Susie Bright - Best Sex Writing 2012: The State of Todays Sexual Culture

Best Sex Writing 2012: The State of Todays Sexual Culture — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "Best Sex Writing 2012: The State of Todays Sexual Culture" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

1234567...44

Table of Contents

When the Sex Guru Met the Sex Panic

Susie Bright

I learned everything I know about Best of annual collections from Mrs. Hogan, my second-grade elementary school teacher. Mrs. Hogan was a believer in The Great Beyond. Each year, she led her class to prepare a time capsule containing everything that was important in our human calendar, a Tupperware bucket filled with news clippings, snapshots, Matchbox cars, dolls in the latest outfits.

We buried our historic treasure in the back forty of our schools playing fields, our mark upon the world. Mrs. Hogan promised that in the decades to come our descendantsand better yet, visitors from universes we cant imagine!would discover our time capsule and learn intimately how we odd little creatures once lived.

What would intelligent life have to say if it came upon a volume of Best Sex Writing 2012, a montage of American sexual lives and mors? I can sense the Martian trembling, the Venusian arching an eyebrow. Was our species trying to extinguish itself with puritanical wrathor just squeeze out one last ecstatic pop shot? What a terrible struggle between the two.

On one side of the current sex news we have the orgasm guru, the pleasure benefactor, the inspirational bohemian. In these stories youll find some of the clearest voices of human connection, of genuine delight in the possibilities of sexual creativity. The writers of these pieces describe an erotic identity unfettered by shame, a marvel in all its variety, the authentic glue that keeps us going, both literally and philosophically.

The other side of the newsmakers are just as interested in sex, even obsessed by it. But their object is panic. The fearmongers of our 21st-century Gilded Age are fanatical about social control through sex, largely using women and young people as bait.

Not only are there fewer jobs in America in 2012, not only is there less economic parity, less care for the weakest and most vulnerable, but according to the fundamentalist pundits there is also a run on virtue. By their lights, America is losing its imperial power because so many of its citizens are so terribly naughty and arent receiving their proper punishment.

If anyone cares to rip back the curtains on the panicmongers lurid accusationsas many of the writers here dotheyll find that the sex panics are falsehoods, divisions that thrive and multiply on a lack of democracy and sunshine. Women are not born to be vestal virgins or wretched harlots (thereafter saved or punished). Sexual dialogue is not obscene. Gender identity and sexual attractions are not cribbed from a cooked-up Bible story. Our sex lives are, to put it humbly, our humanitynot something to be destroyed with pharmaceutical or prison profit schemes, or made into target practice by election-scoring vendetta seekers.

What I find strange is that the very people who want sexual access and freedom denied to others are living high on the hog themselves. Its a harlots secret: the panicmongers are always revealed to be some of the kinkiest people aroundthey have sex on the brain, as my old schoolteacher would have said. It turns out that Mr. Punisher and Mrs. Slutshamer are themselves terribly interested in how to have a shocking blue orgasm, how to feel sublime in their bodies, how to connect with the most awesome erotic possibility of their lives. They want it badthey pay for it, they seek it out. They simply dont feel that anyone else can have the same desire and self-determination without being a threat to them on their tenuous throne.

A good friend of mine works as a dominatrix in Texas. After a recent shitstorm of sex-negativity in her state, she sent me an indignant letter in which she wrote: Susie, Im not spanking any more Republicans. Ive had it.

I wrote her back: I fear you will starve.

I made her laugh, but I share her outrage. We both know its not one political party, or a few bad apples, but rather a massive, nation-level betrayal of civil rights, of freedom of speech, of the American dreamwide open spaces, great educations, and sexual freedom be damned.

I hope this collection lights a fire in your belly. There are chapters here that will bring you respite, some mischievous inspiration, or silky nostalgia. But in the main, were here to reveal the well-sharpened pitchforks of sexual hypocrisy. The reporting is excellent, the exposs jaw-dropping. These writers are activists as well as dreamers. They know in their bones, cocks, and clits that the consequence of sexual fearmongering is a barren world that not even the most deluded prig would want to live in.

Susie Bright
Santa Cruz
November 2011

Beyond the Headlines: Real Sex Secrets

Rachel Kramer Bussel

I think about sex a lotevery day, in fact. I dont mean that in an I want to get it on way, but in a What are other people up to? way. Im a voyeur, first and foremost, and this extends to my writing. Im naturally curious about what other people think about sex, from their intimate lives to how their sexuality translates to the larger world.

With the Best Sex Writing series, I get to merge my voyeuristic self with my journalism leanings, and peek into the lives, public and private, of those around me. This volume in the series doesnt pull any punches; the authors have strong opinions, whether its Marty Klein sticking up for circumcision in the face of an effort in California to criminalize it, Roxane Gay taking the New York Times to task for its treatment of an 11-year-old rape victim, Thomas Roche calling out Newsweek for its shoddy reporting about prostitution, or Radley Balko examining a child pornography charge.

There are also more personal takes on sex here that go beyond facile headlines or easy answers, that arent about making a point so much as exploring what real-life sex is like in all its beauty, drama, and messiness. Whether its Amber Dawn and Tracy Quan sharing the truth about their lives as sex workers, or Hugo Schwyzer explaining the damage our culture does to men with its mythology about their innate sexual prowess, or Tim Elhajjs first-person account of predont ask, dont tell military life, these authors show you a side of sex that you rarely see.

What you are about to read are stories, all true, some reported on the streets and some recorded from lived experience, from the front lines of sexuality. They deal with topics you read about in the headlines, and some topics you may never have considered. They are but a small sampling of the many kinds of sexual stories I received in the submission process.

Part of why I think sex never goes out of style, as a topic or activity, is that it is so very complex. There is no one way to do it, nor two, nor three. Sex can be mundane or mind-blowing, and for those who are trying to get from the former to the latter, there is a plethora of resources but also a host of misinformation purveyed by snake oil salesmen.

In Best Sex Writing 2012, you will read about subjects as diverse as Guys Who Like Fat Chicks, the care and handling of a mans penis, and the glamour and glitter of the Latina drag world. Abby Tallmer, telling a story set in a very specific time and placethe gay leather clubs of New Yorks Meatpacking District in the 1990smanages to capture why sexual community is so vital. Tallmer writes, These clubs gave us a place to feel that we were no longer outsidersor rather, they made us feel that it was better to be outsiders, together, than to force ourselves to be just like everybody else.

Next page

1234567...44

Light

Font size:

↓

↑

Georgia Tahoma Arial Verdana

Reset

Interval:

↓

↑

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «Best Sex Writing 2012: The State of Todays Sexual Culture»

Look at similar books to Best Sex Writing 2012: The State of Todays Sexual Culture. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.

Susie Bright

The Best American Erotica 2002

Maria Frederika Malmström

The Politics of Female Circumcision in Egypt: Gender, Sexuality and the Construction of Identity

National Writing Project

Because Writing Matters: Improving Student Writing in Our Schools

Susie Johns

Knitted Beanies

Susie Bright

I Dare You: 30 Seductions

Stephen Feinstein

Do You Wonder about Sex and Sexuality?

Susie Cox

Susies Sun Signs: How to Truly Understand Your Lover, Family, Friends, Pets, and Yourself Using Astrology

Spencer

Secret sex lives: a year on the fringes of American sexuality

Susie Orbach

What Do Women Want?: Exploding the Myth of Dependency

Georg Feuerstein

Sacred Sexuality: The Erotic Spirit in the World’s Great Religions

Susie Orbach

In Therapy

Susie Bright

Big Sex Little Death: A Memoir

Discussion, reviews of the book Best Sex Writing 2012: The State of Todays Sexual Culture and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.