Out Now: Deranged

Please allow me to introduce my newest release. My poem, "Lead," appears in Deranged, a new collection from Picaroon Press, edited by Kate Garrett and Rachel Nix.

"Lead" is a poem about the disorientation I experienced the first time I stepped outside the bounds of a heteronormative relationship. It wasn't until then that I'd realized there was a whole code of behavior I'd internalized. When I dated a woman for the first time, I felt the absence of that code constantly. I felt like we were inventing everything anew, and that was both thrilling and disconcerting.

I'm really excited to read the other poems in the book!

Here's the general description:

Deranged was originally a response to the claim by one critic that women writers calling out sexism were ‘deranged poetesses’. It grew into something much more than that.

These are poems about rule-breaking, gender nonconformity, and women in the arts by Roxanna Bennett, Sarah Pritchard, Orooj-e-Zafar, Catherine Ayres, Angela Readman, QWD, Rebecca Audra Smith, Abigail Carl-Klassen, Jane Burn, Laurie Kolp, Susan Yount, Lizzie Holden, Annabeth Leong, Amy Kinsman, Justin C. Burkart, J.P. Grimm, Courtney LeBlanc, Mary Meriam, Anna Percy, Finola Scott, Angela Readman, Gail DiMaggio, Misti Rainwater-Lites, Sez Thomasin, Betty Stanton, Rishika Aggarwal, Catherine Edmunds, Claire T. Feild, Janet Philo, Christine Rhein, Noel Sloboda, Carol Eades, Sade Andria Zabala, Robert Beveridge, Rona Fitzgerald, Rebecca Gethin, Claire Booker, Carole Bromley, Sumayyah Malik, and Joanne Key.

For now, the book is only available through Lulu, but it will propagate to Amazon soon. If you'd like to check its current status, its main page is here.

My Trouble With Mantis in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2

I saw Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 a couple weeks ago, and since then I've been rolling stuff over in my mind about the Mantis character. My reaction during the movie was discomfort—I felt I was watching a portrayal that played to certain racial stereotypes. As often happens, though, I hesitated and questioned myself a lot, worrying I was being "oversensitive" or reading something into her that wasn't there.

The feeling persisted, though. I thought other people might write about this for me, but I haven't seen a lot along those lines, so I'm going to write about what stood out for me.

To properly discuss this, I'm going to use spoilers whenever necessary, and generally I'm going to talk like you've seen the movie. Be warned.

Here are the ways I felt weird about this character:

1) She "helps Ego sleep."

Let's talk about Ego. If you think about what he does, he is literally an exploitative sex tourist (he travels to one planet after another impregnating people). I can't tell you how many of those types I've met in real life who are obsessed with/fetishize the idea of obtaining (possession word used intentionally to describe this mindset) an Asian wife or mistress, usually because he thinks this woman would be some combination of submissive and exotic.

When I saw Mantis with him, I immediately read her as a woman filling that role, either in a sex worker way or in a mail order bride way. There's a clear power imbalance between them, and she seems cowed by him. The references to how she helps him sleep fit into a sexually suggestive framework, to my mind.

Okay, but isn't Ego the villain?

I wondered if that somehow mitigates this portrayal of Mantis. Can the movie be read as a story of her escaping Ego's clutches and finding her own voice in some way? But I don't think so, and that has everything to do with how Drax treats her.

2) Drax mocks and belittle Mantis and she seems to love it

The interactions between Drax and Mantis are coded as a romantic B-plot (her attractiveness is discussed, she seems to be a part of his moving on from the loss of his wife, and toward the end of the movie he both princess-carries her and compliments her). I found this relationship sinister, though, because it reinforces the image of Mantis as exotic and submissive, playing into the same qualities that Ego the sex tourist seems to see in her.

Mantis does take action to go with the Guardians—specifically, she gives them key information about Ego's true motives and actions. She also delays Ego for a key amount of time during the climactic battle. This does earn her appreciation with the Guardians.

I don't think it earns her enough or the right sort of appreciation, though. The main kudos I recall her getting come from Drax, who grudgingly tells her that she is beautiful after all—on the inside (implication being that she is actually physically ugly). At the theater where I saw the movie, this line drew laughs, but it's an ugly, backhanded compliment. Mantis's "obvious" beauty and Drax's personality quirks are supposed to mitigate how this lands, I think, but in context... they don't.

Pro tip: Insults that say something "obviously" false about someone else... are still insults. (See all the times terrible insults have been justified as humorous for this reason. For example, the debacle around The Onion's disgusting and crude tweet about Quvenzhané Wallis).

Mantis seems to take Drax's insults as deserved and complimentary, and that's not sweet, especially when I'm already seeing her as a possibly traumatized victim of sexual violence from Ego.

3) The way she is cast

Mantis is an empath. I think her casting illustrates the way artistic projects can work with stereotypes or against them.

There's nothing wrong with having a character who's an empath. But when I see the way Mantis is portrayed, I think OF COURSE they chose to make her a woman. OF COURSE they chose to make her an Asian-coded woman. (Actress Pom Klementieff is French, and her mother is Korean). The idea of the empath works entirely with the stereotype of the Asian woman as receptacle for the hopes, dreams, and penises of straight white men. I'm disappointed to see it played that way.

To cast an Asian woman as an empath without falling into this trap, the character, frankly, has to be written better and with more depth. For more automatic stereotype resistance, cast someone else who doesn't "fit" the idea—and don't play that for laughs. Imagine if the Mantis character was played by someone like Idris Elba (again, not for laughs about the "contrast"). The whole thing would feel very different.

(A brilliant example of casting that pushes against stereotypes is Andre Braugher as Brooklyn Nine-Nine's Captain Holt. The show brilliantly toys with stereotypes to force viewers to see Captain Holt as an individual. In particular, it accomplishes this by forcing tension between the stereotypes of a tough, no-nonsense black man and the stereotypes of a gay man. Because the character is both, no stereotype can settle.)

4) Her use of language and the jokes about it

Mantis speaks, to my ear, with an accent that seems to mock the typical sound of English as spoken by Asian people who've learned it as immigrants. She also, inexplicably, seems not to know certain words. I feel she's coded as an immigrant and non-native speaker, which plays into the way her character embraces Asian stereotypes.

For example, listen to the way she responds when Drax tells her she's disgusting. She proudly announces, "I'm disgusting," to Gamora, and the way she says it reminds me of the way Asian people sound when they don't speak English well.

In other words, Drax's abuse feels even meaner because it takes advantage of a character who doesn't seem to speak the language—and the movie plays this for laughs.

***

Given these things, the movie left a bad taste in my mouth (though I will laugh forever about looking desperately for tape, even in the future).

Here are a couple of links I've found that discuss issues with Mantis, though not quite from the same angle.


Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 Turned Mantis Into the Butt of a Joke by Charles Paul Hoffman
"Intentional or not, Mantis’ portrayal feels very much like the trope of the wife a soldier brought back to the United States after the Vietnam War."

A Good Chunk of Guardians of the Galaxy Is Devoted to Calling This Character Ugly by Morgan Baila
"Why, in a film promoting a misfits gang full of a diverse range of characters, with varying levels of skill, intelligence, and attractiveness, is this female character being singled out for her looks? It's a cheap and lazy plot line, and it almost ruined the movie for me."

Karate Kid Holds Up Surprisingly Well

Sometimes I get drunk and watch old action movies for fun, and I recently decided to do that with The Karate Kid. Usually, it's a hilarious exercise because the movies don't hold up all that well (ahem, Top Gun).

Karate Kid, though, was real AF, and in many ways felt more progressive than movies I see today.

For one thing, the feminism is real. Elisabeth Shue's character, Ali, is not your typical airhead love interest (it so depresses me that I have to write this). For one thing, she's always out doing stuff with her friends. She clearly has an interior life and a social life, and isn't just waiting around for Daniel. She also isn't shy about telling him that she likes him and telling him what she wants and expects. When a guy grabs her in a way she doesn't like, she punches him. Daniel doesn't see that and assumes she was cheating on him, and one of her friends sets him straight, telling him that she shouldn't have to explain something like that to him—he ought to trust that she's a good person.

When Daniel gets a new car, he rushes to show it to Ali—and wants her to drive it. I noticed myself cringing because I was so sure she would crash it and become the butt of a joke about women not being able to drive. (And what does that say about how I've been socialized?) Instead, he helps her figure out the controls (just as he had to do a few minutes before), and they drive off happily.

Also, let's talk about Daniel's mom. Lucille LaRusso is a single mother figuring it out under difficult circumstances. What's striking here, though, is that you never see her lamenting that she's alone or doesn't have a partner. You see a woman who's excited to make her own way and discover a new career. She's frustrated and struggling in some ways, but she's also forming herself in a way that you can tell is thrilling for her. She wants to be in California, and she wants to explore her job opportunities. Daniel's unhappy about it, in a teenage way, and she expresses sympathy but is also clear that she's a person and she deserves this. She's awesome, and different from the way I often see single mothers portrayed now. (She does have one of the most unintentionally funny scenes in the movie, though, when she declares to Daniel, "I could never make this much money in computers!" That, too, is telling, though—it's an artifact of the time when computers were considered women's work and were consequently devalued. Hmmm...)

I often feel like there's this idea that society gets more progressive over time, but it's all too rare now to see a love interest character who's as much her own person as Ali is. This really gives the lie to the idea that feminism has been accomplished. I feel like U.S. society has gone backwards since this movie was made, in many ways.

What I really want to talk about, though, is the drunk Mr. Miyagi scene. I remembered it from childhood, and I remembered that his wife had died and he was wrecked over it.

It was a memorable scene, and there are a lot of clips on YouTube of him singing the Japanese Blues. What I didn't remember, however, is exactly how cruel and damning his story is. If you look carefully at the newspaper clips that Daniel is reading, you'll see that Mr. Miyagi fought for the U.S. during World War II and was decorated for his bravery. At the very same time, his pregnant wife was in an internment camp, where she died while giving birth—probably unnecessarily because it seems like she doesn't get proper medical treatment. (I couldn't find a clip of this whole part, but the movie can be rented and streamed on Amazon).

A lot of people on YouTube seem amused by his drunken antics, but I sobbed through this scene. It seems like the truth about the imprisonment of Japanese people in the U.S. has only been coming out recently, but here's a very popular movie from the early 80s facing it head on.

I'm not going to say this is a perfect movie, but it's a very good movie and it held up way better than I thought it would.

I thought I would be annoyed at Mr. Miyagi's mysterious oriental-ness, but he's a real character, with a past and an arc. You see him in the movie learning to face down racism and get out and make his own life despite his grief. He and Daniel adopt each other, and that helps them both. I'm a sucker for a powerful father figure relationship, and for chosen family stories, and that's what this movie is.

Oh, and that crane scene that's often mocked these days? Watch it again in its full context. I dare you not to cry.

Love of the Game

It's out today!


I'm so proud to be working with Sexy Little Pages, and here's their latest anthology, Love of the Game: Sports Stories to Make You Sweat, which includes my menage story "Fast Pitcher."

I love baseball, and I've spent a lot of time watching it and reading about it. A few years back I was reading a book about minor league players that I'm not going to name because it really irritated me. Large portions of the book were devoted to meditations on why female fans, especially devoted ones, were fans at all. After all, if they were too old to be hot to the players, what were they doing watching the games? What had been their interest in the first place? Was it just about thinking players were hot?

The author pointed out that being a female fan is different by nature from being a male fan, because a male fan is always wondering if he could have played professionally and having feelings about that, but obviously because a woman can't play she has a simpler experience.

I ended up not being able to finish the book because this stuff got so frustrating for me. It was like the author didn't realize that sexism is the reason women can't play professionally, not some sort of law of nature. It was like the author had never asked a woman why she likes baseball. I'm sure there are plenty of women who have complicated feelings about the desire to play professionally. I wasn't a good softball player as a kid, but did I fantasize about being better? Hell, yeah. And do I watch the game because I think the players are hot? Honestly, no. I watch baseball because I love the building tension of it.

So going to write sports erotic romance immediately raised questions for me. In erotica, there's often a simple path you can take. ("Baseball players are hot!"). It can be fun to take that path sometimes. My personality tends not to allow me to—I am a complicated thinker, for better and for worse.

So my story in Love of the Game engages with that stuff that came up while I was reading that book about the minor leagues. It's set among minor league players hoping to make a big break, and there's a woman there, who's just about given up hope of being recognized, and my hope is that this story feels hot, but that the anger behind it doesn't get missed.

In the end, it's got a happy ending, and it's a fantasy of progress, but even that is bittersweet for me because the break the woman gets is smaller than it ought to be, because that's the way our world is sometimes.

I'm always so grateful for publishers of erotica who recognize how important our form can be. How it's good to explore sexuality while also looking at the ways it connects to hopes and dreams, the way the world is structured, all that deep stuff about who we are. That's the erotica I find worthwhile to write and read, and I'm so happy it finds a home.

So, please check out Love of the Game, and anything else Sexy Little Pages publishes.

Below, I'll give you some info about the book, and a look at my story.

Blurb:
Love of the Game will knock you out with a one, two, punch of super sexy. From rugby players who can’t leave their passion on the pitch to Paralympians with everything to prove, these athletes are certainly playing for keeps. Warm yourself up with stories of:

• Football: Where both college stars and former NFL hopefuls are ready to go long

• MMA Fights: Where participants get rough and tumble inside the ring and out

• Baseball: Where the boys of summer can score by making it big or completely striking out

• Swimming: Where diving into bed with teammates or rivals is taboo, but oh so tempting

And so much more. Whatever sport you’re a fan of, Love of the Game is certain to make you sweat.

Excerpt:


FAST PITCHER
By Annabeth Leong

Margie didn't know which way to go now that everyone was staring at her, so she headed in the direction of the nearest friendly face. He leaned in to speak only for her hearing.
"Stick around after the game," Pete said. "I want to see if I can score off you."

Baseball language always sounded so dirty, and Margie's cheeks heated even though she knew what he meant. She cleared her throat and tried to make her expression innocent and blank.

"I'd love to."

*****

Phillips had stayed late too, eschewing the team's after party in order to participate in Margie's tête-à-tête with Pete Muñoz. She knew she needed a catcher, but part of her wished it could have been just the two of them.

She braced herself for more nonsense from Phillips as she stepped onto the field, but her pitch earlier that evening seemed to have made him a convert.

"I've got two bills down that you strike Muñoz out. He's lucky this isn't official, or you'd be messing up his precious over-.300 batting average," he said.

"Nah, man. Margie's good, but she's about to give it up to me. I think she's going to let me take her deep." Muñoz spat in the dirt at his feet, then squinted out at the empty park.

Margie squared her shoulders. She recognized Muñoz's trash talk for what it was — challenging, not sexist. He was chirping at her the way he would have with any hot pitcher. Telling her that she wouldn't be able to keep him from hitting long and hard, far out into the outfield or maybe even over the fences. When he hefted his bat, however, he glanced at her with meaning in his eyes. Margie's mouth went dry. It wasn't just the language that seemed sexual. Muñoz obviously planned to take her deep off the field even if he didn't manage the feat on the diamond.

***

You can find the book here.

New Story Coming Soon: Fast Pitcher

I signed another contract with Sexy Little Pages, this time for my story "Fast Pitcher," which will be out soon in Harley Easton's anthology For Love of the Game. (Want to get to know Harley Easton sooner? Her work appears alongside mine in another SLP anthology, Inked.)

I went through a period of major obsession with baseball, and this story comes straight out of that. I wanted the tone I hear when I listen to baseball on the radio, and I wanted a healthy dose of feminism, and I wanted a threesome on the pitcher's mound late at night after the crowd's gone home. Let me show you how that all comes together:

"You said we wouldn't score off you unless you want us to. I guess the question is, do you?"

"Do I what?"

"Do you want us to?"

Margie ignored the question, winding up, knowing her speed alone could stop him. Muñoz swung on the heels of the pitch, but still a fraction of a second too slow. She glanced at Phillips and saw the lust in his eyes, but this night had become about more than an individual's desire. There was raw hunger between the three of them. Together, they could have eaten the world. Margie thought about what it would be like to step deeper into that mood, to tear into the two men with all her need.

Phillips tossed the ball back to her. Instead of winding up again, she let her glove fall off her hand and onto the mound. The ball fell beside it.

"Yeah," she said. "I want you to."

Muñoz waved his bat.

"Then pitch to me. Let me take you deep."

Margie grinned and shook her head.

"Nah. You can't touch the ball. I'm not giving you that satisfaction." She reached up for her hat and swept it off her head. "Satisfying myself, though... That's another story."

The page isn't up yet for the book, but if you'd like to keep an eye on what I've got coming from SLP, you can look at my author page here.

More on Street Harassment

I've written a fair bit about street harassment, and right now I've got a pretty heavy piece about it up at the Grip (CN: self-harm). I talked about something that I think sometimes gets lost in discussions of street harassment: what it's like to run into it on a day when you're really not okay, the way the mind games a harasser plays (such as quick pivots from "compliments" to insults) can exacerbate existing feelings of depression and worthlessness.

It felt like something I really needed to write, but I also feel sort of weird about "inflicting" that heaviness on readers. Which gets back to the point, I think. I definitely didn't feel up for being harassed on the day I'm writing about (not that I ever do, but this particular day I just really didn't have the mental fortitude to absorb the blow of it). And yet it happens. All the time. That's one of the reasons I need to keep writing about it.

The reason it hurt so badly, I think, was entitlement. Right then, I didn’t feel entitled to live, to breathe, to be in the world without being hurt. I needed a little entitlement. I needed it to be okay that I couldn’t satisfy the person I was fighting with, to see that I still deserved to exist and be loved even if I wasn’t what someone else wanted me to be.

If I had been walking around like I was God’s gift, that would have been a huge victory for me.

That insult, though… What that guy said to me was an effort to take down someone he saw as entitled. “You can’t just walk around like you’re God’s gift, cuz you ain’t.” What was I doing that seemed so entitled to him? Walking down the sidewalk? Breathing? Having breasts? Not responding to his demand for my attention?

You can read the rest here.

Street Harassment Essay, Part III: On Dealing With the Horror of Innocent Men

I've posted the third part of my street harassment essay over at the new website:

I look forward to getting old partially because I look forward to going outside and being somewhat invisible. I am scared I will never get that freedom, though, because my hair is going gray and I'm not slim anymore and yet I still get harassed all the fucking time. I am beginning to understand down to my bones that this whole thing has nothing to do with my "beauty" and everything to do with reminding me that the street doesn't belong to me.

This essay means a lot to me, and I'd appreciate it if you took the time to read it.

You can find it here:

Part I: On Being Harassed and Having to Thank Him For It

Part II: On Putting Me in My Place

Part III: On Dealing With the Horror of Innocent Men

If you missed the video that inspired all this, I've pasted it in below.

Street Harassment Essay, Part II: On Putting Me in My Place

I've posted the second part of my street harassment essay over at the new website:

I have been harassed while I was in a dress and while I was in sweatpants. I have been harassed while wearing a pushup bra, while wearing a sports bra, while wearing no bra. I know that it doesn't matter what I was wearing—I know that intellectually—but the first thing I do every time I get harassed is worry about what I was wearing, what I was doing, where I was walking, how I was walking.

This essay means a lot to me, and I'd appreciate it if you took the time to read it.

You can find it here:

Part I: On Being Harassed and Having to Thank Him For It

Part II: On Putting Me in My Place

Street Harassment Essay, Part I: On Being Harassed and Having to Thank Him For It

This week, one of my afternoons was interrupted by a piece of writing that grabbed me by the throat and wouldn't let go. I've been wanting to write for a while about street harassment, and a video I watched unleashed the floodgates.



(Hat tip to Jon Pressick at Sex in Words).

That video's not going to tell you anything you don't know if you're a person who experiences street harassment, but the way it was shot and cut underscored how common this is, how similar the experiences are, and how angry it makes me. Over at my new website, I've divided the essay I wrote into three pieces. The first goes up today.

It means a lot to me, and I'd love for you to take the time to read it.

Here's a snip:

But what bothers me is that my "thank you" was insult to injury. What it really meant was, "Thank you for scaring me. Thank you for treating me like a piece of meat. Thank you for interrupting me when I was busy. Thank you for making me feel threatened."

You can read the whole thing here.

Wait, What?

I've been reading a book about the history of clothing for women's breasts, and it's a fascinating read but I find myself constantly stopping to ponder the assumptions and implications the book contains. In a section describing Cretan women (who left their breasts bare but wore corsetry that pushed them up and out), there is a sequence of weird and sexist assumptions. The first couple are quotes from male historians from the early twentieth century, so I wasn't terribly surprised. Then the author weighs in with the following:

In fact, Cretan women were far from being sexual objects and played a primary role in society. They participated fully with men in the capture of bulls and the running of nautical expeditions. More significantly, it was they who formed the caste of bare-breasted priestesses who officiated at the rites of the female divinities worshiped by the society as a whole. But more important still, as the Greek historian Nicolas Platon informs us, Minoan civilization was the first to aestheticize adornment and give it the status of an art form, on a par with painting and sculpture.

-- from Support and Seduction: A History of Corsets and Bras, by Béatrice Fontanel

So, to recap:

1) Cretan women played a primary role in society.

2) More significantly than that, they were in charge of worship of divinities.

3) More important still (apparently more significant than political or religious equality for women), the Minoans were the first to aestheticize adornment.

I'm not one to argue against the significance of fashion, but this pulled me up short. One could discuss whether religious or secular power deserves top billing, but I'm pretty sure both trump the "aestheticization of adornment." Maybe the argument is that fashion endures but equality for women does not? A sad thought.

I do like the idea of a society that can handle women going around bare-breasted. I want to read more about the Cretans.

On 'Throwing Like a Girl'

Recently, I was playing a tabletop role-playing game, and my character wanted to throw something. I rolled for it, and the dice didn't go my way. "You throw like a girl!" said the gamemaster, not once but four or five times, seeming to need to repeat the phrase as he reached the conclusion that my character had failed.

I smiled, but my chest burned. For years, I would have let that one slide, or nodded to it with a sense of shame, but these days I've learned a lot more about feminism and how to be a nice person, and I was angry at myself for letting him get away with that one.

I grew up about as far from feminist as possible. In my family, it was totally cool for men to tell women to go get them a glass of water, not as a joke, but as a command. Pretty early on, I decided that the way to deal with this was to avoid being seen as a girl as much as possible. I was not naturally talented at the activities traditionally associated with guys, but I tried really hard. I was jealous of the girls I'd read about who were just so good that they became pitcher of the boys team, or some such. I wanted to be a tomboy, but there were so many ways that I never felt I could really cut it.

I never got anywhere close to good, but I persistently beat my head against that wall. I played baseball, soccer, volleyball, basketball, and touch football. I was the first girl to ever attempt to participate in a game at my school called "beaming," which was an anarchic form of dodgeball that involved getting control of a rubber ball and throwing it at a random person as hard as possible. I was picked last for teams, was made fun of by boys and girls, and sweated out my recesses working damned hard to acquire skills every (boy) around me seemed to have been born with.

This behavior lasted all through elementary school, middle school, and early high school, pretty much until I discovered sex, at which point I became occupied by doing something else with the boys. I tried to have sex like a boy, too, but that's a post for another time.

Looking back, I don't know why I didn't go off and do something a little easier for me. I think I did like things about what I was doing. It was nice to be outside, nice to run around rather than attempting awkward conversation with the girls, nice to use my body even if it didn't always seem to take to what I was trying to do. For a very bookish girl, I think it felt great to feel strong, whenever I could manage it. I'll also never forget how it was whenever I wrested some accomplishment out of sports, such as the first time I threw a football with a perfect spiral.

It used to bother me that I wasn't great at sports because I wanted to prove people wrong when they said girls couldn't play well. The truth, however, is that I often could not prove that. I wasn't in the top 10 or even the top 50, and I probably never could have been. I was, however, not the very worst player, and I was of course far better than people who never played at all. Once, in college, the music class I TA'd for had a pickup baseball game, and I discovered I was the best damn player on the field, mostly because I knew which hand to put the glove on and how to swing a bat (my college was pretty bookish, what can I say).

So this was a big issue for me for a lot of years. For so long, I fought and fought against "playing like a girl" or "throwing like a girl" or even being a girl, really. But when the gamemaster told me my character threw "like a girl," this time I wanted to take him outside and see how he handles a football. My character may not have known how to throw well, but this girl throws like a person who worked really hard at something that didn't come naturally. Other people throw with talent, or like a person who never went outside, or who knows what. These days, I like being a woman and being seen as one, so I don't need to be good at sports to deny my femininity. On the other hand, I take deep offense to being told I'm not good enough just because I'm a girl, as well as to having all that hard work treated as if there's no possibility that it could even have existed.

I wish I'd spoken up then, but it makes me feel a little better to speak up now.

Sexual Fantasies and Being a Slut

There's been a link going around on Twitter for a couple days, highlighting an article on women's sexual fantasies. It's worth a read, and the fantasies listed are roughly what I'd expect--certainly nothing shocking to an erotica writer. (It misses the popularity of m/m scenarios among women, but I suppose I can forgive that).

But here's the part of the piece that really grabbed me:

I began to explain that I asked hundreds of women about their fantasies and received wonderful responses. That's when I was interrupted.

"Are (these women) slutty?" Hoda asked.

Kathie Lee answered, "Total sluts."

My brain froze. Wait -- what? The whole point of this conversation was to get women to feel empowered so that they could share their fantasies with their partners. Now they're being called sluts? (And besides, if you've read any of my work, you know that I have a visceral reaction to the word.)

Like the article's author, I felt outraged by the response. Now, I love erotica for the fun of it. I love one-handed reading, and I love squirming while I write. But moments like this are when I feel that writing and openly reading erotica is a sacred calling and a feminist act. People need to stand up and claim sexuality as normal, healthy, and beautiful, even when--especially when--we're not just talking about m/f missionary.

Speaking up is scary. This name I write under is a pseudonym for a reason, and I was afraid even to use a pseudonym for a very long time. But I spent way too long feeling terrorized by judgments like the ones expressed on this episode of the Today Show.

Erotica writers and others unafraid of talking honestly about sex saved my soul, my self-respect, my sensuality, and more. Thanks so much to all of you.

We have a long way still to go.