Thursday, January 4, 2007
HOW TO: Sex Blog (Introduction)
filed under: Erotic Elite, HOW TO: by Melissa Gira
This might seem like a counter-intuitive how to to publish, but fuck it. There’s hardly enough sex blogs out there when compared with the comparative glut of media/gossip blogs or tech/stuff blogs. Of those sex blogs that survive the first six weeks, and then the first six months, the few that get to go deeper than they imagined when they began (that moment when you have to change your tagline, right?) are so very few that there’s still such a wide terrain for all of us to cover.
Honestly, there was no such thing as a sex blogger (we were all just bloggers back in those days) until 2003, the year that Belle de Jour, the still-reigning queen of “from blogspot to riches,” broke. When it comes to how many think of success in blogging sex, her mold is the model: anonymous, explicit, confessional, female, vaguely repentant. Though some feel there’s only so much to be said of sex, I’m of the belief that we can never really get to the truth of sex as a culture unless we work it out together. There’s no one truth, no one person destined for all six figures of the almighty sex culture book advance and the sex house in the country to retire to. Anyone who can throw up a hot little flare and some rss along this adventure is a welcome comrade.
All that stirred up by way of disclaimer, here’s a bit of a theory of how to sex blog before the bounty of links and suggestive instructions. To get deeply inside what makes someone blog sex, read on:
Blogging sex is not just about blogging sex.
The dirty little secret of so-called “sex bloggers” is that most of us don’t just write about sex. We may have other blogs, or we may even dare to explore additional topics in our “sex blogs” as we choose to. The passion and creativity that drives us to blog sex requires a skill that will take all the mad excitement we’ve got as a community of social media makers and push us hard to manifest that enthusiasm — and on a regular basis — nearly to its limit. Whether or not we write about actual sex we might actually be having at the actual time of our blogging (or, maybe, hopefully, shortly thereafter — though let’s have a moment of silence for the concept of liveblogging sex), our personal sex lives are going to be a part of our sex blogging. Even the most “professional,” seemingly non-personal sex blog is personal. One need only read between the lines…
… and some of your readers and lovers will, in fact, be reading between the lines — and here is where this approach to sex blogging gets interesting.
The old media take on sex blogging is that a sex blog is just a new form of erotic confessional, which, when you define sex blogging only in relationship to other sex writing, loses critical utility as a way of framing how sex is blogged within the context of social media. That so many sex blogs are written significantly ex post facto (years, even) is just a hint at this fundamental problem in writing sex in any form: what we blog about sex, even after the fact, reverberates back into our current sex lives.
Blogging about sex changes sex.
Once we start to blog sex, our sexual experiences will forever after be colored by the question, how will I blog this? When the potential feedback loop between fucking and blogging and fucking anew is that much tighter, when we have the tools to muse on, digest, and rail against the way sex operates in our lives, and in public, and very quickly, we may find ourselves blogging things we shouldn’t yet, or shouldn’t at all. The instinct to open up Movable Type when dropping an email or maybe picking up the phone or going out for a cocktail would be a bit more creative, compassionate way to relay what we have to say to those people who make up our closest sex community: friends, lovers, and all the rest in between.
Yet I so rarely write about Viviane. This is by her request, as she prefers to remain “off blog” in our relationship. She’s not too keen to read about her sex life in blogs.
Mind you, many are the times she’s turned to me during an intense moment to say, “You’re going to blog this, right?”
As we prepared for sex camp, I told her it would be pretty difficult to write about our shared experience without reference to her. “I mean, it’s going to look ridiculous to tell this story without you. It will be too great a void.”
“Okay, sweetie,” she acquiesced. “This time you can write about me.”
“Thanks, baby,” I had replied, lowering my tongue once more to lap at her clit.
- Jefferson, writing at Viviane’s Sex Carnival
Put simply, sex blogging requires us to make a pact with those we share sex with in our lives. Of course, what falls under the umbrella of sex is ever-shifting, and as that shifts, you better damn well blog that, too.
Blogging sex is sex in public.
Sexual identity is formed as much in public space as it is in private space, which is why we sometimes have to blog sex to get at the truth of sex without revealing secrets. It makes you a better blogger, too, as this way of writing is part and parcel with all that good “show and not tell” stuff that every strict language teacher ever got on us about.
This points to another central practice of sex blogging: bloggers have private lives, even as they may blog in ways that seem so deeply personal. We each have our own blogging practices, the ways that we choose what to reveal and what not to reveal, and the care with which we make these decisions goes deeper still in sex blogging.
Even those bloggers who don’t “sex blog” are still blogging sex when they sit in front of ecto wondering, “do I mention that the girl I’m talking about in this post made out with me?” You’re blogging sex when you post your weekend party photos to Flickr and consider how to tag the new boy-in-your-life in them, knowing that your readers check your photostream (and will ask anyway in the comments, or tag them on their own, if you don’t take the lead).
These same questions churn us up as we mentally flip through our past blog entries when a new lover starts Googlestalking us before a date. When some of those those early posts that make you cringe for so many other reasons are out there, what now, with a date reading them? There’s no way to avoid considering how our blogging may hinder or help our chances of finding love — or love-right-now — and then getting some.
Blogging sex is a ‘risky behavior.’
Sex blogging is by definition boundary-challenging, and so my response to being emotionally challenged by sex in blogging is to blog more. If I find myself getting into a tight or hard spot with a friend or lover in how we’re talking about sex online, I give myself permission to just let myself be distressed in that moment, and then try to ease up on the stress itself a bit with the double-action lubrication of tears and/or orgasm combined with making more media. Never underestimate the power of a good wank and an open window (that kind of window, too, sure) to get your head and the rest of you back together again.
It’s just the Internet, people. It’s not like it’s that important.
But it is, and we know that, even if we’re all just figuring this thing out. When it comes to sex and social media, we’re still all a bit green beneath the sheets, alternately brazen and blushing in our groping, but sincere still as we make as mess of ourselves, and the internet, in the process.
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I’ve always been fond of the idea of partitioning pornography on the internet so that when someone googles about sex they are greeted with intelligent and eloquent prose like this rather than invitations for a cheap trick and solicitations for a credit card number.
I’m glad to have found your blog and am envious of your ability to communicate. I was a bit daunted by the length of my scroll bar but its the best thing I’ve read online in weeks.
This is very interesting, and I appreciate Viviane for pointing me in your direction. My blog is my life hanging out before all to see, yet is distorted by the fact that it’s a written account by one man in a relationship. Not only am I using the untrustworthy means of language, but the words must be processed by readers, who often bring their own distortions, agendas and prejudices to the process. But finally, I’m giving those readers only one point of view: mine. Much as I try to be balanced, I can only see the ebb and flow of my life with C. from my perspective, and from hers, only second-hand– and with words, imperfect and open to interpretation.
Eddie - I don’t know how I feel about partitioning pornography on the Internet. It would require that someone make some decision about what pornography is and isn’t — and one would hope, an educated decision, and operative from within a cultural context sensitive to porn’s own mores, not just the sensitivity of “erotica” seekers who find porn annoying, boring, or whatever. As much as I wish pornblogging didn’t rule sexblogging, I think any sort of organized divide would be a grand and utter failure, no matter how it’s executed. But still, I appreciate how much smart sex is needed, and thank you for the nod.
tom - language will always fail us. On the one hand, I’m excited about this idea of looking for the truth of sex in sex itself, but I also am married to the transformative power of the word. I’ve had writing change my sex life, period, and I want to explore that more. See also: the people who are in your sex life, reading your writing? I need to tell the story of the first guy who had listened to my podcast before he slept with me. (And the reverse of that, the people in my sex life who shape my podcast.)
Question for all then: so, do your partners read your sex blogs? Do they keep their own? Do you blog together? How’s that all go down for you both?
Thanks to Tom Paine for linking to you… fabulous article. You have eloquently articulated so much of what has been on my mind in relation to blogging and how much it affects instead of reflects experience. I think being aware of that interplay is what is important — there is nothing necessarily wrong in the idea that being aware of the future blog post will affect sex (and every other experience), as long as it is an awareness, and doesn’t happen through ignorance, right?
To answer your question — my sex blog is anonymous, but the surprise for me is to what extent it has become part of my sex life. One of my partners does not read the blog, but knows it’s there, has read many of the entries, and has in fact contributed one piece of writing to it. Of course, he could find it anytime, with all that information, but has chosen not to until we are ready to go down that path together. We have considered having a second blog that we operate together as friends.
Another partner is someone I developed a relationship with after he read the blog and emailed me. I think this is potentially a very unwise thing to do — so many perils, including that he knew me intimately before I knew he existed (which makes me vulnerable to him), and that his behaviour is influenced by what he knows about what I want (which makes me wonder how many of his decisions are based on what he thinks I want). He is still an avid reader, and, for the most part, I have been able to ignore the fact that he is reading when I do my writing — except of course, that that isn’t entirely possible. I am aware of his reading, and it has caused me to choose not to write about at least one specific event, in order not to hurt his feelings. Very problematic, but I’m trying to keep that to a minimum.
Other lighter, pseudo-relationships or even close online friendships have also developed with fellow bloggers and some other readers, which was also a surprise to me (I was hopelessly naive going into this — still am). I don’t see those as impacting my blogging experience (except in adding pleasure to it), but I haven’t normally chosen to explore those friendships in my writing (although it isn’t because I have felt too awkward to do so — it’s more about my own boundaries and respectful behaviour).
Melissa, I am intrigued enough about your topic that I posted something about it with a link to your site. For the first year, C. did not read my blog. Now she not only reads it, but is reading the blogs of other people we have met. It’s getting downright weird.
[…] (This is part one in our series on HOW TO: Sex Blog. You ought to start with the Introduction for all the pithy theory, really, and then onward to the snark interjected here and there with actual advice.) […]
Melissa,
its good to see someone tackling the issue of the effects of sex blogging on those who blog. It was a strange moment when my partner started to read my own writing, I felt exposed in a way I hadn’t before. I was initially nervous about him reading about my experiences with partners before him; feeling like it was the equivalent of bragging about another lover. He was completely fine with it, but I have noticed that if he we do anything out of the ordinary there are cheeky comments about the possibility of me recording the event.
I often wonder what compels me or anyone else to blog about sex, and where all this will eventually lead.
こちらを紹介します!!…
2,011人の女性にオーガズムを与えてきた専門家が、プロとなって30年現場で実践して手に入れたノウハウを公開！「たった1ヶ月で、より感度がよく、ディープなオーガズムを得る女性に変…