pegging

Mini Reviews: BeOne, Carter, & Star Delight

Kate Sloan

Time for some short reviews to catch up on my sex toy queue! Here are some toys I’ve been testing recently…

The Fun Factory Be-One caught my attention immediately when I spotted it at ANME, because 1) a new Fun Factory toy! yay! and 2) it looked like it might work well for someone with chronic pain in their hands, like me. So I asked Fun Factory to send me one, and blessedly, they did. It’s a rechargeable vibrator designed such that you can grip it between two fingers without the need for a lot of muscle strength or flexibility. The silicone-covered tip of the toy curves downward, so it can make good contact with my clit even on days when my fingers or wrists aren’t cooperating.

That ease of use on bad pain days is, for me, the major selling point of this toy – but there are others, too. It’s waterproof. It’s small enough to fit between bodies easily during penetrative sex. It’s made of non-porous and hypoallergenic silicone and plastic. It comes with a cute, hard plastic storage case, shaped somewhat like a computer mouse, which (especially paired with the toy’s travel lock function) makes me feel much more confident it won’t thrum to life in my suitcase, if and when we’re ever allowed to fly again. Its one button, which you can use to cycle through the toy’s four steady speeds and one “flirty” pattern mode, protrudes and lights up so it’s easy to both see and feel in the heat of the moment (you would not believe how many vibrators get this very important thing wrong).

Crucially, the Be-One has two motors (TWO!) packed into its tiny body, so it’s more powerful than you would expect for a vibe of this size. The dual motor situation also makes the Be-One’s vibrations feel rumblier than Fun Factory’s previous clit vibe offerings; it’s almost like the vibrations are bouncing back and forth from one motor to another at a very high speed. This is no Tango, but I’d pick it over something buzzier like the Lelo Mia or Jimmyjane Form 2 any day. My picky clit can orgasm fairly easily with the Be-One, albeit with a bit of grinding/rubbing/circling added to the mix.

Fun Factory says that with the Be-One, “once it’s in place, you really don’t have to think about it anymore,” and unfortunately that isn’t really true because of where the control button is situated. It’s on top of the toy, a spot I can’t reach when the vibe is positioned between my fingers as advertised. When I want to change the vibration speed, I have to either pause what I’m doing to hit the button with my other hand, or reposition the toy in my hand so I can reach the button – which sort of negates the comfort of its design. However, this is a pretty minor issue (for my particular body, anyway), and overall I think Fun Factory did great with the Be-One. It’s a cute and compact vibrator with two lovely motors, and I think it’ll make a lot of people happy.

The New York Toy Collective Carter was an anniversary gift from my very thoughtful partner. Mine is turquoise and pink, because I love those colors, but it’s also available in various skin tones, a gorgeous teal, and some other shades.

I became interested in this dildo when I read my friend Epiphora’s review of it, in which she says that she squirts every time she uses the Carter. I mean… sounds pretty good to me! Sinclair Sexsmith once called the Carter their “desert-island dildo,” and they know their shit when it comes to strap-ons. I was also curious about this toy because, while the Godemiche Ambit has been my go-to pegging dildo for years, occasionally my partner wants something bigger. With its chunky 2″ diameter and comfortable dual-density silicone, the Carter certainly fits the bill.

However, so far I haven’t used the Carter for pegging purposes, because, y’know, butts are fickle and you can’t rush this stuff. I have, however, gotten fucked with it numerous times, and it’s lovely. Its 7.5″ insertable length allows it to reach my A-spot, and its pronounced coronal ridge can also stroke my G-spot with every thrust. That said, if you’re looking for a dildo to target a specific spot, I don’t think this is the right one; it’s more of a blunt instrument, best for days when you really just wanna be filled up and fucked, rather than having particular internal spots satisfied with the exacting precision of something like a Pure Wand or a Seduction. The Carter, like many New York Toy Collective dildos, has a flexible core that allows you to bend the dildo into a curve that suits you, but I’ve found this feature more useful for visual purposes (e.g. posing for strap-on selfies) than for actual fucking, because my vag tends to straighten out the dildo in short order.

This isn’t the sort of dildo that leaves me breathless or weeping after an orgasm, like the Eleven or Double Trouble can. But it’s squishy enough to be comfortable for longer fucks (assuming you keep the lube flowin’), and it looks fantastic in a strap-on. New York Toy Collective is a fabulous, queer-owned company that makes gorgeous dicks and gender affirmation products; I’m happy to support them in any way I can, especially since doing so involves telling you that you absolutely deserve a stunning and satisfying dildo like the Carter.

I bought myself a Crystal Delights Star Delight dildo in late 2018 and have somehow never gotten around to reviewing it at length here. It’s gotta be one of the prettiest dildos in my collection: clear glass, with an aqua-colored gem set into the base. It can be easy to lose yourself in the quasi-hypnotic act of examining it from all angles.

This, I feel, is a good dildo for a lazy masturbator like me. The bumpy texture all along the shaft ensures you get plenty of stimulation with minimal movement and effort. The girth – 1.4″ at its widest – is slim enough that you may not need to warm up before inserting it, especially if you pair it with a good lube (and being made of glass, it pairs well with any type of lube). I can rest the heel of my hand against the base of the Star Delight and gently rock it against my A-spot without needing to think about it or work too hard. The base is unobtrusive enough that I can easily use a vibe with this dildo, and the firmness of the glass makes orgasms with it extra intense.

That low-profile base is also one of the reasons the Star Delight works so well for me during oral sex. It’s become a favorite for my partner to insert while they’re going down on me, because it allows them to stroke my A-spot with the delicious firmness I like, while also attending to my clit. Very few dildos can actually pull this off – most feel awkward for the giver, the receiver, or both – so I’m thrilled to have found one that works reliably well for this purpose. As my partner noted in an earlier blog post, the texture of the dildo is not only stimulating for me but also helps keep the toy anchored in place during oral sex, so they can focus more fully on what their mouth is doing.

My only issue with the Star Delight – aside from the $100+ price tag, about which I can only say, wait for a sale if you can – is that the bumps make it a bit tricky to clean. I usually have to scrub around each bump individually with an old toothbrush or somesuch. But overall this dildo is versatile, useful, and pleasurable – practically everything I want a dildo to be.

10 Things I Wish I’d Known About Pegging

Kate Sloan

The sex act known as pegging is most often written about, in my experience, by two groups of people: vanilla straight people advising other vanilla straight people on how to do it, and, uh, Dan Savage.

Needless to say, this means that a lot of pegging-related media doesn’t provide a full picture of what pegging actually entails and what can make it hot. So here I am, harnessing (ha!) all my queer, kinky experiences with this act to tell you some stuff I wish I’d known before I ever strapped a dick onto me and pushed it inside a butt. Gather round!

1. Lube, lube everywhere. This should be obvious to anyone who’s ever done any kind of anal play, but, you know, a lot of couples attempting pegging for the first time probably never have! You should drizzle a good, butt-friendly lube all over the dildo you’re using, as well as on the outside of the ass you’ll be penetrating. You really can’t overdo it with lube in this case. Go hard or go home!

2. Positioning aids are your friends. Don’t be a hero: it’s okay to accept help with pegging, even if that help comes from a piece of foam meant to elevate the receptive partner’s ass. My Liberator Jaz is my favorite tool for this; slid underneath my partner’s hips before penetration, it makes insertion a whole lot easier and seems to improve contact between my dildo and their prostate. Plus the outer lining can be zipped off and laundered, always a plus for lube-heavy, potentially messy sex acts.

3. It’s okay to be particular about your cock. Why does queer and trans media know and accept that it’s okay to be picky about which strap-on dicks you’ll use, but so much cis-hetero media describes your choice of strap-on as a logistical consideration more than an important personal decision? Answer: because LGBTQ+ folks are typically more used to using “accessories” during sex, to make the experience both physically and emotionally better, so we have more opinions on said accessories. Anyway, regardless of your sexual orientation or gender, if you’ll be wearing a strap-on, you deserve one that makes you feel great – gender-wise, aesthetics-wise, and otherwise-wise. My cock of choice is a glittery Godemiche Ambit and it makes me happy every time I strap it on.

4. Your choice of harness matters. Again: you are allowed to want to customize your setup; you don’t just have to grab the first velcro-strap harness kit you spot at the sex shop! Obviously there may be financial reasons you’d want to go with something simple, but that doesn’t mean you have to pick an ugly harness that you hate, in the name of practicality. You should feel hot in your harness! My Aslan Jaguar is easy to put on and take off, and it makes me feel (and look) gorgeous.

5. Try on your setup before the crucial moment. Much like I would never advise a teenage boy to try condoms for the first time right before having sex (YIKES), I would strongly suggest you get your harness and dildo properly configured long before you’ll be using them to fuck someone. “Show time” has the potential to be awkward enough already without you struggling to get your leg through the straps and your dildo right-side-up! Try getting into and out of your setup a few times so you know exactly how to do it, and maybe have your preferred dildo already in the harness for faster assembly. You and your partner will thank me!

6. Be careful and pay attention. If you’ve never done anal play before, then I wouldn’t blame you for not knowing this, but: a butt is far more delicate than a vag, so you have to fuck it a bit differently. Certainly don’t just ram it in there. Go slower than you think you need to, watch your partner’s face closely, and ask them a lot of questions for guidance. You might be able to thrust with wild abandon once they’re used to the sensation and you’ve got enough lube in the mix, but for the most part, assume you should slow your roll.

7. “Strap-on sex” is a more inclusive term. What even is “pegging,” anyway? Much like “guyliner,” it’s a term adopted by the cis-het community to soothe toxic concerns about the “unmanliness” of things traditionally understood to be for women and/or queer people. Besides which, the term “pegging” was coined to refer to a woman fucking a man with a strap-on, and that may be a limiting word if you or your partner don’t fit neatly into those gender categories. It’s okay to call it “strap-on sex” – and once you do, you might open yourself up to even more sexual possibilities. (There’s far more you can do with a strapped-on cock than just stick it in an ass!)

8. Non-physical types of pleasure are perfectly valid. Based on the influx of “couples’ vibes” and vibrating strap-on accoutrements, it seems like straight cis people are overly hung up on the idea of both partners receiving pleasure at the same time. Queer folks, by contrast, are often used to “taking turns” during sex, in my experience. While there are a whole lotta bells and whistles you could add to your strap-on setup to make it more pleasurable for the wearer (e.g. a bullet vibe tucked behind the dildo, or a ridged base that rubs against you with every thrust), sometimes it’s also fun to just embrace that a particular sex act won’t be directly pleasurable for you, and that’s okay. After all, your partner can get you off at a different point in the sex session, and taking the emphasis off your own junk will help you focus better on fucking your partner well. And that is its own type of pleasure.

9. It’s not humiliating (unless you want it to be). Pegging is too often depicted (especially in straight porn) as a man submitting to a woman’s will by “letting” her fuck him. It’s often presented as humiliating, emasculating, and painful. Now, I’m extremely perverted and am certainly not going to deny you your kinky dynamic if that makes sex more fun for you, but I want you to know that power play doesn’t have to be a part of your pegging sesh. Things can be totally vanilla and equitable between the two of you – or the receptive partner can even be the dominant one in the scene, as I’ve learned when dommy partners have tugged on my leash to force me to fuck them harder. That said, if “submissive bottom” and “dominant top” is truly your dynamic of choice when it comes to pegging, go right ahead and make that happen!

10. It can be super romantic. I’ve honestly found few sex acts as intimate and connective as pegging. Needing to focus that closely on my partner really points out to me how cute and hot they are, and the trust they put in me by letting me fuck them is an incredible compliment. Though some people wax poetic about “lovemaking” in more traditional forms like penis-in-vagina sex, I’ve felt that gooey emotional closeness more often during pegging than during PIV!

What do you wish someone had told you about pegging before you did it?

Review: Blush Novelties Avant Pride P1

Kate Sloan

There have been many debates on my social media timelines recently about objects’ aesthetics versus their usefulness. Some people say, for example, that there’s no reason to keep books once you’ve read them, because you’ve already absorbed the information therein, while others insist books are personal objects worth keeping and curating into visually pleasing collections. Some people tuck their lingerie, neatly folded, into drawers, while others proudly drape their silks and satins everywhere. Some people have a practical lamp hanging from their bedroom ceiling, while others – like me – have a fucking disco ball.

When it comes to sex toys, however, for the most part I am more interested in function than appearance. My favorite vibrators are the Magic Wand and Eroscillator, both widely considered some of the ugliest in the biz. My favorite dildos are made of glass, not because they’re gorgeous (though they are) but because they press firmly against my internal spots. I chose the simple black Liberator Throe, because I want it to keep squirt and blood off my sheets, not jazz up my decor. Y’know?

But when Tabu Toys offered me a product of my choice from their “lesbian sex toys” section (which, by the way, other types of people can use these toys, and lesbians can use other types of toys, and not all lesbians are cis women!), my eyes fixed immediately on the Blush Avant Pride P1 dildo. I had no idea if it would work for me, or for my partners. I just knew it looked gay as heck and I wanted it.

Pegging is still a relatively new thing for me, and wearing a cock still feels a little odd. It helps to use dicks that are glitzy and bright, dicks that make me feel aggressively girly, dicks that pointedly are not flesh-and-blood dicks. So I figured I would like strapping on the P1 and pushing it into my partner.

Before I go any further, I gotta say: this dildo is smaller than I was expecting. At only 6 inches total in length, it’s not ideal if you or your receiving partner are fans of deep penetration. Once you factor in the base and the harness, there’s really only about 5 inches of insertable length. That’s fine for hitting most G-spots and prostates, but it doesn’t give you a whole lotta leeway.

It has a big bump near the base that tops out at 1.4″ wide, but I feel it’s a bit oddly positioned: it doesn’t even go in unless I push almost uncomfortably deep, whether I’m pegging a partner or just fucking myself with this toy. The head is smaller, and it does press against good spots, but there’s no “wow” factor. It’s like someone is warming up my G-spot with one gentle finger, rather than pounding against it with two or three strong ones. My partner agreed: he said it didn’t leave him panting from prostate stimulation the way something made of steel or firmer silicone can, but it was enjoyable nonetheless.

The neck of the toy, too, leaves something to be desired. It’s nicely shaped – I like the way it gently tapers from the head, making my vag want to pull the toy deeper – but it’s just too floppy to make this dildo a decent G-spotter or prostate toy. Those spots tend to need firm touch, and the P1 bends under pressure.

All of that said – the aesthetics of this toy still appeal to me. I feel cute wearing it; I like seeing it on my nightstand; I dream of wearing it strapped into my red leather thigh harness to some kind of X-rated Pride event someday. It looks adorable sliding in and out of someone’s mouth, like a vibrant little lollipop. My partner likes how the colored stripes give you a way to measure how much of the toy you take on each try, so you can challenge yourself to take more: “I got up to blue this time!”

I admire that Blush offers high-quality silicone dildos at reasonable prices – this one is $45 – and that much of their marketing is relatively gender-neutral. This is a dildo I might recommend for someone who was new to prostate stimulation and/or pegging and wanted something comfortable and unintimidating; it’s just not going to be a go-to for people like me and my partner, who’ve already stuck a bunch of stuff in our holes and have grander visions for them now.

There should be more rainbow dicks in the world, is what I’m saying.

 

Thanks to Tabu Toys for sending me the Blush Novelties Avant Pride P1 to try! This review was sponsored, and as always, all writing and opinions are my own.

25 Amazing Sexual Experiences I Had At Age 25

Kate Sloan

I’m 26 today, babes! The past few years have been good to me, sex-wise: I got real slutty at age 23, learned a lot about my kinks and relationship style at 24, and settled into a more confident sexual existence at 25. To celebrate this minor milestone, here’s a list of 25 amazing sexual experiences I had while I was 25!

1. Dated a sadist. Despite identifying as a masochist for a few years, it wasn’t until just after my 25th birthday that I started seeing someone who self-identified as a sadist. I got spanked/slapped/scratched a lot in that relationship and it was great!

2. Got tied up. Rope bondage is a trip! I’ve dated two different rope aficionados within the past year, and playing with them showed me that being a rope bottom gets me real subspacey real fast. All that pressure, slowness, and focus puts me into a meditative space that’s unlike almost anything else I’ve experienced.

3. Pegged someone. I didn’t think I would like it, but I did. Innnteresting!

4. Used a blowjob mirror. I’ve been reviewing sex toys for over six years and this was one of the most terrifying toys I’ve tested, though it was also supremely satisfying and fun.

5. Experimented with “forced orgasm” play. I tried this with a few different partners and it typically involved them strapping me down and using a strong vibe on me until I couldn’t help but come. Very fun, would recommend!

6. Demo-bottomed for a spanking workshop. I took my dress off in front of a bunch of strangers and got my ass beat, which was… not as nervewracking as I thought it was gonna be. Maybe I have a teensy exhibitionist streak?

7. Dated a daddy dom. A couple of them, actually. DD/lg has been a fixture of my perv-brain for a few years but this was the first year when I actually tried it with real-life partners, and goddd, I love it.

8. Got a professional erotic massage. And actually had an orgasm from it, which I wasn’t expecting! It happened a few days after a breakup, which made it feel even more healing and necessary.

9. Fucked in an alley. I’d made out in many alleys before. I’d gotten spanked in a couple of alleys. This was the first year I actually had sex in an alley. It was lovely.

10. Had sex in my own place. I moved out of my parents’ house last September, and while I haven’t had a ton of sex in my own bedroom since then (tending, instead, to bang at partners’ houses or a local sex club), it was nice to christen my own space with sexual fluids ASAP. A real adulthood milestone!

11. Went to a sex tradeshow as foreplay. When you and your FWB are both huge sex toy nerds, there are few better pre-sex activities than trawling a tradeshow to see what’s new and hot. I bought a vibe and an impact implement, we flirted and giggled and made bad jokes, and then we had incredible sex at a club. A+ day, 10/10, would do again.

12. Got collared. Collars have been an important kink symbol to me for a long time but I’d never had one that was linked to a specific partner and made me “theirs.” My Sir had never collared anyone before me, either, so it was a super special thing for both of us when he put a collar on me in a Brooklyn hotel room just before we went to see my favorite band and exchanged our first I-love-you’s. So romantic!

13. Tried knifeplay. My pal Dick Wound is a hell of a knife top, so we negotiated some scenes so I could lightly explore my burgeoning interest in knives. It was scary, but in a safe, fun, consensual way. Oh, and a hot way. That, too.

14. Got spanked with a lightsaber. And also a butcher’s cleaver. (Which one would you guess hurt more?)

15. Did educational cam shows. I’ve long offered cam shows of the typically titillating variety, but this year I had a client who genuinely wanted to learn about vulvovaginal anatomy, so I got to patiently demonstrate and explain how I touch myself. Such a fun time!

16. Had a sugar daddy. This was a specific flavor of submission I had never sampled before, and wow, it was exhilarating. Money is so tied up in our personal psychology that I found it was easy to make it sexy, even though I’d never viewed it that way before.

17. Had actually good phone sex. Um, shout-out to people who have a way with dirty talk, because a) I sure don’t, and b) they can make me come really hard. Enough said.

18. Finally had sex with someone after a whole month of only sexting and phone sex. Love a good slow burn, am I right? It turns out you can fuck someone a whole lot better if you have a month’s worth of their sexy communiqué to refer to.

19. Shined a partner’s shoes. I will write about this in more detail when my head stops spinning from the incredible, meditative subspace it put me into. Neither of us had tried bootblacking in any context before, and once we did it together, we knew immediately that we liked it a lot.

20. Played with my wink kink more deliberately. Being winked at, in the right context, has long turned me on, but I’ve rarely had partners who knew how to harness that power to their advantage. My current boyfriend sure does, though. Winking as flirting, winking as foreplay, winking as a hypnotic induction… Woof.

21. Got hypnotized. A whole bunch. Ohhh, it’s so relaxing and hot. I love it.

22. Gave a BJ purely for my own pleasure. This experiment was inspired by my friend Caitlin K. Roberts and a Masters and Johnson concept she taught me about, “sensate focus.” It’s the practice of touching someone else for your own tactile enjoyment, and it can be transformative. I’d never given a blowjob quite like this before, and it really shifted my perspective on oral sex in general!

23. Sucked a dick through a glory hole. Granted, it’s not quite the Full Glory Hole Experience™ if you know exactly whose dick you’re sucking (or at least, I’m sure some purists would argue that), but I was still glad I got to try it. It’s been a fantasy of mine for a long time.

24. Received electrostimulation. I wasn’t sure how I would feel about getting painfully zapped with a Neon Wand, but, like many other forms of kinky pain, it made me subspacey and happy. And I’ll never forget how gleeful I got watching my boyfriend painstakingly try out each attachment on his own arm at various different settings to make sure he knew what he’d be inflicting on me before he did it. Swoon-o-rama.

25. Got “treated for hysteria,” i.e. did a medical-play scene centered around the Victorian notion of “female hysteria” being curable by manual and mechanical clitoral stimulation until “hysterical paroxysm.” The image of my boyfriend in a vaguely doctor-esque white T-shirt telling me, “That’s right, Kate, let go, let it happen” while holding a Doxy to my clit is forever burned into my brain…

What’s the most amazing thing you did when you were 25?

Obscenity, Authenticity, and Coming Out: My Day at the The Feminist Porn Conference

Kate Sloan

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On Friday night, I attended the Feminist Porn Awards, an annual event held by my local sex shop Good For Her. I hadn’t planned on going, because I’ve been a little strapped for cash lately, but my friend happened to have an extra ticket and invited me along at the last minute. Obviously, I was thrilled.

The awards were really exciting and a lot of well-deserved films took home Crystal Delights butt plug trophies. I was especially pleased that Fifty Shades of Dylan Ryan (which I loved) received the prize for best kink film, and that so many oppressed groups were honored – for example, in Nica Noelle’s awesome trans-positive flick Forbidden Lovers, and Matthew Clark’s short film Krutch, which focuses on disability and sex.

Honestly, though, it was sort of hard to concentrate on the awards because I was surrounded by so many hot porn stars I could hardly breathe. Dylan Ryan was a few seats to my left, Wolf Hudson was to my right, and directly in front of me were James Darling and Jiz Lee. I have watched all of these people fuck, many times, and have gotten off doing it. I’ve met some of my favorite celebrities before, but seeing someone in person who’s actually induced an orgasm in you (however indirectly) is quite a different story. (And yes, I was way too shy to speak to any of them!)

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The next day, I got up bright and early for the Feminist Porn Conference, put together by Tristan Taormino to coincide with the recent release of the Feminist Porn Book (a great read which I highly recommend). My boyfriend, whose career and hobbies have nothing to do with sex, had nonetheless enthusiastically agreed to come with me, so we went together.

The first session we attended was Lesbo Retro: A Dyke Porn Retrospective, hosted by Shar Rednour and Nan Kinney, two totally captivating dykes associated with iconic lesbian porn companies like Fatale Media and On Our Backs. It was an hour of lezzie porn from the ‘60s up through the ’00s. A lot of it was silly and strange – voluminous hair (both on performers’ heads and in their pubic regions), stilted dialogue, “dyke drama” screaming matches – but I walked out of it with damp panties anyhow. (What can I say? I love a good cunnilingus scene.)

Shar and Nan recalled when they couldn’t ship media to certain zip codes because of the obscenity laws that existed there. Sexual acts like fisting and female ejaculation were considered too extreme to be legal. They would have been risking jail time by distributing those materials to some areas, mostly in the south. I said a little prayer of gratitude for the internet and its magical powers of distribution, as well as for the trailblazers (like Shar and Nan!) who ushered us into our more sex-positive time.

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The second session we attended was To Be Real: Authenticity in Queer & Feminist Porn. It featured Jiz Lee (swoon), Dylan Ryan (also swoon), Shar Rednour again, and Dr. Jill Bakehorn, a sociologist whose research has focused on feminist porn.

The discussion was lively and thought-provoking. Many questions were raised: what is authenticity? How do we know if something is authentic? How can something as performative as porn ever really be authentic? Are we using the word “authentic” when we really mean something else, like sincerity or relatability? And if it gets us off, does it really matter whether or not it’s authentic?

This conversation really hit home for me, because although I’ve often told myself and others that I like “authentic” porn best, sometimes I watch porn that’s probably as genuine as any but just doesn’t do a damn thing for me – like porn where a performer isn’t making any noise, or is making noise but in a way that’s gratingly repetitive and monotonous. Who am I to say that that’s not how those people genuinely react to sexual stimulation? It would be more accurate to say that I simply like porn that suits my tastes, regardless of how genuine it may or may not be.

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Next up was a panel called Being Out Now: How Performers Navigate Sexual Morality and Media Representation. It featured Tina Horn and James Darling (both favorites of mine, both pictured above) as well as Arabelle Raphael, Bianca Stone, Jiz Lee, and Quinn Cassidy.

This panel’s contributors were amazingly diverse in experience and identity. All of them do porn, all of them have at least dabbled in other kinds of sex work (most still do it), two identify as genderqueer, one as trans. All come from different sorts of families with different tolerance levels for what they do and who they are.

There was much discussion about whether one is obligated to come out, and how to remain true to oneself even in situations where one chooses not to come out (a choice usually made out of a desire to maintain safety for oneself and/or the people one is close to). For example, Arabelle suggested that sex workers who don’t want to come out can still vocally support sex workers’ rights when talking to people they’re not out to.

It was interesting to hear the perspective of a white cis male, Quinn Cassidy, in this feminist discourse. He pointed out that the parameters of a person’s “closet” can change depending on what environments that person exists in – meaning, for example, that he often has to “come out” as a cis male in queer communities that may assume he is genderqueer.

Moderator Tina Horn asked the audience to participate in an exercise: we were told to raise our hands if we are “out” about our involvement in the sex world, first to parents, then to siblings, extended family, the world at large, and our employers. It was interesting that so many people (including several of the panelists) said they are out to the internet and the world, but not to their aunts, uncles, and grandparents.

The panel concluded with a discussion on how to be a good ally to sex workers, which included advice like “Listen to them” and “Don’t call yourself a sex worker if you’ve only shot one queer porn scene” and “Start a chapter of SWOP in your area.”

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The last session we attended was a Q&A with Shine Louise Houston, the creator of Crash Pad Series, a huge presence in today’s feminist queer porn world. I’ve reviewed a few Crash Pad scenes before (here, here, and here) and I’m a huge fan of the site.

Shine screened a video she made in which she “interviews herself” via the magic of post-production. The interview was funny and honest, like Shine herself. One thing she mentioned which struck me as particularly interesting is that she almost never jerks off to her own porn, even though the whole Crash Pad Series is based around her personal fantasies of voyeurism. She also pointed out that porn is “about more than getting off” – when done well, it can be a medium for pushing boundaries, for exercising one’s right to free speech, and for normalizing certain sex acts so people feel they have permission to explore. Hear hear!

The Q&A session after the video ended up being mostly a discussion about coming out as a pornographer, after Shine confessed that she isn’t out to her kids and doesn’t plan on changing that in the foreseeable future. While I appreciated that some of the audience members felt strongly about coming out as a form of political activism (“being militantly out,” as Quinn Cassidy had phrased it earlier in the day), I didn’t like that some of them seemed to be shaming Shine for her choices. I think everyone gets to choose whether or not they want to come out, and to whom, and it isn’t helpful to shame someone for staying in the closet if that’s what they want to do.

It was also interesting to hear that people frequently complain to Shine about her site not being diverse enough, but that she also receives complaints when she puts a cis male on the site (some past examples include Ned Mayhem and Mickey Mod). How sad that the queer community, known for diversity and acceptance, would revolt against cis guys even if they’re having sex in deliciously transgressive ways.

Just before leaving, I bought a copy of Tristan Taormino’s Expert Guide to Pegging (which had nabbed Tristan the Smutty Schoolteacher award the night before, yay!). Then I headed home, smiling and feeling wonderfully enlightened.

Photo credits: the Feminist Porn Awards, Wikipedia, Crash Pad Series, and Queer Porn Review.