August 31: Hanne Blank on Radical Acceptance of Bodies, the History of the Hymen, and the Invention of Straight People

Aug 252012
 

 

This Friday, August 31, Sex Out Loud welcomes author and scholar Hanne Blank. We’ll discuss her work on the history of both heterosexuality and virginity. Blank will talk about the 20th century invention of the concept of “straight” and why everything you think you know about virginity is wrong. Blank is also the author of Big Big Love: A Sex and Relationships Guide for People of Size (and Those Who Love Them), updated, illustrated, and re-released in 2011, so we’ll discuss radical acceptance of bodies and how it relates to bettering all of our sex and relationships. This show will be LIVE, so be ready to call in with your questions and join the discussion at 866-472-5788.

Hanne Blank spends her time thinking, learning, writing, and speaking at the crossroads of bodies, self, and culture. Joyfully spanning the town/gown divide as well as the mind/body split, her books include the histories Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality (Beacon Press, 2012) and Virgin: The Untouched History (Bloomsbury, 2007), the cult classic sex and body-acceptance book Big Big Love: A Sex and Relationships Guide for People of Size (and Those Who Love Them) (Celestial Arts, 2011), and numerous others.

Hanne’s work has been featured in periodicals ranging from Penthouse to Bitch: Feminist Response to Pop Culture, and in anthologies ranging from Embodied Resistance: Challenging the Norms, Breaking The Rules to Fucking Daphne: Mostly True Stories and Fictions to Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape.

A former Scholar of the Institute for Teaching and Research on Women at Towson University, Hanne has taught in various capacities on campuses including Brandeis and Tufts. She is also a popular speaker and guest lecturer, with appearances ranging from Harvard University to the inaugural Femme Conference and on topics from the history of the hymen to the politics of getting on top.

Hanne divides her time between north-central Massachusetts and Atlanta. She is a passionate defender of the Oxford comma, is a tea and cider drinker who lives in a coffee and beer country, and owns a preposterous number of red lipsticks. Her current projects include books on MFK Fisher, the rights of human bodies, and the thoroughly gory history of gynecology, as well as teaching and lecturing on campuses all over.

August 24: Jessica Valenti on Virginity, the Purity Myth, and the Future of Feminism

Aug 192012
 

 

This Friday, August 24th, I’m thrilled to welcome Jessica Valenti, writer and founder of feministing.com to Sex Out Loud. Jessica Valenti will talk to us about her latest book, The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity Is Hurting Young Women, which was also turned into a documentary. We’ll discuss abstinence-only education, recent attempts by legislators to control women’s reproductive health care, and long term effects of the current climate on women and sexuality. I will also talk with Jessica, author of Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman’s Guide to Why Feminism Matters, about her experiences as a feminist writer and activist, and where she thinks the next generation of online organizing will lead us. Tune into our show at 8 pm ET / 5 pm PT.

Jessica Valenti – called one of the Top 100 Inspiring Women in the world by The Guardian – is the author of three books: Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman’s Guide to Why Feminism Matters, He’s a Stud, She’s a Slut…and 49 Other Double Standards Every Woman Should Know, and The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women which has been made into a documentary by the Media Education Foundation. She is the editor of the anthology Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape, which was named one of Publishers Weekly‘s Top 100 Books of 2009.

Jessica is also the founder of Feministing.com, which Columbia Journalism Review calls “head and shoulders above almost any writing on women’s issues in mainstream media.” Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, The Nation, The Guardian (UK), The American Prospect, Ms. magazine, Salon and Bitch magazine. She has won a Choice USA Generation award and the 2011 Hillman Journalism Prize for her work with Feministing. She has appeared on The Colbert Report and the Today show, among others, and was profiled in The New York Times Magazine under the headline “Fourth Wave Feminism.”

Jessica is also a widely sought-after speaker who gives dozens of speeches at universities and organizations in the U.S. and abroad. She received her Masters degree in Women’s and Gender Studies from Rutgers University.

August 10: Mollena Williams on Kinky Roleplay, Race Play, Taboo Fantasies, and Being a Slave

Aug 062012
 

Photo by Don Sir Photography

Mollena Williams – our guest for this Friday’s episode of Sex Out Loud - is simply one of the most intelligent and articulate BDSM educators of her generation, and we get to spend the entire hour picking her perverted brain! We will talk about the two chapters on roleplay she wrote for my book The Ultimate Guide to Kink: BDSM, Role Play and the Erotic Edge. She’ll explain the complex elements of race play, where kinky people play out racist scenarios, use racial epithets, or eroticize racial power dynamics. Mollena will reveal why she is turned on by this controversial kink and other kinds of taboo fantasies. Plus, I’ll ask her about what it’s like to be a woman of color who enjoys being a submissive and a collared slave. Read all about Mollena Williams below, including a list of appearances in the next few months.

This “Delicate, Trembling Flower of Submission” © is a NYC born and raised writer, actress, BDSM Educator, Storyteller and an Award-Winning Executive Pervert. She is extremely proud to have served as International Ms Leather 2010. She is also thrilled to have been named Ms. San Francisco Leather 2009 after that contest’s decade long slumber.

She is deeply honored and profoundly humbled to have been selected to receive the 2012 Jack McGeorge Award for Excellence in Education by Black Rose, and is thrilled to have won the National Leather Association’s 2012 Cynthia Slater Non-Fiction Article Award. She was a finalist for the 21st annual Pantheon of Leather’s Woman of the Year & Northern California Regional Awards. You can watch her being interviewed for the Women’s Leather History Project, as curated by the Leather Archives and Museum.

Her latest project, co-authored with Lee Harrington, “Playing Well With Others: Your Guide to Discovering, Exploring and Navigating the Kink, Leather and BDSM Communities” hits the streets September 1, 2012. She is the author of the “Toybag Gude: Taboo Play.” Her essays appear in 2 anthologies curated by Rachel Kramer Bussel: “BDSM and Race Play” appears in “Best Sex Writing 2010,” (you can read the Jezebel review here!) and “Kiss my Boots” is featured in “The Lust Chronicles.” Her challenging essay on “race play” is featured in“Spirit of Desire: Personal Journeys in Sacred Kink” edited by Lee Harrington. Not one but two essays commissioned by Tristan Taormino appear in the groundbreaking anthology “The Ultimate Guide to Kinky Sex.” Mollena is pleased and delighted to be a featured educator with The Kink Academy, where you can see clips of her speaking on various and sundry topics! She is also a columnist for SexIs Magazine, where she lets loose twice a month on just about anything.

Exploring kink since 1993, active in BDSM and the Leather Community since 1996, and presenting classes since 1998, she speaks at Leather, BDSM and Kink events across the US, Europe and Canada on many Leather and BDSM focused topics. She also brings the knowledge on Kink, BDSM and Leather to such august institutions of higher learning as SF State and Cal State, Harvard, Princeton,Yale, Stamford, and Brown for IvyQ. She has been invited to present this fall for MIT.

Mollena’s been sober since 3-14-2007 and in December that same year, she founded “Safeword,” a 12-step based recovery group for all kinksters seeking recovery from addiction.

International Ms Leather 2010 was truly an international title year with visits to the Pride Festival in Stockholm, Sweden, where she made history as the first Leatherwoman ever invited to march with the venerable Scandinavian Leathermen’s Association! She’s also done her thing in Dublin, Ireland, Berlin, Germany, the UK: toured Amsterdam, Netherlands for Leather Pride, as well as teaching and performing in Vancouver, Canada. A roll-up of her epic IMsL 2010 title year can be found here!

Her background includes a lifetime of training and involvement in the performing arts, which include spoken word, classical theater, dance, performance art, and all manner of stagecraft. Performing professionally since the age of 5, her credits include singing on the soundtrack for the movie The Wiz and co-starring with Danny Bonaduce in the underground cult-classic America’s Deadliest Home Video. Her first solo show,69Stories: One Pervert’s Tale has been re-revived and was a hit in Vancouver BC in November 2010 and Madison, Wisconsin July 2012. You can see an excerpt from it here (“Kiss My Boots” part One, and Part Two) as performed at Rachel Kramer Bussel’s In the Flesh storytelling series. She is a favorite at Dixie De La Tour’s Bawdy Storytelling, has performed for many storytelling venues including Bare! Stories, Tiny, Dangerous Fun Audacia Ray’s Red Umbrella Diaries, Carol Queen’s Perverts Put Out, and was a guest on Kevin Allison’s Risk! Podcast. She has also thrown down onstage for Porchlight Storytelling and is looking forward to an upcoming appearance on NPR’s Snap Judgement.

As a model, Mollena has been featured on the Folsom Street Fair 2010 Poster, as well as modeling for Stormy Leather. She has worked with many well-known and renowned kink, Leather and fetish photographers, including Stacie Joy, Laren Leland, Aeric Meredith-Goujon, Melvin Moten, Don Sir and Michele Serchuk: who’s photograph of Mollena posing with fellow educator Graydancer was featured in the Seattle Erotic Arts Festival 2010.

She is chuffed to have been interviewed for the Leather Archives & Museum’s Women’s Leather History Project. Recent interviews with Mo can be found on Jezebel and on Princeton University’s Equal Writes website. You can also read her 2010 interview with SexisIs Magazine. She was featured in a groundbreaking interview at TheGrio.com on BDSM and race, and also interviewed by Sharon Glassman for the Huffington Post. Her work’s also been published by the Society Of Janus Newsletter, The Eulenspiegel Society’s magazine, Prometheus, as well as the online magazine at ALT.COM and Bondage.com. She has been interviewed for The Bottoming Book, ColorLines Magazine, Bitch Magazine, Abiola Abrams: Love, Sex & Dasting, The Playboy Advisor, Sexploration with Monika and The Reverend Mel Show, SexIs Magazine, The Huffington Post, Jezebel and Racialicious to name a few! She is featured in the award winning documentary “Vice & Consent”. You can also see her all tied up in the instructional video, “Jay Wiseman Teaches Rope Bondage”

A founding member of Crowded Fire Theater Company, and former co-host of San Francisco’s Queer Open Mic, Mo blogs on http://mollena.com. Her blog, The Perverted Negress, has been a featured blog on Fleshbot (not Once but TWICE!) as well as the pick of the week for The Sugasm. And boy howdy, the venerated Jane’s Guide thinks The Perverted Negress’ Blog is pretty rad! Mollena is also a member of Mama’s Leather Family (#1231) , formally dubbed “Mama’s Perverted Negress” and pinned in at the SF Eagle by Mama Sandy Reinhardt herself. She Twitters incessantly over on http://twitter.com/mollena, so follow her there!

UPCOMING APPEARANCES:

August 16th through August 22nd: Boston, MA
  • 8/16 Video shoot with Kink Academy
  • 8/17 Class for New England Leather Alliance
  • 8/18 “Boundary Smackdowns” class for MOB
  • 8/19 “Never A ‘Bad’ Scene!” class for MOB
  • 8/22 “Taboo Play” class for NELA

August 23rd – August 30th: NYC

August 31st – September 2nd: Maryland

September 3rd – September 6th – New York, NY

  • 9/5 Work with Aeric on editing the YBCA Film Project

September 7th Through September 26th: Bay Area, CA

September 27th – October 4th: New York, NY

  • 10/1”The Worst!” True storytelling

October 5th through October 8th, Washington DC

  • Black Rose

Beyond Fifty Shades, plus the new collection Stripped Down

Jul 192012
 

“If you’ve been reading (or have heard about) Fifty Shades of Grey and you’re curious about how those kinky games are actually played, this book’s for you. Even if you don’t want to tie up your partner, you’ll learn how to do it right and why it appeals to the folks who play that game.”

 

So You Wanna Be A Sex Writer?

Jul 062012
 

 

June 15: Kate Bornstein on Gender, Kink, Mental Health, Scientology, and Her New Memoir

Jun 122012
 


My next guest on Sex Out Loud is author, performer, playwright, and gender theorist Kate Bornstein. Join us on Friday, June 15 at 5:00 pm Pacific time/8:00 pm Eastern time on the VoiceAmerica Talk Radio Network when we’ll talk about her new memoir, her years as a high-ranking Scientologist working directly for L. Ron Hubbard, her transition, BDSM and kink, her time as a collared slave, the documentary being made about her, her own mental health and the struggles LGBT folks with mental health issues face. Plus, she’ll read one of the most provoactive sections from A Queer and Pleasant Danger.

Kate Bornstein is an author, playwright and performance artist whose latest book is her memoir, A Queer and Pleasant Danger. Other published works include the books Gender Outlaws: The Next Generation, Gender Outlaw: On Men, Women, and the Rest of Us, My Gender Workbook, Hello, Cruel World: 101 Alternatives To Suicide For Teens, Freaks, and Other Outlaws and the cyber-romance-action novel, Nearly Roadkill with co-author Caitlin Sullivan. Kate’s plays and performance pieces include Strangers in Paradox, Hidden: A Gender, The Opposite Sex Is Neither, Virtually Yours, and y2kate: gender virus 2000.

Kate’s books are taught in over 120 colleges and universities around the world; and she has performed her work live on college campuses, and in theaters and performance spaces across the USA, as well as in Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Austria. Kate is currently touring colleges, youth conferences and high schools, speaking, leading workshops, and performing. Follow her on Twitter @KateBornstein.

RADAR Lab Benefit at The Strand – This Saturday!

Mar 172012
 

RADAR Productions and Michelle Tea have put together an amazing benefit that’s happening in NYC this Saturday, March 24th. Come see a powerhouse line-up up of writers and artists, while supporting a great project (RADAR Lab, the annual 11-day queer writers retreat). Information on the event and how to get tickets are below.

~~~

RADAR Productions’ East Coast Benefit – Saturday, March 24, 2012

RADAR Productions hosts its first East Coast fundraiser to benefit the 4th annual RADAR Lab. The fundraiser takes place from 7pm – 9:30pm at The Strand Bookstore (828 Broadway) in Greenwich Village.  Light refreshments provided with a cash bar.  Tickets are $30 and can be purchased in advance at https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/225631.  The event lineup features:

  • Rose Troche:  film and television director, television producer, and screenwriter.  Her directorial debut was the groundbreaking film Go Fish (1994), a lezzie love story.
  • Stephen Elliott:  author of seven books including The Adderall Diaries which has been described as “genius” by both the San Francisco Chronicle and Vanity Fair; creator of The Rumpus and director of the forthcoming feature film Cherry, starring James Franco.
  • Mary Gaitskill:  author of the National Book Award nominee Veronica, the novel Two Girls, Fat and Thin and the story collections Bad Behavior, Because They Wanted To and Don’t Cry. Her short story, Secretary, was the inspiration for the film of the same name.
  • Tao Lin: author of 6 books of fiction and poetry, including Eeeee Eee Eeee, Shoplifting from American Apparel, Richard Yates and the forthcoming Untitled Third Novel. He is the creator of the blog Thought Catalog and publisher of the press Muumuu House.
  • Leopoldine Core: born and raised in Manhattan. She attended Hunter College. Her work has appeared in Open City, The Literarian and Joyland Magazine.
  • Michael Cunningham: author of the novels A Home at the End of the World, Flesh and Blood, The Hours (winner of the Pen/Faulkner Award & Pulitzer Prize), and Specimen Days.
  • Lorelei Lee: a student, writer, and porn performer. Her writing has appeared or is upcoming in Transfer, $pread Magazine, Animal Shelter, and Denver Quarterly.
  • And a sneak preview of Sini Anderson’s documentary The Punk Singer: The Documentary about Kathleen Hanna.

RADAR Lab is an 11-day, queer-centric retreat for writers and artists. The retreat is free of charge, and is hosted by RADAR’s Artistic Director, Michelle Tea, Program Manager, Ali Liebegott, and Managing Director, Elizabeth Pickens. The Lab has been held annually for the last three summers in Akumal, Mexico.  All writers and artists work independently on projects and share progress during daily communal meals and discussions. Each year, there is a featured guest writer; in 2012 the featured guest is Rhodessa Jones, Cultural Odyssey co-director and founder of Medea Project – Theater for Incarcerated Women. Writers attending the 2012 Radar LAB include Jonathan Katz, Ariel Schrag, Miguel Gutierrez, Brontez Purnell, Erin Markey and many more.

RADAR Productions is a San Francisco-based non-profit that produces literary happenings around the Bay Area and beyond. Founded in 2003 by writer Michelle Tea, RADAR conducts presenting, commissioning, professional development and touring programs that stimulate the production of queer and underground literature.

Thought Catalog, Original Plumbing, and an award from Naked Truth

Feb 222012
 

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