Agog

Lady Gaga attended the MTV Awards as her male alter-ego, Jo Calderone. Naturally, this caused quite a stir among the media, which immediately began digging up all the tidbits on the performance (for it was a performance, make no mistake) that they could. Some of the resulting coverage was obviously put out by people not familiar with drag ("OMG! SHE WORE A FAKE PENIS!!!" Uh... it's called packing.) while some of it was pretty interesting.

For example, apparently Jo used the men's restroom. If it's true (I take all celebrity gossip rags with a mountain of salt), it's a neat commentary on how silly gender-segregated bathrooms are in general.

I also found it amusing that she went in drag for her award in the Best Female Video category. I'm positive that was entirely intentional. After all, what is "female", anyway?

I noticed that a lot of the responses to Jo were that the character was "exhausting" and "annoying." The accent certainly was grating after a bit (And the slouching! Stand up, man!), but overall I found the performance entertaining. It hit on the major theme of Gaga's schtick - the idea that she is constantly performing. And I was intrigued that Jo hinted that was not a good thing. (But what is the alternative? We are always performing for someone, even if it is just ourselves.) I also liked that he highlighted the ultra-femininity of Gaga's usual persona, as opposed to, well, him. Some times it seemed like the (probably mostly, if not entirely) cis male backup dancers were dancing more femininely than Jo was. They certainly did more pirouettes, which actually made sense considering they weren't holding microphones.

I'll be interested to see if Jo appears more often in the future. Admittedly, I haven't been keeping up with all things Gaga because her latest album was rather meh, IMO. But I'm sure that the media will get all aflutter again the next time Jo shows up, so I'm bound to hear about it.

Musical

There are some songs I like that, whether because of the music video or the lyrics or je ne sais quoi, really trigger the kinky side(s) of me when I hear them. While I don't generally have a "soundtrack" or background music of any sort when I scene (or if I do, it's not chosen specifically to get me in the "kinky" mood), I do enjoy the subby or dommy feelings that these songs elicit when I'm in the car, or at work, or anywhere that I happen to hear them. It's a way to indulge my kinkiness anywhere I please without getting arrested! :D

First, let's get the obvious one out of the way: Rihanna's "S&M"



Yeah, I know this one's almost too easy. I haven't really looked at how the kink community responded to this song, so I don't know what kind of critiques it's faced. (Though I'd be interested to read them, if anyone would be so kind as to point me in the right direction.) I imagine the most obvious is the usual "appropriating kink just for shock value/sales," but for some reason I feel this isn't the case (as much as it usually is, anyway).

This video discards most of the kink stereotypes - there isn't a black leather catsuit to be seen! - and has several kinks featured that are generally ignored outside the scene, like mummification in plastic wrap. And that's why I like this video. It feels more like how I actually experience kink much of the time - bright and fun and chaotic and goofy. None of that gloomy dungeons-and-leather stuff. (Not that there's anything wrong with that! I'm just usually not in the mood for it.)

It also hits on several specific kinks of mine: shibari, mummification, petplay, flogging, and being put on display. (Not sure if that counts as exhibitionism? It has a different feel to it than what I associate with the term.)

Also, I'd be topped by Rihanna. Any day.

Next up: Katy Perry's "E.T."



There's a lot to criticize about Katy Perry - I am incredibly ambivalent and uncomfortable about her (in?)famous "I Kissed A Girl" for reasons that deserve their own post - but this song and video only make me go, "OMG YES YES WANT."

This one's interesting because it throws my fetishes at odds with each other, kind of, but in a neat way. I'm very turned on by the idea of abduction by an alien creature, so when I see Katy Perry's alien (OMG THOSE EYES *SWOONS*) I want to be dominated by it/her. Yet it's the alien who's singing about being dominated. (by a human?) So I simultaneously empathize with the alien and am objectifying it.

The mixture of both death and life imagery, and tying both in with sexual ecstasy, is also very appealing to me because, on those occasions where I'm not in the mood for happy-bubbly-funtimes kink, I feel kink is a way to explore existential issues. Pain is also pleasure; life is also death. (Le petit mort, anyone?) These contradictory concepts are part of what makes kink appealing.

Also, human-animal hybrids! YUM!

Next: Lady GaGa's "Teeth"



This one also arouses contradictory feelings in me, in that it appeals to both my dommy and my subby side. On the one hand, GaGa sings about "[loving] you with my hands tied," says "my religion is you," and entreats the listener to "take a bite of my bad girl meat," and "show me your fangs," which suggests she's bottoming to an aggressive creature - something I empathize with, of course.

On the other hand, she commands, "Open your mouth, boy," and reassures him, "Don't be scared; I've done this before." Indeed, the oft-repeated imperative, "Show me your teeth," is pretty dommy - think of how vulnerable we all are when we're lying in the dentist's chair! It invokes the image of GaGa (or me >:3) leering over a helpless man* strapped to a chair, one hand forcing his mouth open for inspection, like a horse at a market.

I'm a little hesitant to post this last one, but for the sake of being honest: Kanye West's "Monster" (TRIGGER WARNING: Graphic depictions of violence against women.)



I first saw this video on Feministing in a post taking him to task for the shockingly violent imagery he has in this video. I think the poster has a good point that the narrative of white women are victims/black women are animals (and black men love to rape/kill white women) is incredibly problematic and not nearly as "edgy" or "avant-garde" as I'm sure Kanye was hoping to be.

And yet... I love werewolves. I love seeing "masculine" werewolf traits expressed in women, especially, and I'm fascinated by the monstrous in general. Plus the dualism of Nikki Minaj's scene, where she torments herself, really plays with my switchiness (Do I empathize with the top or bottom? Is she top or bottom? Both!) - and those fangs! *fans self* And the scene where Kanye is being grabbed by the dozens of hands, and you can tell that he's enjoying it even as they nearly overpower him... mm-mmm.

What songs or music videos appeal to your kinky side?

*Interestingly, my dommy fantasies are almost exclusively about dominating men, while I fantasize about subbing to men and women about equally; to make it more complicated, in practice I've almost never topped a man - only women.

Off the grid

I just got a new job, which necessitated moving to a new home in a new city in a new state. Hence the scarcity of my posts recently.

Also, I don't have internet in my apartment yet. And for obvious reasons I'm loath to post from my office computer. Right now I'm at the local pub.

In any case, I haven't even had the time yet to get to know my new city's kink scene. I know for a fact it exists - I just need to find it. But I've been too busy with moving, then with my new job, and now I've got all sorts of issues that still need sorting out.

I did go to a newbie munch in Master's hometown last weekend, which was nice. The crowd was much older than I'm used to, though. Hopefully there's an under-35 or somesuch group in my town. No offense to older kinksters - I just tend to be more comfortable and have more in common with young'ns like me.

Lately it seems I've been hearing more and more public derision and condemnation and plain ol' bigotry against kink and poly folk. Not just in conversations around me, either - I'm talking on TV, on the radio, in print. A recent example would be a DJ, when talking about rumors that some celebrity couple or another has an open marriage, saying, "That's not marriage; that's gross." It hurts every time. It's not like when I hear homophobic bullshit; then I just roll my eyes and write the spewer off as an ass, and I know that the majority of America would agree with me - they're just a lot quieter than the very loud, very bigoted minority. But I don't know that about kink and poly. So I still feel very small and alone and unwanted when it comes to that.

Guilty pleasures

Apparently some parts of the feminist blogosphere are... maybe not angry, but at least irritated by the movie Splice. I wanted to see it because the concept seemed cool, and the design for the human/animal hybrid looked pretty good. Then a couple of my friends said, "Don't see this! It's got gratuitous rape!" I was like, "Bwuh?" and read a spoilerrific review to find out what the hell they were talking about.

And, okay, there definitely is a lot to critique. The female characters (all two... well, 1.5 of them) seem pretty shallow and sexist in their portrayal. And apparently there's a lot of really ableist connotations in how the hybrid is treated. (Keep in mind I haven't actually seen it yet.) But as for the rest... um. A gender/sex-shifting human/animal hybrid that sexually assaults people with his/her tentacle-tail-penis-thing? With hints of incest thrown in? That's like, five of my fetishes all combined into one right there.

So now I feel like a Bad Feminist because the things that make others miffed make me go, "Oooh. Hot." I know that the "Examine your desires!" thing is generally considered bunk, and I've never really felt in conflict before, but... yeah. I dunno. I know why others are upset by this movie, but I just can't get myself to feel the same way. :/

This is so weird. Even though I'm a submissive-oriented woman, I've never really felt that was at odds with my feminism. But with this I actually feel kind of guilty. :( Bleh. Then I feel bad for feeling guilty because YOU SHOULD NEVER FEEL GUILTY FOR YOUR SEXUALITY and so on.

I dunno what to do.

*sigh*

Oooooh, look. A CSI episode where a masochist is murdered in a "play scene gone wrong" scenario. Way to be original. You just can't miss an opportunity to show how sick and wrong and scary us kinksters are, can you?

-_-

Well, I know what I won't be watching this summer

The most recent Gerard Butler "romantic" "comedy" is called The Ugly Truth.

At one point in the trailer, while giving advice to Katherine Heigl's character, Butler's character says, "You have to be two people: the librarian and the stripper."

Hmmm....

Librarian: connotations of primness, propriety, "bookishness," intellectualism, prudishness, etc.

Stripper: connotations of sexiness, promiscuity, sexual experience, etc.

So you have to be... both a virgin... and a whore!

WOW! WHY DOES THIS SOUND SO FAMILIAR?!

...

You know, watching the trailer for this movie, I can honestly say I've never seen a mainstream movie that more explicitly moralizes against feminist ideas. I mean, it literally says that men are nothing but sex-hungry, ravenous beasts (wow... who knew that anti-feminism was also so anti-male) and that any career woman who demands such outlandish things as a man who respects her for her intelligence and success should just shut up because that's not gonna happen anytime soon, amirite? And would it kill them to show more cleavage once in a while? GAWD.

Excuse me for a moment. *grabs a case of dynamite and a bus ticket to Hollywood*

Off-the-cuff response to a recent "scientific" study

A local news station did a segment on a study conducted recently on what men and women perceive as "attractive" in the opposite sex. To their credit, they included a wide range of ages for both sexes - I think it was from mid-twenties to late sixties.

Ignoring the heteronormativity of the study for a moment (did they ensure that those surveyed were actually attracted to the opposite sex, or did they just assume it?), there were several things problematic with it.

First, it found that men were attracted to women who are young and "beautiful." As the news anchor said, "duh." But wait a minute - what do they mean by "beautiful"? Are we going by the scientists' standard, or the standard of society at large or what?

This fuzzy terminology is made more problematic because the study claims that men have a narrower perception of attractiveness than women, who were all over the place (cuz who knows what women want, amirite?). But depending on how you're defining "beautiful," you could include a very large or very small portion of the population.

Could it be that hetero men are afforded a wider definition of "beautiful" than women because of their priveleged position in society? A narrow definition of "beautiful" is one more way to control women - you must adhere to this unreasonable standard to be accepted in society, and since few to no women can meet that standard, society is justified in giving them the shaft, etc etc. This is a pretty basic idea in feminism.

Conversely - could it be that, because women are assumed to be "non-visually" stimulated, society has focused less on what women find visually attractive and therefore women have been given more freedom to develop their tastes without societal pressure? Think about it - there's really only one type of woman that's portrayed as "attractive" in mass media: thin, white, young, large-breasted, etc. If that's the only option that men are given, then of course that's what they're going to find attractive; to be attracted to (or admit being attracted to, at least) anything else is to be labeled a deviant, a weirdo, a freak, what have you.

The study concluded that men (the poor dears) would have a harder time finding a "mate" (their word) because there would be higher competition for fewer women.

And yet it seems that hetero and bisexual men across America have no problem falling deeply, passionately, head-over-heels in love with all types of women - large, small, black, white, brown, able-bodied, disabled, you name it. Isn't that something to be considered?

Wah. :[

Master and I have gone to our respective homes for the holidays. While I was able to spend a good week with him in his hometown, it's very difficult to have good sex in a three-bedroom house with five to six other people in it. :/

While Master and I were hanging out in his family's pub, House, M.D. was playing on one of the TVs. It was an older episode that I'd somehow missed (I'm a rather rabid fan >.>) in which the patient of the day was a sub/bottom who also had a fetish for breath play* and was in a rather strict 24/7 relationship with a Domme. I didn't quite catch if she was a professional or not (the volume was too low to hear in the bar and the clost captioning was shit), but it seemed like a genuine loving relationship - not just a business arrangement.

Of course, there were good and bad things in this portrayal in the show. On the one hand, Chase was/had been a part of the scene, so he was sympathetic to the patient and his Domme; he guessed the nature of their relationship right away, but didn't want to "out" them and stayed silent (whether he should have as a doctor is another thing), and he stood up for them when Cuddy barred the Domme from the hospital. And the smile on his face when he watched the two reunite was priceless!

That was outweighed by the general disgust of the rest of the cast, though - mostly Foreman and the clinic's laywer, as well as Cuddy. And the patient's family, of course - but they were quite obviously painted as the "villains" in the episode: people so intolerant, so insensitive towards their son that they were almost willing to sit back and let him die. House took them to task quite thoroughly for that; and for his part, House cracked his off-color jokes about leather and so on, but for the most part didn't give a damn about what the patient did in the sack - very House of him, really.

As for the portrayal of the Domme and sub... I'm mixed. Though it was nice to see a D/s relationship that didn't have chains and latex all over the place, and the Domme was obviously very intelligent and cared deeply about her sub, I didn't like how the sub was portrayed as a spineless, sobbing twit without the Domme. I mean, Jesus Christ, I may be a sub, but I have enough self-esteem to make critical medical decisions about myself! For fuck's sake!

I also was perturbed that it was the sub's kink that made him wind up in the hospital. I mean, even though the general tone was vaguely sympathetic, the fact that the sub had to give up his fetish or die gave seemed to give a "he got what was coming" message. But I may be reading to much into it - and I wasn't able to catch all of the episode before they turned to a football game, so maybe I'm missing a critical part that changed the entire meaning of the episode.

*I've noticed that whenever BDSM is featured in the media, it almost always involves erotic asphyxiation - to an extent much further than it seems to feature in the actual community. I wonder what it is about breath play that makes it particularly alluring to TV writers; perhaps the fact that it's so obviously dangerous makes it easier to vilify? After all, you wouldn't want the viewers to get any ideas.