Fuck the Prudes

She approached the podium cautiously, not quite knowing yet how the audience would respond.

It isn't about seduction. It's about how much I need you to hurt me.

She preaches her porn with a reverence that one wouldn't ordinarily expect. But of course, this is no ordinary crowd.

The Body Heat Femme Porn Tour kicked off at a small performance space in Inman Square, where I'd gone previously to see Jason Webley and Amanda Palmer (and was greeted with cookies by the drummer for the Dresden Dolls, but I digress). It was one of the most amazing things I've witnessed. A bunch of avowed freaky femmes waxing poetically on their filthiest fantasies-- often in ways that were deliberately ambiguous as to the gender of the partners they were describing-- with such intensity and joy as to inspire awe. One spoke of a summer in San Jose working at strip clubs and making out in the nude with a friend in private audiences with self-styled Tantra gurus for five hundred dollars a performance. Another spoke of the difficulties faced by femmes who like to sleep with other femmes. Yet another reveled in an episode about annonymous sex, declaring "Thank God I shave my pussy."

I fucking love Cambridge

It was like a religious experience. I was surrounded by people who loudly refuse to buy in to societal prescriptions for their sexual behavior, which is far more rare a sight than I'd like to report. It left me feeling good for the rest of the weekend.

Then I read this.

Good lord, is it another woman being accused of demeaning women because of the way she decided to express her sexuality? The shock, I say!

I love Lady Gaga, and this is coming from someone who can't stand a great deal of her genre. Unlike just about anyone else in the game, she's pursuing her craft with a real desire to create interesting art. I can't freaking get enough of the Bad Romance video

I'm not as crazy about Telephone, but it's far more clever than those two fools at The Huffington Post are letting on. I'll let The Moderate Voice take the wheel on that analysis. The point is, when you openly dedicate your life's work to the freaks-- when someone calls you a hermaphrodite and you respond that you don't mind hearing them say it but your beautiful vagina is offended-- you've pretty much added my name to the list of people who will make enemies of your unprincipled detractors. And for good reason. Lady Gaga is on the right side of history.

I think that I'm being charitable when I say that the argument that because there's rough play in the Telephone video that it constitutes an affront to the right of a child to "reach adulthood without thinking that watching two women engaged in a jailhouse beating is prerequisite foreplay for a satisfying sexual encounter." is the product of complete fucking morons. What is it about these assholes that makes them assume that whenever they see people doing things with their bodies that they don't approve of that the freaks are going to come out in force and make it compulsory?

It's that sort of rhetoric that every December makes me fantasize about dressing as Santa Claus and breaking into houses and leaving dildos and fleshlights under the tree, just to show these fuckwits what the world they're imagining would actually resemble.

Mark Twain said it perfectly: "Censorship is like telling a grown man he can't have steak because a baby can't chew it.."

I'm sick of "The Children" being used as a cudgel by people who are deadset on stifling any sexual expression that doesn't fit into their own pathetically small world where one man dates one woman until they get married and THEN they have sex, but only to have a baby.

Do you remember the rallying cry for Proposition 8 in California and Proposition 1 in Maine?

"They'll be teaching our children how to have gay sex."

No, Jim. No, Debbie. I'm not just calling you uncool or prudish-- I'm not in the business of going to such lengths to state the obvious-- I'm calling you What's Wrong With America. If you have issues with the way the media influences your childrens' sexual development --and I'm sure that you're railing just as hard against the odious hetero-normative ownership paradigm that's being sold to us on almost every channel in almost every time slot, I'm just SURE of it-- If you're worried about how your kids' attitudes towards sex are being shaped by outside influence, try fucking talking to your kids about sex.

Even if you're right, and we're under constant assault by deviant sex freaks looking to poison your child? No matter how hard you shake your fist you will never stop the freaks from being freaky. From James Madison's lips to God's ears, in this country they're as protected when they dress skimpily and make out with each other as you are when you whine about it on the Internet. The only power you have-- or need-- as a parent is the power to be a parent.

I'm pretty goddamned sick of hearing people claim that women who choose to express their sexuality are destroying society. And it's always women who get targeted. Remember who took the brunt of the criticism when Justin Timberlake showed Janet Jackson's nipple to a soon-to-be-comically-outraged public? Do you think for a moment that all of this noise isn't gendered?

How about we have more respect for art and less slut-shaming?

How about we teach our children how to think for themselves instead of blaming the people who aren't afraid to say that it's ok to enjoy sex?

How about we remember that in this country we value freedom of expression instead of taking the easy way out and decrying anything that makes us uncomfortable?

The rallying cry of the people who want you to fit inside a box will always be "think of the children." It's time to stop taking that sentiment as anything other than an attack on our right to individuality.