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Tuesday, January 30, 2007

The Pink Ghetto: No Place Else To Go But Slut

filed under: Web Sex Index, The Pink Ghetto by Melissa Gira | 5 Comments

(This is part two in our series, The Pink Ghetto, on writing and working sex on the Internet.)

When thinking sex online, porn operates as the great dividing line. As those who work sex online, that’s the frame we’re issued — are you porn, or not porn? Explicit, or non-explicit? Adult, or “family friendly”? Safe for work, or…? Who’s work, really? What if writing, blogging, and thinking sex is your work?

Porn — making it, reviewing it, theorizing in best sellers about it — is only just one way to make a living thinking sex, yet porn is still the culture’s point of reference for sex. This framing of sex online as being either porn or not-porn doesn’t just come to us by way of the culture alone. Rather, it is enforced by the structure of our publishing and media industries, that themselves are, in turn, shaped by the culture’s attitudes towards sex. Anyone contributing to the sex culture by reflecting on, educating about, or otherwise talking sex is subject to answering for their work’s ability to arouse — and if it does arouse, how much can it still educate? Being smart about sex and being a sexual smartypants are still viewed as mutually exclusive positions, whether we’re talking sex academia, sex in publishing, or the sex entertainment industry.

What to do for those of us contributing to the sex culture with our words and pictures, no matter how naked we are or aren’t in them? Do we limit our work to abstraction and theory, talking only in the vague and general “you” of the culture as a way not only to seem more credible, but to shield ourselves from being viewed as sluts? Who would care about these things, after all, but sluts? Who would want to make a living from engaging the culture-at-large around sexuality? What kind of person can know so much about human sexuality and can still put a sentence together about it? Just as some people harbor suspicions about “the sex people” as their own form of defense and distancing, so that they don’t have to deal with the possibility of sex being just part of being, so, too, are us “sex people” asked to make apologies for our work if we want to “be accepted.”

So, in this context, I could say I’m only doing this — this sex thing on the Internet — to get somewhere else in my career, as a stepping stone to some supposedly elevated ground as real writer, a real journalist, a real contributor to society. Sex is a commodity, that’s for sure, but it’s only really socially acceptable to traffic in temporarily. Where once upon a time, the story of sex for women was from virgin to whore, in the story of the business of sex writing, there’s the chance for all us soiled doves to reclaim our purity by renouncing sex, relegating sex to “that crazy thing” we wrote about to get our start, revising not just our resumes but our passions.

What if sex is where you want to go, not just your rent as you get there? (Hey, it’s been my rent, too, Not knocking that for a millisecond.) What if sex is your work, not limited to prostitution or porn or what we think of as sex work, but as your medium? What is so less noble about thinking sex rather than money, rather than politics, religion, or art? Sex being so fully embedded in the human experience, I want to put out there that there really is no way to engage the culture on “what really matters” without looking at sexuality.

Producing sexual media, theorizing and studying sex, and educating about sex are not some marginal activity, or at least, they should be thought of as such no longer. For us working sex, refusing to be ghettoized for our labors and loves doesn’t mean “rising up” from the gutter, but resisting the idea that sex is in some gutter at all.

(photo: pinkmoose, via Flickr)

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Sexerati Interviews: Molly Crabapple

filed under: Erotic Elite, We Make Art Not Sex, Sexerati Interviews by Lux Nightmare | 1 Comment

Heads up!  Sexerati Interviews is now on Tuesday, and The Future of Sex has been moved to Thursdays.  Subscribe to Sexerati and never worry about missing a feature!

I first met Molly Crabapple at a mutual friend’s party. We bonded over cupcakes, gossiping about altporn, nude modeling, and trying to make it in New York City. Two and a half years later, Molly’s tenacity and whipsmart business sense has brought her a bunch of fancypants clients, an awesome book, and the coolest lifedrawing class since, well, ever. Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School – a cross between cabaret and life drawing class – meets every other Saturday in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, and has spawned spinoff events all around the country (and internationally!), as well as Dr. Sketchy’s Official Rainy Day Coloring Book. I recently sat down with Molly to pick her brains about art, sex, and hot naked men.

So what’s the history of Dr. Sketchy’s? How’d that get started?
During college, I worked as an artists’ model. Going into it, I was under the delusion that modeling was a glamorous profession, tied in with Paris and absinthe and all that la-di-da. Not so. And boy was it low paid. I started Dr. Sketchy’s to bring to life some of my fantasies. And to give models a nice wage.

There’s some really great antecedents to Dr. Sketchy’s in bohemian culture of times yore. What would your biggest inspirations, in the history of sexy art scenes and eras, be?
While I have my inspirations, I’m sure that, looked upon in the harsh light of fact, they’re pretty a-historical. That said, Kiki de Montparnasse, the Bal des Quaz’arts, the Zutistes, and all that crazy bohemian Parisian stuff was a big inspiration.

Dr. Sketchy’s has made a point to have male models as well as female models. How has your audience reacted to that? Are hot naked men received as well as hot naked women?
Unfortunately not. It seems like, unless you tap into a gay male audience, it’s much harder to make a buck off of guys than girls. Straight women seem more inclined to shell out cash to ogle other women than to men, which makes me kind of sad for society.

Several of your male models have come from the burlesque scene: is the burlesque world more accommodating of hot naked men than the art world?
Male burlesque perfomers have been enthusiastically welcomed into the burlesque community. There’s ever a special category for them at Miss Exotic World (Miss America for peelers). Frankly, I love the fact that there are men- especially hot, macho ones- performing. Sometimes, doing burlesque feels like working in a harem.

In your opinion, who’s more fun to draw: naked men or naked women?
For me… naked men. Though I’m better at naked women, mostly because I practiced drawing myself.

What’s the best piece of advice you can give to aspiring young artists?
If you want to make money, develop a consistent style. Art directors and gallery owners have very little imagination, and versatility confuses them.

Here’s the one thing we’re all dying to know: do you have any debauched Dr. Sketchy’s hookup tales? Has love (or at least, lust) been found after the pencils go down?
Every single man, and a significant minority of women, is in love with Lady J [a Dr. Sketchy’s model].

What one thing do you consider to be most essential to a good, healthy sex life?
Twisted, unhealthy sex is more my speed.

And lastly: any plans for the future that our readers should know about?
Dr. Sketchy’s is coming to a city near you! In March, I’m doing a national book tour (which means lugging bags and sleeping on floors in ten cities across the country). So, if you live in LA, SF, PHX, Norfolk, Boston, Durham, DC, Baltimore, Richmond or Greensboro, come to my signings. I will love you and shower you in free buttons. Deets at www.drsketchy.com/tour.php.

Need more Molly? Check out her website. Learn more about Dr. Sketchy’s here.

Monday, January 29, 2007

Sex for Moderns: The Lucite Robot Edition

filed under: We Make Art Not Sex, Jet Sex by Melissa Gira | Leave a Comment

It’s sultry in San Francisco this afternoon, and my brain is still ramping up. Please, to the web powers-that-be, let me wake up somewhere between these two images, a cool, mod place for a mid-day fantasy:

(Willy Rey)

(Katy Manning)

(both via Strange Ink, via Sexoteric)

Monday, January 29, 2007

The Pink Ghetto: Welcome to NSFW

filed under: Web Sex Index, The Pink Ghetto by Lux Nightmare | 11 Comments

At one of my offices (I have several), I cannot access Sexerati.

If I attempt to go to this site, I am presented with a blank white page that informs me that this site has been blocked for being “Adult/Sexually Explicit.”

The same filtering software blocks me from viewing a bunch of sex education sites: a vaguely inconvenient/ironic situation, given that I work as a sex educator.

When you work in sex – as a sex blogger, a sex educator, a pornographer, whatever – and you’re trying to promote both yourself and your work, you are pretty much guaranteed to come up against some very hard walls.

Ask your friends to subscribe to your RSS feed: they can’t have the word “sex” on their work computer. Ask your blogger friends to promote your project: they can’t, it’d fuck with the vibe they’re going for. Try to get advertisers, try to promote your work, try to sell things using Paypal:

You have now entered the Pink Ghetto.

I’ve been using the Internet to talk about sex, in one form or another, since I was eighteen: basically, since it was legal to do so. Most of my work online has been firmly confined in the Pink Ghetto: it’s the kind of stuff I can’t show to certain types of people, the kind of stuff that people erase from their browser history.

Even when it’s not porn, it’s sex: and sex alone is enough to earn the label NSFW. Sex, even academic sex, is something we can’t always discuss in polite company. Trying to build your life, your career, around a discussion of sex means accepting that you will always have a fringe identity. That no matter how academic, how smart, how clean you keep it, you will always be on the edges of polite society. You will always be in the Pink Ghetto, and you will never be able to escape it.

This piece is the first in a series exploring the nature of discussing sex on the web. Check back next week for more.