I gots no idea why Dita is a pundit in Teens, except she seems to be the poster girl for the series.

Speaking of the series, they have a nice page at IFC with all the info. There’s a list of films discussed in the series (though sadly not organized by episode), and they’re doing some sort of co-branding thing with Nerve for a joint list of “50 Greatest Sex Scenes in Cinema“, which they’re announcing ten at a time, each day, until friday. (We have a great post about the list, and series, at Fleshbot.) Mileage with the film list will certainly vary, but it helps when putting your own lists together. And I love those mainstream sex movie lists; I recommend films off those lists all the time as conversation starters for couples who want to introduce (the idea of) a new sex act. Because if you see it onscreen — *you* didn’t bring it up, the movie did. :)

I *heart* IFC. Thank you, IFC!

This week’s column is locally focused: a fun guide to some (of my) favorite places to flirt and hook up in San Francisco. When I leave the house, that is. Snip:

About a month ago I provided some comments for a Men’s Health piece about “finding men” in San Francisco, and I told the writers that we have a pretty exciting dating scene here in The City. Amusingly, the authors ran my response to what they termed the “the gay question.” Which would have been a little less confusing if they’d actually asked me “the gay question.” Whatever it is.

Gay mystery questions about straight people being single in San Francisco aside, I think the dating scene here is as complex and romantic as our atmosphere. No matter what neighborhood you flirt in, it’s impossible to escape our cool air of dark mystery, as seen in every filmic rendition of The City from “The Maltese Falcon” and “Vertigo,” to “Jade” and “Interview With a Vampire.” There’s a reason films like this are set here, though you don’t have to think like a vampire to get nibbled on after dark. But if you want to, we certainly won’t judge you.

Of course, unless you’re a Web 2.0 dweeb like me, that means you actually have to leave the house to meet someone. One of my maxims for meeting people is “half of having a life is showing up,” and the San Francisco fog leaves even the vampiest with little excuse not to get out and look for fresh blood — of all kinds.

San Francisco, even at a glance, is a city full of interesting people looking to meet other interesting people, because so many people move here from somewhere else, seeking art, technology, education, fortune, and yes, sexual tolerance. With our high concentration of sex writers, bloggers and educators, it’s tough not to feel the amour everywhere you turn. There are many places to flirt and meet other singles in The City; below are a few favorites.

Link.

Someone I like (but don’t really know), Susan Mernit, has a great post up on the BlogHer blog about her thoughts re: how she’d categorize some of the leading women in the sexblogosphere. It’s a fascinating, well-thought post, with lots of really interesting female sex blogs (and bloggers) put into four distinct categories. I think female sex blogging is going to be the new black in a lot of ways in the next year, and while it’s old news to those of us who’ve been slogging it out on the sex blog front lines for years, I just have a gut feeling it’s going to get much more mainstreamed as we move toward 2008. And I think that’s a good thing: sex blogs and our experiences on teh internets are, to me, the true front lines for women exploring and finally — maybe for the first time in our cultural history — defining sex on their (our) own individuated terms, in our own worlds, unfiltered.

And, no I’m still not a fan of BlogHer.

A whole box of them just arrived — Italian translations of my first book (and its sequel) Sweet Life 1 and Sweet Life 2. w00t!!!! Eeeeee!!!!

But the irony here for me is in the re-titling of the books (compiled into one volume, above). You see, I named my first collection of explicit erotica for couples Sweet Life after Fellini’s masterpiece La Dolce Vita, in part because it’s one of my lifetime favorite films, and also because it’s such a wistful allegory for trying to find that thing you desire the most. In my two books, all of the couples are deeply in love and looking for ways to make that hotter, deeper, naughtier (and they do). La Dolce Vita is Italian for “the sweet life”. But the Italian press that translated my books renamed it Sexploration. What a ridiculous title. But then, maybe they couldn’t use the direct translation for copyright reasons. Life is sweet and strange, indeed.