Having cast aside the traditional mode of economic security—a 9-5 job—I now find myself with a slew of new opportunities. Now it’s up to me to start following up on them.
I was asked to write an essay for Furry Girl‘s latest independent porn site, Cocksexual.com. Unlike most porn sites, whose mere descriptions turn me right the fuck off, when Furry Girl described her vision of Cocksexual, I was actually intrigued. On the homepage, she calls it, pansexual porn featuring hot models of all orientations and genders. Here, you’ll find none of those tacky “lesbian” scenes with discount-bin strapons, or the cliché Mistress Fetishqueen fucking her worthless male submissive
. Now that, I thought, I could get behind. Or in front of, depending.
So when Furry Girl asked me to write a piece for the launch of her site, I didn’t have any trouble and what I came up with was a touch more personal than even I was prepared for. Here’s an excerpt from my essay on Cocksexual.com:
When I first tentatively explored anal sex, which I began doing in the shower using the handle of a discarded toothbrush, I thought what I wanted was the woman’s role, passive and receptive. At that age, surrounded as I was by the false hegemonic view of penetration as being the same as masculinity, what else could I think? Maybe I was really a woman, because if being a man meant a distaste for anal pleasure, then I certainly wasn’t one of those.
But as the years went by I discovered, to my admitted surprise, that I’m not a woman. I’m a man. One’s gender identity, such as man or woman, and the enjoyment one gets from a particular sexual activity, such as penis-in-vagina sexual intercourse or strap-on sex, are in no way directly correlated. So too are sexual orientation and enjoying anal sex distinct from one another. I’ve had anal sex with both men and women, but I’ve so far enjoyed being penetrated by the women a lot more. For me, a big part of the fun is seeing their enthusiasm.
You should check out the full essay over on Furry Girl’s site. There’s also a really detailed, really personable article by Thomas Roche, and another by Essin Em. It’s pretty neat to find myself in the company of such well-known writers.
Finally, I made some money writing that essay and I’m now looking for paid writing gigs that align with my worldview and message, as this one did. The feeling of getting financially supported—rather than financially “compensated”—for sharing an intimate part of myself in writing is absolutely wonderful. I sincerely hope I can find or make more opportunities to do it again.
Thanks for the first opportunity, Furry Girl, and good luck with Cocksexual.com. I hope it shows more people, especially more men, that they can enjoy strap-on sex without the stigmas so many other pornographers drown it in.
by jeffliveshere
03 Feb 2010 at 09:25
Congrats! Looks like a neat site, though it always pains me to see porn that is fantastically diverse along some lines, but which seems to take racial diversity as an afterthought (of course, I haven’t signed up, but on the “freebies” page, it seems to be only a whole lotta white folks). Still, the site looks great from lots of perspectives.
by maymay
03 Feb 2010 at 10:59
I know exactly what you mean. At the same time, I also know that it’s actually surprisingly hard to show certain kinds of diversity unless you know already know where to look or have grown big enough for someone else to offer you help.
Case in point, MaleSubmissionArt.com had, for the first couple of months, a disturbing lack of racial diversity as well as a diversity of sexual orientations, and I knew this and others told me this and yet I still couldn’t fix it until people started sending in photos like this one. Now I’ve reached a bit of a tipping point. Even so, I think the lack of diversity in erotica does hold up a mirror to the lack of diversity in reality; not a lack of desire among those of other races to do the things that are shown, but rather a lack of the quantity of self-representation we see from others.
It’s a tough egg to crack.
by jeffliveshere
03 Feb 2010 at 14:16
@maymay:
I want to acknowledge the difficulties involved, and don’t want to downplay them. You have done something amazing with MaleSubmissionArt, and you deserve full credit for that, and I’m thankful for it!
However, I feel like you’re leaving an important part of the story out: The responsibility of those who are the gatekeepers of whatever media (in this case, you’re the gatekeeper of a lot of images of male submission) to actively move to change the status quo, in part *because* you recognize that racial diversity is difficult. It maybe that you “couldn’t fix it until people started sending in” photos of folks who are people of color, but what did you actively do to encourage folks to do that? In an analogous situation, it’s not enough for, say, Scientific American to say, “Well, there just aren’t a lot of women science writers–we’d love to publish them if there were!” and then wash their hands of it. Instead, they need to be going out there and finding women science writers. Just as an example.
Which isn’t to say that your site isn’t great, or that you aren’t doing great work, etc. It’s just to say that, when you’re the gatekeeper, you take on some of that responsibility for “recruitment”. (Of course, I don’t really know how much recruitment you did, specifically, to try to get more diversity along, say, racial lines…maybe you did a LOT and it still didn’t come about–but the fact that there is now some diversity there tells me that it wasn’t impossible from the start. Tipping points are made, right, not just through happenstance.
Just as the folks who started the site you’re mentioning here noticed that, hey, there aren’t enough representations of various gender-ed folks with strap-ons pegging and fucking folks of various genders, and then actively (I suspect *very* actively) sought out those pictures, I wish they had *just as actively* sought out some people of color.
by maymay
03 Feb 2010 at 14:53
I agree 100%! :) That’s exactly why I so strongly voiced agreement about the lack of racial/sexual orientation diversity when MaleSubmissionArt.com hadn’t hit its tipping point yet. (Here’s an example I managed to dig up from the site’s archives.)
by Carola Anne Caiafa
05 Feb 2010 at 19:44
Your essay is very interesting.
However… it doesn’t answer a few questions for me.
What if the feminine being who loves dressing in feminine clothes doesn’t want a man?
What if the feminine being who loves dressing in feminine clothes doesn’t identify as a woman?
What if the feminine being who loves dressing in feminine clothes doesn’t want a man OR identify as a woman?
What if the one who may LOOK soft and frilly doesn’t identify as either???
WHAT THEN???
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