Link Roundup, August 2018

 Link Digests  No Responses »
Aug 192018
 
  • Divine Deviance is a forthcoming documentary film series about the kink culture. I will be participating in a panel discussion affiliated with it, alongside Race Bannon and Gayle Rubin, on September 28th in San Francisco, a couple of days before the Folsom Street Fair.
  • Culture.pl has a profile of pre-WWII Polish writer and artist Bruno Schulz who did a lot of female-dominant, male-submissive images. Interesting to consider if there are links between Schulz and Sacher-Masoch.
  • Femdom-Resource considers the etymology of the word “dominatrix”. It goes back to the 16th century, but apparently the word used to refer to a sexually dominant woman only goes back to 1967.
  • Fakir Musafar, a major pioneer in the BDSM and modern primitive cultures, has passed on. RIP.
  • The Porno Cultures podcast has an interview with Lynn Comella, author of Vibrator Nation, about how feminist adult stores grew and changed in the USA. This indirectly ties to another angle of BDSM history I haven’t explored yet, the growth of kink business and their products, and their acceptability in middle-class contexts.
  • Buzzfeed has an interested feature on Orthodox Jews in kink.
  • Dangerous Minds profiles Michael’s Thing, a post-Stonewall, pre-Internet print guide to NYC’s queer life, often with leatherman imagery on the cover.

Link roundup, July 2018

 Link Digests  No Responses »
Jul 152018
 
  • The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual rules the mental health landscape in the USA, but in the rest of the world, the keystone reference is the ICD, administered by the World Health Organization. The WHO recently took consensual sexual minorities out of the ICD-11 revision, following the work of many Nordic countries.
  • The Japanese culture/tradition of BDSM is a separate thing from the European/American tradition that I haven’t delved into as much as I’d like. (Hopefully to be covered in future works.) I don’t understand any language other than English, which forces me to rely on secondary sources. Most of them are shallow or suspect. However, the Tokyo Bound blog has a couple of translated interviews with bondage grandmaster Akechi Denki, one from 1997 and another from circa 1976. They give an interesting glimpse of Akechi’s life in post-war Japan, his many brushes with death, and his involvement in the underground of SM performances and magazines.
  • Speaking of shibari, is it cultural appropriation?
  • Notches has an essay on the peculiar relationship between the early fascist movement in Germany and the nascent homosexuality movement of the same time. Ernst Röhm, the head of the SA stormtroopers, saw homosexuality, or a particular definition of it, as fully compatible with German fascism, and distinguished from the perceived effeminacy and decadence of other forms of homosexuality. “Röhm’s queer fascism was identical to the Nazi Party’s ideology in almost all respects, save on questions of male-male eroticism.” An anonymous stormtrooper wrote, “the hand of a Nazi militia man ‘can strike a blow but also caress.’ The blows being struck by those hands were against Jews, Social Democrats, Communists, and homosexuals.” I should emphasize that we should not fall into the “Nazis were gay” trope; Röhm was eliminated during the “night of the long knives” when Hitler decided he was no longer an asset.
  • Another review of Katharine Gates’ Deviant Desires.
  • An essay on the fetish classic Satan in High Heels (1962).
  • An essay on the original Hellraiser (1987) film, strongly influenced by the gay SM subculture and the industrial music subculture of the early 1980s.

The Woman in Black: in search of the proto-dominatrix

 Uncategorized  No Responses »
Jun 182018
 

What are the sartorial origins of the black-clad dominatrix? I will skip the more familiar examples from recent years and try to find the earlier examples.

Certainly everyone will remember Diana Rigg as Mrs. Emma Peel (“Miss SM Appeal”) in the UK spy TV series The Avengers. Her most overtly kinky costumes were features in the episodes “A Touch of Brimstone” and “Death at Bargain Prices.”

Woman in black leather suit with zippers

Diana Rigg as Emma Peel in The Avengers, wearing the leather jumpsuit costume from “Death at Bargain Prices”

Continue reading »

A Lover’s Pinch promotional events in August 2018

 A Lover's Pinch  No Responses »
Jun 172018
 

A Lover’s Pinch launches in late July, but I’ll really get into promoting in August. So far, I’ve booked four events.

Sneak preview launch: August 4, 2018

You can get an early signed copy in the lobby at the Maritime Labour Centre at 1880 Triumph St, Vancouver, BC V5L 1K3, from 8PM to 10PM, during the monthly Vancouver Dungeon play party, presented by Metro Vancouver Kink.

Official launch party: August 8, 2018

This will be at The Art of Loving at 369 W Broadway, Vancouver, BC V5Y 1P8, at 7:30 PM, August 8, 2018. This will feature a reading, books for sale, author Q&A and a prize draw, held at Vancouver’s premier adult store.

Book reading and signing: August 16, 2018

I’ll be holding a reading and signing at Little Sister’s LGBT bookstore (1238 Davie St, Vancouver, BC V6E 1N3) at 7PM on August 16, 2018. Little Sister’s is a Vancouver institution with a long history.

Book Signing: August 18, 2018

I’ll be signing books at Indigo Spirit at 810 Granville & Robson, downtown Vancouver, BC, 12 noon – 2pm.

 Older Entries  Newer Entries