Pr0n, baby, it is all about Pr0n

 

Via http://xkcd.com/714/

 

During a talk at Stockholm Pride this summer, we where listening to a talk about the possibilities or rather apparently the inpossibilities of feminist pornography. Now, I don’t view a lot of pr0n, simply because I’m not very interested in the expressions and most of the time find hot things in other places, even if they are not intended to be anything erotic. I’m sorry but I guess that is how I am wired. What I am interested in is different erotic expressions amongst people, and with that comes certain discussions that I do know are reoccurring and sometimes really frustrating.
There is doublebind and a difficulty when it comes to porn and feminist theory. Not because there is something inherently problematic about porn itself, but because it has been made in to being so problematic. It does not matter if you come from a rightwing nutplace like the one below

or if it is a rethoric coming from what is framed as a feminist, because they can both frame pornography as something pwetti evööööööl. It turns men into murderers, women into wanton sluts or depraved victims and wrecks families, lives and it is also the ultimate expression of the patriarchal society in which we live. I.E porn, according to some, is the blueprint of the oppression of women in our society. Etc. Etc. I could go on forever and ever on the massive effects that pornography is supposed to have on mankind. Yeah, that is MANkind, because it is the man who can never separate fantasy from reality, who can’t control himself, who turns into broken rapists and sadists (the bad kind).

I can’t say I’m totally positive towards the sex industries, but that is in the same way as I am not totally positive towards many other industries. We are not perfect human beings, we can’t really claim that everything is alright, fine and dandy, because hey, I make a choice and if I make a choice that must automatically be good, right? Not really, but my point here is to discuss the implications of a possible feminist pornography. The project ‘Dirty Diaries’ from Sweden was filmed with mobile cameras, and with another approach than what porn production usually has. Furthermore, it was also given funding from the Swedish State (which many saw as proof of how twisted the Swedish society had become, funny enough…). Now, I’ve seen bits and bobs and for me it did not do anything, sexually, but I found the approach being interesting. With a mobile camera filming and the participants being a very active part of the creation, the lines between the viewer and the viewed became blurred. By turning voyeurism and exhibitionism on it’s head, I think there is a lot that can be done, especially if it is for someone else than the viewer. This is already in full throttle  with the masses of amateur porn that is produced each and every day by people shagging away in front of the camera.

The thing then is, for whom is pornography produced and why? Usually, the answer is something like, “People who want to get off on watching other peeps shag”. Now, I can fully understand that it is how it is defined, because definitions are important to us, especially in the West with our obsessions of taxonomy here and there and everywhere. But is not definition to narrow? Does it not exclude all of those who do amateur pornography for themselves, for their own private pleasure? Or those who view it with other perspectives than the hands-down-pants intention? There is of course a question of art here, if art is a part of all of this, and also a question of value.
I think many people would say that ‘The Swing’ is different from the picture from the CCTV with the creep who is harassing women. And I would agree.

 

The Swing, by Jean-Honoré Fragonard

 

I’m going to touch on the issue of consent first actually, just because it is a simple but still important bit. The painting depict a playing couple, whereas the CCTV image is, as far as I know, a man who clearly don’t respect women’s boundaries. A sexist pig indeed.
Second of all, I think I’m far more impressed by the work of Fragonard, simply because it is such a beautiful painting. I’m talking workmanship here now, the craft of an artist versus the developed technology which enables the act of the Peeping Tom to be caught on camera. The intention of one of these images is that it is an object d’art and the other is a candid image never meant be put on show or hung up in a gallery.

But to get back on track, or back to the pornography. There is also a thing about what the intention behind an image is. What reactions does The Swing conjure, and how do you feel when looking at the Peeping Tom?
First of all, the reaction to the Swing and Peeping Tom are contextual and situational. They depend on what society we live in, what kind of norms we have, so once in a time, the painting was erotic. It showed skirts, it showed nature and people enjoying themselves, it showed stockings, legs and hints of something more. And yes, the Peeping Tom-idiot can also be seen as erotic, although I personally have a problem with sexualizing images like the above.
In what I am going to say now, is not that we should not take responsibility, but that it is possible to shift the focus of struggles. Feminist pornography is used as a way of escaping the problem, by phrasing it slightly differently, it is supposed to be something completely else. In the discussion at Pride, a member of the panel started to connect art and feminist porn, like they are interchangeable and that pornography has to be art in order to be (feminist) pornography. I don’t know how many turns this logic can take, but it does certainly create a scary binary,  where pornography has to show something special, something specific, as if it would be responsible for for what the viewer might see.
Here is some news: you can’t control the viewer. You can adapt and work with different ways of influencing the viewer, in the same way as Fragonard works with his composition or in the same way as a CCTV erotic image can make us feel a bit uneasy, but I repeat, it is not possible to control the viewer. Just  about anyone can pick up any kind of pornographic movie and it would not matter what the intentions were of the producer. What is possible to control is the conditions that the people on the set work are subjected to, to push for safe sex practices whenever possible.  And this is where the focus needs to be.

I am a sex-positive feminist and don’t see anything inherently bad in connecting sex and money, but my beef is where the focus is and who holds positions of power. This connected with us living in a patriarchal society that does not help young people to shape their lust as well or learning how to take responsibility for ones fellows, in the same time as people choose to pinpoint blame on pornography, creates a really toxic situation.  And is really, really irresponsible and stupid. It is like bombarding someone with images, impressions, values, language, norms and feelings  but not giving them the tool to interpret and relate to them.

As a fan of queer pr0n, on many different levels, I believe that there is more to pr0n than exploitation and misery and I don’t really believe in feminist pr0n, but I don’t want to put the ones who are shagging on pedestal either.

But it is time to stop blaming the pr0n for everything, and turn the attention wider.

 

Coming out kink

So, how many of you readers have fully disclosed your life for your friends and family? What have you disclosed? Is there anything that you feel you don’t have to tell? I’m sure there is, because I myself is struggling with the whole concept. I am as out as I can be in regards to me being queer, I am open about girlfriends and boyfriends as well as being open about my non-monogamy. But when it comes to kink, I am not out. I don’t know if I want to really. As much as my sexual practices are important to me, they are that. They are practices which are a part of me now, but they are not written with non-removable ink on my body, and might very well change. Believe it or not, I’ve been asexual as well.
I suppose I would not want to question my father on if he likes blowjobs or not, or ask my mother about what kind of bodies she find being the hottest (I would assume my father is not really on that list). I respect their privacy, and would assume mine would be respected in the same way. Except that it is not.
A couple of months ago, some smart-ass (well-meaning?) sent a gift to me anonymously. To my address in Sweden, an address that the person sending the gift must have known my full name in order to do. The thing is, I don’t live in Sweden, so I changed my Swedish address to the address of my parents. Everyone who knows me well enough to know my full name also know this. In any case, I received this gift and I’m not going to disclose what it was, except that it gave away pretty much everything, including words like ‘kink’ and ‘vanilla’. In the end, I blamed everything on a art-project for university (you can always blame art for anything, it is brilliant!) but still had to navigate questions at the X-mas table. Lots of fun, and even if I know laugh about it (and I sold the gift) it was also scary at the time.

My mother told me recently that another packet had arrived. And I keep on debating if I should just come clean. The thing is, I don’t feel guilty. I don’t believe I am guilty and I don’t believe that I am obliged to come out to any one against my will. It would be different if I would be a high-ranking politician building my career on discriminating against sexual minorities while still being in the closet. But I am not. I don’t have that privilege and for the record, if I would I would use it in a better way than via discrimination.

But the real reason for this post is not my story, it is this story. A letter together with applications for law schools was sent. The letter stated:

To come out fully, in my case, requires three separate disclosures, each as potentially confusing and alienating as the last. I share them now for reasons that are political as well as personal: I am pansexual. When I say this I mean that I seek physical and emotional partnerships with people of all genders, including men, women, and transgender individuals. I am polyamorous. By this I mean that I see monogamy as one among many stable ways in which people are capable of forming romantic and familial bonds. I mean also that I find joy in my partners’ joy, including when that joy comes through companions and lovers other than myself. Lastly, I am a member of the BDSM community. When I say this I mean that I find fulfillment in consensual relationships and sensations that are not always soft and fuzzy, but can indeed be painful and challenging. Taken together, these three facts mean that I have found love and fulfillment in a wide spectrum of relationships and with a variety of people, and that this diversity of partners figures importantly into my identity.

They mean also that I inhabit a small, overlapping sliver of three poorly understood, largely invisible, and utterly unprotected sexual minorities. I am acutely aware that to share these details about myself represents a risk both personal and professional, and in some cases legal. But one reason I have chosen to out myself is to help legitimize my identity, and the identities of those I care about. It is my great hope that taking this risk openly and often will yield benefits both for me and for all those minorities who seek public recognition.

I am an activist, but I am no partisan, no bloodthirsty separatist. Instead of engaging intolerance and divisiveness, I have invested my energy in positively increasing the visibility of diverse sexual identities and normalizing the discussion of sexuality in my immediate environment. This is why I co-founded the Male Sexuality Workshop at Brown University, and for three years took the lead role in designing its curriculum and organizing its activities, affecting more than two hundred and fifty alumni of the program. It is also why I wrote a weekly sex advice and sexuality column for Brown’s student newspaper, why I currently work at Planned Parenthood, and why I have volunteered with the Boston chapter of the National Organization for Men Against Sexism over the past year. Most importantly, it is why I am applying to law school.

The communities I hope to support are at best underserved, at worst the victims of fierce and unchallenged discrimination. How best to contribute to their advancement, whether through labor or constitutional law, family or criminal law, is not crystal clear, and I will allow exposure and passion to guide as I move further into my career. But the larger society can and will come to a better understanding of the diversity of sexuality and gender expression it contains, and in the slow crawl toward that understanding, the first and most profoundly personal step I can take is to state unabashedly who I am: to come out.

Read the full story, it is very well worth it, and I can’t really describe how warm and fuzzy I felt inside after I had read it all.
He was admitted to Law School and I hope he will be one more of the kink-friendly professionals that are so very well needed.

David Cameron is wrong. And stupid.

I know, I know, this whole debate happened in the end of February, but since it is the General Election coming up and I’ve got a terrible backlog of things to get published here on the blog, I thought it was just as good to get it out of the way. And furthermore, this is not a debate that gets old, it is highly topical and it is about gender, bodies and control. Which is basically stuffs that gets written about in this blog.

First of all, I am not suprised that he is wrong. It is not something unusual, and usually I would not give a toss about him in this blog, but his recent outbursts caught my attention.

Apparently, he is very much against the sexualisation of kids and don’t allow his daughter to listen to Lily Allen.  Bloody hell. Ok, so here we go again. First of all, I’m not very much a fan of small girls underwear that is geared towards making them into ‘sex kittens’ from the time they are 7,8,9 years old. Nor am I a fan of poledancing kits for kids in the same age. But that is not because I am against sex or believe that pole-dancing is the most evil thing ever.  We live in a fantasy world if we think that kids are ‘innocent’ because of their age. There is nothing there to ‘protect’ or rather, the only thing we need to save kids from is from ourselves. Our own rotten appreciation of sex and lust. There is no age in which you are ‘innocent’ and then after that you turn into someone who is ‘guilty’. You don’t wake up one morning with a scarlet letter ‘S’ for sinner.
And while there could certainly be stricter restrictions on how advertisement is geared towards children, I don’t think the most harmful one is just the sexualised kind of advertisement and products. If you walk down on the high street, or to Hamleys, you will notice what expectations there is on children today, according to what gender they are perceived as belonging to. We all know of the colors, the activities and the attitudes this foster and pointing fingers towards a padded bra or outspoken singer.
And this is where the populist idiot David Cameron comes into the picture. Because what he is complaining about is nothing new under the sun. Au contraire, it is something that goes along the line of the argument like But-think-about-the-children! And we all know how very well that works.
Because Cameron has a daughter, the focus has been there pretty much, but it is also symptomatic of what I have written before about a body that is female. No matter what age, a female body is a site of regulation, strangulation and modification.

As one of journalist so brilliantly expressed, this is not so much about the kids. It is true, that they live in a reality that is sometimes dangerous, and there are threats to those who are not mature to handle life on their own, but that has more to do with us. And when a kid explore the dress-up drawer, they do not do that because they want to have sex or shoot someone in the stomach with a AK47. But it is still the girls that our dear Cameron is so concerned with. Because they dress in feather-boas, they apparently become Heard of fantasy? About creativity? The sad thing is that we are working very hard to constrict that very fantasy and that creativity already.

But this is not only about the kids, or female children. This is about a larger picture, and it is one in which there is a constant worry about what is happening to females everywhere. Ariel Levy’s ‘Female Chauvinist Pigs’ is one which questions the very base on which the ‘raunch culture’ lies, a base which is perceived as ‘liberating’ and fulfilling.
And I can agree with many of the criticisms, I’m one of those who pretty much is so fed up with burlesque, fed up how streamlined the bodies that we see are.  It is the 21st century version of the 70’s but the problem is that there is nothing in sexuality to liberate, there is nothing that is trapped or needs to be unleashed. There is nothing deep in there in our bodies that needs to be found and put on display. Instead we need to know how we make ourselves understand sex and what possible consequences this might have. It is not a project that one can finish, never ever. Instead it is a journey and a endless exploration,  and I would prefer if there was something more open in general, not making sex in to something special, something threatening, something incredibly powerful. By giving sex so much importance it becomes so important. And by importance I mean sex  in a sex-negative, hetero-normative, binary way of looking at it.

And it is here that I can’t really say what I want to say as good as I would like it to, so I’m going to quote my favourite blogger Penny Red:

Young women and girls are blamed for their concessions to misogynist, ‘pornified’ sexual culture even as we are told that we’re so thick we can’t help but be complicit. Apparently, there is no middle ground between being an independent, dynamic young thing who makes joyful millions selling her body and the subsequent book-deal, and a cringing, broken victim of porn culture crying tears of shame into her cleavage. Elements of this binary thinking reinforce a stereotype which is just as damaging to young women as the ‘happy hooker’ fantasy beloved by bourgeois filmmakers. As the furore over ‘raunch culture’ escalates, all this baby-boomer moral hand-wringing is beginning to sound less like radicalism and more like priggishness. It’s sounding less like genuine concern, and more like good old-fashioned slut-shaming.

I’m not arguing that raunch culture does not hurt young women. It hurts us deeply. It encourages us to lessen, cheapen and diminish ourselves, to think of ourselves as vehicles for the sexual appreciation of men who still hold economic sway over our lives. It makes us understand that what we look like is as important or more important than what we do, whether we’re lap-dancers, librarians or lazy-ass freelance journalists like me. It warps our understanding of power, intimacy and desire and urges us to starve and torture our bodies and neglect our intelligence. It sells us a fake, plasticised image of empowerment that, for most of us, is deeply disempowering – as many wealthy and powerful middle-aged men and women have recently observed.

I am not asking for us to pretend that raunch culture is unproblematic, or that it’s uncomplicatedly fun to be a Southend lap dancer. I am asking for honesty. I am asking for an analysis that is more rigorous, more grounded in an understanding of the gendered basis of capital, an analysis that is less focused on recalcitrant sexual morality. I am asking for an analysis that addresses itself to young men, who also consume and are affected by the brutally identikit heterosexual consensus. Most importantly, I want a consensus that actually gives a voice to young women, not just those who work as strippers or glamour models, but all young women and girls growing up in a culture steeped in this grinding, monotonous, deodorised sexual dialectic.

…….

Censorship should never be an alternative to challenging the roots of patriarchy. Instead of slapping a blanket ban on pictures of tits, we need to look harder at the economic basis for sexual exploitation and at the reasons why many women make the choice to comply with raunch culture. Today’s young women are neither soulless slags nor tragic victims: we are real people with real desires and real agency, trying to negotiate our personal and sexual identities in a culture whose socio-economic misogyny runs far deeper than conservative commentators would have us believe.

I am not even sure that strippers have that much of a voice, but rather the corrected version of something that can best be resembled to the Belle DeJour version of sexwork, further exploited by the crappy television show. And with this, I’ll leave you for a nice  Sunday, and hope the may-weekend is as nice as you want it to be.

Congratulations to Norway and some other important matters

First of all:

About a year ago, perves in Sweden were not to be considered sick anymore.
Now, it is Norways turn:

The Norwegian Directorate of Health has decided that certain diagnostic codes are now invalid in Norway, thus changing the Norwegian version of the international diagnoses register. (ICD-10)
The following diagnoses are taken out: fetishism, fetishistic transvestism, sadomasochism, multiple disorders of sexual preference, and transvestism.
– In our opinion there is no basis, neither in today’s societal norms nor in professional health thinking, to classify these diagnostic groups as disease, says head of the Health Directorate Bjorn-Inge Larsen. By excluding the use of these codes in Norway the Directorate wishes to contribute to the weakening of a general opinion that certain sexual preferences, sexual identities and gender expressions may be seen as states of illness.

The really interesting article can be found here

Congratulations Norway! The activism has given result, and joined Denmark and Sweden as being countries where you can be a healthy perv.

For those of you who need more proof of how stupidity reigns the world with weird methods, read this excellent wallraff article on how to ‘cure’ gay men. Amongst many things that will make you gay is your (neglecting or too neglecting) parents, Freemasons, sexual abuse or just in general not being in touch with oneself. I’m just telling you, if you had happened to have missed that.
To read more about exgay movement, Ex-gay watch and Beyond Ex-gay is a good place to start.
I also wrote a bit about the possibilities of a cross-over between ex-gay and ex-bdsm and how it could be manifested. That you can read about here.

One writer that always makes me feel something is Penny Red. She writes so eloquently and passionately about politics, feminism and a whole lot more that I go all mushy and sometimes teary-eyed. Writers like her are needed, voices like hers are needed.
Three of her latest pieces resonated strongly within me, one on the misogyny and racism hidden in the debate over the veil , one about trans-activism and also, very appropriately slamming the  Comment is Free-article by Simon Jenkins who is ‘defending‘ the pope (cause that ex-nazi, priest-peadophilia cover-upper needs sooooooo much defending…) in this excellent post ‘Does Simon Jenkins shit in the woods?’

That’s all for now folks.

Too Much Pussy! A Queer X-show

It’s cold, I’ve got a bad version of insomnia and February makes me feel miserable. I’m dreaming about warmer times and thinking about the summer. One amazing thing that I got to experience this summer was The Queer X-show.

The Queer X-show was 7 women who traveled through Europe in a van, performing on various stages and all this was filmed. The ‘first sexplicit, queer, documentary road movie’ was filmed by Emilie Jouvet. And it was awesome

The heroes of my summer became this amazing group, which consisted of DJ Metzgerei, Wendy Delorme, Judy Minx, Madison Young, Mad Kate, Sadie Lune, & Emilie Jouvet. But not only did I get to see them once but twice.First time was in Stockholm, during Stockholm Pride. Queer Allstars, organized by Wotever was one of the best parties during the week. Then they had already toured around Europe with their sexpositive message and full-frontal (femme) feminism and fuckery.
I did not really know anything about them, more than they were not to be missed. And the show itself started while I was snogging a gorgeous woman, not being entirely sober. So my concentration was maybe directed more at my fistfull of her hair than what happened at stage. But suddenly everything else stopped and I was breathing harder than ever. I don’t know which part of the show it was, except that it was spellbinding, terrifying, sexy and utterly in your face. A couple of people became upset, and I felt uneasy too, but not because of the show but because of some of the reactions from the audience. Undressed women carry many connotations, and I for one was sad when the biggest response from the audience came when someone showed their tits. Not because of the tits (they were stunning!) but because of the almost mandatory, general reaction in the audience. You know, the alpha male ‘rapture’. I know that a couple of people in the audience also felt uneasy, and some left because they were not able to reconcile their personal and political identities with what went on on stage.

Anyhow, when Mad Kate, dressed in zentai suit, tied herself into a karada and masturbated with a Hitachi while having microphones enhancing every sound, I could feel the electricity in the whole room.

Pic by Jean Pol

Judy Minx then came out, all innocent, making you think about very naughty ageplay, spitting gruel all over the audience before stripping and pissing on stage. Her small-girl personae was really something else

A captivating technofiliac scene followed, with a doll-like performance and a nighmarish ghoul performing a slow, painfully slow, strip, finishing kissing each other and in the same time blood flowing en mass from their mouths. I think this was one of the performances that made me cry. This passive, made up doll being undressed by a tall, dark, deformed figure. These characters who rested in their relationship, taking each other so far as to streams of blood. It is so hard to describe all the feelings, but the interplay between Delorme and Mad Kate was heartbreakingly beautiful.

The final playpiercingstrip I could barely watch (at that point my needlephobia was still getting in the way), but I could not help but taking sneak peaks. The oriental theme, with a conclusion that gave me the connotations of a sense of community and love for eachother echoed throughout the evening in Stockholm. I even thought about it while being lovingly stroked and pampered in the dungeon afterwards.

Then, a week later, back in the south of Sweden we realize that the same show is going to be shown in our town. It was not hard to decide whether to go and see them again or not. As for the most of the summer I was feeling a bit odd as we drove down to the venue on our bicycles, and that evening I was feeling antisocial, to be more specific. But at some point, I got tired of that feeling and decided that it was rope that I needed. So I turned back on my bicycle, pedaled like a mad person back, fetched my rope and got first a hold of E and then K. And after some lemonade and some knots I felt better already.
So when they came onstage again, I could just sit back and enjoy the ride that these performers take you on. The venue was different and it was a very different crowd as well. The art-gallery made the setup very different, all in all.

Things that struck me in this show was how much closer you could come to the performers. At an early stage, Judy Minx performed her piece about BDSM, and I was crying so much that it felt like floodgates had burst. It reminded me of people I missed, touches that I had to imagine instead of feeling, and reminded me of a sense of loss, a loss of something that I almost never even had.

BDSM is the quiet, firm pressure of your arm on my skin, pushing into my flesh as if I were made of dough.
It is the way your eyes stare coldly at me sometimes, moving slowly on me, observing me, examining every inch of me.
It is the slightest gesture – a reassuring nod of your head, telling me I can hold ten more seconds, just ten more seconds, and be a good girl for you ; a quiet look in your eyes that says trust me ; a little patting on my head, to tell me you’re proud of me, to tell me how strong and good I’ve been ; a word or two, you know you don’t need more, I know what you expect from me, and I know how to obey ; or an interrogative look, with something of a warning in it, is this what I told you to do ? is this how a good girl should behave ? what’s getting into you, don’t you want to please me ? you wouldn’t want to disappoint me. you’ve been bratty enough for tonight. quit it. now.
BDSM is your hand at the back of my neck, just this slight, gentle pressure at the back of my neck that paralyzes me all the way down my spine, controlling my every moves.

BDSM is you to me
BDSM is you and me.

It is well worth it to visit Judy’s own blog and read the whole text. It sure made me cry more than usually, and I’ve been called waterworks more than one time. A different burlesque came from Wendy Delorme, captivating and almost hypnotic she carefully watered the flowers.

Wendy Delorme, by Emilie Jouvet

Mad Kate did one of her fast-paced aggressive numbers, forcefully making the audience think about the self, the participation of social networks on internet and how scewed the notion of being a member of such communities can become, in which every second is documented, written about/upon, every moment captured with the help of a camera-lense and all of the informations that we crave transferred every second by wires or wireless networks. Hearing her scream about how she had to update her Facebook, check the Twitter, has any one written?!, is there any change since she last checked?! , this was both fun and frightening. And I decided to stop being stressed about updating More Inches.

Mad Kate, by Emilie Jouve

One other highlight (among many, so many that I will not write of all of them here) was Sadie Lune’s invite from her to look at her cervix. All a part of the educational and sex-positive spirit in which the show was performed with. She sat down in a plush chair, started talking about anatomy and cunts and then she took out a plastic speculum which she inserted. With the help of a torch, she then did a cervix viewing, encouraging people to step forward and look at her cervix. While doing this, she also answered questions about female anatomy. Many people stepped forward, but it took some time before they dared to do so. This felt at no time inappropriate and no one behaved in an abusive manner. The performers were powerful subjects (or if objects, chosen to be such) with bodies of their own, and this was very much the strength of the whole of the Queer X-show. It might sound strange that I’m saying it at all, but there is such a twisted notion in the world, which is a notion about the female form that cannot be viewed without being exploited. And that is to a certain extent true, but what if we are still subjects? What if the exploitative model does not suit all situations? I think this is a very true case when speaking of Queer X show. They refuse the notion of the powerless hypersexualized body, in favour of one that is true to relating to a sex-positive message while still refusing the normative mode in which the female body is produced. Maybe it should be noted that even if all of them could be considered ‘pretty’ or beautiful (not always very useful notions them either) they were often reclaiming their bodies on stage, and controlled the way that we could view them. This meant that distortions were never far away, a stripping to the bone, or a body moulded after their own likings. ‘Uglyfied’ is maybe the wrong word, but definitely different from what we think a body of beauty should look like. This challenge was for me, personally, the largest turn on, in a way that made me participate but to also think about who is really watching who.

Sadie Lune by Emilie Jouvet

Another beautiful scene, was the last ceremony in which the group showed their solidarity which sex-workers ended the show it self, although the party continued afterwards with great music, friendly people and of course, a sauna on wheels, which was used by many. It stood outside the venue, half a meter from the water (we were in the harbor) and the evening became full of nekkid people who bathed, sat in the sauna, made out, had sex, drank, danced, talked, rode on bikes in the nude. You name it.
And what did I do? I took it all in, then continued tying. Dolly, the poor thing looked good in the middle of the night, naked and stuck.

And what is even better, the trailer for the movie shot by Jouvet, can be seen here

You can find Queer X show’s blog here

All Hail Mary- now give yourself a hug.

I personally can feel it is tricky to sometimes feel the joy and the calm of Xmas-time. This is because of many reasons. For some people, the Xmas has nothing to do with joy and togetherness. It can be a rather lonely affair,  when the one who is lonely get even more lonely because of the anticipation of the idea of the lovely family. The idea about the nuclear family is never as present as it is during this ‘festive’ season.

I belong to the tradition of the Xmas tradition that is what it is because it has always been. We meet, we eat, we have one debacle after the other, talking about my now deceased grandmothers lover (whom she met for more than 40 years), get quite hammered and sing to the snaps.  It is fun to meet some of the people, but the peace really first occur when the Xmas is over, and I can go back for normal. Everything that reminds me about the ‘peace’ during Xmas makes me so fucking stressed. Any one else?

Going to church, not because of belief, but because of tradition is another feature. Last Xmas was the  first time I stood my grounds on not getting up 6 o’clock in the morning and sing to some kind of god I do not believe in. I was called selfish, but did not care the slightest. I find it more selfish to attend something that does not belong to me. A god I cannot relate to or wish to have in my life.

The following text is not going to be academic. It is not going to relate to everything written on the subject, don’t take into the account of all the writings of the possible misunderstanding of the concept of ‘virgin’. I am simply going to ask a question related to how people seem to be viewing the immaculate conception and ‘virgin’ Mary, the holy mother, and blablabla.

First of all, I can’t feel it. I can’t feel the joy every one is talking about when Xmas is coming. That the saviour was born, that the world received a messiah. Cause I think about something else. I think about the so called ‘virgin’ Mary, the immaculate conception and how fucking scared that girl must have been. In a  society, women was more children than grown-up women when getting married.
There is a saying that if there is many possible explanations to something, the most simple is the most probable. So. A couple of different explanations, just from the top of my head.

• The God spoke to Mary, said she would have the son that would save the world. Jesus.
• Mary was a child, got raped, did not dare to say anything to anyone, and when she was supposed to be married but had not been fucking with her husband and still being pregnant, freaked out and found the best explanation in the whole world.
• My favourite. Mary liked sex. She managed to get what she wanted, enjoy it, but got in to trouble and needed an explanation. An nothing is as imaginative as a person that needs to explain herself.
• Mary’s parents needed to figure something out and she did not have a say. Or maybe she did.

By Masonic Bomb

I don’t know about you, but somehow the other scenarios seems to be more accessible than the others.

I know I disregard a lot here. Especially the meaning of virgin in different translations from Hebrew and things (any one want to fill me in?)

So, instead, I come to think about the concept of whores and madonnas. The accessible and the divine. Something that the
”Immaculata Conceptio” helped to create, sustain and re-enforce. This was of course done through various other cultural and structural influences that worked this, such as the later domesticity ideal in the west, or the earlier (im)possibilites for women to have the right to inherit or even have access to financial means.

But how old was she? Really? How old was the woman (girl?) who is said to give birth to Jesus? It is not impossible to speak of her as a 12 to 13-year old. What does that say about a western, christian society? I can’t find comfort in a story about a young girl/woman becoming pregnant, going on a trek and then, while sleeping in a stable, giving birth for the first time. Where was the angels then? Do you believe anything while trying to give birth in a stable?

I repeat: I cannot find comfort in this story!
Or should I try to give away to the need of belief? Cause it is not always about rational thoughts, especially not when believing/feeling.

But I see something else. And that is how the concept of the whore and madonna keeps on being reinforced, on all the levels in our society. Easiest place to see it is in the debate about sex workers. She is the whore that cannot claim agency, she is the one that shall be considered as ‘used’ or ‘broken’ or ‘vice’.

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We also see it in rape-cases.

‘What did you wear?’
‘How many sexual partners have you had in your life?’
‘Why do you think he was interested in you?’

I don’t know how many women who have heard those questions. And what is the result of survivorblaming? That there is a lot of women who still not report sexual assaults of any kind. Or even that there is no legislature at all.

Rape  is considered to be a mean of warfare, at least since a couple of years back. Genocides has been made possible because of the breakdown of societies when women has been systematically raped. And it is not only something that is over when perpetrators leave. It is there, the survivor becomes the embodiment of the trauma, a physical form that lingers after the physical threat has been reduced to a mental image.  In her body, the nation also rests, the mother. And because of this binary idea, in which a woman is pure when she is ‘pure’ and not ‘touched’ and unpure if she is the rape is highly ‘effective’.

Oh, wow. I do give you a lot of Xmas cheer don’t I?!
One last thing. It does not comfort me at all. Instead, I ask you to give someone whom you want to hug a hug. One of those big, massive, warm, long ones.
And tomorrow in church I will not listen. I might read Dan Brown in the back row instead.

Ok. Sorry about that. I will shut up now.

Some more reading can be found here:

Rape in War

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