Seattle Erotic Art Festival

One of the writers I've reviewed in the past, Gene Clements, wrote to let me know that he will be reading a couple of his stories at the Seattle Erotic Art Festival (April 22nd-24th). The festival sounds like it's going to be fab from start to finish, and if you're short of cash but still want to go - fear not, you can be a volunteer. 

Festivals of this kind, and burlesque shows, are a good sign that sex and erotica are becoming increasingly accepted in society. A healthy mind in a healthy body - brooding over one of our most natural and pleasurable impulses just can't be good for you. (Gene's books are a delightful reminder that sex is for everyone, as his hero and heroine are an older couple who still enjoy their rumpy-pumpy.)

BTW, in the tradition of those adult doodling/colouring books which are designed to lower your stress levels, Gene has recently produced Tilly and Elmer - The Sexy Citizens of South Branch Coloring Book. (The cover looks deliciously like a soft focus Lichtenstein.) That should get us all mellow and in the mood! 

None of the Above

A review by stickygirl

None of the Above, by IW Gregorio: Kristin has a secret, but one that Nature has hidden from her. It is only when, as Homecoming Queen, her attention turns more seriously to her boyfriend, that the truth reveals itself.

Pucker Up and Vote!

The Literotica Valentine's Day competition is here - a list stuffed full of top class stories for you to peruse and purse your lips over. Remember - Literotica writers publish our work for free. All we ask is that you give an honest vote, and if you have time - leave a comment. We really appreciate feedback that helps us with our writing, either by pointing to what we did that you like or by suggesting areas we may need to improve. 

The Danish Girl

(In this guest post, Literotica author stickygirl gives us her thoughts on the recently released film: The Danish Girl.) 

From the perspective of a transgender woman as well a cinema-goer, I was impatient, if apprehensive, to see this film. It seems to have had such a long run of reviews these past months before its official release in the UK on 1^st January.

The Truth about Hymens and Sex

Thank you to Foo Foo Labelle for drawing my attention to this video. As a long-standing campaigner against the way 'virginity' is touted as if it were the ultimate bridal accessory, I thought I understood the hymen pretty well. Well, now that I've seen this video I do. There's a lot I didn't understand about the hymen which is explained very well and very funnily here by Adam Ruins Everything.

Selection Box - a Burlesque Christmas Party

Come on now, Christmas just isn't Christmas without those selection boxes of chocolates and biscuits. So of course the burlesque presented a delicious selection box of acts for us to party to in the runup to Christmas Day.

I always love taking along a friend who hasn't been to burlesque before. The 'O' of their mouth as they realise how much fun it is. The shaking with laughter, the gasping with amazement, the sparkle of sexiness. Even though they know, because I told them, they always comment on how seeing women of all different shapes and sizes makes us feel good about ourselves.

Burlesque is about watching performers who are freely being themselves, and that makes you feel free to enjoy being yourself. Frankly, it is just a sign of how sexist and sick our society is, that there isn't a burlesque show being put on in a top venue every weekend for women (and men) to go to and enjoy seeing how sexy and smart and super every woman is. (Yes, you too. If you don't believe me, go to a burlesque show and find out.)

Mobile Home for the Holidays

I mentioned in my review of the winner from Literotica's 2015 Winter Holiday competition that I know what it is to be homeless. The story I review here takes place against a background of a less well understood homelessness, more likely to be experienced by women. Homelessness doesn't always mean having to sleep rough. Many homeless have a job, but the high price of housing and lack of suitable rented accomodation forces them to sleep on friends' floors or try to find other ways to stay safe - and clean. 

An Angel's Wish

Angel Waiting, 
by Todd Krasovetz

That this hard-hitting non-erotic story could win Literotica's Winter Holiday competition is testament to the quality of readers of Literotica stories. This is the antithesis of what you would expect a story on an erotica site to be: a mix of romance and tough realism which squeezes the heart and could make even a hardened critic cry. (I said could. It's just some dust in my eye *sniffle*.) 

Both this and a story I plan to review for tomorrow as a runup to Christmas, have a background theme of homelessness. At this time of year, many of us are 'driving home for Christmas'. I have personally been homeless on more than one occasion. I know that people who are 'homeless' are often not people you would expect to have trouble getting housed. This month, as I gratefully plan for a merry Christmas with my young daughter and our cats in a safe warm happy home, I am donating to a local homeless charity. I hope the small donation helps someone be warm and safe even if only for a couple of days. 

Serena Williams

Serena Williams in Vogue.

Serena Williams in 
the Pirelli calendar.

In the comments on my blogpost on calendars, someone said they think Serena Williams has 'too many overtly masculine features'. This has been a common comment on her muscular physique and was one of the reasons Annie Liebowitz asked her to pose for this year's Pirelli Calendar, which looks to question the very kind of photos of women for which Pirelli used to be famous. 

curl4ever is a keen admirer of muscular women (see my review of his writing), and he wrote these thoughts about that comment.

Her Secret Confessions Parts 1 and 2

Kawasaki Ninja featured 
on CrotchRocket.com.

Here we have two hot little quickies, the first of which features a hot red motorbike, a hot man and a young woman who is a little shy about admitting how much she is into the hotness of hot things. The second gives us more action from the hot hot pair.

The anxieties of the central character are well portrayed in these purportedly biographical pieces. As young women, we are heavily schooled into concern about our sexuality. On the one hand, we are given the impression that the world is full of naughty men waiting to pounce on us out of the undergrowth and slaver all over us. Plus, we are made to feel it's of the foremost importance to be closer to 'virgin' on the social spectrum than 'whore'; I mean actually more important than scoring a Nobel Prize with our school science project.

The predicament of a young woman who feels turned on by a hot man is a well drawn backdrop in these stories.

Calendar Girls ... and Boys

This is actually quite a rare Pirelli calendar pic (it's by Helmut Newton) - as it features a tyre. As a rule, the famous classic girl-y calendars showed beautiful women in pictures that had absolutely nothing to do with cars. 

Well, as Christmas approaches and you are desperate to get something for Auntie Rhoda, you may be turning to the calendar shops for an inoffensive gift. Cats? Landscape photos? Cartoons of cats? Landscape shots with cats in them? 

Probably not a nude girl-y calendar, although the old-fashioned staple of every garage has undergone something of a revolution. 

Summertime Sex Ed

This isn't going to be a lecture from me about how poor sex education is in schools. It's a review of a story that has a sex education session the likes of which I'm sure we all wished we had had. 

FAWC6

OK, I am going to break my rule now! (I know, exciting, isn't it! I occasionally do break the rules; after all, it's not as bad as breaking a finger nail.) Although there are likely to be some stories here which are not 'safe sex', I am going to publish the link to the full list of Friendly Anonymous Writing Challenge stories, so you can access what is bound to be a cohort of extremely strong stories. Some of the best writers have always participated in the FAWCs, and this will be a particularly memorable list as we are taking part to commemorate our friend slyc_willie, who set up the FAWCs.

NB I haven't been able to assign a rating to these stories as I haven't read them yet myself. Past competition entries have gone right across the range from 0 to XXX. Check them out, vote and see if you can guess who wrote which one. (I provide the full list of participating authors at the end of my blogpost.)

My Night with an Internet Stranger

This story is well written in a feisty way, and probably is true - as it claims to be. I like it for being a good How To about casual sex. Plus there is plenty of sex described in luscious detail.

Exploring the Ring of Kerry

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

1st International Welsh Cabaret Festival

Beautiful hats and fascinators
by Looby Creations

BIG thumbs up to the Sherman theatre for staging such a key event in a central venue. 

People worry that burlesque is just an excuse for sleazy strip-tease. In fact it is a witty caricature, simultaneously sending up our fears about sex and celebrating real women's bodies and our sexuality. With its gender bending politics and intellectual rather than physical strip-tease, cabaret and burlesque is an ideal filler for a theatre like the Sherman to put in between earnest new plays and the kids' Christmas shows, providing something that's adult and emotionally mature. 

Burlesque is the mirror opposite of strip-tease. In strip-tease, women are the objects of Desire; in burlesque we are the subjects of our own desire to enjoy showing our bodies and our selves. The 1st International Welsh Cabaret Festival showcased this particularly well with the inclusion of several male acts - who were not stripping for women in a reverse strip-tease. They were often engaging with more feminine sides of themselves, e.g. through balletic movements - again providing a subjective celebratory vision of feminine sides to identity. 

Burlesque is a liberatory subversive artform, of the kind the critic Bakhtin called carnivalesque. 

OK, enough of that, now for what I thought of the actual festival:

Consent

This post isn't exactly a review, rather it's to circulate a cool comic strip about 'consent'. The comic is aimed at guys, it explains that a woman's body is her own, and men have zero rights in it. It's helpful for women too. 

I run this blog partly to provide some fun that encourages safe sex, and shows young lads that it's possible to get a lot more in life if you ask for it politely than if you rudely try to blag women into giving you pictures of their boobs for your phone. (See my review of Peter Morgan's work.) I also run it to encourage young women to have confidence. If we as women confidently say No more often, men may realise that No does mean No and f*ck off when we don't want them bothering us. Yes, men must do more to respect women's consensual rights. As women we can take courage and be more assertive. 

From Everyday Feminism: link to rest of comic below.

Beat-Off Buddies

"Fishnet Stockings" polish 
as reviewed on HerCampus.

One of the things I like about this story by Carnevil9, is how it immediately leaps into the sex. We are straight in the action, then there is an asterism (new word I learnt this week! meaning row of asterisks) and then we get good back story.

An Anal Fantasy for You

It's not hard to guess what Rimminglover is into, LOL. 

In this tender appeal, he spells out his passion for arse. If you were wondering how to go about anal sex, here is a poetic way to find out. Rimminglover writes about what he would like to do to his lover and lingers in detail on how he would go about fingering and fucking her.

Mouse's Maiden Voyage

Craig Revel Horwood - notorious for
harsh one-liner critique

In this blogpost, curl4ever and I are going to collaborate on tearing apart ... reviewing (wink) a story by Gorza. In his innocence, curl wrote: I'm very happy to contribute to Naoko's blog again.  In order to make it happen, she offered to "collaborate" which I take to mean that I get to write the easy parts and she gets to write the rest. - curl.

Darcy Bussell - brilliant insights
delivered with kindness.

Actually what "collaborate" means is that we are going to be like the judges on the British Strictly Come Dancing show: Darcy Bussell and Craig Revel Horwood. Craig is the one whom the audience start booing as soon as he opens his mouth. Darcy picks up the pieces of the weeping dancers and makes them feel better after Craig has shot them down with a bullet point list of all their faults. curl, naturally, is going to be Darcy while I will play the part of the Bitch of Strictness <snerk>.

curl: I am very excited to introduce you to an exceptional new author on Literotica, Gorza.  I've loved both of his first two stories. Today I want to direct you to Mouse's Maiden Voyage.

Naoko: Yes, yes darling, but his footwork, and that habit of dropping the shoulders. You must keep the topline ... oh sorry, wrong script.