sexuality

Star light, star [Susie] Bright!

Kelsey Wallace — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 16:24:08 -0500

Coming out (and out and out)

Debbie Rasmussen — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 17:36:55 -0400

Lately I've been thinking about the process of coming out and identities/shifting, and how for so many of us it's an ongoing/lifetime process. In part because we as individuals change, and/or in part because our environment changes, and/or in part because our identities can't be read on the outside, and/or because some of us feel the most comfortable in those in-between spaces yet sometimes feel compelled to "pick a side" (so to speak/referencing here the dualism so prevalent in mainstream Western culture), because the struggle to have our identities validated (or even finding language to define ourselves and our experiences) simply becomes too much work. But then when we "pick that side," we might eventually feel the weight of that boxed-in identity start to hurt, so we begin the process of coming out again... Or geez, to put it most simply, because things just change...

And speaking of sex

Debbie Rasmussen — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 14:41:31 -0400

A new publication about sex/sexuality in Pakistani society from a feminist and gender-inclusive perspective has entered the publishing world. Read Bitch contributor Sarah Seltzer's interview with Chay magazine founders Kyla Pasha and Sarah Suhail in the current issue of INTHEFRAY magazine, an online magazine focused on identity and community.

And now for a sexy conference

Debbie Rasmussen — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 14:28:14 -0400

This weekend, June 13th to June 15th is Sexy Spring, Minneapolis's radical, sex/body positive, sex education skill-share and conference.

The event is focused on exploring the ways sex, sexuality, relationships, our bodies, and our choices affect our lives. It's a weekend full of workshops, discussions, play, demonstrations, crafting, art shows, communal meals, telling stories, and sex/body performances and dancing.

"If a femme falls in the forest..."

Debbie Rasmussen — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 22:02:27 -0400

This past weekend, we at Bitch were honored to be a community partner in Portland's Queer Documentary Film Festival 's screening of FtF: From Female to Femme. QDOC is the only festival in the United States (and apparently one of two worldwide) devoted to queer documentaries, and FtF: From Female to Femme is – to my knowledge – the first feature length documentary that explores the experiences and identities of femme as a queer identity. This lack of femme analysis is a little alarming, considering the breadth and depth of analyses focused on butch, FtM, and other masculine(/queer) identities. But then again, as books like Julia Serano's Whipping Girl: A Transsexual woman on sexism and the scapegoating of femininity illustrate, femme identities and femininity in general continue to be misunderstood and maligned (and in some senses, masculinity so fetishized), so it also makes sense.

Busting the "Technical Virgin" Myth

Miriam Wolf — Wed, 21 May 2008 15:07:25 -0400

For months now, articles about our "hook-up culture" have touted the fact that teens have been engaging in oral and anal sex instead of vaginal sex so that they can still call themselves virgins. The trouble is, it turns out that so-called fact is actually a myth.

News flash: boys like relationships

Lisa Jervis — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 17:23:41 -0500

Cheers to a new study reporting that, contrary to age-old stereotypes about teenage boys as indiscriminate horndogs, 16-year-old boys' primary motivations for dating are that they "really like the person" (via the New York Times health blog).

The Great Cover-Up

Kyla — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 -0500

In an era when it’s possible to turn on the television on any given night and see a clutch of bikini-clad women crawling over their male prey (ABC’s The Bachelor), a sex-toy demonstration (HBO’s Real Sex), or a 9-year-old showing off her moves on her parents’ personal stripper pole (E!’s Keeping Up with the Kardashians), Wendy Shalit’s assertion that modesty has made a comeback seems a little, well, optimistic.

Hog Heaven

Kyla — Wed, 31 Aug 2005 20:00:00 -0400

You’ll recognize the female silhouette that leans against the title on the cover of Ariel Levy’s new book, Female Chauvinist Pigs. She’s the girl who in recent years has made the move from the mud flaps of big rigs right into pop culture, gracing trucker caps, baby tees, and gold necklaces as an emblem of sexy, empowered womanhood. Or at least that’s what she’d like you to believe.

We Were Here, We Were Maybe Queer

Kyla — Wed, 01 Jun 2005 03:00:00 -0400

Four score and seven years ago, our forefathers—and most infamous tyrants—were getting down with other men. Or so some folks would like us to believe. Historians and posthumous biographers have of late been venturing into the relatively uncharted territory of sexual historiography, exhuming some celebrated corpses to uncover the steamy, secret queer lives they once lived.