I Want to Read to You! + Links!

I Want to Read to You.

I’ve written and published many things in my time: journalism, memoir, poetry, essays, comics. I’ve loved them all. But the only thing I’ve ever truly, deeply, dearly wanted to write is prose fiction.

Here’s a secret: I have been quietly writing it all along! I just haven’t told anybody.

I want that to change in 2022.

I’ve got a stash of short stories and novellas tucked away. They’re in various stages of repair, ranging from finished to abandoned to needing some fixing up. I want to start introducing them to the world to see what people think.

In order to get the feedback I desire before I publish them, I need…well…feedback. So, I would like to read to you. Live on stream! I want to hear what you think of my stories.

But in order to hear what you think, I need to know how I can read to you. So please, help a nervous fiction writer out by answering a few quick survey questions. Your answers will help me enormously!

Submit to Cinekink!

Currently planned for May 2022, the specially-curated CineKink NYC will include a short film competition, audience choice awards and an adult industry showcase, with a national screening tour to follow. Our intent is to offer in-person festivities and screenings, as long as it’s possible to do so safely and affordably, while utilizing virtual presentations to expand our offerings and reach a wider audience.

Cutting across orientations, topics covered at CineKink have included — but are by no means limited to — BDSM, leather and fetish, swinging, non-monogamy and polyamory, roleplay and gender bending, sex work and sex geekery. We’re looking to blur some boundaries and will consider offerings of any length and genre drawn from both the independent film world and the adult, with works ranging from documentary to drama, camp comedy to artsy experimental, mildly spicy to quite explicit — and everything in between.

Basically, as long as it involves consenting adults, just about anything celebrating sex as a right of self expression is fair game.

Submit your film here!

SexType.Me Survey

Pornhub, the Museum of Sex, and the Kinsey Institute have teamed up to bring “the world’s largest personality survey” (according to their press release) to the world of sexuality!

You are invited to participate in the “Sexual Personality” research project developed by the Museum of Sex in collaboration with Professor Lee Silver (Princeton University) and Professor Kristen Mark (University of Minnesota and the Kinsey Institute).

The primary goal of this research is to gain insight into whether sexual personality traits map inside well-known traits such as extroversion or empathy, or are unrelated domains of mental expression.

To reach this goal, we are looking for tens of thousands of adult participants who are able and willing to carefully consider their degree of attraction to, or repulsion from, mental attitudes, emotions, and beliefs . . . of a sexual nature.

On completion of the survey, we will send you a confidential interpretation of your results in comparison to all other survey-takers.

Take the survey and get your results here!

How Secks Workers are Providing Secks Education

Ryn Pfeuffer wrote a great piece over at Kinkly about how secks workers are providing the education so many of us are sorely lacking.

“Instead of waging a war on sex workers, it would befit everyone from lawmakers to laymen to reevaluate the role sex workers play in providing solid sex education. Sexual gratification is not our only service.

“There’s a growing number of sex workers who bring sex education to the bedroom and their social media platforms. The reality is that when it comes to sex ed, the education system is inadequate. It fails students.

“In a landscape that is sorely lacking in accurate and inclusive sex education [It’s 2021, FFS, and some states still prohibit teachers from discussing sexual orientation in class!] sex workers are, IMO, the real heroes of sex education.”

Read the rest here!

Seggs Toy Company Wins Legal Fight to Advertise Vibes on Subway

The phenomenal Samantha Cole wrote about a rare bit of seggs-positive goodness for Motherboard, about Dame’s recent massive win in NYC.

“Sexual wellness company Dame just won the right to display its ads on the subway—making it the first female-founded pleasure brand to run ads throughout New York City on the Metropolitan Transit Authority.”

It’s been a three-year fight for the seggs-positive, vulva-centric pleasure product company. A fight that led the MTA to revise its advertising guidelines to prevent them from showing their ads in the subway. (When I interviewed the founders for Playboy back in 2019, they told me about the battles they’d already fought with the MTA.)

Dame sued, and the MTA has now settled with them—allowing the company to advertise from November till January in New York City’s massive underground rail system.

Cole writes: “While they won the legal battle and are now allowed to advertise on New York’s transit system, the new ads […are…] even more abstract than before, barely alluding to sex or sex toys. Instead, they show softly-lit blue and orange illustrated hands, touching fingertips or roses, with the tagline ‘Get In Touch.'”

It’s a win for pleasure positivity in public, but we’ve still got a long way to go.

Read the article here!

Well…The Balldo Exists

I recently received a press release that read:

“GET YOUR FREE REVIEW UNIT: The First Sex Toy to Turn Your Balls Into a Second Penis Hits the Market This Fall”

I had to know more. And now, so do you.

Introducing the Balldo: the world’s first ball-dildo.

“A new Era in sex has arrived! We’ve created the world’s first sex toy that will allow you to penetrate your partner with your balls and unleash pleasure that you’ve never experienced before. Let the ballsex revolution begin!”

I don’t really know how to feel about the balldo, but I am enormously tickled that it exists at all. So, I dunno. Maybe you will be, too?

Click here to learn about the ballsex revolution!

Superfood Vaginal What-Nows?

I also received a press release with this title: “NEW: Physician-Formulated Superfood Vaginal Washes For Ultimate Down-There Care“

Look, I’m all for “down-there” care. And superfoods? Sure. I like a good kale Caesar salad as much as anybody.

But, folks. Friends. Be-vulva-ed individuals. Your vagina does not need superfood cleanses.

Your vagina is a glorious, wonderful, beautiful, amazing, self-cleaning organ. Unless there’s an infection down there—which happens to the best of us—it does not need intervention of the “cleaning-up” type. (And if it does…it does not need superfood. It needs a doctor’s prescription.)

Even if that superfood sounds really yummy—like the “CRANBERRY JUICE & COOL PEPPERMINT VAGINAL CLEANSE” or the “VELVETY YOGURT & SALUBRIOUS ELDERBERRY VAGINAL CLEANSE”—it does not belong in your vagina.

Now, once again, I’m not one to shy away from anybody using the word “salubrious.” Ever. That’s a great and sadly under-utilized word.

But…no. Do not put food in your vagina. Please.

I don’t know why I’m linking you to this. DO NOT buy these products.