All of the photographs in this NSFW Sunday are from Shutterstock. The inclusion of a visual here should not be interpreted as an assertion of the model’s gender identity or sexual orientation. If you’re a photographer or model and think your work would be a good fit for NSFW Sunday, please email carolyn at autostraddle dot com.
Welcome to NSFW Sunday!
+ “One thing is clear: the screams of catharsis, the ingenuity of predicament bondage, the collaboration of devious queer minds will no longer fill the rooms and hallways of the Armory. Beyond that, the future of Kink.com is still unwritten.” At Hazlitt, Tina Horn writes about the last hardcore porn shot at the San Francisco Armory (including a truly beautiful gangbang vignette), Kink.com’s political and community work, and the company’s uncertain future:
“Every available room and in-between space is piled with the fetish costumes, outrageously high-heeled shoes, sinister customized props, and other ephemera that employees have claimed. It reminds me of an apartment the day before roommates move out, except instead of appliances, people are putting masking tape labels on rubber tongue fucking machines and olive green latex military uniforms. Just beyond a cart stacked high with vintage encyclopedias is a large disco ball resting in a metal hydrotherapy bath. A collection of rusty chains has been piled into a wheelchair. If the Armory is haunted, I could imagine the ghosts trapped here finding all this poltergeist-ing material a little on the nose.”
+ The zine Fucking Trans Women by Mira Bellweather is one of the few print resources out there for learning about sex as a trans woman. Here’s what it has to say about muffing:
“Muffing, as Bellwether calls it, is just one of many sex acts in FTW; it stands apart from the rest because it involves penetrating orifices that most people don’t know exist. In order to understand the act, you first need to understand the anatomy involved: Bellwether describes the act as “being [finger-]fucked in one or both of my inguinal canals,” which are, as she puts it, the “twin ‘pockets’ that are situatied in the groin above and behind the testicles and scrotum.” Generally speaking, inguinal canals are the canals that the testicles descend from—the same pathways that balls get sucked back into when you jump into a pool of cold water. Bellwether refers to these parts of her body as her “cunts,” and uses that chill term interchangeably with their medical name.
In order to penetrate or fuck your inguinal cunts, you need to locate them inside your body. This can be challenging, because, unlike your anus, the entrances to these canals are enveloped by flesh. In order to locate them, FTW advises users to take their hand and feel upward and behind their dick. This is where you’ll find the entrances, which Bellwether says are “initially about the same diameter as a finger but will stretch considerably.” She advises first timers to “start slowly” and to be careful.”
+ “Women are cumming all over the place. There’s ‘ ream’ a-plenty, and squirting. The Victorians knew an orgasm was very, very important to women,” notes Dr. Kate Lister, the history of sexual attitudes expert behind Whores of Yore. She talked to Vice about Victorian smut, experimentation, taxidermy, orgasms, and having fun in erotica:
“There’s oral sex, lots of oral sex, and threesomes and foursomes and group sex and dildos. There are lots of strap-ons and orgies… if you can think of it, they’re doing it. And they’re having a great time. […] There’s a real sense of cheeky fun. There’s something incredibly human about them.”
+ Don’t try to be mysterious on dates.
+ Loneliness is bad for you. It’s okay to ask for help.
+ Sex coach Myisha Battle named 11 American sexual pioneers.
+ Don’t “cleanse” vaginas with cucumbers.
+ It’s okay to still think about “Daddy” sometimes.
+ The best way to give bad news is directly.
+ American sex education is broken, confirms yet another new study, published in the American Journal of Sexuality Education. For this one, researchers interviewed marginalized young adults — women, people of color, queers — about their sex ed experiences, noting themes that emerged:
“These include respondents feeling that insufficient information and resources were provided, that sexist and heterosexist stereotypes were promoted, and that students of color were assumed to be more sexually active than they were. Further, respondents did not feel safe in their sex education classes, describing the curricula and many teachers as relying on fear and shame.”
+ It’s okay to call that one fuckboi an ex even if she wasn’t officially the opposite of an ex if it helps you close the loop and get on with your life:
“[T]he title of ‘ex’ can help us move on from the person hurting us. Even if the relationship was rooted in sex, the title of ‘ex’ can help us realize that this person, this relationship, is still significant. ‘People don’t see it as valid if it’s not an ‘ex’ sometimes, no matter how real the feelings were,’ a woman named Marilyn points out.
By deciding for myself that the relationship I was in was significant enough to make my ex exactly that, I gave myself freedom to move on. I also gave myself the opportunity to recognize that the hurt and pain I experienced when things were over was valid; even if our relationship was never official.”
So my ex is Pisces & I wrote a poem about her as a ‘sea girl’ who was a bit like a mermaid and that zodiac thing mentions that Pisces are mermaids and now I’m imagining all Pisces women/femmes as mermaids…
how are you finding these images on shutterstock? honestly great job, they’re stunning!
Wow, that last link about fuckbois was not something that I knew I needed but it validated something in me that I’ve been holding onto for years! To simplify things, I’ve been calling someone in my past an ex even if they weren’t “officially the opposite of an ex” and always felt so weird about it. But they fucked me up in ways most long-term partners never came close to — and there’s no better word for them.
Thanks for an excellent round-up as always, Carolyn!