Zak Smith is an artist whose work has been featured in the Whitney Biennial and The Museum of Modern Art, among others. Zak Sabbath is an alterna porn-star who has co-starred bedside Sasha Gray and Joanna Angel. Zak’s written a book about his experiences in the porn and art worlds,  entitled We Did Porn , which is often intelligent, humorous and insightful.

Here, is a behind the scenes look from my Man Series interview. Zak spills about male sexuality and gender differences in the porn industry, shares some of his art and gives us a juicy excerpt from the We Did Porn.

So, what’s up with the stereotype that men just “think with their dicks”?

So, guys can be extraordinarily smart in order to get their dick to have what they want. like, right now we’re talking on a telephone. You’ve got Skype. My guess is that both of those things were invented by guys who thought that if they could invent something cool, that it would make them rich and famous and it would get them laid. So Alexander Graham Bell wasn’t maybe thinking with his dick but he’s

thinking really helped his dick out. Women are a complicated target. You have to really do all kinds of crazy shit in order to impress them or to get them to know you. And so, you now, they invent computers and airplanes, and socks and healthcare like, you can’t have sex with women when they’re dead so we’ve really got to keep them all alive, you know.

Why aren’t there more young, hot guys like yourself in the porn business?

First of all the reliability is the bread and butter of the business for a guy. The way casting works is they move heaven and earth to get the girls they want and then when they are available, they call up the agency to send over a guy. So in a business where reliability is important you tend to hire the same guy that worked last time. So if Tom Byron has been shooting scenes for 20 years, then he’ll probably show up and shoot a good scene. Who cares if he’s 40 years old, 50, whatever. It’s exactly the opposite for women, Like the whole point with the female talent if you do someone’s first you’ll make lots more money. You’re always looking for someone new. So the girls are younger and younger.

It’s interesting to me that the guys don’t matter, like their roles aren’t really written in.

Most of the porn directors and people in charge are guys, and they don’t get really ambitious about the casting of guys. And also, there aren’t that many guys period in the industry, because they don’t need us. So, just there’s maybe 200 guys who work regularly they could figure a hundred of those guys are old and proven reliable. And maybe 50 of those guys are random. And that leaves maybe 50 guys where someone said“That guy is cute!” and hired him.

I also wonder if it has to do with homophobia, like don’t let the camera lens linger on the man too much, because that’s going to spark some fear.

Homophobia is a part of it. It’s like, people who wanna fuck men think one way, and when people wanna fuck women they think another way, because it’s literally a different catch. What women seem to want sexually out of a man would appear to be something that a stereotype of a gay guy couldn’t provide. You know like, in other words it seems like the impression one gets is that women want certain behavior out of a man. And the stereotype of a gay guy doesn’t have that behavior. So men fear to be that guy.

Y’know, one place where that shows is in porn. There just isn’t porn for straight women.

Kimberly Kane had a site called, “ilovestraight.com” which was just guys jerking off. And her kind of talking them through it and helping out a little bit. And she was like, “I’m not a  gay guy and I wanna watch guys jerk off”. There isn’t porn for straight women but I think there’ll be more of it that the future. But, eventually, she sold that site.

So, what do you think about the Stop Porn Culture meme, and the idea that porn has changed an entire generation of men, and the way they have sex?

I feel like the pornographication of the culture is only a good thing. I feel like, people have to be responsible for their own behavior. If you see a porno movie and assume that next person you have sex with is gonna want to fuck exactly like that movie, you’re an idiot. Nothing culture does is gonna fix you from being an idiot. You may not be an idiot in a porn way, you might become an idiot in a religious way or in some form other way but you’re a fucking idiot and I don’t want to be responsible for your behavior. But I feel like as a broad cultural trend, the fact like there’s porn everywhere and a pressure of “sex is great” is good. We’ve had about 300,000 years of the opposite of that. If you give me a choice between a post religious culture and a post pornographic culture I will choose the pornographic culture every time.

What is missing from the discussion about male sexuality?

A tremendous gulf between male and female sexuality is that women thinking about men’s sexuality have to mentally handicap for how they’d act if sex carried no connotation of danger. Gay or straight, having sex with a man involves putting yourself in a position where you could be physically injured if the person doesn’t care about you or know what they’re doing.  Having sex with a woman doesn’t. In a sense having sex with a woman is just less of a commitment than fucking a guy. It involves you being less vulnerable to that person’s whims, awkwardness, lack of talent, etc. I think a lot of what men are dealing with is just the practical situation in their real life. You know, they’re not thinking theoretically about their sexuality, they’re thinking practically like what do I do right now? How do I have to act right now in order to sleep with that person over there.

Here is how I put it in my book: “I think men must really seem like dogs to women—hungry and large, often slobbering—as a species, unpredictable and sometimes dangerous (the dogs of war, the dogs of doom) but as individuals, predictable and clockwork and cute (like puppies, like hounds), and, if you spend enough time with them, each with a different personality (babe-hounds, faithful hounds). Some are tiny and harmless, some are harmless and big as bears, but all have predatory, long-boned bodies with teeth and claws essentially made to hunt and hurt smaller things. To deliver yourself sexually to an unknown one must be like putting yourself at the mercy of a strange, large, imprecise, and hairy animal that you can only hope is well-trained. Straight men should imagine how much differently they’d behave if their lovers were—to scale up—wolves.
From the point of view of men, sex does not automatically or ordinarily have the radioactive glow of risk, of pleasure-snatched-from-danger. Because for us, sex has no downside. Going from making out with a stranger to fucking her involves no more trust or psychophysical commitment than eating a melon. Men all bitch to each other about the complications—things get slippery, things get sticky, you get juice everywhere and seeds on the floor, She keeps saying I should… Oh I was in the middle of checking it when she calls wanting…  She gave me this frikkin’… but really they are just bitching about life. That’s the horrible downside—having to walk around and be alive all the time. Life is the horrible downside to sex. We’d rather be dead all day and then come up for a few hours to eat and fuck and maybe fight someone (preferably simultaneously) and then be dead again. Like Dracula. “

Tao Lin is a twenty-something novelist, poet and short story writer whose  fifth book, Richard Yates was released today. Written in Lin’s signature sparse monotone, Richard Yates tells the story of a couple,  Dakota Fanning and Haley Joel Osment. They drink soy milk, talk on g-chat, shoplift from Whole Foods and destruct one and other in a bruising relationship.

Lin’s work has garnered both positive and negative attention.  Miranda July has said, “Tao Lin writes from moods that less radical writers would let pass—from laziness, from vacancy, from boredom. And it turns out that his report from these places is moving and necessary, not to mention frequently hilarious.”

This an interview I conducted with Tao for my story  After Portnoy: Three Men on Writing about Sex published in BookSlut’s 100th issue today. Check out that piece for bits from Tao, Stephen Elliot and Steve Almond.

Here, Tao Lin opens up about sex, gender and Richard Yates.

So a theme through your new book, Richard Yates, is statutory rape,  are there sex scenes?

There are some sex scenes in Richard Yates. There are scenes where “statutory rape” is discussed and where a prior “rape” is discussed. I would characterize the sex scenes in Richard Yates as concise, “objective,” concrete, minimalist but as a result of the book’s overall style/tone which I would also describe as concise, “objective,” concrete, minimalist.

I feel like your  female protagonists are very similar to your male protagonists. Which feels right to me.

This past Sunday, I was a guest on the fabulous Kink on Tap podcast.  One of the things we talked about is how sex–and adjacently STI’s–are on the rise for  senior citizens.

I spilled to the audience something I have been working on: a journalism piece about elderly BDSM. This one is coming soon, but in the meantime I want to share some excerpts.

These are some behind the scenes tidbits from an interview with sexologist and co-founder for the Center of Sex and Culture  Carol Queen, whom I talked with about senior citizens, BDSM and sex in general.

How common is it that older people are finding new ways to have sex?

“If we can extrapolate from recent survey research suggesting that STI rates among elders is increasing, I’d say it’s quite common indeed. Widow/ers and divorce(e)s are out of long-term relationships that may have grown sexually stagnant or at least had a set of sexual practices that became the core way of having sex. With a new partner, or on the dating scene, a person can reinvent her- or himself sexually, to some degree, and pursue long-held or new interests, or respond to the preferences of the new person. This can really reinvigorate people, physically and emotionally. As the above-noted stats show, however, it’s obvious that being “back in the game” brings risks that these folks may not have had to address earlier in their lives. Many seniors haven’t learned enough about safer sex and sexually transmitted conditions.”

How has the Internet changed sex for older people, especially?

“I think it’s somewhat easier for younger people, in general, to go out and look for partners. The Internet levels the playing field quite a bit and allows older people to specifically seek partners (long- or short-term) if they wish, making it easier to find new romance — or, for that matter, a tryst with a sex worker. It also brings the sexual world to one’s door for a generation of people who may not have had as much access to explicit materials earlier in their lives, so I think for some, it sparks or gives permission for new erotic interests.”

What is sex drive really like in people aged 65+? Does it dwindle to a stop, as we’ve been taught?

This is a really individual thing, but in general: not necessarily. It may be  more likely in women, who often (though by no means always) contextualize their erotic lives in relationship to another person.But really the thing that tends to affect sex drive as we age is health — libido is very often the canary in the mineshaft of declining health, and should always be taken seriously when it changes. Enough older people still have plenty of desire and sexual functioning and pleasure that it should never be assumed that an older person is just too old to want it any more — especially if the drop is unexplained and sudden.

Why are there cultural taboos against old people having sex? It seems these really aren’t challenged.

“They certainly aren’t challenged very openly by the larger culture. I see two things operating here. There had been an underlying bias in our culture –not completely gone yet– that sex really is, at bottom, for reproduction. (That’s one of the things that continues to power homophobia too.) After one is out of one’s reproductive years, the notion of sex becomes unseemly and even unacceptable to many. The other thing, I think, is that there is societal pressure on us to fear aging, and seeing evidence of older people’s sexuality brings up our difficult feelings about getting older ourselves, our own body image fears, fears of mortality, etc. All this may be true even if the older person is nowhere near decline and death! Plus plain old-fashioned ageism is at work too — the kind that makes the lives of elders problematic in many more ways than around sex.”

Do you know any older people into BDSM?

“I have a women friend in her 80s who still puts on her corset and goes to BDSM parties! She’s a wonderful role model for anybody who thinks erotic play and fun is reserved for the young. I’ve also heard from more than one woman that as menopause changes their sexual response and how it feels to have intercourse, that non-vaginal forms of pleasure gain new prominence. One of my post-menopausal friends discovered she really loved anal sex even after she was no longer particularly into vaginal “vanilla.” And many dominatrices have seen older clients, particularly older men. The focus in BDSM is so often on energy, emotion, and skill level that many more kinds of people are seen as attractive and valuable players. The knowledge and experience of many years of play can be really specialized and rarefied — and is valued. What sexuality can be, in this community, is often a very expanded thing.”

Yesterday I was in the shower, the warm-cool space where I do my best thinking, and I realized that so much of what I’ve learned about my sexuality has been through asexuality–from somewhere invisible in sex-positivity, in feminism, from somewhere that isn’t sexual at all. Asexuality is the lack of sexual attraction. It’s not like celibacy, which is a choice.

I don’t consider myself asexual, but from talking with asexuals, I’ve learned a lot about my own relationships, sexual and non. Here are excerpts from interviews I’ve done over the past year with David Jay, the founder of AVEN,  illustrating my education in sex and not sex.

Friendships and relationships aren’t that different.

“In the asexual community the word single doesn’t exist. Because single implies that if you don’t have a romantic relationship you don’t have a valid source of intimacy in your life.  A lot of “single” people have extremely valid sources of intimacy worth talking about. Instead, words like romantic and aromantic get thrown around to describe relationships. When asexual people gossip we don’t just talk about the relationships we are in, we talk about the relationship models we are in. Every asexual person ends up with this elaborate world view of how intimacy words and their relationships work.

We have to ask, what makes a relationship different that a really close friendship?  What is monogamy? At what point would I be cheating on my romantic partner with my best friend? What commitments do we need to make in order for us both to feel safe and trusting? You have to go deeper than some sexual couples might, where that  line is drawn by sex.”

Being open and honest about sex is great, but how you do it matters.

“The desire to create a dialogue of sexuality in our marketing driven culture can easily turn into over-celebrating sexuality and glamorizing or fetishizing it. I think that you should be mindful of the way that you are glamorizing sex or treating sex as intrinsically different or better than other ways of connecting with people.

We think that if your goal is to create an open honest dialogue about sexuality, you should be talking about asexuality too. By celebrating sexuality, you should also be celebrating the fact that sex is sometimes boring and that there are other ways to connect with people. Right now even in sex positive spaces if you start talking about how sex is sometimes boring it has the weight of I have to lower my voice and have a hand on my back in order to talk about it.”

Often, it’s really intimacy we are talking about, not sex.

“I would define intimacy pretty broadly, I would say an intimate relationship is one where you feel comfortable being vulnerable. In our society intimacy is really strongly correlated with sex. The ability for someone to fully emotionally connect with someone else is largely sexualized. There is a strong case to be made that not all important relationships are sexual and not all intimacy on an emotional level is sexual.

I’ve definitely had conversations with a lot of guys that start out expressing what they’ve label as sexuality. And if I kind of prod, there’s a lot of other emotional stuff that’s under that. And it may or may not have anything to do with sexuality, they just may not have another language set for expressing it.”

Gender is sexual

“Part of the boogeyman that gets you if you don’t gender perform right is that you won’t be sexually attractive. So, if you’re female you have to be feminine or you won’t be attractive and that means you won’t be in a sexual relationship with someone. But if you’re asexual that’s already not happening. And your only incentive to be feminine is if that is a genuine expression of who you are. And so I think, with that incentive stripped away, there’s less emphasis on gender but in some way, the emphasis left is kind of a little more genuine. Because it’s driven by self expression.

So much of how we express our sexuality is gender. The expression of our sexuality ultimately often is the expression of our gender. And we are still trying to figure out what the expression of asexuality looks like, learning how to have an empowered gender identity without sexuality is really tricky.”

Grant Stoddard is the much loved underdog of the sex-writing world. His “I Did it For Science” column at Nerve gave us a hands-on account of his personal exploits, which saw him tackle everything from dressing up like a baby to doing a sample Real Doll at the factory.

A few must reads:

Experiment: To attend and participate in an Orgy

Experiment: To have a threesome with a woman and another man

Experiment: To literally have sex with Myself

Experiment: To have sex with a Real Doll

He’s since published a memoir, Working Stiff: The Misadventures of an Accidental Sexpert. Paramount Vantage bought the motion picture rights and Stoddard signed a deal with 20th Century Fox Television. For The Man Project, he opens up about doing it for science and how he got his sex education.
Do you think it’s harder for men to write about their sexual experiences than it is for women?

We think there’s something gross about reading about a straight guy and his sexual experiences. The whole premise of “I Did it For Science” was that I was the least likely person for the job. I started interning at Nerve when they gave me the sex-writing job as a joke. I was vastly inexperienced. It was kind of like I was being forced to do it, but I think that made it palatable for readers to hear about a man’s sex life.

Who’d ever suspect that a guy who’d make a mold of his penis and fuck himself with it was inexperienced?

All of a sudden, I was dressing up like a baby, convincing a masseuse to give me a “happy ending,” getting fucked in the ass by a friend. I was like: “I wanna deal with normal sexual stuff, the stuff I am supposed to be doing with my youth!”

As a guy, what have you learned from exploring the vast rainbow of sexual experiences?

Women are given great sexual latitude to do a number of different things—bondage, kinks, even lots of different vanilla sex. Men are really sort of reduced to just wanting to fuck something, and that’s it. There’s a huge downside with what’s expected of you, and how you’re expected to behave in the bedroom. It’s very limiting.

It’s a double standard we hear about over and over.

There is also the double standard of consent. If you go on a date, and the girl doesn’t want to have sex with you it’s accepted. But if a guy is offered sex and he declines, it raises eyebrows. This happened to me once, and then it was all these questions: What’s wrong with him? Is he gay? The idea that I just simply wasn’t in the mood [wasn’t allowed.]

What about the male-female double standard regarding bisexuality?

Oh, yes, “You know, I wanna suck a dick. I don’t want to conform to a lifestyle or necessarily move to Chelsea. I just want to suck a big one.” If women [want to eat pussy], it’s cool, but for guys it’s, “Oh, so you’re gay?”

Maybe homophobia hasn’t gone away, but now it’s a personal thing? Like, “That’s okay for you, but NO, I am not gay!”

It’s very strange. My friends who are supposedly liberal and comfortable sexually cringe when it’s implied that they would be implicated in any [form of] gay sex.

What is your relationship to masculinity like?

Tenuous. I’ve lived in Manhattan for most of my adult life (although, he was born in England). [Masculinity is] not highly regarded as it would be elsewhere. I’ve definitely benefited from the fact that it’s not in vogue. I was actually playing with the idea of writing a book about how “un-masculine” I am. I just bought an apartment and I don’t know how to do anything. I’m looking at these ugly light fixtures now, and I have no idea how to change that. I’m gonna need some sort of tools. I have no tools. I have no hair on my chest.

Is there something you feel needs to be addressed about male sexuality, or changed?

I’m not exactly sure how you would go about instituting it, but the way that men use language. They talk about banging girls, finger banging or fucking. It’s something mechanical that sort of gets done. I hope for them it’s actually a little more complex than that, a little more considered. But anything other than some sort of Anglo-Saxon terms for what you do to a woman as a man is viewed as somehow weird, or creepy, or it makes you a sensualist.

Do you think that stems from our cultural insistence that men not use “flowery” language? We tend to view men as just thinking with their dicks.

To some extent, we do. I would agree with the sentiment that men are sexually oriented. What I disagree with is that it only manifests itself in one way. Sexually, we are forced into a box and not allowed to express ourselves in many more ways than society allows.

Growing up, where did you learn about sex?

My friend showed me this hardcore French pornography. I was nine years old. I’d never seen anything like it before. I was shocked. [He] was just like, “Yeah, everyone does that. Your mom and dad did last night!” Later, a friend found an illegal porn dealer—[it was] like crack. We’d meet him in the parking lot of a Home Depot. I’d spend my allowance—or morally support my friend if he spent his allowance—buying porn.

That’s a common thread: learning about sex through porn and friends, rather than in any sort of formalized sex education.

In Sex Ed, we had a gym teacher putting rubbers on bananas and stretching out dental dams. I couldn’t keep a straight face. I was so excited, I got thrown out. I got a report card with an annotation I had to sign saying I was too immature to be in a Sex Ed class.

You’ve come a long way, from getting thrown out of Sex Ed to writing a book about your sex life.

I feel like in writing about sex, I got to become myself. I’m glad that I did all this stuff. My penis: bringing good to the world.

Known as “the man with a pussy,” Buck Angel has become a cultural icon. He’s a successful porn star—who’s addressed audiences at Yale University. Angel does the talk-show circuit, but when he took Howard Stern up on a dare to ride the Simian Sex Machine, the joke was squarely on Stern.

Angel is redefining gender and educating us all on the fluidity of sexuality and gender identity politics—and it’s not about what’s between your legs. Angel is 100 percent guy. He identifies as a man, and has thought long and hard about what that means. Everyone’s journey is unique, but his is more unique than most. Here are some excerpts from  The Man Project. What he’s learned about gender, and what that means for all of us, may surprise you.

RW: When I pitched this piece to you, I mentioned that the majority of sex writers seem to be women. Why is this?

BA:  I don’t think a lot of  men care. I don’t think exploring sexuality is an important issue for them. If you think about it the world has been dominated by men. It still is dominated by men. Men don’t have to prove anything, but women do.
Women have to say” look my sexuality is this.”

RW: There’s data that suggests trans people (female to male) report a different inner sexual experience after the transition; from a biological side they want to “top” more. The way they view sex has changed.

BA: I’m doing a feature film on that specific topic: transmen and their partners and how the hormones have affected their sexuality. I believe 100 percent that the hormones are that powerful. Every guy I’ve interviewed has had the same experiences. Sometimes their sexuality changed. Where before they were just into women, now they are into women and men. Or now they’re just into men and identify as gay. Their sexual drive has changed. Their turn-ons and turn-offs have changed. That’s just hormones in your body and how that can literally change the way your mind thinks about sex.

RW: How did you experience the transition?

BA:  I think and act, interact totally different from how I did when I was female and had little testosterone in my body. Even though I was a very masculine female. But  I was much more sensitive, I cried easier. I looked at things differently my sexuality. My sex drive was intense for a woman. But I would say it is much more intense for me now. And the way I view things sexually has changed

RW: How so?

BA: Little things turn me on. I notice myself looking at her tits through her shirt and getting totally turned on by that for no reason. That would have never happened to me before the hormones. Sometimes I just think, I don’t know dirty thoughts. I wonder how that woman’s underwear smells after she’s been on that bicycle seat for an hour. I would have never done that before and that’s from testosterone.

RW: So I know that before you transitioned, you considered yourself a dyke. Coming from that community, what do you think of genderqueer as an identity, which seems to see gender as something that floats on a spectrum.

BA: Yeah, that is out there.  The problem that I have is that I think a lot of people are changing for the wrong reason meaning female to male transsexuals. Feeling masculine doesn’t make you a man.

RW: I’ve often wondered if some aspects of the genderqueer politics (rejecting the notion of two genders) could be seen as disrespectful to transpeople.

BA: My gender was a life or death situation for me. The fact that people are molding or unmolding their gender so easily takes away from the fact that it is a life threatening situation for us. If I am fighting to get out of this body because I believe I’m male what does that mean? That means gender exists. At the same time, I tell people instead of looking at someone as a gender, look at them as a person. People are so obsessed with gender. And with sexuality: are you gay are you straight are you bi.  I think people are attracted to people.

RW: I am curious how you experienced your inherent maleness.

BA: I’m a man. I do believe that is inherent. Though you have certain aspects of yourself that are  more masculine or feminine. I believe that I’ve always had a more masculine part. And I was pushed back from exploring that. Very masculine women are not accepted in society. The dykes and the hard core ones get pushed the hardest. People don’t like to see very masculine women or they don’t want to see very feminine men.

RW: Part of what we’re skating around is that it’s hard to define. So many parts of us are fluid. We all have masculine parts, but then there’s the part that makes you “you.” And there’s biology there. There’s psychology there…

BA: When someone asks me the question what does it mean to be a man, it’s really difficult to answer.

RW: As a philosophical question, I can’t answer what it means to be a woman.

BA: It’s a very weird question because it means something different for everyone. For me, it means my physical body is now in tune to my inner being. Now I can look at myself in the mirror, now I can take my clothes off, now I can interact with people and feel like they’re looking at me. To me, that’s what it means to be a man—that my outer body resembles a genetic male body.

RW: What have you learned about masculinity, living as a woman?

BA: To be honest with you, the best thing to happen to me as a man was to live as a woman. I wouldn’t have said that before, but now I feel it was a blessing in disguise: to have experienced life from a woman’s eyes in society. Now I am a much more sensitive man. I’m not embarrassed to talk about things that turn me on or that might be a little weird. I don’t think a lot of straight men feel comfortable talking about their sexuality—not so much their sexuality, but what turns them on and how they feel. I think there is a misconception of men. They are more emotional than society lets them be.

Why do you think transsexual male-to-female porn is the number two in the industry? Number one is gay. Who is the consumer of transsexual women’s porn? Straight men. It’s a way for them to suck cock or get fucked. They don’t have the tools or the freedom socially to say, “Hey, I’d like to suck a cock a little once in a while, and that’s okay.”

The second installment of my project, The Man Series went live on Sexis today. This time I am talking to prolific writer, photographer and sexual activist David Steinberg who was recently named Erotic Photographer of the Year.

Being one of the visible and outspoken guys working in the realm of feminism and sex, he’s got a lot to say on the topics of masculinity and sexuality. Here are some unpublished excerpts about men and feminism, peppered with some of his (NSFW) photography.

RW: So why does it seem the majority of sex writers are women?

DS:  I think the critique and developing analysis of women’s sexuality came out of the feminist movement to a large extent. So, that would explain the critique of traditional thinking about women’s sexuality in general– who women are, what women’s gender roles are related to sexuality. I was very much involved in the what we called “men’s pro-feminist movement”, a movement of men examining traditional gender roles. This goes back 25 years.

RW: Did the male feminism groups explore male sexuality?

DS: There was some discussion on sexuality…though not the major focus. That movement being much much smaller than the feminist movement among women, it really did not generate the same kind of analytical thinking about male sexuality. Absent the women’s movement there might be a whole less writing about women’s sexuality too. It’s too bad because I think traditional gender roles in sexuality are just as limiting as damaging for men.

RW: What was the focus in the dialogue about men and feminism?

DS: What we felt we had to offer men was better relationships with their partners and particularly with their children. And the other thing we felt we had to offer was a much richer sexuality. If you are working a high stress 60 hour a week job that takes you out of town and puts family behind, having a meaningful sex life is not in your interest. That meant getting men to look at  sex differently than what the mainstream culture teaches them to do. If you re-organize what it means to be a man, a proper man, around your values, then your emotional, family and sex life all improve. There is so much that men deny themselves. If achieving the goals you’ve set for yourself aren’t making you happy then you’ve got to ask yourself if you have set the wrong goals.

RW: Do you think there are more men questioning their gender roles?

DS: There is a significant number of men, even if it’s not most, that are aware of and working on these issues. They are shifting  how they see themselves as men and what masculinity means to them. I certainly feel that my own life has been enlarged and made  happier when I learned I could make conscious choices about what aspects of socially defined masculinity I wanted to hold onto and what I wanted to move away from.

RW: How does this effect sex?

DS: My guess would be that men who make a point of focusing on being more aware and expressive of a full range of emotions will be able to move into sex in a deeper way. I think it happens in that direction more often then discovering themselves in sex and  spreading to the rest of their emotional life. My sense is that men who have rejected traditional roles are the guys that get to experience sex in a more intimate and satisfying way. Women often think all guys wanna do is get off,  but often that is not the case.

RW: What else have you found that women assume about men’s sexuality?

DS: I used to run a workshop on male sexuality for women. One of the most common things that women would ask is, “So I’m with this guy, we have amazing sex and then in the morning, he is like gone.”

I think guys think they are just gonna have a fun time.  Because sex is as powerful as it is, sometimes a big door opens up inside you. Suddenly, your emotional guts are all over the table. I think sex, touch, it is powerful in that way. Suddenly, you are dealing with the fact that you never got touched as a child, suddenly you are dealing with the time something happened and you were embarrassed. Suddenly, all sorts of larger issues, even existential ones leap up, and there you are in the middle of them.

I think women are more prepared for this, less frightened. For some guys in this deeply intimate, exposed place with a person they hardly know, they wake up in the morning and just start putting a wall up, really fast.

RW: It’s interesting because we kind of ignore that this goes on, with one night stands.

DS: I am an advocate of people being free and sexual but one of the things that can happen in jumping into sex without knowing each other is that you end up in a situation where you are exposed, kind of prematurely, to somebody that you are really not prepared to allow into  your soul. And oops you just did. Sex is a tricky business.

RW: I love this observation about sex.

One of the wonders of sex and one of the things that interests me so much is that it’s this part of life that opens so many doors and can give you an opportunity to look at childhood joys and traumas. One of the sad things about sex, particularly for men, is that the culture shoves a version of sex down your throat that is just poor, pale version of what is really possible.

A woman gives birth to a baby and afterward, the doctor comes into the room and says in a formal tone, “I have something to tell you, Mrs. Smith.”

Instantly, the new mother knows that something is amiss. “What’s the matter, Doctor?” she asks worriedly. “Is my baby all right?”

The doctor replies, “There’s nothing really wrong, but your baby intersexed.”

“Intersexed?” Mrs. Smith asks. “What’s that?”

“Your baby has features of both a male and a female,” the doctor explains.

Relieved, Mrs. Smith says, “What? You mean it has a penis and a brain?”

In mainstream society, male sexuality is often dismissed as the punch line to a bad joke. The media’s continuing portrayal of the average guy as a beer-swilling one-dimensional horndog certainly doesn’t promote enlightenment, and as the majority of sex writers are female, the issues relating to the XY-chromosome’d portion of the population get short shrift.

So, just what the hell does it mean to be a man, anyway? And what do the guys who are out there teaching, talking and writing about sex think about it?

This is what I will be tackling in my new series for Sexis, The Man Project. I’ll talk with premier male sex writers, educators, artists and activists to get their take. The first installment went live yesterday, a conversation with writer & host of HBO’s sex inspectors, Michael Alvear. Check out Sexis for the article and here is a supplementary, previously unreleased bit about men and their emotions and how sex is different for men and women.

RW: So what about the stereotype of guys being less in touch with their emotions?

MA: I think it is true. It’s sometimes like, men don’t know where their emotions are and women are fondling them. Here you fall into a trap of saying all men are cavemen, I think it would be more honest to say that men don’t express emotions the way women do and we are not as comfortable talking. That doesn’t mean that our interior life is barren. The inability to express your feelings does not mean you don’t have feelings.

RW: Do you think it nature or nurture?

MA: I think like anything else it is a little bit of both. There is a great need to shut off your emotions, say if you are a caveman and there is a bear. The nurture part is boys don’t cry and girls are expected to. If you think about it, boys are trained not to express their emotions or express them in certain ways, like sports. It’s “you are angry, now get out there and block or kick or hit.”  The expression of our feelings and emotions is channeled into doing something.

RW: What about the internal experiences? The emotional, psychological stuff how is that different?

ML: Women are more complicated.

RW: From what I’ve read, if you look at biology our sexual responses we aren’t that different though.

ML: I think that its true to say that physiologically an erection is as complicated. But I think women’s sexual attraction switches are involved with non sexual characteristics– far more than men. Emotion, attachment, self esteem, self perception, body perception. Those things have a huge impact on their sexual response. That is not to say that men don’t have those things. It’s just that it is much more consequential for women and therefore more complicated.

RW: What this also reminds me of are the statistics about how boys masturbate much earlier than girls. And I think in part that is because  it is actually more simple for boys.

ML: Boys are Macs, girls are PC’s. Right, if you cant figure stuff out on a Mac, you just kinda figure out where to go. With women its like, well, you’ve got so many options!

RW: What is missing in the discussion of male sexuality?

ML: I think that men are far more multi-dimensional than women give them credit.  Even in the bad decisions we make there is an idea that we are black and white. Take Tiger Woods. There is always a sense with males that you are either good or bad. And truthfully it’s the same with women. But for men, it’s the struggle to attain security through marriage, relationships, kids and then excitement, particularly sexual excitement. We think men have to be one or the other when in fact we are both. There is an inner conflict brewing in almost every man about how to do that.

RW: Oh, I am so into this, like a male madonna/whore complex.

ML: With that it’s either you are chaste or you’re just a whore who never met a sausage you didn’t wanna sit on. With men it is more like you are robot, you just want a hole to fuck and if you do that you cant possibly love or experience true intimacy. And it is just not true. Its unfair to both men and women.

Naked Jen’s nickname is straight-forward. Naked Jen gets naked everywhere: on the street, while walking her dogs, touring on vacation, on the steps of the capitol building and most recently at Chicago’s Navy Pier at it’s most crowded — just after the fireworks grand finale. She records this public nudity on her blog, NakedJen.com

It was at an after party for the annual Blogher conference that I met Naked Jen. As I walked nervously through the party, clutching my $9 vodka and cranberry, a tiny woman with pixie blonde hair made a bee-line toward me. “I love your dress, I have to know who you are” she said.

Later,  Jen disapeared then arrived back at the party, nude coming down the escalator. She did a round about totally naked, then took a different escalator back up.

The idea for her blog came after a stint working the back-end of the Internet porn industry.

“After I left that job, I was kind of disenchanted. I knew we were selling a fantasy but the women the men were paying to see were not real; they didn’t have real bodies.”

This attitude and her casual, non-sexual nudity makes NakedJen a sort of counter-porn site. At it’s core, the site is about body issues, body acceptance and learning to love yourself, a backlash to distorted body perceptions fueled by the media.

Summing this up, Jen says, “Just think how many times a day any person says I hate ______ about myself, I say we try to not do that. My biggest message is ‘love yourself and love the body you have’. I think the more we love ourselves, the more we can love other people.”

Viewing Jen’s rather anti-sexualized naked photos was at once exhilarating and terrifying. Seeing someone put themselves out there in such a vulnerable way caused me a -fit of anxiety, about imagining doing it myself. But weeing Jen’s smiling face atop her nude natural woman’s body — wobbly bits and all — seemed so genuine. It had me wondering if Jen was really onto something.

Jen also admits she has not always been so comfortable in her skin. As a survivor of sexual abuse, getting naked was part of Jen’s healing process. The non-sexual aspect of her nudity then makes sense: getting naked is about reclaiming her body, truly inhabiting it and reclaiming her innocence. “There are a lot of people who have been sexually abused, and I worry that for some women seeing me naked might trigger them, but I do this to empower myself and to empower everyone” Jen says.

Each week Jen features “Naked Fridays” on her blog, with a nude photo of herself and a call for readers to spend time appreciating their naked bodies and loving themselves just as they are. With this segment she hopes to begin to change our perception of beauty, one body at a time.

So why is getting naked a positive thing? “Being naked is awesome because it allows you to live your truth, you can’t hide behind a mask. When you are naked and not hiding the bulges and flaws,  you eventually no longer even notice them” Jen says.

She also points out that just the act of wearing something like Spanx or Yummie Tummie is a constant reminder than you are trying to hide something. Jen is also an advocate of more social nudity in general, something that has never caught on in puritan rooted America but is more acceptable in European counties. “In Europe I am very popular,  they are just excited to have someone that is just so naked! There, people just see a body, they don’t get all like ‘Woooo she is showing her boobs!’” she says.

I decided to take Jen’s advice and celebrate my own nakedness. I’m not a total prude to nudity, I often find myself mindlessly naked at home as I go about tasks. Yet when it comes to focusing on my naked body and it’s appearance, I go into self-attack mode. However, I felt hopeful after having talked with Jen about using naked time to focus on body positivity.

The day after my interview with Jen I woke up early with the intention of spending some quality naked-time with myself. I walked around the house naked and tried to feel really in my skin. As I noticed the areas I would normally criticize or try to suck in and hide, I worked on accepting them, accepting and loving my naked self as I was.

I then ventured outside to my apartment building’s shared back porch. For whatever reason being outside puffed me with a feeling of confidence. I stood taller and felt blissful, focusing on loving myself and staying in the moment — the morning’s gentle breeze didn’t feel bad either.

It was an amazing start to my day, I think some nude porch sitting could be a positive indulgence every now and then, Chicago weather permitting. So now, my Naked Friday call: Try not criticizing your body all day, try to never say “I hate ________”, set aside some time to appreciate your body today as it is, go forth and get naked!

]]> http://rachelrabbitwhite.com/how-naked-jen-got-me-naked-an-interview-with-a-guerilla-nudist/feed/ 0 http://rachelrabbitwhite.com/hearts-revolution/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=hearts-revolution http://rachelrabbitwhite.com/hearts-revolution/#comments Wed, 29 Apr 2009 16:25:18 +0000 Rachel R. White http://rabbitwrite.com/?p=1089 The giddy sound of Hearts Revolution is infectious and haunting — sugar coated but piercing. Sweethearts and band-mates, Lo and Ben are two pieces of the BFF necklace that make up this riot grrrl spirited electro-thrash band.

Hearts Revolution first got media attention not solely for their music but also for their bubble-gum colored ice cream trucks. The band drove the truck to shows in Los Angeles selling candy, imported ice creams, toys and band merchandise. It was an idea lead singer Lo dreamed up at age 14 while laying on a rock at a rave in the desert. Now the band has a signature fleet of the pink ice cream trucks in LA, New York and Miami.

Aesthetically, the Hearts Revolution-Hearts Challenger brand is like the real life embodiment of candy-flipping: glow-in-the-dark vinyl records, selling hot pink toy guns online. The band’s mantra is Choose Your Own Adventure, a lifestyle philosophy which is about breaking the cycle of conformity and living a life that moves you to do, “whatever the fuck you want to do.”

In this interview the band talks about their story of breaking from that cycle, becoming feminist darlings, and growing together as musicians.

RW: What does the pink mask do?

Lo: The eyes are a window for the soul and the pink mask is kind of like protection for your eyes. Half of my family is from the middle  east where they cover their entire bodies except their eyes and I kinda think it’s like a reverse. What’s so special about my ankles?! I wanna protect my eyes. People get so set off by the mask that you would think it would draw more attention, but people just stay away. It works to my advantage because I don’t have to engage; it’s a boundary. For the first  couple shows I didn’t have it on, and I was so scared, but then with it on I felt like no one could really see me. But I love that it’s taken on its own thing: we sell the make up online and kids send in photos of them wearing it, kids come to shows wearing the mask. It’s kind of the embodiment of being your own superhero. It’s like it doesn’t matter what color it is or how you wear it; it doesn’t matter who’s behind it; it’s about a movement and a feeling.

RW: I think Hearts Revolution on some level  is about engaging people’s inner child,. Where does that come from?

Ben: Personally, I think we as a band are all very childlike. So I think some of that comes through.

Lo:  I, personally, did not have a childhood. When I was younger I was trying to be my mother’s husband and dealing with finances and why we didn’t have enough money. The older you get the further you get away from those instinctive childhood dreams of “I wanna be this” and “I can be this and do anything because I want it.” You really get that beaten out of you.

RW: What adventure have you chosen for your life?

Lo: I think the embodiment of the spirit of Hearts Revolution is the Choose Your Own Adventure Model, and I think in this world people love to tell you what is possible and what is not, and you can become a victim of circumstance to your background, your education, your family but we do whatever the fuck we wanna do.

RW: So many people don’t go after their dreams. Why do you think this is?

Lo: We are instilled with fear from the moment we are born, then you become a victim of circumstance. I personally came from the wrong fucking background and had a lot of problems with drugs and bad lifestyle choices. I had a baby when I was a teenager and certain things just are not possible for teenage mothers. You have to break that cycle, the first time is the hardest one but once you do it it’s like a fucking  roller coaster. Who wants to go to a job they hate everyday for $10 an hour?  But they keep you afraid and in that cycle. You have to create your own infrastructure.

RW: You’ve said before in interviews that Hearts Revolution and Hearts Challenger is a lifestyle brand. What does that mean for you?

Lo: We said that as kind of a joke.  But it is a self contained unit,: we are creating projects, experiences, songs and videos in accordance to the same visual aesthetic. The Choose Your Own Adventure Model became our brand. It encompasses all of the projects that we do and in a way that there is integrity behind everything, it’s not a marketing ploy. We want to make stuff that is beautiful, like in 20 years you have a white heart shaped record…that’s something that is beautiful.

RW: I see hearts revolution as this bubble, the aesthetic spanning everything, almost protecting it. But at the same time you are constantly giving away a piece of that bubble whether it is through a heart shaped record or some ice cream.
Lo: Hearts Revolution is such an insane dichotomy. Half of it is like a child wanting to share and the other half  is like anger and wanting to cry and fight. Even the symbol is so guarded: the heart is the symbol of love and then you  have the two unicorns protecting it.

RW:  What are you guys listening to these days?
Lo: Motown, we almost always have Motown on. I have this obsession where I listen to one song over and over. I can listen to a smiths song 5,000 times in a weekend, it’s like why anyone listens to anything that’s out today I have no idea.

RW: So I am really into the pink aesthetic, I think it totally works.

Lo: I fucking hated pink my entire life then all of the sudden I hit 25 and I was like I want the faintest shade of pink, not Barbie pink. If you look at what I wear it’s almost beige. I wanted a whisper of neon and some holograph stickers– this was before nu rave and dance music really happened. I think that we’ve done a really good job of creating something that’s us. When the Ed Banger thing happened the whole world paired up like fucking Noah’s ark with two boy DJs everywhere. So-Me’s graphics were everywhere. People  don’t wanna stand on their own two feet and do their own shit. And so navigating through the past two years of that you know when something has staying power and when it is different.

RW: From  a guys point of view why is Hearts Revolution awesome?

Ben: Aesthetically there is such a strong identity with it, also I like try to make a balance in everything we do. When everything is pink it makes more leeway for something ugly or dark sounding.

Lo: I am so angry. We don’t have freedom of speech we just have freedom to say what they want us to say and how they want us to say it. You cant say fuck in public but you can say rape.

RW: So what issues get you fired up?

Lo: Oh, don’t get started with this bitch. I think the world is full of cruel inner circles where it’s a who’s who game of hipster fucking bullshit. We are not concerned with making music for the 200 hipsters in all of the major cities. Also the fact that there is this crazy celebrity obsession with these poor girls like Lindsay Lohan and Britney Spears. They build up these pop stars to unrealistic standards and then they love to rip them apart. All the while there are little girls and boys getting raped and killed all around the world, starving and getting AIDS… and we are worried about Jennifer Aniston? If this continues we are going to be in a very bad place. You know when this Travis/AM thing  happened? I saw the whole internet community rally. I would never wish that on anyone but if we would collectively take all of this energy and focus it on something that really fucking  matters then anything would be possible!

RW: I know you’ve said you grew up listening to riot grrrl, where is riot grrrl’s influence in Hearts Revolution?

Lo: I have been a riot grrrl since I was 13 years old. I will be a riot grrrl ’till I die. I grew up in the crux of that. When I was really young I worked at this all ages club in LA and I got to see all of those bands: Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, Heavens to Betsy, I put on Sleater Kinneys first show!  The whole thing was so magical. I dropped out of school in 9th grade because the kids were so horrible. So riot grrrl was like my family but then it became a thing where it was just as bad as the kids at school because it was like “you can’t be  into anything else this is your thing. ” For me, and Hearts Revolution is riot grrrl lyrically and content wise. I want to be able to give riot grrl a new face and take over where Kathleen Hanna and even Kim Gordon fizzled out. We need that more so than ever in fucking history with this ridiculous Disney machine that keeps cranking out assholes. We need to have something to counter balance for the kids. I wanna make music that Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore will like have Coco listening to. She’s thirteen/fourteen years old now, who the fuck is she going to listen to?

RW: Also especially with electro because it is such a boys club

Lo: It IS such a boys club! I hate it.  I  like to think that we are like the future:  Hearts Revolution are a fusion of hip hop and what’s going on in the streets with amazing electronic music and a riot grrrl spirit. Without it being written off as “whiny girl music”. People get all hung up on , “Oh she’s screaming.” Who wants to hear another woman with a guitar singing folk music? I don’t! I have something to say.

More Hearts Revolution:

Hearts Revolution on Myspace

Hearts Challenger

Hearts Revolution- CYOA

Hearts Revolution- Switchblade