Down to a T

I recently read a piece (I can’t remember where so can’t provide a reference) in which it was argued that the T in LGBT I was out of place since gender is a distinct phenomenon from sexual orientation. On one level this is true although we might point out that if a change of gender does not entail a change in sexual orientation this would mean that the act of transitioning the T actually entails the L or G since a straight man transitioning becomes a lesbian.

But there is a deeper problem with this way of thinking. It simply has an excessively narrow view  both of gender and sexuality and  ignores the ways in which they have been intertwined in gay and lesbian subcultures.

I began to think about this whilst at Tate Britain last week,  visiting the exhibition Queer British Art 1861 to 1967, held to commemorate the 50^th anniversary of the partial decriminalisation of male homosexuality in England and Wales.

For, from the Victorian era, experiments with gender fluidity were part of the artistic expression of gay and lesbian identity. Everywhere where there is androgyny and this was something that was clear to contemporary observers.   Clothes, make up, hair,  the use of beautiful young men as models for female figures from  classical mythology, this even before we get onto pantomime dames and  drag queens. In short, those who identified with alternative and stigmatised sexualities, sought to perform their sexuality in ways that also challenged gender stereotypes. Look, for example, at the photograph of Quentin Crisp in the exhibition or the iconic portrait of Radclyffe Hall.

And maybe the words gay and lesbian are out of place here too. At the start of the period represented by the exhibition medical science had still to invent and define hetero- and homosexuality as concepts. As categories they can be restricting too. Science seeks to define and classify. Art doesn’t.  Art like this serves to undermine the neat order of science’s categories. It points the way to which allow us can live art through our sexuality and through our performance of gender. Queer art is saying that sexuality is elusive, a range of possibilities, a range of pleasures, and gender a stage for our self-representation. Seen through the prism of art, rigid definitions of gender are as constraining as heteronormative binary views of sexuality and, in a sense, underpin them.

There were parts of this exhibition I found deeply erotic. Some of the exhibition was wickedly funny. Take a look at the library book covers doctored by Joe Orton and Kenneth Halliwell, an act for which the state exacted vicious revenge with six month prison sentences.  All of it was empowering, much of it beautiful. I left, thinking that sexuality and gender form a space where can express ourselves, a space where we can be free.

Sexy Summer Book Club

I am pretty undisciplined when it comes to reading. I usually have seven or more books on the go at any one time, read on the loo, on the bus, while stirring porridge, often just a page or two at a time, before I put the book down and move on to something else. I do plenty of reading but seem to take ages to finish individual books.  It is not unusual for a book for a book to lie untouched for several weeks and, when I pick it up to resume reading, I find I have lost the thread.

For this reason, I am great joiner of book clubs. I regularly attend the Birmingham Feminists Book Club and have read some wonderful books by the likes of Sarah Waters, Maya Angelou and Angela Carter. Book clubs make you read to a deadline and think about what you are reading so that you can contribute to the discussion.  In short, it gives you discipline.

Strange as it may seem, I don’t read nearly as much smut as I ought to.  So I thought that the Sexy Summer Book Club might be an opportunity. We began with the sexual reminiscences and reflections of Girl on the Net. Now I have known GoTN for a few years, having originally met her at Eroticon. I got to chat to her quite a bit as we were often to be found outside the building with the smoking crew. And bonding over a cigarette is a great way to bond, at least with people you are probably never going to go to bed with.

But I had never read very much of her writing. Partly this is because I don’t read a lot of blogs and things online. After a day in the office mired in Excel spreadsheets I just don’t like spending much time reading from screens in the evening. Book Club seemed like a good opportunity to make good the omission.

And I totally loved How a Bad Girl Falls in Love. The GoTN who came off the page was  the same GoTN I love smoking and drinking with. Witty and clever, with a sharp eye for the detail or observation that saves five hundred words, forthright in her opinions, a big personality.

Yet there is more here than opinion, humorous asides and fab sex (although there is plenty of all those). She also writes about her struggles with anxiety and low self-esteem and this, too, is something I can relate to.  I sometimes think it goes with the territory for those of us who became aware, possibly at a young age, that we were different in terms of our sexuality.  The journey away from shame and self-loathing towards an acceptance of who you are and the confidence to simply be yourself is a long one. And even when you find soul mates, in the kink scene or the sex blogging community, for example, the black clouds never quite leave you. Maybe life would be untroubled if all my sex was vanilla, if I didn’t know what a spreader bar was or a dildo?

But ultimately we are who we are. And in my darkest moments  I know that they are people lime GoTN  who will get me, will not judge, will give me love. Which I will reciprocate. Because that is one of the great things to come out of the book for me, the realisation that GoTN is not just a companion in nicotine and cider, but, in all her complexity, a soul mate.

I also understand where she is coming from sexually and why she likes the particular pieces of writing of mine that she does. And some of the writing in this book is hot. I read the book in the gym and had to interrupt my workout on one occasion to go to the Ladies and play with myself. And that, dear reader is the acid test, isn’t it?

A Pin To See The Peepshow

My interest in true crime dates from the time when, as a child, I listened to Edgar Lustgarten’s half hour programmes on Radio 4, when , in a rich, fruity voice he recounted famous murders of the past. So it was that I first heard about Armstrong the Hay poisoner, about the Brighton trunk murders of 1934, the Stratton brothers who, in 1905, became the first defendants convicted of murder on the basis of fingerprint evidence, and many other notorious cases.

Lustgarten seemed to revel in the often gory detail and he left no doubt that he considered the gallows a just destination for those who killed. He also believed that there had been few true miscarriages of justice and had a faith in the criminal justice system that few would have today. He even disputed the innocence of Timothy Evans.

There was really only one hanging that disturbed him and, when I first heard his account of the Ilford murder of 1922, I detected a tremor of emotion in his voice. For Lustgarten believed passionately in the innocence of Edith Thompson.

The facts of the case are well enough known.  Thompson, who was 28 at the time of the killing, lived in Ilford with her slightly older husband Percy. Their life was one of middle class respectability and quiet prosperity. Edith was a career woman and had worked her way up to be head buyer for a firm of milliners.  The marriage, however, was not happy and she embarked on an affair with a younger man called Freddy Bywaters. This proved her downfall. The jealous Bywaters, frustrated that Edith would not leave her husband, (something she could only do at huge personal cost) ran up behind the couple one evening as they walked home from the theatre and stabbed Percy Thompson to death.

There was no evidence that Edith knew that Bywaters had planned to do this, still less that she had incited him. Nonetheless she found herself on trial for murder. Bywaters had foolishly kept all her letters, in which she fantasised about killing or harming Percy, about putting ground glass in his dinner for example.   These were pure fantasy but deadly in the hands  of a prosecution seeking to plant a picture of Edith Thompson as an evil and manipulative woman. What was not fantasy was the fact that Edith had committed adultery and had had an illegal abortion.  For the social conventions of the time this put her pretty much beyond the pale and led her to the gallows at Holloway.

The case inspired the novel A Pin To See The Peepshow by F. Tennyson Jesse that I have just finished reading. Her heroine is called Julia Starling, nee Almond, and the setting moved across London to Chiswick.  Two thirds of the book is a portrait of London life from the period just before the First World War up to the early 1920s. Julia is a complex and contradictory character, attractive yet flawed. The narrative cleverly builds up the tension between the   dreams fostered by her daily contact with the wealthy aristocratic women she mixes with at the shop where she works, women whose money allows them moral leeway, and the drab lower middle class existence she has to return to each evening. Like Edith Thompson, she embarks on a an affair with dire consequences.

The last third of the book is essentially a fictionalised retelling of the actual trial of Thompson and Bywaters. It is compelling but grim, the story of a woman caught up in the machinery of a system that she does not understand and which she is powerless to stop.

Jesse’s novel was also dramatised but a performing licence was refused by the Lord Chamberlain. It was, even by 1934, too sensitive a matter for the authorities. Eventually in 1973 it was serialised for television by Elaine Morgan, with Francesca Annis playing the lead role.

The case continues to fascinate, principally because of Edith Thompson. Everyone who studies the case finds her an attractive personality. She is in many ways strikingly modern, a career woman with a good salary and financial independence (something which was held against her), a woman who enjoyed sex, and gave eloquent expression in her writing to her erotic imagination. She was a woman trapped in her time and, importantly, her class. For, even in 1922, her life would have been different had she been born into the aristocracy and not the suburban lower middle class. She was a victim of class prejudice as well as misogyny. At the time commentators sneeringly described her as a kind of low rent Madame Bovary. Killing Edith Thompson was not enough it seems. Her reputation had to be trashed as well.

This all happened nearly a century ago but the case still has resonance. Women are still harshly treated by the criminal justice system, more likely to be imprisoned than mean for similar offences, this despite the fact that women are more likely to have childcare responsibilities. It is, at times, as if women defendants are judged not just for their crimes, but for falling short of some ill-defined ideal of what a woman should be.

We have, I suppose, moved on from the times when a 28 year old woman could be killed by the state for liking sex  but not wanting to have a baby, but we haven’t moved far enough.

When EU Citizens Are Not Wanted

As the Brexit negotiations get underway, the rights of EU citizens living in the UK are beimg much discussed and the Government is, apparently, keen to give them the right to stay in the UK after Brexit,

Even  before Brexit, however, there are some EU citizens who are apparently not welcome. This statement from Wiltshire police describes the arrest of three Romanian women who had been selling sex from a property in Swindon. They were arrested and now face deportation.

You.will note that there is no evidence of trafficking or coercion. The ladies were working through choice, and quite openly advertising their services through Adultwork. They were, according to the law, running a brothel which is a criminal offence. In this case running a  brothel is simply women working together for their own safety like the Polish women in Bradford who were jailed in 2013..

If the women were not coerced what basis do the police have for saying this?

“This is a very positive outcome as the women are now safe and away from their clients and are no longer vulnerable to the risks of off street sex work.”

And what evidence is there to support this assertion?

“There are strong connections between the adult sex industry, human trafficking and modern slavery”

This is frequently said but major police inquiries like Operation Pentameter  failed to find any significant evidence of trafficking into sex work although there have been several recent cases of trafficking into farmwork and construction.

Such police stings do nothing to promote the safety and well being of sex workers and surely run counter to the good practice set out in  the Merseyside Model which is supposed to create the trust between sex workers and police that gives the sex workers the confidence to report indents of violence.

It is surely time to decriminalise sex work so that women can work together for their own safety  and so that citizens of out (still) fellow EU states can work in the way they choose without fearing the knock on the door.

 

 

Simply Clever

Unlike other participants I have been finishing a novella today rather writing directly for this blog but here is something inspired by a conversation earlier today. My first Smutathon 2017 post.

Not so many years ago Skoda cars were the butt of jokes like “Why do Skodas have heated rear windows?” Answer “To keep your hands warm when you’re pushing”

For Communist era Skodas were tinny affairs with noisy air cooled rear engines. They looked good…in comparison to Trabants   and Moskviches but not in comparison to ,ost western cars. They were cheap and cheerful, well cheap anyway, a kind of 1980s version  of the Proton.  Then Communism collapsed, Skoda Auto was acquired by VW and the rest is history. Skoda now make good cars, in fact better in many case than those of the parent company which has moved to restrict production of the Octavia

But I digress. The reason I  mention Skoda is that it is now public knowledge , thanks to a tweet by Coffee and Kink this afternoon, that I have had sex in three Skodas. All of these were nice modern Skodas, an old shape Fabia, a new shape Fabia and  an Octavia.

But why, you may ask, would I want to have sex in a car? I mean I live on my own, have a spacious double bed   (although the Octavia encounters took  place at a time when I didn’t) and, if you are not so near home, I could always find a cheap hotel. Thew answer is that, apart from saving money, sex in cars is fun.

It gives a real thrill because, even in the most secluded locations there is the risk of being caught. Steamed up windows and rocking are a bit of a give away. If this car sex is part of an illicit affair there is the risk of leaving a used condom, a  tissue paper reeking of come, or a stain on fabric upholstery that can’t be removed. There is the thrill of anticipation, the feeling of increasing horniness as you drive the dark lanes  looking for a suitable spot. The times when, you start to undress, then duck down as you see the headlights of a passing car.

You don’t have time  which makes the experience more intense. A minimum of foreplay and then  penetration. And the cramped conditions make  for an angle that allows deep penetration.  Car sex is quick and intense. And fun!

Car sex has enabled me to have sex in dogging sites in the Black Country, in the  car park of a medieval castle, down a lane in Oxfordshire under the embankment of the  M40 (this leaving stains on the seat), and down a number of farm tracks around Warwickhire.

And most of this sex in three little Skodas.

As they say in Czech “Simply clever”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

An Appetite for Pleasure

When I was 11 and staying at a friend’s house, we stumbled upon her father’s porn stash. We spent the afternoon leafing through these well- thumbed copies of Men Only.  At this distance in time I don’t remember a great deal about them except being fascinated by a photospread of a guy eating bananas and cream off his partner’s lady parts. And so a connection between food and sex was established in my mind. A current male lover loves to lick various sweet treats off my feet and this is as good a pedicure as I have had in any salon and delightfully erotic.

I, in my time, have greedily licked yoghurt and honey off cock, I have drawn a Cadbury’s Flake out of a girlfriend with my teeth (and soaked in pussy juice a Flake is, well, something else) and I still shudder to think to think about the mess a lover and I made of a hotel bed with a steak and kidney pie.

The point for me is that food is sensual, sex is sensual. Eating oysters is quite a bit like sucking cock, it’s just that cock is even better when your lover comes in your mouth. And like all the sensual pleasures they are predicated on mortality. I was, therefore,  little surprised a while ago to talk to a sex positive lady (and part time sex worker)   describing the way in which she had lost weight, through one of the many faddish diets.

“I haven’t eaten for 48 hours”  she said with a smile. “And I’m nor even hungry.”

Well, yes, I thought but this is missing the point. Food is not an enemy it is a pleasure to be embraced like a lover. Eat well, eat regularly just not to excess. Deny yourself nothing. Yet so many people do. And they are surely blunting their sensual appetite more generally. Deny yourself dessert  and what are you going to lick off your lover before you fuck? And how can you get properly horny and have the energy for love making without steak or oysters or a glass of wine?

I have lost three and a half stone since the beginning of 2015. I am now dress size 12 to 14 where I was once a 22. Some of this was down to running but mainly it is down to making the decision to eat well and eat regularly. Three proper meals, no snacks. Oh and room for dessert, room for cheese, room for wine.  It was while visiting friends In France that I had this idea. My friends pointed out that there are far fewer overweight people in France than in England yet most French people eat well. I had to agree.

I really can’t imagine Catherine Deneuve going 48 hours without food and not feeling hungry, still less being happy about it. So I’m just off out to buy cheese and maybe a crème brulee. And then I will see where the evening takes me.

In The Family Way

I have written before about Eroticon and how those who attend regularly have become a kind of family. Writing can be an isolating experience and when your subject matter is sex, and particularly  when it is seen from the angle of unconventional and alternative sexualities, this isolation can be compounded by the stigma and lack of understanding that requires many bloggers and writers to write pseudonymously, in some cases, going to great lengths to protect their real names.  So it is really good to get together from time to time and chat, and drink , and eat and laugh with people like you, people who “get it”

Yesterday’s blogger meetup in Birmingham was  not a reprise of Eroticon ans several of the bloggers present have not yet been there (but surely will) but it was great to spend an afternoon with awesome people, new friends and old friends, the inevitable cigarette and swapping of gleeful reminiscences about election night with Girl on the Net, planning cocktails and cake for Smutathon next weekend, all this awesomeness, while just 50 yards away, the massed ranks of 20 Britain First supporters, ranted into a void.

We are going to do this again. I only hope the next ne doesn’t clash with rugby at Moseley…please! But I will be there anyway. You are family.

Huge thanks to Horny Geek Girl and Echo Explores for organising.