Tag Archive for "Sexuality"

Posts Tagged Sexuality

The Academic Feminist: Lesbians in Space

Welcome back, Academic Feminists! Our back-to-school edition features an interview with two scholars, Maria Rodó-de-Zárate and Jen Gieseking, whose work explores the production of lesbian space and identify, though from opposite sides of the pond. Maria is a Ph.D. Candidate at the Department of Geography of the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, where her work examines the uses and experiences of young people in public space from an intersectional approach. Jen is a Ph.D. Candidate in the environmental psychology program at The Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY), and you can read more about her research at her website. I got the two of them together – first over email and then for a live ...

By Anna • 11 years ago

The Feministing Five: Barbara Carrellas

Barbara Carrellas is an author, sex educator, sex/life coach, motivational speaker and theater artist. Her past books include Urban Tantra: Sacred Sex for the Twenty First Century and Luxurious Loving. Her latest book, Ecstasy is Necessary, invites readers to explore their authentic, sexual self. She also talks about her non-genitally based breath and energy orgasms, which were featured on The Learning Channel.
Barbara is the founder of Urban Tantra®, an approach to sacred sexuality that adapts and blends conscious sexuality practices from Tantra to BDSM, and the co-founder of Erotic Awakening, a pioneering series of workshops focusing on the ...

By Samhita • 11 years ago

Sherlyn Chopra: The first ever Indian lady to pose nude in Playboy

Sherlyn Chopra is making naked lady history by being the first Indian woman to pose nude for Playboy. And she’s getting a lot of criticism for this–not because she is supporting a misogynist publication that perpetuates ridiculous standards of sexy. No, that’s not why. Instead, she is getting criticism because some people believe she is hurting the view that Indian women should be modest and pure.

Playboy has always had this awkward relationship to feminism. Hefner is a sexist pig that lives off the objectification of women’s bodies and posits nudity as faux-empowerment–since you get paid for it! (He ignores the part where it is a sexist marketplace that believes a women’s greatest asset is that booty which allows for ...

By Jos Truitt • 11 years ago

Enough with “I date women and trans men”

I’m traveling on the east coast right now, which has thrown me back into the kind of queer, mostly female assigned community that exists in the “I date women and trans men” frame (I’m not saying this doesn’t happen on the west coast – but I’ve found alternatives way more easily). This is a big part of what my Girl Talk piece was about, but I want to address this particular issue really directly.

“I date women and trans men” is the definition of cissexism. It’s basing your frame for sexuality on the gender coercively assigned to a person by their doctor at birth, not on that person’s actual identity. In this case, we’re talking about folks who were assigned ...

By Maya Dusenbery • 11 years ago

A conversation about kink with Natalie Zina Walschots

After I took on Katie Roiphe’s article on female fantasies of submission last month, Natalie Zina Walschots reached out to take issue with a couple of my points–and invite me to have a more in-depth discussion of submission, kinky orientations, and how BDSM can best be de-stigmatized. Natalie is a Toronto-based rock critic specializing in heavy metal and poet who writes about sadomasochism. Which means she’s way cooler than me, so how could I say no? (Read her full bio and check out her two collections of poetry, DOOM: Love Poems for Supervillains and Thumbscrews, after the jump.) The following is an edited version of our email conversation.

Natalie: I’d like to start with what you wrote in your ...

By Miriam • 12 years ago

Not Oprah’s Book Club: Straight

So I’m kind of cheating on this one, because I haven’t actually read Hanne Blank‘s new book, Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality. But I know her work, and I know how fabulously important this topic is, so I’m endorsing it sight unseen.

A recent interview with Hanne in Salon gives a flavor of what the book covers:

Men and woman have been having sex for as long as there have been humans. So how can we talk about there being a “history” of heterosexuality?

We can talk about there being a history of heterosexuality in the same way that we can talk about there being a history of religions. People have been praying to God for a really ...

By Lori Adelman • 12 years ago

Saudi women finally allowed to join work force… to sell lingerie

Wow, there are so many layers to this story. Saudi women, long denied the ability to work, are finally allowed into the public sector- but only to sell garments, cosmetics, and yes – skimpy women’s lingerie. From the New York Times:

The Ministry of Labor is enforcing a royal decree issued last summer ordering that sales personnel in shops selling garments and other goods, like cosmetics, that are only for women must be female. More than 28,000 women applied for the jobs, the ministry said. [Emphasis mine.]

Anywhere else in the world, it would not be news that sales assistants in shops selling panties and bras were female. In Saudi Arabia, where women have always been ...

Wow, there are so many layers to this story. Saudi women, long denied the ability to work, are finally allowed into the public sector- but only to sell garments, cosmetics, and yes – skimpy ...

By Miriam • 12 years ago

More on why you must see Pariah

Samhita mentioned that a crew of us went to see Pariah last weekend. If Meryl Streep’s shout out to the lead actress Adepero Oduye during her Golden Globes acceptance speech wasn’t enough of an encouragement to rush out and see the film, I thought I would add my two cents to the symphony of praise for this film.

Pariah was absolutely breathtaking. So genuine, so raw and very touching. But also, and this is where the film was set apart from other recent portrayals–uplifting. I kept telling people who asked that it was sad, but it was like a really good cry–you just feel so much better at the end. I won’t spoil the film, but just say that the ...