July 15: Sex with Shakespeare

Please join us for an online discussion of Sex with Shakespeare: Here’s Much to Do with Pain, but More with Love by Jillian Keenan!

Published this year by HarperCollins and reviewed by the New York Times, Sex with Shakespeare is a moving memoir about coming to terms with a spanking kink. You will find conversations with Shakespeare characters (magical realism, not hallucination), the sexual frontiers of Singapore and Oman, a truly inspired talent for bratting, and the (successful!) conversion of a vanilla spouse.

Trigger warnings: child abuse, rape.

The author: Jillian Keenan is known for coming out in the New York Times and her assertion that kink is a sexual orientation. She should be better known for her essay onthe foggy edge of sexual consent. You can check out her FL profile here.

• Date/Time: Friday, 15 February 2016, 10.30pm- (Eastern Seaboard Time)
• Where: Google Hangouts voice chat. Just invite yingtai.is.reading@gmail.com to a hangout with you, using a Gmail address you are willing to share with other kinksters.

Please note the discussion etiquette. We look forward to chatting with you!

Marketplace Q&A with Laura Antoniou

When Laura Antoniou heard that this reading group was discussing her novel The Marketplace, she offered to come over to our FetLife group to answer our questions. WOW. Now that’s fan service!

We are repaying her generosity with the toughest questions we could manage. Thank you so much, Laura!

Venus in Furs: Film + Background

Image from RogerEbert.com

We’re celebrating the holiday season with a film screening!

Venus in Fur is a 2013 French film (subtitled). The reviews say things like “caustically brilliant” and “sexually charged.” The trailer may excite you in more ways than one. Personally I like the bit where she calls the book sexist S&M porn and hurls it into the fire.

For once, you don’t have to read anything before the meeting. But if you do want background, the film is based on the Broadway play by David Ives, which is based on the classic 1870 novella by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, who gave his name to masochism.

Click here for event details. Note that we are starting earlier than usual so we can fit in both the film and a discussion.

The Ultimate Guide to Kink: Tops

For November we are reading The Ultimate Guide to Kink (2012), edited by Tristan Taormino.

This book is 400+ pages of gold on 20 different topics. The editor asked a whole lot of kink educators to write on their favorite topics. It’s like BDSM 101/201/301 taught by the dream team.

Our discussion will focus on these two chapters:

• Chapter 13: Forte Femme: The Art and Philosophy of Feminine Dominance by Midori
• Chapter 16: Inside the Mind of a Sadist by FifthAngel

Please note that this is not an endorsement of everything in those two chapters. One of them makes pretty controversial claims, which should be fun to discuss.

See you at our next meeting!

Yingtai on The Story of O

Image by James (CC BY 2.0)

This month the BDSM Classics Reading Group read The Story of O by Pauline Réage. I chose it, but I wasn’t looking forward to rereading it yet again.

So instead, I did some background reading. And wow.

Now I want to be Pauline Réage!

(Read the rest at Yingtai’s blog…)

The Story of O: Background

Image from Google Books

This month we are reading The Story of O, the classic novel of erotic submission by Pauline Réage! You are welcome to join our discussion, either at our face-to-face meeting, our FetLife group, or here.

We are incredibly lucky that so much background information has become available recently:

• I Wrote the Story of O – In-depth article on the real Pauline Réage
• O Told Me – An extended interview with Pauline Réage
• Writer of O – Documentary about Pauline Réage and her world

There is also a sequel, Return to the Chateau, which is pretty universally agreed to be a waste of time except that it also includes “A Girl in Love”, Pauline Réage’s brilliant essay on how her book came to be.

‘Who am I, finally,’ said Pauline Réage, ‘if not the long silent part of someone, the secret and nocturnal part which has never betrayed itself in public by any thought, word, or deed, but communicates through the subterranean depths of the imaginary with dreams as old as the world itself?’ – “A Girl in Love” by Pauline Réage

Postscript from Yingtai: I’m curious what O says about Sade. And I think Carrie’s Story and its sequel say interesting things about O too. Will see if I can write something coherent about this.

Yingtai on Consent

Image by Viktor Rosenfeld (CC BY‑SA 2.0)

I started a BDSM classics reading group! People actually signed up and everything! Squee!

Ahem.

For our first meeting on 3rd September, we’re going to read seminal essays from the Safe Sane Consensual debate.

(Read the rest at Yingtai’s blog…)

Vote! The Ultimate Guide to Kink

The Ultimate Guide to Kink (2012) is 400+ pages of gold on 20 different topics. The editor, Tristan Taormino, asked a whole lot of kink educators to write on their favorite topics. This is like BDSM 101/201/301 taught by the dream team.

Here’s your chance to vote on the focus of our discussion!

Consent Debate Cheat Sheet

1. Joseph Bean, The Future of Leather

And, it was SM, the take me while I’m hot, do with me as you will, no-holds-barred, I’ll do my best to explain the bruises later … Each of us knew our place; out of the way until called, silent until ordered to speak, available to be used or ignored by the men towering over our cowering forms.

2. Dusk Peterson, Spontaneous

“That’s the way to do it,” Trent said with satisfaction. “No twelve-hour negotiations. No fiddling talk of whether the bottom will allow his left ass-cheek to be pounded harder than his right ass-cheek. And Christ help us, no goddamn breaks in the middle to renegotiate. Just raw, rough sex, the way it was meant to be.”

3. Laura Antoniou, Unsafe at Any Speed

Now, when the boys want that big old dyke and her bullwhip away from their sash parades, all they have to say is, “She’s endangering people; it’s unsafe,” or, “She’s not projecting a proper image for our community. That’s insane.” “The people watching have not given their permission to be shown this kind of behavior. That’s nonconsensual.”

RopeDreams on Consent

By RopeDreams

I have enjoyed thinking about the first reading group topic, “Safe, Sane and Consensual – ethical principles for risk tolerance.” The suggested readings provided much food for thought and prompted a rousing debate in my own relationship and among my friends about this controversial topic. At Yingtai’s invitation, I have included a few of my own thoughts about the subject.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that so much is available from the man who apparently coined the phrase Safe, Sane and Consensual, David Stein. According to Stein, the formula was originally offered as a “minimum standard for ethically defensible S/M.” David Stein, “Safe, Sane Consensual: The Making of a Shibbloeth.” But he intended the phrase merely to describe ethically defensible BSDM, what it looked like, not as a protocol or guide for how to get there. As Joseph Bean pointed out, the “problem comes in mistaking a description for a prescription.” Joseph Bean, “The SSC Mistake.”