by Naomi Darvell
(09/10/03)
Susannah Breslin's blog, Reverse Cowgirl, has the subtitle: "wherein a writer attempts to justify the enormity of her porn collection." How refreshing is that -- a girl not only admits she has porn but claims an outrageous collection? It's the kind of surprise you find when you travel the blog world.
By the time you read this, anything I say about sexblogs will be slightly outdated. As Breslin comments in a recent entry: "Routinely, I've found, I become bored with blogging in a certain way. I've done various things to switch it up..." Her latest thing: a "phonecam moblog" for posting instant pictures.
At its best, blogging is all about change. The format suits writers who want to move fast. This year, the blog world has been evolving on a grand scale. "Bacchus," of Erosblog, says, "The summer crop of hot new sex blogs continues to amaze me." Me too. Also amazing: the amount of mainstream attention sexblogs are getting. Reverse Cowgirl -- named after a common porn-movie position; use your imagination -- is linked by such major non-sex blogs as Glenn Reynolds's Instapundit. Breslin has appeared on Politically Incorrect.
Blogs and bloggers are crossing over into print, as well. September's Playboy features a letter by Carly Milne of Pornblography. Invited by Playboy, she wrote about porn peeves, such as, "A guy who walks up to a woman who is already busy with two penises and taps her on the head with his cock. Wait your turn!"
If women and porn seems to be a theme here -- well, female bloggers may be the fastest-growing group, and they're definitely some of the bravest, as this little tour will show.
First, a bit of history. The term "blog" comes from "weblog," coined in 1997 by Jorn Barger of Robotwisdom. (Still online and updating, Barger's site also houses arcane stuff like a long paper on masturbation in the works of James Joyce.) Another pioneer weblogger made a joke about "wee-blogging," and "blog" was born.
Barger's 1999 definition of a (web)log:
A weblog (sometimes called a blog or a newspage or a filter) is a webpage where a weblogger (sometimes called a blogger, or a pre-surfer) 'logs' all the other webpages she finds interesting. The format is normally to add the newest entry at the top of the page, so that repeat visitors can catch up by simply reading down the page until they reach a link they saw on their last visit.
He goes on to note that blogs and Internet journals tend to blend together. This is even more true today; also, blogs vary more, including images and sound as well as essays and links.
In a recent essay, Debra Hyde gives the title of "granddaddy" sexblog to Mouthorgan, Todd Belton's site for commentary on sex news. Others have called her own Pursed Lips the first sexblog. Pursed Lips is still going strong, one of the sharpest blogs for lesbian, gay, transgender, and BDSM news. When I go on an Internet sex surf, it's one of the few places I always check, along with Dazereader.
Dazereader is a classic blog in the format Jorn Barger described. It covers news around the Web, fleshed out (so to speak) with comments and information you won't get from the original sources. On Sunday, August 17, "Evan Daze" (not his real name) linked to a New York Times story on interactive porn DVDs. Unlike the Times, he told readers where to buy the porn. He even reported his own experience:
I rented Virtual Sex with Devon once. Clicking through the menus to call up different positions and acts (finger | vibrator | tongue | cock) was fun, but the "you are there" illusion required a truly heroic suspension of disbelief. Fortunately, the Times article also reports the development of "new technology involving holographic porn" which might "someday soon offer porn that seems to bring the performer into the viewer's living room."
You can't beat Daze's comprehensive coverage, quick turnaround time, and thoughtful comments. You also can't beat Daze's links. Voracious sex-surfer that I am, it would be impossible to bookmark all the sites I want to keep up with. Instead, I start with Dazereader or with Bacchus's Erosblog -- an exuberant, relatively new site, also with copious links. I read what they've put up lately, then start wandering through some of the blogs they link to.
On a day in late August, popping into Erosblog, I find some splashy, if slightly scary, "water bondage" photos. (A girl in a cage is being blasted with what looks like a fire hose.) Bacchus is very much into pictures, ranging from the cute to the edgy. Although he focuses on the female body, he does it without the grating lasciviousness of, say, The Man Show. His is clearly a male point of view, but most of the time it feels friendly to this bi woman.
Turning to the links, I check out Spanking Blog. I love it that Spanking Blog is first on Bacchus's list, even though he doesn't appear to be a spanko. I have a soft spot for spanking, and it vexes me when BDSM types and other fetishists consider spankos silly or lightweight. In sexblogs, kinks seem to coexist a little more easily.
At Spanking Blog, "Spank Boss" offers a couple of amusing drawings and a link to a new personal blog, the journal of "Katy" and "Max." In current entries, they're trying out hairbrushes and showing photos of Katy's reddened bum.
One of the great pleasures of the blogiverse is the number of people -- smart, sexy, funny, monomaniacal, whatever -- who, like Katy and Max, share their daily lives on the net. At Pussy Ranch, you feel like you're going into the house of a Minneapolis couple who talk about everything from lubes to "porn shui" ("I have great porn shui -- I face the hallway and the desk behind me is vacant.") to Shake-n-Bake pork chops -- which they make sound suggestive, of course. At Phone Sex Slut Diary, "Doxy" tells you about the politics of sex work and how to take care of your throat. Is there any kind of sex activity you want an inside view of? You can almost certainly find a blogger with first-hand information. Check out Lust, Love and Latex!, Diary of a Sneeze Fetishist, or Peep Show Stories.
Some of blogs' most amusing qualities -- their fast pace; their individuality; their autonomy -- also make them ideally suited to expressing points of view that are endangered in the mass media, particularly now. Just the other week, Debra Hyde wrote:
But I do have a thought to share with you this year: I'm glad the sexblog explosion continues unabated. I'm glad people are blogging everything from sex news to pornography to personal experiences. We need the public discourse and the bearing witness to pro-sex acceptance. Why? Because the culture war's back on.
She's exactly right. Blogging is doing a lot to put a face on various aspects of sexuality (homosexuality, BDSM) that the religious right is trying to scare people about just now.
Blogging has the potential to break down all kinds of stereotypes, sexual and otherwise. Breslin has written:
Some people can't help but blog differently -- and their blogs are better for it. Take, for example, Mark Siegel, at The 19th Floor. He's an attorney working in the area of disability policy -- and he's a blogger who happens to have spinal muscular atrophy, blogging from a wheelchair, with a ventilator, and a nurse in tow.
This month, Siegel wrote about sex with disability:
[M]uch to my surprise, I did get into a relationship last year. I discovered that, for me, sex is entirely within my personal realm of possibility. My particular disability doesn't affect -- ahem -- functioning, so it was just a matter of finding what works and what doesn't. For the most part, I think my girlfriend at the time was quite satisfied with my abilities. Unfortunately, the relationship ended after a few months. Whether I'll ever find another partner, who knows? I like to think that my thirties will be a little more exciting than my twenties. But most people still tend to associate disability with asexuality or complete sexual innocence. The common perception is that we're too sick or too incapacitated to enjoy sex. Of course, reality is something else. Some of the most sexually voracious people I know are people with disabilities.
Whether Siegel is writing about politics, the mechanics of blogging while disabled, or Pirates of The Caribbean, his blog makes fascinating reading. So does The Homeless Guy, where Kevin Barbieux has blogged steadily for a year, despite homelessness and despite sometimes vitriolic attacks from readers.
Blogs (sex or general) offer readers an education. They can give the bloggers themselves a sense of freedom too -- sometimes much needed. Recently, Iranian blogger "LadySun," a graduate student of English, has been widely quoted in the news, complaining of not being allowed into a hotel, "cuz I wasn't wearing socks!!"
While not a sexblog, her site is daring. In July, she discussed her feelings towards men:
Sometimes it's easier to deny what you feel. I'm a little bit scared. Feeling this much close to somebody scares me. I have always used to set up a wall, an invisible wall, between me and the men around me.
Cruising through her links to other Iranian blogs, I'm impressed with how much uncensored commentary there is. It's risky to write like this. BBC news quoted one female blogger under conditions of anonymity:
Women in Iran cannot speak out frankly because of our Eastern culture and there are some taboos just for women, such as talking about sex or the right to choose your partner...I have the opportunity to talk about these things and share my experiences with others...I've had e-mails from men who have told me that I changed their attitude towards women in Iran...I had some negative responses, people saying I am disrespecting the image of an Iranian woman. Some people even insulted me.
LadySun herself said recently: "I have written a lot these days, but haven't posted them. My friends advise me not to post whatever I write." She also worries that recent reports about Iranian prostitutes blogging (false, in her opinion) may give the government an excuse to crack down on Internet freedom of speech. Let's hope that, somehow, bloggers like these Iranian women are able to persevere.
You don't have to live in Iran to find blogs liberating. This summer the author of Dirty Whore Diary was challenged about her site's title. Did it somehow, as Bacchus suggested, speak to the mindset of "bitter angry scared broken guys" who would buy into the stereotype it suggests? He might have asked the same about names other women have chosen for their sites: Jezebel, Red Headed Slut, Bloggin' Bitch, Drunken Whore. "Dirty Whore" explains:
I want you take a small risk when you come here. I want you to think and feel when you read my blog. I want you to be provoked sometimes. I want you to disagree with me. I want you to learn something about yourself and the way you feel about sex -- that's more important than what you absorb about me. Let's face it; when it comes to your life, I'm irrelevant except in how I help you please, discover, understand, and develop yourself.
At any point, I could choose to rename this site "Henrietta's Happy Place" and remove all the vile cursing. I could take away the BDSM references because they make many of you uncomfortable. I could stop talking about bisexual and gay people, because the hetero majority sometimes squirms at those parts. I could take away the posts that show my vulnerability and my longing for real relationship, not just sex, because those ruin the fantasy for you.
To what end? Making my blog more accessible to the masses offers no win for me. I'm not Disney. I'm not doing this for money. Just as you should be reading this for YOU, I'm writing it for ME. I'm okay with my discomfort.
And I'm okay with mine. Yes, sometimes sexblogs make me uncomfortable. It may be something as simple as a photograph that suddenly puts someone's genitals, four times larger than life, so close that I imagine I can feel the person's body heat. Often blogs are literally "in your face." But then, so is commercial advertising, which I usually haven't sought out. The material in a blog like Dirty Whore's is not pitched at me or even to me, and that's why it's worth looking at.
