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!
+ At Archer, Jami Rose writes about being a femme discovering she’s into strapping it on:
“I edged my way over to the mirror, and through the cracks in my shielded eyes, I met my reflection. Any apprehension I felt about wearing the strap-on fell away when I saw myself. I looked powerful, strong and hot as fuck, and seeing myself this way made me feel the same.
At 25 years old, for the first time in my life, I felt genuinely sexy and no longer like I was trying to perform sexiness to appease the person on top of me. Jesse and I had sex, and knowing it was my first time wearing a strap-on, she was fantastic at talking me through it. We kept an open-dialogue for the entirety and even though my pelvic thrust timing was a bit off, and the dildo slipped out more times than could be counted, it felt oddly natural. I felt sexy and empowered and in control. Afterwards, we did what queers do best and we debriefed. I declared that I loved wearing a strap-on and I felt years of sexual oppression and suppression beginning to shift.”
+ The problem with conversations that draw conclusions about how people engage with sex and sexuality from say porn search engine terms is that they remove social context and still try to fit sexuality into boxes. Maybe stop trying to fit sexuality into boxes:
“[T]he new data-driven surveillance suggests sexual diversity is tolerated only if the desires are perceived to be “true” or “authentic” — that is, innate and largely unchanging, exercised individually and traceable through individualized data. People are allowed to be who they really are out of a presumed respect for this inner truth, but a fluid sexuality is rendered suspect if not impossible. If the media interpretations of the Pornhub data are any indication, society is less ready to accept the idea that sexual desires may represent only who we are at a given time or that we may not have a coherent and definite sexual “self” at all. Perhaps we are getting used to the idea that someone searching for videos of homosexual acts would not necessarily regard themselves as homosexual, but there is still pressure to translate porn categories back into a fixed category of person.”
+ The wheel of consent can be a neat way to tease out some of the different contexts of consent: doing something to someone for their pleasure or yours, or someone doing something to you for their pleasure or yours.
+ At Oh Joy Sex Toy, Katie Fleming discusses sensate focus, a way to share touch with a partner without focusing on orgasm.
+ The history of sex toys is secretly kinda regressive, Hallie Lieberman, author of Buzz: A Stimulating History of the Sex Toy, tells the Cut
“In a way, we were more liberated in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when sex toys were advertised everywhere, like in the New York Times. They were just disguised as other things. When sex toys came out of the closet, or became more openly sold, in the 1960s, they were seen more as dangerous devices — this sort of magic wand that symbolized female liberation. We’re only able to fit them into the culture if they’re representing traditional gender roles. You see that even today. Yes, 50 Shades of Grey was great for publicizing sex toys, but at the end of the day, it’s really a message about a woman submitting to a man, and a man using sex toys on her — not a woman discovering her sexuality independent of a man.”
“at the end of the day, it’s really a message about a woman submitting to a man, and a man using sex toys on her — not a woman discovering her sexuality independent of a man”
True story: I bought my first sex toy in 2004. It wasn’t until I had read every single article (and all the comments) about sex toys on Autostraddle, in 2016, that I bought a sex toy and felt good about it, felt that it was for me, about me, with no spectre of a man present. It was revolutionary and empowering. So… Thank you Autostraddle.
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I assume that that article on PH search preferences mainly refers to widely reported finding that the most common search among women users was ‘lesbian’.
No journalist that wrote about it, including the one whose article is quoted here, seems to understand the statistics and the data. The fact ‘lesbian’ was consistently most often used word doesn’t mean that the majority of women used it.
Here’s the thing – to find any kind of sex videos with two (or more) women, but not men involved, you ALWAYS have to type tag ‘lesbian’, and then eventually some additional word to narrow the search. Otherwise, you ALWAYS get straight result, straight doesn’t need any tag, it’s the DEFAULT.
What’s more, there was a research that suggested that non-straight women use more pornography than straight women. PH claimed just 20% of its users were women. So for example if let’s say 25% of these were queer, it means that 25% of all PH searches among its women users consistently had ‘lesbian’ tag, which automatically elevated it to the top. Meanwhile all the straight stuff got distributed more evenly between any peculiar (straight) preferences of the straight users.
And, of course, the point about “sexual fluidity” from the author of the quoted article is just anti-intellectual wishful thinking. There’s long line of research on arousal from visual erotic stimuli and its relation to sexual orientation. But I guess we should ignore science and evidence if it doesn’t match with the one and only truly enlightened thesis of universal sexual fluidity and Foucault’s fantasies on human nature based just on his own personal limited experience.
Right on! I love this! <3