August 31, 2002

Book Review - The Whole Lesbian Sex Book: A Passionate Guide for All of Us

Cure for cancer? End to world hunger? What's left to do after the publication of Felice Newman's definitive guide to lesbian sex? Drawing on a wide range of published sources as well as her own notoriously graphic questionnaire circulated by e-mail--stunning mild-mannered office workers as it reeled across their computer screens--Newman has compiled an exhaustively thorough how-to guide for practices as exotic as play piercings and as pedestrian as oral sex. Along the way, she offers a primer in sexual politics and lesbian manners at the turn of the century. The S/M hanky code is laid out once and for all. There is even a (brief, happily brief) section on celibacy.

Highlights include descriptions of sex writer Tristan Taormino's private consultation with Betty Dodson, the author of Sex for One described as "the mother of masturbation": "I was so excited about this adventure that I nearly peed in my pants," recalled Taormino, "I was going to touch myself for Dr. Betty Dodson!" (In the end, Newman reports, "Tristan earned an A+ in pelvic thrusting, but got a big 'needs improvement' in the breathing department.") Although it sometimes skimps on the details, especially with regard to women's health, The Whole Lesbian Sex Book is so rich, inclusive, and authoritative that it invites challenge. Now inventive lovers can ask each other: "Is it in Whole Lesbian?" --Regina Marler

August 29, 2002

Book Review - Escapades of a Gay Traveler: Sexual, Cultural, and Spiritual Encounters

Customer Review

I have traveled the world for several decades. I would recommend to every gay traveler that he read this book before going to virtually any Third World country.

Many gay readers do not like Joseph Itiel because of his "Virtual Boyfriend" and "Escort Tales" books. I personally have read and loved his guide to Costa Rica and this book. I have only started to read "Escort Tales" and have immediately come to dislike it.

Joseph Itiel is best as a non-fiction writer. While he seems to have some strange sexual preferences (like frottage) his adventures in other lands are mesmerizing and illuminating.

Homosexuals from the United States and Europe live in a world where sex is based on social courtship. Their reality is that it is demeaning and improper to "buy sex" although some might do so.

However, traveling with those perceptions can be both naive and dangerous. In very poor countries, sex of any kind is a means of survival, not just a game of social courtship and the pursuit of pleasure.

Joseph Itiel paints a daunting picture of how Mexicans inevitably come to ask for "a loan" for some pressing social situation from travelers who are sexual partners. It is a subtle form of prostitution even though they would be offended if you put it in those terms.

He describes the dangers involved in getting sexually involved with the poor denizens of other lands. Leave your passport in the Hotel. Carry your International Driver's License or a photocopy of your passport.

Each country is different. In the Phillippines, he finds himself fought over and passed around from one friend to another like a "prize". However, then he sees that he is simply exploiting the poverty of his sexual conquests.

Itiel does have some personality quirks. He came out later in life and discovered he actually preferred sexual liasons based on financial arrangements. That simply frames his stories.

Their real value lies in his practical advice for tourists who travel in societies where "their world" is replaced by an environment in which sex is more a means of survival than the quest for romance and pleasure.

I have found myself "a stranger" in such situations and learned many of the lessons Itiel shares in this book the hard way. Anyone planning a trip to a Third World country should read this book first.

They may decide to avoid sexual encounters. However, if they choose to pursue such encounters, they will be far better prepared to do so safely and sanely for having read this amazing and entertaining book.

August 27, 2002

Book Review - Bullets and Butterflies: Queer Spoken Word Poetry

An extraordinary anthology of collected work from America’s hottest queer spoken word performers and slam-poets. Gays have always been in the forefront of US poetry: Whitman, Stein, Hughes, Ginsberg. But it’s at this curious hinge of twenty-first century that poetry itself has found its way into the ear of public consciousness, so that we are finally hearing Whitman’s varied carols tambourining. Many of the poets in this anthology are not generally known outside the Slam, Performance, and Hip Hop Poetry worlds, but spinning on dialectics political, gentrified, aesthetic, this book features vibrant, sexy, and shocking new poetry focused on sexuality, gender, class, race, religion, and politics by Cheryl Boyce-Taylor, Regie Cabico, Staceyann Chin, Celena Glenn, Daphne Gottlieb, Maurice Jamal, Shane Luitjens, Marty McConnell, Travis Montez, Alix Olson, Shailja Patel, horehound stillpoint, and Emanuel Xavier.

August 25, 2002

Book Review - Queer Theory, Gender Theory : An Instant Primer

A one-stop, no-nonsense introduction to the core of postmodern theory, particularly its impact on queer and gender studies. Nationally known gender activist Riki Wilchins combines straightforward prose with concrete examples from LGBT and feminist politics, as well as her own life, to guide the reader through the ideas that have forever altered our understanding of bodies, sex and desire. This is that rare postmodern theory book that combines accessibility, passion, personal experience and applied politics, noting at every turn why these ideas matter and how they can affect your daily life.

Riki Wilchins is the founding executive director of the Gender Public Advocacy Coalition. The author of Read My Lips and GenderQueer. She was selected by Time magazine as one of "100 Civic Innovators for the 21st Century."