beta_vulgaris

I am a book person. It will shock those who know me and my line of work to hear this :)

I have been collecting books on rope bondage for the past couple of years. I've referenced or outright learned from each of them and I have developed my own opinions about each! Here's a quick reference list of those opinions in general order of the books I use the most to the ones I use the least :)

( Books reviewed under the cut! )

So, here I am blurring my identities a bit, but I'm excited and readers of this blog may appreciate this!

( Slightly NSFW rope bondage art by Allie Kleber below the cut! )

I want more of this book. I want ten thousand of this book and all its queer siblings. I'm appalled that I hadn't read it before and sad that it was so slim that I burned through it in two sittings.

This is a series of connected stories/moments in the life of a queer kinkster in SF in probably the 90's. The protagonist starts out in boy drag as Randy and picks up a leather daddy, Jack, at a gay leather bar. Unlike many of the gay men she's taken home before, Jack accepts Randy's gender fluidity and doesn't skip a beat when she transforms herself into her femme self, Miranda. A couple of chapters later, Jack's longtime lover, a Black man named Demetrius, comes home from his travels and they embark on a sexy, fun, caring, intentional journey to knitting themselves and others into a family of choice.

This is unabashed queer leather erotica. My favorite thing about it is that the characters spend just as much time discussing gender, sexual identity, queerness, sex work, the experiences of genderqueers and trans women, roleplay, BDSM, leather, alt sex cultures as they do having inventive hot sex. It makes the sex incredibly hot and it feeds a deepseated need in my soul for fiction that reflects my experiences building intentional relationships and being open to experiences beyond those circumscribed by their cultures or apparent sexualities. Miranda may be a woman much of the time, and a woman with a cunt all the time, but her attraction to gay leathermen over straight men really resonated for me, and Jack and Demetrius's willingness to see her as the complicated sexy fuckable genderfluid slutty bottom that she is was marvelous.

We need more erotica like this, that explores relationships in a low-drama way, that doesn't privilege romance over self-discovery and long-term close friendships, that reflects the diversity of queer communities on many axes, and that sees the heart of why people do the BDSM they do, and how identity labels can work for and against people. I loved the moments when Miranda or Jack come up against the censure and expectations of their own alt communities, who view their decisions as something of traitorous to their own queer selves by taking up with an ostensibly het relationship. I loved that the story didn't shy away from that, but dealt with it head-on while showing that this relationship helped each person involved grow into their queerness and explore beyond the constraints of identity politics. I like that it also didn't wholly trash or ask the characters to reject the more structured or separatist communities and community histories that they have been a part of, but rather showed the characters moving between spaces and roles with all the complexity and realism that I have seen in my own life.

This was a really fun book and I'm proud to have it on my shelf. I liked it even better than Macho Sluts, it had way fewer instances of dubious consent. I think this book's realistic depiction of a life lived, with all the context that that entails, rather than heightening that life with a layer of fantasy, gives it a stronger footing. This book isn't perfect but it's really really excellent and I recommend it. It's also fabulously sexy in a way I so rarely see in fiction--a way that resonated with my own relatively complex approach to BDSM, queer identity and gender fluidity, while not being about me in specifics, it was about me in spirit. A+ would rec again.

Animal play is one of those kinks that I have that I was kind of embarrassed about exploring at first. I'm still a bit reticent about it mostly because it has such a bad rep and it's such a comforting kink for me that I don't like feeling defensive about it, even moreso than other kinks.

( Puppy play and what it is to me. )

In appreciation of really great bruises, here is a post.

( Some talk of impact play and consensual masochism and an appreciation of bruising. No pictures. )

I picked this up on a trip to the Tool Shed in Milwaukee a couple of days ago.



Power Exchange Books: Playing with Disabilities ed. Robert J Rubel & Angela Stassinopoulos

I read this book in one sitting. It's a collection of short personal essays and a couple of pieces of fiction from BDSMers with a variety of disabilites, and it comes off as rather light. This series was originally a magazine, with the editor choosing eventually to publish in book form to give the work a bit more permanence.

The range of voices is well-chosen in this book, particularly in terms of disability, and centers the voices of people with disabilities over abled people (with one exception, when the husband of a person with DID/MPD discusses the needs of his wife's various alters and the way they work with her alters to have satisfying BDSM in their lives).

Much of the book is full of practical, personal-life advice aimed at kinksters. I felt that some wider context of disability activism and social movements could have helped this book, or at least placed it beyond the personal experience. The book is published in 2007 and consists of some reprints from the magazine, so the contents feel dated in some ways. I hesitate to fully criticize the individual authors for their work as each is so personal about their journey, that even when I read something that I might call out as inapporpriate if a person without disabilities said it, I felt that it was part of this individual's honest lived experience and perspective and I think there is great value in people having an in-group space to share their stories without feeling they must self-censor for the cause.

Some of the entries made me raise my eyebrow (the Deaf person who explicitly uses her lack of hearing to seduce people, and partners who threw her hearing aids across the room during scenes with little regard to their expense and without prior negotiation about removing them, but it's presented as a positive in that she found the vulnerability of that scene enhanced her enjoyment?). Others made me nod my head--the submissive who experiences panic attacks and the ways he and his Dommes have communicated about them and worked through them.

I think this series seems to have a strong focus on service and master/slave identities, which interested me particularly in terms of submissives and dominants incorporating changing ability status into their protocols.

In general this is a nice collection of personal experiences, none of which I found particularly brilliant in terms of writing, but all of which felt very honest to that person's place on their journey. For that reason I found it interesting, and there certainly were some pieces that gave good advice based in an individual's experience. I would have liked some stronger writing and analysis, but ultimately I think this book has enough honest integrity that I am glad it exists.

I recently had a good friend ask me for suggestions about where/how to get good starter rope. I... wrote her a novel-length email in response. I had a lot of feelings, okay? I have rewritten and expanded that email for today's post.

Disclaimer: as with all of these posts, this is personal opinion/advice based on my experiences, and other people have wildly different preferences!

( Rooooooooooope! )

This is a post about kink_bingo, and how it helped me work through a lot of my feelings and interests around kink enough to begin practicing it with my physical body and in non-fannish spaces. This is absolutely only my journey and how it relates to kink_bingo and is not a comment on the things anyone else does or should get out of this community, whose members may have wildly different experiences and reasons for participating and following than I do!

( Kink_bingo and me )

I'd love some recs for kinky fanworks in comments! It doesn't have to come from kink_bingo, though it'd be cool if it does. If you feel like describing what about the fanwork appeals to you in terms of its depiction of kink, that'd be great but isn't necessary, either. A future Kinky November post will be fanwork recs, and I'd love to be able to collate recs from more sources than just myself :)

Also, anon commenting is now available on this blog, though there is a text captcha so I can avoid spam. This means you don't need a Dreamwidth account to comment.

Book Review: Playing Well With Others by Lee Harrington and Mollena Williams


Indiebound listing

I was delighted when I ran into this book on the shelves of a feminist bookstore in Chicago, and I got my bookstore to order it, too. It's written by a trans guy, Lee Harrington, whose name I have encountered frequently in my travels through kink space, and also Mollena Williams, a woman of color whose name I've also seen around the kinky/poly podcastosphere. I have very much enjoyed Harrington's appearances on Greydancer's Ropecast and Minx's Poly Weekly, and I do use Harrington's rope tutorial book Shibari You Can Use.

This book is a really excellent guide to getting into kink scenes, and thanks to this focus and the care of its authors, the advice in here is relevant and really useful. There are a lot of things I learned the hard way (ie., by feeling/acting like a n00b in some spaces and having to really get to know people before I got access to the kinds of advice and conversation that helps one understand and navigate kink scenes. This book is clear, well-organized, and relevant if you want to participate in kink and BDSM outside of the bedroom. The authors do a great job of discussing the types of events that are out there, lots of social do's and don't's around how to dress for particular events (ie., an outfit for a munch is generally VERY different from one you'd wear to a fetish club--both events are likely to have differing dress codes), how to respect and watch for aspects of etiquette and community norms, advice for handling social interactions, etc.

I particularly like this book because other books on BDSM that I have found have focused almost exclusively on the bedroom. That's great, but this is the handbook I needed in order to feel comfortable enough to navigate the scene. It's also usefully broad--Harrington and Williams are very cautious not to be prescriptive and to offer multiple options and considerations to think through or talk over before deciding on whatever course of action is best *for you*. Their approach is refreshingly diverse, contemporary, informative and friendly, and I really think this is a nice intro for anyone considering taking the leap and going to an event.

I might also recommend this book as a resource to anyone writing fiction set in contemporary BDSM communities! It addresses so many of the major and minor anxieties that come up (air travel considerations, for instance, as well as managing one's emotional resources at events and so many other small things that really matter in small moments) that can help you contextualize characters in a community and find little details to ring true, even if you aren't interested in attending any of these events or spaces yourself.

My rope order finally arrived a couple of days ago, almost a month after I ordered it! It is worth the wait.

( Some discussion of the rope I got and some non-sexual self-bondage and partner bondage I did just to try it out. Photos! )

Okay, this got long! Feel free to ask any questions or whatever. Obviously I am no expert, I'm just learning, but I'm happy to talk about how this all feels!