sexuality Archives - Page 4 of 4

Why Secular Hedonism Needs Social Justice

August 6, 2014 by Greta Christina Leave a Comment

Originally published at FreethoughtBlogs

I’m going to go out on a limb here. If we want to create and maintain a secular society that values pleasure? If we want to create and maintain a society that recognizes that this life is the only one we have, so we should experience it and enjoy it as richly as we can? If we want to create and maintain a society that understands that our bodies are all we have, and that values those bodies? If we want to create and maintain a society that that recognizes pleasure, not as the only part of life worth working towards, but as one part of that life, and an important one?

We need to fight for social justice.

[Read more…]

About Greta Christina

Greta Christina has been writing professionally since 1989, on topics including atheism, sexuality and sex-positivity, LGBT issues, politics, culture, and whatever crosses her mind. She is author of Coming Out Atheist: How to Do It, How to Help Each Other, Why Are You Atheists So Angry? 99 Things That Piss Off the Godless, and of Bending: Dirty Kinky Stories About Pain, Power, Religion, Unicorns, & More, and is editor of Paying For It: A Guide by Sex Workers for Their Clients. She has been a public speaker for many years, and is on the speaker's bureaus of the Secular Student Alliance. Her writing has appeared in multiple magazines and newspapers, including Ms., Penthouse, Chicago Sun-Times, On Our Backs, Skeptical Inquirer and numerous anthologies, including Everything You Know About God Is Wrong and three volumes of Best American Erotica. She is co-founder and co-organizer of Godless Perverts, a performance series and social community that promotes a positive view of sexuality without religion. She lives in San Francisco with her wife, Ingrid. You can email her at gcgreta (at) doubtfulpalace (dot) com, and follow her on Twitter at @GretaChristina.

Bisexual or Pansexual?

July 19, 2014 by Greta Christina Leave a Comment

Cross-posted from Greta Christina’s Blog.

I’ve been pondering the question of whether I should keep using the word “bisexual” to describe myself, or whether I should start using “pansexual” instead. I wanted to run the pros and cons by y’all and get feedback.

On the one hand: The word “bisexual” feeds into the gender binary, in a way that I don’t feel comfortable with. It implies that either (a) there are only two genders, or (b) there are more than two genders, but I’m only attracted to two of them. Neither of these is correct. I accept the existence of people who don’t identify on a gender binary — and there are non-gender-binary-identifying people who I think are hot. “Pansexual” would be a more respectful word, and it would be more accurate.

[Read more…]

About Greta Christina

Sex Isn’t Always Positive

January 12, 2014 by Chris Hall 1 Comment

I think that Kitty Stryker is one of the smartest and most honest people talking about sexuality these days. The below video shows why.

I’m not in the same position as Kitty; I’m neither a sex worker, nor do I do sex education. Being seen as sexy isn’t part of my job requirement. But I do identify with a lot of what she says. The majority of “sex-positive” culture ((I know that there are a lot of people — including myself — who question the validity of that term, and whether it really means anything any more, but for lack of a better term that’s both colloquial and precise, I’m going to stick with sex-positive for right now.)) doesn’t talk enough about sexual fears and insecurities, and how to cope with them. Or, for that matter, how to accept that, as Kitty says below, being sexually “off” is part of our sexualities, too.

I think that a big part of the problem — although by no means all of it — is how much of the structure of sex positivity is based on feeding commercial ventures. I have no problem with people feeding themselves, and I wish to hell that Kitty and others like her could go out there and make lots of money off their insights.

[Read more…]

About Chris Hall

A somewhat nerdy pervert who looks (mostly) normal on the outside, Chris Hall is fascinated by the politics, culture, and art of sex. He has written for The Atlantic, Alternet, SF Weekly, Slixa, numerous anthologies, and a dog blog that will go discreetly unnamed here.

When Satire Isn’t Satire: A Sex Worker Speaks Up About the Flying Spaghetti Monster

July 24, 2013 by Chris Hall Leave a Comment

My post about the repulsive anti-sex worker aspects of the Pastafarian Canon stimulated a lot of conversation on Facebook, a lot of it disappointingly clueless. When confronted with the criticisms, a lot of FSM fans just shrugged and pulled out the infamous “It’s just satire” defense. That kinda pisses me off; not only because it’s dismissive of my point, or because it’s intellectually lazy, but it also shows a fundamental misunderstanding of what satire is, and why it’s such a vital tool in speaking truth to power.

Sophie Hirschfeld has written a better reply to those complaints than I ever could. The chief difference between us here is that she’s a sex worker; I’m not. Her skin is quite literally on the line in this issue. When I write about sex workers or whorephobia, it’s because I have friends in sex work whom I want to support and help, but in the end, I’m not the one at risk. Because Sophie has to think about these things every day, she’s able to take some of the points that I was trying to make and talk about them with a clarity and eloquence that I can’t. These paragraphs are vital to understanding why the stripper factories are a problem, and not just a bunch of uptight assholes trying to ruin everyone’s fun:

[Read more…]

About Chris Hall

Building a Better Parody: The Flying Spaghetti Monster and Sex Worker Stigma

July 22, 2013 by Chris Hall Leave a Comment

About a month ago, Kate Donovan wrote a post making a No Flying Spaghetti Monster good case that it’s time to ditch the whole Flying Spaghetti Monster thing, and I’m inclined to agree with her. Partly because it’s served its purpose, but mostly because it incorporates sexism and homophobia into its mythology. Specifically, she points out some passages in The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, by Bobby Henderson, which describe the rewards of the Pastafarian afterlife as including a stripper factory and a beer volcano:

We’d like to tell you all about our Heaven, which features a Stripper Factory and a giant Beer Volcano.
[….]
Q: If there’s a Beer Volcano and a Stripper Factory in Heaven, what’s FSM Hell like?

A: We’re not entirely certain, but we imagine it’s similar to FSM Heaven, only the beer is stale and the strippers have venereal diseases. Not unlike Las Vegas.

The strippers aren’t all women, of course, but straight men aren’t required to get rid of their homophobia in Pastafarian heaven:

Q: Are there male strippers in FSM Heaven for women?
A: Probably, but they are invisible to the non-homo guys.

Note two things in that passage: first, heterosexuality is the norm in Pastafarian Heaven. And second, homophobia is assumed to be the default; if straight men have to look upon the icky sexual desires of heterosexual women or gay men, it can’t be heaven. Bi, trans, and genderqueer people aren’t even anywhere in the equation. For someone like me, who’s perpetually curious about other people’s sexualities because it expands the way I see my own, it sounds like hell.

When I read those quotes, they sounded vaguely familiar, but they had fallen right out of my brain long ago. Like most religious believers, I just knew the basics and ignored the details. But, as the theists say, God (or the Devil) is in the details. [Read more…]