Susie Bright's Journal

A Little Truth About Those Embarrassing "Post Feminist" Memoirs

A tough, gorgeous, take-no-prisoners femme searches for a butch who's got the balls to top her. She rejects a million wusses on the way, all too flimsy to hold her egg sac. 

The latest entry is a memoir by Alisa Valdes Rodriguez, called The Feminist and the Cowboy, reviewed by Noah Berlatsky at The Atlantic: "Woman Rejects Feminism, Continues to Disdain Femininity."

When Miss Rodriguez finds her starmate, the Big Cowboy presumeably fucks her silly— and I'm guessing she came so hard she finally got the good night's sleep she'd been searching for.

Mouthy, bossy femmes— who happen to be submissive in bed— crave strong medicine. They can't just roll over on their backs and mew for the average Walter Mitty emo-boy. Tough bottoms need a top they can look up to.

You'd think Rodriguez had never known a gay leatherman to imagine she was so unique.

What critic Noah can't abide, is that Valdes, like some other revisionist Divas, revels in her newly-discovered submissive qualities by claiming that she rejects "feminism"--- that she had to dump all that women's lib stuff to get peace of mind. 

Yeah, I've read it a million times, the cliché: "I used to be a feminist, but now I've discovered the 'Natural Order' and my man who treats me right— What a relief."

Cringe.

It's a jinx. The women who write these declarations typically find themselves in divorce court with decidedly feminist issues within months of writing these self-abnegating confessions. Boy, does their attorney get an earful.

If you are crazy enough to write a story and yell: I'm NOT a feminist, dammit!— the Furies seize upon you; you are lashed upon the cloven hooves of a million male chauvinist pigs. Betrayal is in the wings.

Whether it's suddenly-dingbat Alisa or liberal Noah, they both miss the sex motive that lies underneath all the shouting. 

People want to get fucked the way they want to get fucked— and then make up the most ridiculous rationalizations to explain themselves.

"Feminism" can just get in line with all the other absurd things lovers point the finger at, to take the attention away from their bright red cheeks. It's okay, honey, you can come out of the kink closet.

The mistake of the feminist apologists is taking both their precious orgasm, and gender theater SO seriously. They need a backstage pass to kink reality.

It's the legacy of purtianism to lie about what lust "means," the endless cognitive dissonance— nothing else.  The Liar Prude talking, not the honest observer.

Noah writes in his review: "It's true that feminists from Julia Serano to... Susie Bright have, in different ways, tried to figure out a way to create a feminism that embraces traditional femininity."

What? That description cracks me up. He's well-intentioned, right? No one, from my mother to my worst enemy, would say, "Susie embraces traditional femininity." Mostly because I'm such a klutz— if I embrace traditional femininity in my next life, I hope it involves gliding across floors, perfect smiles, and never dropping a stitch.

I have embraced gender theater in all its campy glory, however-- never taking it as science or inevitablity, cross-switching as I please, delighting in femme and butch drag. That's what "masculine" and "feminine" is— don't try to make something more out of it. There is no natural in the dark, my sweet.

 I have a lot of empathy for femme bottoms, although I notice that sometimes they just wake up one morning and feel like a randy horned goat. One day their Big Strong Cowboy wants to curl up in a ball— that happens too. It's all good.

Sugar and spice and everthing nice...

Slugs and snail and puppy dog tails...

You can have it all between the sheets and not make an ass of yourself trying to spin an anti-feminist, or "traditionally feminine"  theory about it! 

PostScript

This is tragic:

The day after I posted my Cassandra-like warning, Alisa Valdes, the author of The Feminist & the Cowboy, wrote on her blog that her lover had knocked her up, then immediately abandoned her, "took her back" after "miscarriage," beat the crap out of her multiple times, raped her, and threatened to kill her-- she was terrified enough at one point to jump out of a moving truck and limp 16 miles bloody for help. She hasn't seen him since.... JESUS!  

"What I actually wrote," she said in her blog post,"was a handbook for women on how to fall in love with a manipulative, controlling, abusive narcissist.”

The night after she posted her devastating confession, her agent/publishertold her to take the admission down, that she was ruining her book's future. So she did. But she's still talking about it. She seems confused and torn, like so many people  with "Stockholm Syndrome."

I don't appreciate being prescient about things like this. You can only watch this crime so many times before you know the how the story ends— it's horrible.

If Alisa by some miracle is reading this:

—You can get what you want sexually without enduring abuse at the hands of psychos and bigots. There are butch tops, both male and female, who are kind, egalitarian, sane, and dare I mention it, "feminist." You are not the "weaker sex," but you are being abused— and if it doesn't end with your demise, it will certainly end in bitterness. I hope you get help and I hope you get help from sex-positive comrades— not "romance" exploiters or sexist scolds.

 

Illustration: "Bedtime for Frances,"  drawing by Garth Williams

New Year's Soup for a New Kinda Day

1 quart chicken broth

1 Tbsp. salt

1/4 cup Kümmel (caraway liqueur, found in any decent liquor store)

1 leek, diced— green tough part excluded

1 shallot clove, diced

3-4 cups potatoes, peeled and diced

1 1/2 cups milk

Salt and pepper to taste

2 Tbsp. dill

2-3 Tbsp. butter

3 Tbsp. goat cheese

Chopped fresh parsley

 

Potato soup, as found in cafeterias and cans, is forgettable at best.

But this recipe is a revelation— it will turn your head around. It's what you need for a brand new year. It's one of my favorite potato potions of any kind.

Peel and dice up the potatoes; don't cheat. Dice the leeks and shallot.

Simmer the vegetables in your broth until tender, ~15-20 minutes. Yes, you could simply use onion, but a more exotic allium makes a flavor difference here.

When the veggies are tender, add the milk, butter, and dill, and continue at low simmer for another 15-20 minutes. The potatoes will be falling apart; yum.

Add the goat cheese and blend it in as it melts. Salt and pepper to taste. Stir in fresh chopped parsley and serve.

I first made a version of this recipe as it appears in Anna Thomas' Vegetarian Epicure, where she dedicates the soup to her "paramour," Louis. I was 17 at the time and very romantic, so her lover's note appealed to me— plus, it was an easy ticket for my novice culinary skills.

Thomas prescribes water (not broth), all leeks, sour cream (instead of goat cheese) and caraway seeds instead of kummel. I didn't have caraway seeds in my cupboard today, but I had this exotic booze. MY GOD, what a revelation. 

Here's what my paramour said after his first bowl: "I have fallen love with you all over again."

Happy New Love and New Year!

 

Susie, Live!

Tweets by @susiebright

Letter from Tsuarah in Brooklyn After the Hurricane

Hi Susie,
 
I'm safe and thank you for your love and concern.
 
My building was not offically in the"A" zone.
The "A" zone started in the middle of Water Street
in front of my building on the water side.
No one here would have left anyway.
 
It was amazing to watch,the storm; the sky was purple and
Manhattan invisible behind the rain. The wind sounded like a roar,
an enormous roar.

The surge came around 8:30 pm, the water rose so high it jumped the railing
in the park, spilled out to cover Water Street and went 1/3  way up Old Fulton St. in front of the house.
I thought if we were a boat we might float away but we did not.
The basement flooded and the antiquated boiler is ruined, but the
most important thing every one stayed safe.
 
Some of the people here lost electricity but I was lucky
and still have it. There was some good white wine left
which I drank while listening to the Best of Elvis.
 
One thing though, my computer and phone were out. I could see the wire dangling 
in front of my window.
I slept some and then at 6am went up on the roof and tacked
the wire back up so I'm able to write you. By then the water was
all gone, pulled back into the ocean by the tides. You know the
East River is not really a river but a salt water estuary of the Atlantic.
 
During the surge there were plenty of police cars and emergency
vehicles outside as well as on lookers who came out to take
pictures. The police worked hard to keep the onlookers away
from the water because they were afraid there were electric
wires in the water and the gawkers would get electrocuted.
 
Much love,
Tsaurah

Inspired By Andrea -- Essays on Lust, Aggression, Porn, and The Female Gaze

Over the years, I've received a number of queries about my writing on the subject of Andrea Dworkin's feminist philosophies and sexual politics.

I decided to collect all my Dworkin-related work into one tidy ebook, which I've titled:

Inspired By Andrea:

Essays on Lust, Aggression, Porn, & The Female Gaze

That I Might Not Have Written If Not for Her

 

Table of Contents:

The Baffling Case of Andrea Dworkin

Spankful

Story of O Birthday Party

Are Women Making Porn Movies?

As Porn As We Wanna Be

Lesbian Lowdown

The Prime of Miss Kitty MacKinnon

The Blatant Lesbian Image

Dyke

Cunt

Soaking Feminism 

Vargas Girls: Susie’s Vargas in Drag, & Andrea’s Blonde Sambos 

Andrea Dworkin Has Died

These are essays and stories I've written from the mid-80s to today. Some are scholarly; others were written as consumer advice; some were popular features in counterculture and mainstream media. 

I think you will find it to be everything you ever wanted to know on the topic from the sex-positive-feminist-pornographer side of the tracks, and a very good introduction to the "other side" as well.

After you've read it, I would welcome your thoughtful feedback. Thank you so much for all your interest... I've been very moved to re-read these stories and think about all that has happened in the past thirty years since this conversation began.

 

Thanks to all 11,000 of you-- yes!-- who weighed in on the cover contest. It was a 50/50 split vote, the red domme vs. the mantis. I decided to use both!  They were each designed by the amazing Stewart A. Williams.

The Golden Hardcore and the Shimmering Dyke-Core - The Erotic Screen

I have a new book out, about old-school porn and the erotic video revolution. It's called: 

The Erotic Screen: Volume 1 —

The Golden Hardcore and the Shimmering Dyke-Core 

The book is a "live" history of erotic cinema before the Internet— from the Golden Age of lavish 35mm hardcore, to the video-inspired “Porno Spring,” initiated by none other than punk, feminist, and lesbian video-makers.   

I'm so curious to hear your reactions.

 

Here's the introduction: "Birth of a Blue Movie Critic."

And here's the "Table of Contents."

 

If you are:

Crazy for movies; 

Fascinated with the overlap of Hollywood, Indies, and Blue Cinema; 

An afficionado of porn director and porn star history; or,

Seriously into the nature of sex work on film;

—You'll go cuckoo for the whole thing.

This first volume includes all my stories on blue movies and the porn biz, covering 1967-1989.

There's my original “X-Rated Advisor” columns from Penthouse Forum, my killed story about the history of Jim Crow in the Adult Industry, plus uncommonly candid interviews from the 1980s with legendary artists like Russ Meyer, John Leslie, Sharon Mitchell, Jeannie Pepper, Christopher Rage... and many more.

Chapters include: 

The bizarre beginnings of How-To Sex Videos,

the unexpected taboos of erotic foreign cinema,  

the punk nationalist "Tampon Tango!" from Japan,  

The Last of Traci Lords,

The Eve of John Holmes’ Departure,

the last word on “What Women Want,"

my blue-movie favorites, (both X and R-rated),

the never-spoken realities behind a porn shoot, the invention of the “Blatant Lesbian Image”

— plus dozens of fan questions answered with panache and detail!  

Finally, you might like to watch this video of me recounting the improbable story how I ended up with a notebook in my hand at the Pussycat Theater...  This was the inspiration for the whole saga.

When you finish reading The Erotic Screen, I'd love to hear your review— on your blog, on Amazon, Good-Reads, wherever you write your opinions. Please do send me the link so I can write you back.  And you can always email me any feedback you may have...

All my best, and Clits Up!

Susie

P.S. 
 There is no paperback. The advantage of the e-book is that the chapters are linked to videos, illustrations, and bio material that are ideal for reading on your computer or your e-book reader, iPad, etc. Enjoy! 

You don't need a special device to read a Kindle book; they look great on any normal computer or tablet, ipod, iphons, or cell-phone.... Here's all you need.

 Cover design by Stewart Williams.

A Cocktail Legend is Born— "The Pendino"

 

A moment, a genuine moment in cocktail legend, has transpired. —While grilling chicken and eggplant on the Weber.

Messieurs et Mesdames, je vous donne:

 

The Pendino

2 oz. Bombay Sapphire London Dry Gin

1 oz Marie Brizard Apry (or Apricot Brandy)

1/2 oz. Nocino

1/2 a full, juicy lime

 

Shake in an iced cocktail shaker, and strain into a ice-filled highball glass.

Garnish with lime wheel.

Inspired by the iconic Pendennis Cocktail, devastated in style by homemade Nocino. A joint effort by Master Bailiff and Miss Bright.

You can also buy the store brand of Nocino, happily. 

But if you have a walnut tree in your vicinity, you should be horsewhipped if you're not making this tincture every summer. It's so easy, and yet the result is so astounding, so multi-Leary-layered, people will think you're a magician.

He Would Give His Hawk to Any Man Who Would Ask For It

Most of my now-ancient blog is my own diary and opinion. Occasionally I must press something in between its pages like a butterfly wing. This is one of those times.

—A letter from Ted Hughes, in 1986, to his 23-year-old son, Nicholas, reprinted from the Letters of Ted Hughes.

 

Dear Nick, 

I hope things are clearing. It did cross my mind, last summer, that you were under strains of an odd sort. I expect, like many another, you'll spend your life oscillating between fierce relationships that become tunnel traps, and sudden escapes into wide freedom when the whole world seems to be just there for the taking.

Nobody's solved it. You solve it as you get older, when you reach the point where you've tasted so much that you can somehow sacrifice certain things more easily, and you have a more tolerant view of things like possessiveness (your own) and a broader acceptance of the pains and the losses.

I came to America, when I was 27, and lived there three years as if I were living inside a damart sock—I lived in there with your mother. We made hardly any friends, no close ones, and neither of us ever did anything the other didn't want wholeheartedly to do.

(It meant, Nicholas, that meeting any female between 17 and 39 was out. Your mother banished all her old friends, girl friends, in case one of them set eyes on me—presumably. And if she saw me talking with a girl student, I was in court. Foolish of her, and foolish of me to encourage her to think her laws were reasonable. But most people are the same. I was quite happy to live like that, for some years.)

Since the only thing we both wanted to do was write, our lives disappeared into the blank page. My three years in America disappeared like a Rip Van Winkle snooze.

Why didn't I explore America then? I wanted to. I knew it was there. Ten years later we could have done it, because by then we would have learned, maybe, that one person cannot live within another's magic circle, as an enchanted prisoner.

So take this new opportunity to look about and fill your lungs with that fantastic land, while it and you are still there. That was a most curious and interesting remark you made about feeling, occasionally, very childish, in certain situations.

Nicholas, don't you know about people this first and most crucial fact: every single one is, and is painfully every moment aware of it, still a child. To get beyond the age of about eight is not permitted to this primate—except in a very special way, which I'll try to explain.

When I came to Lake Victoria, it was quite obvious to me that in some of the most important ways you are much more mature than I am. And your self-reliance, your Independence, your general boldness in exposing yourself to new and to-most-people-very-alarming situations, and your phenomenal ability to carry through your plans to the last practical detail (I know it probably doesn't feel like that to you, but that's how it looks to the rest of us, who simply look on in envy), is the sort of real maturity that not one in a thousand ever come near. As you know.

But in many other ways obviously you are still childish—how could you not be, you alone among mankind? It's something people don't discuss, because it's something most people are aware of only as a general crisis of sense of inadequacy, or helpless dependence, or pointless loneliness, or a sense of not having a strong enough ego to meet and master inner storms that come from an unexpected angle. But not many people realise that it is, in fact, the suffering of the child inside them.

Everybody tries to protect this vulnerable two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight-year-old inside, and to acquire skills and aptitudes for dealing with the situations that threaten to overwhelm it. So everybody develops a whole armour of secondary self, the artificially constructed being that deals with the outer world, and the crush of circumstances.

And when we meet people this is what we usually meet. And if this is the only part of them we meet we're likely to get a rough time, and to end up making 'no contact'.

But when you develop a strong divining sense for the child behind that armour, and you make your dealings and negotiations only with that child, you find that everybody becomes, in a way, like your own child. It's an intangible thing. But they too sense when that is what you are appealing to, and they respond with an impulse of real life, you get a little flash of the essential person, which is the child.

Usually, that child is a wretchedly isolated undeveloped little being. It's been protected by the efficient armour, it's never participated in life, it's never been exposed to living and to managing the person's affairs, it's never been given responsibility for taking the brunt. And it's never properly lived. That's how it is in almost everybody. And that little creature is sitting there, behind the armour, peering through the slits. And in its own self, it is still unprotected, incapable, inexperienced.

Every single person is vulnerable to unexpected defeat in this inmost emotional self. At every moment, behind the most efficient seeming adult exterior, the whole world of the person's childhood is being carefully held like a glass of water bulging above the brim. And in fact, that child is the only real thing in them. It's their humanity, their real individuality, the one that can't understand why it was born and that knows it will have to die, in no matter how crowded a place, quite on its own. That's the carrier of all the living qualities. It's the centre of all the possible magic and revelation.

What doesn't come out of that creature isn't worth having, or it's worth having only as a tool—for that creature to use and turn to account and make meaningful.

So there it is. And the sense of itself, in that little being, at its core, is what it always was. But since that artificial secondary self took over the control of life around the age of eight, and relegated the real, vulnerable, supersensitive, suffering self back into its nursery, it has lacked training, this inner prisoner. And so, wherever life takes it by surprise, and suddenly the artificial self of adaptations proves inadequate, and fails to ward off the invasion of raw experience, that inner self is thrown into the front line—unprepared, with all its childhood terrors round its ears.

And yet that's the moment it wants. That's where it comes alive—even if only to be overwhelmed and bewildered and hurt. And that's where it calls up its own resources—not artificial aids, picked up outside, but real inner resources, real biological ability to cope, and to turn to account, and to enjoy.

That's the paradox: the only time most people feel alive is when they're suffering, when something overwhelms their ordinary, careful armour, and the naked child is flung out onto the world. That's why the things that are worst to undergo are best to remember.

But when that child gets buried away under their adaptive and protective shells—he becomes one of the walking dead, a monster. So when you realise you've gone a few weeks and haven't felt that awful struggle of your childish self—struggling to lift itself out of its inadequacy and incompetence—you'll know you've gone some weeks without meeting new challenge, and without growing, and that you've gone some weeks towards losing touch with yourself.

The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated.

And the only thing people regret is that they didn't live boldly enough, that they didn't invest enough heart, didn't love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.

It was a saying about noble figures in old Irish poems—he would give his hawk to any man that asked for it, yet he loved his hawk better than men nowadays love their bride of tomorrow. He would mourn a dog with more grief than men nowadays mourn their fathers.

And that's how we measure out our real respect for people—by the degree of feeling they can register, the voltage of life they can carry and tolerate—and enjoy.

End of sermon. As Buddha says: live like a mighty river. And as the old Greeks said: live as though all your ancestors were living again through you.

 

Thanks to Letters of Note for introducing me to this letter. Photo of young Nicholas Hughes from The Keating Blog.

Susie's Open Audition for "Sex and the Single Girl" -- Are You My Dream Actress?

 

Hey Pussycat! — Do you have a sultry delivery?

Audible Editor-at-Large, Susie Bright, seeks the perfect voice to bring Sex and the Single Girl to life; we invite all actors to submit online auditions.

Let me hear you purr and scratch! —Imagine Ru Paul crossed with Lauren Bacall and a soupçon of Dolly Parton. (Helen Gurley Brown, the book's author, was a New Yorker by way of the Ozarks!)

Audible Studios seeks the perfect voice to capture the shrewd, sophisticated, audacious sensibility in a first-ever audio production of the iconic 1962 book.

We invite actors to participate in an online audition for the work by submitting a recording of Sex and the Single Girl’s introduction at www.acx.com/singlegirl.

Audible will produce the audiobook immediately upon announcing the chosen actor. (Yes, you do get paid, kitten... handsomely).

“We were all saddened about Gurley Brown’s recent passing, but we welcome this opportunity to keep her voice alive and to bring a new audience to her most significant work,” said Audible publisher Beth Anderson. “Sex and the Single Girl has sold millions of copies in print, and its influence continues to reverberate throughout the culture, from Sex and the City to Mad Men. 

The audition text (3 pages) for Sex and the Single Girl can be found at www.acx.com/singlegirl.  

(If you haven't signed up for ACX yet— and if you're an actor, MY GOD DO IT NOW— just register— after that, the audition instructions are simple. You might end up auditioning for a whole bunch of other books!)

“Sex and the Single Girl is a ball to read,” said renowned feminist sex writer and Editor-at-Large Susie Bright, who acquired the audio rights for Audible. “It’s the most radical work Helen Gurley Brown ever published. The right actor, with the right sass and wit, will make Helen’s voice even more captivating.”

Bright added, “Helen Gurley Brown had a very sexy voice. No wonder she always got her way on the phone.”  

Bright negotiated the deal, for world audio rights, with publisher Carole Stuart at Barricade Books, which brought the book back into print in 2003.

Audible Studios’ acquisition efforts continue to revitalize backlist gems in audio, from the acclaimed 2009 production of John Irving’s A Prayer for Owen Meany to forthcoming recordings of Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried and Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s.

Photo Credit: Natalie Wood in the 1964 film version of Sex and the Single Girl. Yes, she's adorable to look at, but we bet your vocal talents can knock her out of the park! 

 

Catullus 101, for Bill Brent

 

Multas per gentes et multa per aequora vectus

Carried through many nations and over many seas

 

advenio has miseras frater ad inferias

I arrive, brother, for these wretched funeral rites

 

ut te postremo donarem munere mortis

so that I might present you with the last tribute of death

 

et mutam nequiquam alloquerer cinerem 

and speak in vain to silent ash

 

quandoqudem Fortuna mihi tete abstulit ipsum

since Fortune has carried away from me, you in the flesh

 

heu msier indigne frater adempte mihi

Alas, poor brother, unfairly taken away from me

 

nunc tamen interea haec prisco quae more parentum

now in the meantime, nevertheless, these things which in the ancient custom of ancestors

 

tradita sunt tristi menere ad inferias

are handed over as a sad tribute to the rites

 

accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu

receive, dripping much with brotherly weeping

 

atque in perpetuum frater ave atque vale 

And forever, brother, hail and farewell.

 

Our dear friend and comrade, sexual and literary inspiration, Bill Brent checked out this past weekend. "Each of us wants to hear someone shouting back as we scream into the abyss." —We hear you, Bill; we're screaming too and we hear every single word.