Vote for your favorite BDSM fiction for a new Leather Archives & Museum exhibit!

Calling all READERS within the Leather / Kink / Fetish / S&M / B&D / BDSM community:

I (Clarisse) have been asked to curate a pansexual BDSM books exhibit at the Leather Archives & Museum (your friendly neighborhood BDSM museum). I know a fair bit about books, but I still need help with this question, so I’ve created an online poll. I’m asking everyone to send in their favorite BDSM fiction title; I’ll base the exhibit on your submissions. This way, the exhibit will be firmly based within the community — please repost this WIDELY, so that we get the most comprehensive community representation possible!

To be featured in this exhibit, a book must be FICTION and it must contain EXPLICIT BDSM.

You can vote in the poll by clicking here.

NOTES!

If you really like your favorite book, then please consider also submitting a comment of 100-200 words, describing any or all of the following:
+ a brief synopsis of the book,
+ how the book represents BDSM,
+ historical significance of the book,
+ other work the author may have done within the BDSM community.

The best book descriptions might be used in the exhibit. So if you want your description to have your name or pseudonym on it, please include that name at the end of your description! Sadly, we cannot pay people if we use their descriptions.

You can vote for books that aren’t written in English, but if you submit a description of the book, then the description must be in English.

It is technically possible for an individual to vote more than once in this poll, but please don’t. I am indeed logging where the votes come from; if the data appear too skewed when the poll is done, then I might have to throw out the results. Don’t do that to me!

Again, you can vote here! The poll will close June 1, 2009 at 12AM.

Thanks for reading!

cheers,
Clarisse Thorn

DISCLAIMERS!
Clarisse and LA&M staff will give this poll as much weight as possible! However, we reserve the right not to use all the top winners of the poll, for reasons that may include but are not limited to: adequately representing a pansexual range of identities; ensuring that all books in the exhibit contain explicit BDSM; or suspicious quantities of votes from the same place. All comments submitted in this poll become property of the Leather Archives & Museum.

Interview with Daniel Bergner, author of “The Other Side of Desire”

I was all set to dislike Daniel Bergner. As a member of the BDSM community and an advocate for greater societal acceptance of BDSM, I was unimpressed by the reviews of his new book, The Other Side of Desire. I get annoyed when I see media depictions that play into BDSM stereotypes or create other problems for the BDSM community image; it seemed to me that Bergner had written a book that did just that. At best, it sounded naïve — at worst, cynical and insensitive. I requested an interview with him, wondering whether we’d end up at each other’s throats … and then I read the book.

The Other Side of Desire is far more complex than I initially gave it credit for. There’s too much silence around alternative sexuality, and it breaks that silence — not by promoting an agenda, but with a plea for personal understanding. I found myself believing that Daniel Bergner really had done his best — not to put us deviants on display like animals in a zoo, but to give profiles of human beings thinking about human concerns. Still, there were gaps in the book that I found very troubling, and I wanted to see if he could defend them.

I arranged to meet Daniel at the Leather Archives and Museum, a museum devoted to leather / fetish / BDSM on Chicago’s north side. There, I found him looking over the Archives’ BDSM history timeline. As he greeted me, I was impressed by his measured speech and unexpectedly dark eyes. There was an openness to him — even, perhaps, a vulnerability — that didn’t come across in photographs. I could see how he’d gotten so many people to open up about their sexuality, and I warmed to him instantly.

The most obvious question to start with was what fetishes Daniel has, personally. But he’d already told other interviewers that he’s totally vanilla …

Daniel Bergner: (laughs) Did I say totally vanilla? I think I’ve — I think vanilla-ish, let’s go with that.

Clarisse Thorn: There was a part of your book’s Introduction that made some kinky readers wince a little bit. It’s at the beginning, where you compare your coverage of sexual fetishists to your previous journalistic experiences … one experience was interviewing convicted prisoners on death row, and another was covering war in Sierra Leone. Do you think it’s problematic that you compared alternative sexuality to a war zone in a foreign country?

DB: Now, I think that comparison was misunderstood. I do not see the erotically unusual as comparable to criminality or to utterly damaging violence, like in a war zone. What I was trying to say was that in each of those previous books I’ve gone to a very extreme place in order to learn about things that are universal.

Here, with sexuality — again, not comparing criminality to alternative sexuality — but I was comparing journeys of looking at lives that might fall outside “the norm”, and I’m putting quotes around “norm” because I think that whole concept of normal is suspect. Looking at lives lived outside the typical boundaries might help me, might help readers understand more about the lives we live sexually, how we come to be who we are sexually, and what we do with our sexuality.

CT: I’m interested to know what you knew about alternative sexuality before you started this book. What did you think of alternative sexuality? What stereotypes did you have? In particular, what kind of experience did you have with BDSM?

DB: I think I’ve come to all the writing I’ve done with a very open mind. Some people would say “too open”. It’s not just that I hesitate to judge. I think I’m missing the judgmental gene somehow.

I think it’s safe to say that I didn’t know nearly as much as I know now. I had no, or little, direct contact. It was new.

CT: You wrote on the blog for Powell’s Bookstore that you met fetishists for your book through “friends, therapists, and the Internet”. Can you shed some more light on that?

DB: I met the sadist I profiled — The Baroness — through a writer friend who very much admired The Baroness. Others I met through therapists who knew my writing and trusted me to be careful in my perspective. Ron, who’s the central figure in the last story —

CT: The amputee fetishist.

DB: — the amputee devotee, yes — I met him very indirectly through the Internet; I was having conversations with people in that community.

CT: In a comment on the blog “Sex in the Public Square” you said that you are “not, primarily, an advocate.” In other words, you didn’t see yourself as writing this book in order to advocate for alternative sexuality. Making alternative sexuality more acceptable was not a major goal for you. Is that right?

DB: I rely on and am indebted to advocates, because those who advocate for — in this case, sexual freedom, in other cases, for a more humanistic vision of convicts or what it means to live in a West African village — that kind of advocacy allows for what I do. I couldn’t do what I do without it, because it causes people to be open-minded and take an interest. What I do is try to tell complex stories about complex human beings in a way that makes us feel our humanity intensely, and deepens our humanity.

I think it’s very hard to create politically driven art. There are some examples of it that succeed, but I think often, people have to make a choice. I think it’s really difficult to do both.

CT: I guess those of us who are more concerned with advocacy just thought that it seems strange, even heartless, to write a book like this without making advocacy a goal. You must know that there’s a battle on — there are people out there, like the nonprofit National Coalition for Sexual Freedom, who are working really hard towards alternative sexuality acceptance.

So on the one side we have the NCSF. And then there are people on the other side who do nothing but tell us kinksters that we are sinful, or sick, or deluded, or otherwise screwed up. Anti-BDSM activists are not always religious evangelicals, either. They can come from surprisingly liberal circles. For instance — I identify strongly as a feminist, and there are lots of feminists out there who think that practicing BDSM and feminism are not irreconcilable — but there are also anti-BDSM feminists. Just recently I encountered a popular radical feminist blogger who outright stated that sadists should either repress their sadistic desires, or kill themselves.

We deal with this hostile environment all the time, and it’s hard for us to relate to someone who would write a book like yours and then say that he’s outside the conflict. Here’s an example that might illuminate what I’m saying. Suppose a foreigner came to the U.S. and wrote a book about four soldiers on the front in the Iraq War. And suppose his book was a huge hit in his country. Suppose that for lots of people in that foreigner’s home country, his book is the only exposure they have to the lives of Iraq War soldiers — that’s all they ever read about those stories. And then suppose that author said, afterwards, “I just wanted to write a book about these particular four soldiers, and their lives as soldiers. I wasn’t trying to make a statement about the Iraq War, and I didn’t mean to shape people’s perceptions of what being a soldier is like in general.”

What would you say to that author?

DB: That’s a great example, and it makes me feel bad.

CT: (laughs) Sorry!

DB: That’s fine; it’s your job to complicate things and ask difficult questions.

I have certainly read about the legal thinking that surrounds BDSM. Still — I hope this will not sound like too rarefied and irrelevant a thought — I have always been protective of the impulse to tell stories, to render people within nonfiction or journalism. So there’s a part of me that says: Wait. We don’t want all nonfiction, all journalism to become advocacy, because we’d lose something — we’d lose a depth of human investigation. We’d lose a depth that language itself can bring us. We’d lose a level of emotional resonance.

With the prison book, of course that book was in part an effort to have people see human beings that our society has rendered completely invisible, and to have our society see them as human beings. I think a lot of readers did in fact react that way. So when I would speak to groups about that, on the one hand I was protective and I said that I was telling stories about particular people, but that didn’t mean that underneath wasn’t an impulse to make people see in a way that starts to change their minds. Understand on an emotional level that makes them reconsider on an intellectual level.

You’re right: it would be ridiculously callous for me to say, “I just wanted to tell some stories, great, I’m done, goodbye.” Of course that’s not true. Of course I’m concerned with the boundaries that are placed on the erotic, and I wouldn’t have written this book if I didn’t feel that. That was an original impulse behind this book — feeling those boundaries in all kinds of forms, and questioning them. The entire book, in a way, is an attempt to chisel away at those constraints.

Let’s circle back to your radical feminist voice, who wrote that all sadists should either repress their sadistic desires or kill themselves. There’s an example of politics run amok. That writer is so engaged with her own political viewpoint — from her perspective, she probably sees BDSM as a threat to a feminist sense of independence. But by applying those politics to the realm of eros so extremely, she renders herself absurd. So there, again, I think your point sort of — if not proves mine, at least bolsters it a little bit. Eros is such a complex place, such a place for individual exploration. I almost want to clear politics out of it altogether. It’s difficult enough for us to be us as human beings when it comes to the erotic, without politics getting in there … once politics gets in there, I worry that we’re going to distort things even more.

In any case, I certainly get your point, and I certainly don’t mean to say that I don’t care about sexual freedom. I hope there is an undercurrent of tacit advocacy that runs throughout my book.

First reaction to Daniel Bergner’s “The Other Side of Desire”

This post is a bit of teaser — I’ll own up to that at the start. I’m not going to review Daniel Bergner’s new book The Other Side of Desire yet … because I will be interviewing the man himself on this coming Thursday, before his 7PM reading at the Leather Archives and Museum. I’ll post that interview, along with my commentary and book review, next week. Exciting!

So if I’m not going to talk about my first reaction to reading the book, what am I talking about?

The Other Side of Desire has been generating a huge amount of buzz, and not just for sexuality geeks. I first heard about it when one of my sexuality geek friends grabbed me and said, “You have to read this ‘New York Times’ article.” We went through the whole thing with much commentary, then rushed to the computer to read excerpts from Mr. Bergner’s book.

I wasn’t sure how to read Daniel Bergner — the writer himself, that is, rather than his material. What does it mean that he compares profiling kinky people to investigating a Louisiana prison, or covering war in Sierra Leone? * What does it mean that he characterizes — or at least, has been reported as characterizing — the greatest benefit of feeling comfortable talking about sex as good cocktail party conversation? ** What does it mean that one of the editorial reviews chosen for the back of his book describes his subjects as “oddly winning”? ***

I mean … seriously? How much was he kidding about the party conversation thing? Did he choose that review himself, and did he himself consider his subjects “oddly winning” — as if it’s such a great big insight that fetishists can be nice people? Was Mr. Bergner making these statements because he was trying to make The Other Side of Desire more accessible to a wide, potentially intolerant audience … or because he, himself, sees conversations with sexual fetishists as analogous to reporting on a war zone in a foreign country?

I didn’t know. I knew already that I wanted to talk to him and hear his perspective, but I had no obvious channels to do so.

A little while later, someone emailed me the “Times” Magazine review of Mr. Bergner’s book. That review, by Lori Gottlieb, shifted me from slight unease to actual irritation — specifically, this quotation:

The only story about a woman — a celebrated clothing designer and sadist who’s in a conventional marriage — is also unfortunately the weakest. To be fair, Bergner doesn’t have a lot to work with. His subject, a narcissist who enjoys torturing and humiliating her underlings, is inherently unsympathetic. … While his other subjects struggle mightily with their unconventional cravings, the Baroness, as her victims call her, denies any inner conflict. In her mind, she’s happy, her victims are grateful, and she is their “beacon.”

Wait a minute, I thought. Why is Gottlieb describing the Baroness’s BDSM partners as “victims”, and what does this imply about how Daniel Bergner described the Baroness and her activities? Of course, it’s worth noting that at the article’s beginning, Gottlieb mentions that the one time a partner asked her for anything remotely untraditional in bed (specifically, he asked her to handcuff him), she flipped out and fled home to tell all her friends “what a freak this guy turned out to be”. (Really — that’s an actual quotation from her article.) I guess Lori Gottlieb has trouble understanding that it might be a good thing for a kinkster to feel sexually unashamed. For her, it’s only acceptable for people to explore their fetishes as long as they feel really horrible about it. Shame is what matters to Gottlieb, not consent. In fact, Gottlieb seems to have much more of a problem with the Baroness than she does with Roy — another subject of the book and a convicted child molester. ****

But even though her perspective is obviously kink-phobic, Gottlieb’s words gave me more questions. What was Daniel Bergner saying? I’d read excerpts from his book posted online; I knew I’d have to read more. Were his words being twisted, was I being too harsh in my assessment? What were his goals in writing this book?

I finally got my chance when I heard about the Leather Archives event. Daniel Bergner was going to be in Chicago, and he’d chosen to do his reading at the BDSM museum! Thrilled, I redoubled my efforts to get in touch. This culminated with me sending Bergner’s publicist an email introducing myself, describing my activist work and then holding my breath. Was this author really all about communicating with us “oddly winning” fetishists … or was this, for him, merely about making good conversation at parties? He’s been featured by the “New York Times” and NPR; I knew he had no reason to talk to me unless he really wants to engage with the BDSM community.

So it counts for a lot, I think, that Daniel Bergner agreed to be interviewed by lil ole me. And as I slowly cover my copy of The Other Side of Desire with underlines and margin notes, I find myself — yes, bothered by aspects of this book, but somewhat heartened as well. I’ll withhold complete judgment until I’ve actually spoken to Mr. Bergner; I’m definitely looking forward to it.

We come to the cliffhanger: watch this space ….

(And if you’re not in Chicago, check out the author’s site to see whether you might be able to catch him in your city.)

* “What,” the people I write about often ask, “are you doing here with me?” I heard the question in Angola Prison, Louisiana’s maximum security penitentiary, where I followed the lives of men sentenced to stay locked up until their deaths, with no chance of parole. I heard it in Sierra Leone, in West Africa, where I attached myself to missionaries and mercenaries and child soldiers amid the most brutal war in recent memory. And I heard it as a sought the stories — of eros, obsession, anarchy, love — that fill The Other Side of Desire. (from the book’s Introduction)

** “Well, it definitely deepened my sense of the power of the erotic,” he said. “And if I was always at least fairly comfortable talking about sex, now I’m very comfortable. That in itself has led to something good. It’s good for cocktail party conversation.” (from the “Times” article)

*** See the cover and read excerpts by clicking here.

**** And let’s not forget that to some people, Gottlieb comes across as a veritable “libertine”. Christ.

Latest sex-positive links, publications and Chicago events

Lots to report! Four things:

Firstly: fabulous poly podcaster Cunning Minx interviewed me for her latest podcast! Also on the podcast are her thoughts on “Sex Positive”, the last documentary we screened at Sex+++. Thanks Minx!

Secondly: Richard Berkowitz, the sex education activist profiled in aforementioned documentary “Sex Positive”, left a great comment on my quick semi-review of the film. He and I corresponded briefly, and I will be interviewing him soon — watch this space for more on that! Also, it turns out that you can order his book Stayin’ Alive: The Invention of Safe Sex through his website.

Thirdly: Sugasm #159!

The best of this week’s sex blogs by the bloggers who blog them. Highlighting the top 3 posts as chosen by Sugasm participants.

This Week’s Picks
+The Annual Anti-Valentine’s Day Posting: 2009 Edition “Ahh, Valentine’s Day. Sigh.”
+ Exposed “We talk a lot about putting me on display, and it was even more intense in reality as it has been in fantasy.”
+ Yes “At the edge of the precipice, my nerves rippling with electricity, i tumbled down into you”

Sugasm Editor
+ Sex Work And Compassion: A Call From Baghdad

Editor’s Choice
+ Stairwell

BDSM & Fetish
+ 25 Things, the Kinky Way
+ The Domme Experiment — The Result
+ Firsts, part 2
+ Permission
+ Single Minded Passion
+ My post, “There is no ’should’” and the sex-positive “agenda”

+ More Sugasm
+ Join the Sugasm
+ See also: Fleshbot’s Sex Blog Roundup each Tuesday and Friday.

Fourthly: Last but not least, let’s talk about some upcoming Chicago sex-positive events! All events are totally free and open to the public unless otherwise noted.

+ Thursday February 19, 12 noon: Yes Means Yes! sex-positive anthology discussion at Hull-House Museum. Includes Hazel/Cedar Troost, amazing local trans activist.

+ Thursday February 19, 7.30 PM: Yes Means Yes! sex-positive anthology discussion at Women and Children First. Includes Hazel/Cedar Troost, amazing local trans activist.

+ Tuesday February 24, 7 PM: “When Two Won’t Do” documentary about consensual non-monogamy at Sex+++

+ Thursday February 26, 3 PM: Leadership in the Bedroom: Communicating What You Want and Don’t Want sexual communication workshop with Clarisse Thorn at UIC (312.413.2120 for more information)

+ Thursday February 26, 7 PM: The Other Side of Desire fetish and sexuality book reading with Daniel Bergner at the Leather Archives and Museum. I’m going to be interviewing Daniel Bergner soon — watch this space!

+ Thursday February 26, 7.30 PM: Bound to Struggle kink and radical politics zine discussion at Women and Children First. Simon Strikeback, the zine editor, is really great and also helps run Threat Level Queer Shorts.

+ Friday February 27, 12 noon: Sex education history discussion at Hull-House Museum

+ Tuesday March 3, 7.30 PM: Cheap Sex workshop at Early to Bed — $15, or $10 for students and low-income

+ Tuesday March 3, 7.30 PM: “The Last Days of Desmond ‘Nani’ Reese” post-apocalyptic stripper play at Steppenwolf — $20 with code “5103″

+ Wednesday March 4, 6 PM: Women on Wednesdays meet-up features Babes with Blades at Center on Halsted — $10, women only

+ Friday March 6, evening: Fornication-themed party to benefit the Sex Workers Outreach Project at the Wild Pug — $5-10 suggested donation. Includes awesome sex worker and blogger Aspasia.

+ Tuesday March 10, 7 PM: “BDSM: It’s Not What You Think!” and other short S&M documentaries at Sex+++

+ Saturday March 14, 4 PM: Newcomer’s Social relaxed gathering at BDSM club Galleria Domain Two — 21+ only.

Upcoming kink events and publications

I’ll post more about these as the specific times approach –
Awesome upcoming kink events:

Ongoing: Threat Level Queer Shorts, Chicago
A sex-positive series of queer shorts — explicitly kink-friendly. I heard about these folks while researching the Chicago queer film scene, since I’m curating a new sex-positive documentary film series myself (more on that soon!). I hope to share audience with them and promote each other’s work!

February: CineKink, New York City
“Cutting across orientations, topics covered at CineKink have included — but are by no means limited to — BDSM, leather and fetish, swinging, non-monogamy and polyamory, roleplay and gender bending. Or, frankly, given the current moral climate, as long as it involves consenting adults, just about anything celebrating sex as a right of self expression is fair game. (Far be it from us to define “kink” — if you think your work might make sense in this context, please send it along!)” With luck, I’ll be able to catch the tail end of CineKink on my next New York visit.

March: KinkForAll, New York City
Based on the quasi-anarchist, user-generated, very flexible BarCamp conference model, KinkForAlls are intended to be — well — quasi-anarchist, user-generated, very flexible sex-positive conferences. The idea is that they’ll hopefully start popping up all over the country … and be open to all orientations and kinks, not just BDSMers! I heard about this from BDSM blogger Maymay while emailing around the New York scene, last time I was in that fine city; I’ll most likely present on a variety of topics at the event in March.

May: Bash Back! Radical Queer Convergence, Chicago
A weekend of debauchery, mischief, workshops, games and more! I met a member of Bash Back through my friend Sex, Art and Politics, and they’ve got a lot of interesting things to say. There’s a chance that I won’t be around in May, but I really hope to be here to attend Convergence! If I am, I’ll probably run a BDSM Outreach workshop and sit on a BDSM discussion panel.

And I’ll post more about these as I read them –
Awesome upcoming kink publications:

Ongoing: Bound to Struggle Zine — Where Kink and Radical Politics Meet
“Does radical politics inform how you do kink? Has kink taught you ways to be a better activist or political thinker? Can the non-physical mechanics of kink (notions of consent, etc.) effect the nitty-gritty mechanics of an action bloc or campaign fight? Do conscientious ideas of environmentalism, anti-sexism, racism, able-ism, classism, gender-ism, etc. figure into the negotiating process of your scenes or relationships? How do you talk about power? Where do these ideas meet action and how do they affect our lives?” Editor Simon Strikeback is one of the great people who run Threat Level Queer Shorts! I’m hoping to contribute to future issues.

Available Now: Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and a World Without Rape
I just found out that my new friend Hazel/Cedar has an essay in this anthology, and I’m a little starstruck — the book just looks so fantastic! Just one example of the coolness therein was recently linked by Sex, Art and Politics: a wonderful (very basic, very clear) essay on feminism and BDSM, which will probably feature heavily in one or two of my own later blog entries.