Month: December 2010

Holidays

On December 29, 2010

I didn’t intend to be vacant for the holidays, it just sort of happened that way.

Thursday the 16th was Onyx’s birthday. It feels like we’ve been going going going ever since. The party we threw for Onyx’s bday was a great success, then the lunar eclipse on Monday night, then we went to a solstice party on Tuesday, performed a solstice ritual on Thursday, and met my sister and her boyfriend at the airport on Saturday during their five-hour layover, then had people over on Sunday for the Sacred Sexuality Book Club we are hosting. There were plenty of other things in between, but those were the big ones.

All this activity and socializing has been making me a little crazy, honestly. I’m a hardcore introvert, by which I mean I recharge by being alone and get zapped of energy while socializing with others. I have been so much of a hermit the last few years, as well, that I’m still adjusting to being so social. It’s nice, though, we finally have a good group of friends that we know and like and have activities that we engage in. Our hermit-like behavior is becoming more chosen than default.

Luckily since Sunday and for the rest of this week we have absolutely no plans outside of work and New Years Eve, our usual Thursday night and Sunday afternoon activities have been cancelled so we’ll have lots of time for ourselves, which we have desperately needed after the last couple of weeks.

Technically we don’t celebrate “Christmas,” though my family has an important tradition of gift giving. We sent out quite a few presents and received many as well, the biggest of which was a KitchenAid Stand Mixer that was a group effort from a handful of my relatives. I’ve already used it a couple times and it is amazing! Seriously worth the money. I kind of want to start a food blog now but there’s no way I have time for another blog, I hardly have the time to update what I already have.

There were plenty of other awesome presents as well, including lots of Cthulhu items, some geeky shirts, lots of socks (I seriously have an obsession), some books, and a pair of amazing kick-ass and comfy knee-high boots (my tied-for-favorite gift with the Stand Mixer. They will be featured in a Wanton Wednesday soon)! Overall it’s been a great last few weeks and I’m very much looking forward to this week of relaxation.

Even though Christmas itself has passed I am still going to leave you with my newest favorite sorta-Christmas song by Lon Milo DuQuette “If We Believed.”

Sex-Positivity

By Tai Fenix Kulystin

On December 6, 2010

In Discourse, Equality, Sex Blogging

I don’t think I’ve read a better description or example of sex positivity before. It’s clear and concise and isn’t hinged upon using “positive” speech despite the sex-positive name:

Although fewer people would say that “I think anal sex is amazing” is a sex-negative statement, I consider it to be just as problematic as “I think anal sex is gross.” What makes something like this sex-negative isn’t whether one uses a positive or negative adjective. It’s that saying these sorts of things neglects the diversity of sexual experiences and pleasures.

Simply put, these sorts of things aren’t true. Anal sex is gross for some people and amazing for some people and boring for some people and exciting for some people. No matter what word you use to finish the sentence, you’re leaving out many people’s experiences and that is what makes it sex-negative.

On the other hand, when you say something like “I enjoy/dislike/fill-in-the-blank anal sex,” you’re practicing mindful speech. You’re explicitly recognizing that your experience is your own. You’re not making a sweeping statement and you’re not claiming that anyone else should have the same response that you have. It doesn’t matter whether the word you use is positive or negative in this example, either.

Sex-positivity isn’t about enjoying every possible way to have sex. Sex-positivity isn’t about only using positive words when talking about sex.

Sex-positivity is about making room for different people to have wildly different experiences. And in order to do so, we can practice using language that makes room for that. One of the best (and most difficult) ways to do that is to own our experiences and try to not make sweeping statements. It’s simultaneously quite simple and incredibly difficult, which is why so many people seem to not understand it. Well, that and the fact that there aren’t a lot of examples of mindful speech in the media- it doesn’t make for good soundbites. [emphasis mine]

This is from a post by Charlie Glickman on Good Vibrations Magazine called Owning Your Words: Sex-Positivity, Mindful Speech, and Why Some People Don’t Get It. I highly encourage you to read the entire article to get all of it in context, though what I quoted above is the crux of it. He has other awesome points that are just as important, however, so go read. I’ll be here when you get back.

Why does this matter? I’ve considered myself sex-positive for quite some time and this distinction is an important one. I’ve heard people saying that “sex-positivity” is some sort of trend word, which in some ways I think is true. There seems to be a big trend in those who write about sex and sexuality ((as opposed to “sex bloggers” since I don’t really like that term)) to adopt the term “sex-positive” even when it’s clear they know nothing about what it means.

Of course, being sex-positive and confronting your own internalized sex-negativity ((let’s face it, we all have some)) is a continual process, it’s not something you earn like a merit badge that you can then flash at people to prove that you are sex-positive. Saying you’re sex-positive only gets you so far if you don’t walk the walk. I love his point that it’s not about always saying something positive either, despite “positive” being right in the term itself. I think this is something people get hung up on and a very important point to make.

It may be some sort of trendy word to some, but for others of us it is something we strive for.

Lights, Camera…

By Tai Fenix Kulystin

On December 5, 2010

In Introspection, Smut

Not too long ago near the beginning of this month I answered a post in the Seattle Area Personal Ads group on FetLife (login required) for a project titled Process of Pain for Raise Your Fist Productions. It explores masochism, giving a taste of what pain is, what masochists and sadists love about pain, how we play, and other various things. I was very interested in doing this and Onyx agreed to be part of it as well, as a part of being in the documentary was agreeing to do a scene on camera.

Last Monday Amanda came over and we shot a breast play scene. Onyx pulled and twisted my nipples, slapped my breasts, pulled my hair, slapped my face, and made me come on camera. He also used crops, a cane, and nipple clamps on me. It wasn’t a super heavy scene, though there was a good amount of pain, and we didn’t fuck on camera but I did come multiple times. Amanda said she got some very nice shots. She’s filming other couples for this as well and I’m sure I will post about it again when it is done. I’m very excited to see the finished result.

It’s brought up a lot of interesting things for me, as I’ve always loved porn and for a long time I’ve had a fantasy about doing it, though I’ve not always had the body-confidence that I have gained over the last few years. I’ve been seriously considering exploring phone sex work again in the last couple months, I made a couple NiteFlirt accounts but have not yet utilized them to their full potential, and now after this experience I’m seriously considering getting into ethical queer pornography as well.

I say ethical queer pornography because that’s the only type I would be willing to do. This documentary was a great first step, I think, it proved to me that it was something I could do on camera, and I enjoyed doing so. I have a lot of theatre background and have been on stage and in front of the camera many times so I always kind of new I would be able to do it, but there was always some doubt. Now that doubt is gone.

I’ve also recently been reconnecting with my Goddess Babalon after a slight deviation from her path and I believe that getting in to sex work and pornography would be a great act of devotion to her. She was part of the reason I started exploring phone sex work two years ago as well.

Since filming I came across this quote while reading Demons of the Flesh: The Complete Guide to Left-Hand Path Sex Magic for the Sacred Sexuality Book Club Onyx and I are hosting at our place which first met today.

“The moral pornographer would be an artist who uses pornographic material as a part of the acceptance of the logic of a world of absolute sexual license for all the genders, and projects a model of the way such a world might work. His business would be the total demystification of the flesh and the subsequent revelation, through the infinite modulations of the sexual act… the pornographer has it in his power to become a terrorist of the imagination, a sexual guerilla whose purpose is to overturn our most basic notions of these relations, to reinstate sexuality as a primary mode of being rather than a specialized area of vacation from being and to show that the everyday meetings in the marriage bed are parodies of their own pretensions. –Angela Carter

Peacock Hair

By Tai Fenix Kulystin

On December 3, 2010

In Gender Galaxy, Introspection

Papageno 4 by selfmade1

I found and used this on last week’s Pleasurists and love it so much I wanted to share it here too. I’ve become enamored with peacock feathers lately and want to do this to my hair. That is all.