Caitlin Moran’s How To Be a Woman, putting water on the fire of my own year-long hope, is far from a how-to guide to being anything. What it is, essentially, is a reminiscence of a woman’s life, told with an ingeniously comic voice, holding the added bonus of granting immense comfort to all those women who wanted the reassurance that they aren’t weird, that other women think and feel the same things, do the same things, like masturbate in the afternoon, just like Caitlin, a person they can respect. Basically, it’s Harry Potter for women.

To those who read Moran every week in The Times, or follow her face-splitting and blazingly ‘normal’ extemporisations on Twitter, this book is a perfect progression. It offers Moran’s disciples (growing in number every day) three benefits: 1. An insight into her life. 2. A holy and cleansing feeling of “Me too” in almost every line. Even reading her tweets, one constantly feels compelled to shout aloud “I think that!”, “I do that, too!”, and the book is no different. 3. A feminist elucidation, in which bra burning is made old-fashioned, and a set of principles for the modern, intelligent woman is proposed.

Moran is brave. She has to be, her reputation and career depend on it. She earns high respect, and (one assumes) high wages by not shying away from difficult ground. In the book she faces subjects head-on; from wearing her mother’s secondhand knickers as a teenager, because it’s all they could afford, to holding her lack of guilt after an abortion up to the limelight of a whole chapter. If the respect she’s earned by being fearless, and open was ever subject to re-evaluation, it’s surely still intact. This book proves that Moran deserves the balls she’s so often credited with, and in a way that makes it ridiculous for it to have ever been up for question.

The book starts with the obligatory ‘period’ chapter, something which has, over the years, given feminism a bad name. Whether it’s necessary or not to discuss menstruation, Moran is forgiven, because she handles the subject with such linguistic skill and humour that you almost forget to squirm. Instead of rolling one’s eyes at another feminist wrenching of blood and guts in the name of women, one laughs, and feels warmth, and the subject is given a new lease of life. As with every subject she takes on, Moran wrestles with the subject matter with fierce gumption, and wins. Moran isn’t just funny, though, there’s a sadness behind every joviality that makes you feel close to her, sometimes makes you want to cry. “‘I don’t think Judy Garland ever had a period,’ I tell the dog unhappily, later that night. I am watching myself cry in a small hand-mirror. ‘Or Cyd Charisse. Or Gene Kelly’.” The woman who dressed as Beyoncé and attempted to learn the Single Ladies dance routine for The Times (the video of which appears to have vanished completely from the internet), unashamedly and humbly introducing herself as “Caitlin Moran, a mum from North London”, truly earns her dues, in terms of comedy and raw honesty.

Moran discusses the many self-explorations involved in growing up, especially sexual ones, and also her parents and siblings, with sometimes cringe-worthy naked honesty. However, a fraction of a second before your face screws up and you form a gut feeling of embarrassment or pity for this clumsy ingénue, you remember that you did or said exactly the same thing many years ago. What’s more, you felt the same, too. Moran’s biggest asset, apart from being nifty with words, is her deep connection to honesty and normality. She describes growing up in a council house with no money and so many siblings that they shared beds, and one realises where her humility comes from.

The book is being called a “feminist manifesto” by almost everyone who’s reviewed it, and it’s easy to see why. Moran uses every ‘C’ word on the list, with the proud guffaw and Greerist austerity of what she calls a “strident feminist”, without ever losing the gentleness of a mother. She manages to embody tender frumpiness, learned from the council-estate, and also leopard print, metropolitan, spiky glamour, learned from London. It’s so tempting to feel that it is her rightful place, on the monolith that allowed her to write a book entitled How To Be a Woman, duly inaugurated as 21st-century London’s perfect example of womanhood. Perhaps, one thinks, she is the perfect woman. Certainly, to many, she is a role model. Without lectures, or demands, or demonstrations, Moran teaches young women, and old alike, that you can have a brain and use it. As Margaret Thatcher said: “If you have to tell people that you’re a lady, you aren’t”, so Caitlin Moran proves that you can be intelligent, hilarious, and nurturing to your family, and she does it without kicking her feet, or chaining herself to a building, as her feminist predecessors had to. She does it while admitting that she doesn’t hate men (another misinformed axiom heaped on feminists): “I love boys. They’re funny and can lift heavy things”, and that she felt right and morally justified to terminate her pregnancy, because it wasn’t the right time in her life to have another baby.

Moran discusses feminism and its few heroes with contemporary awareness, one foot in modern society, the other in history. She talks about feminist heroes, and everyday women, with realistic practicality, rather than stereotypical convenience: “I started reading Sylvia Plath, who everyone agrees is one of the few women who can write as well as a man, but who also keeps trying to kill herself”. How To Be a Woman is affirming, comforting, and empowering for women; giving them permission to feel confidence in being who they are, rather than a pre-formed mould of the perfect woman to conform to, and funny for men and women alike. Bible, manifesto, rant, autobiography, instruction manual; this book can be so many things to so many people, the only invariable is that it will do something significant to you. It’s one of those books that you can’t not read.

In 1969, the Australian public would know Roger Ward’s face from TV shows like Skippy. Less than a year later, he would gain tabloid infamy thanks to Frank Brittain’s film based on his novel The Set. Originally a candid look at sexual revolution sweeping the country’s teens, the screenplay jettisoned much of the material to focus on the gay and lesbian aspects of the story. It became a sensation and a huge success. Ward later went on to appear in cult classics like Mad Max and has now published the full text of the novel

What were the defining staples of “the heady days of Australia’s sexual revolution”? How does The Set embody them?

The late 50s/early 60s was a time of abortion, unwanted pregnancy, and shotgun weddings. Where getting the birth control pill when it did arrive, meant a demeaning trip to one’s local doctor. It was a time when sex was never discussed in public and if a young man wished to buy a condom he went to a chemist or drug store, an experience that put them into a lather of perspiration. And even though the age of consent was 16, an unplanned pregnancy meant shame, humiliation, and estrangement from your family

I have tried to cover this humiliation, this shame, and have attempted to describe the terror felt by a teenager facing sex during the 50s and 60s. There was no birth control pill until 1961 and even then it was available only through prescription to married women and there was no words of wisdom or information from one’s parents; a situation that led to Tony’s inability to offer Carolyn a permanent and secure relationship and certainly no desire to go ‘all the way’ for neither one wanted pregnancy, a common fate during that time.

Common because the revolution had started.

It began through adventurous and oversexed teenagers such as the go getting Leah who was prepared to offer her body as a stepping stone to the top of her profession. By Louise, Paul’s first girl friend who was European and had an open mind toward all things sexual.

Sex was a constant with Peg, having been forced into wedlock at 16, she was frightened her daughter Carolyn may have inherited her genes, and her mind floated between a mother’s angst at her daughter enjoying the same pleasures of the flesh that she had at the same age and her dismay that she may be ‘doing it’ with Tony, the young man she also dreamt of seducing.

Later, because of his inability to rise to the occasion when he entered the trap she set, Peg feels free and at ease with the world because she now knows this callow youth could never initiate sex with her daughter. She moves on then to enjoy her more experienced partners.

Paul also experiments with sex, firstly with the provocative Louise and then with various men. His homosexual bent having come to the fore when the deed was forced upon him, but after overcoming the shock he enjoys the act and sets about procuring it.

Tony also disregards his initial fear and attempts to go ‘all the way’ with Carolyn but when her fear overcomes her desire, he drifts toward his latent interest in Paul.

I feel I have shown, in the attitude and actions of my characters, a gradual relaxation of the built in sexual fear, held by most, as the book moves from the late 50s into the early 60s.

Comparatively, how do the struggles of the GLBTQ community differ between Australia 1970 and Australia 2011?  What were the major struggles then and conversely, what are they now?

You’re talking 1970s because that was when the film was released. The film rights were actually sold in 1967 and the book that it was based upon was written in 1960 onward from notes and diaries created from 1954. So my observations were not from the 1970s but from the 50s through to the late 60s.

However I can still answer your question.

Historically the gay community has been hounded for an eternity. And a person of that persuasion was, at that time at least, considered to be some sort of freak, someone to be laughed at, to be ridiculed, derided, beaten up, ostracized, even put to death. And ironically, while I was in the French outpost of Tahiti writing the first pages of The Set, the National Assembly of France declared homosexuality a “social scourge” and urged the government to take action against it. Although a light did begin to glow at the end of the tunnel when in 1961, in a move possibly leading to the acceptance of my own material for film, a television station in San Francisco made and broadcast The Rejected – a documentary on homosexuals. So the change started to begin even then. It continued, in Australia and throughout the world to eventually cause the police department in New York City to change its policy of police entrapment of gay men, and rescinded its hiring practices designed to screen out gay people. And after the Stonewall riots in late June 1969 many within the emerging Gay Liberation movement in the US saw themselves as connected with the New Left rather than the established homophile groups of the time and the words “Gay Power” became a defiant answer to the rights-oriented homophile movement.

This power swept the world and those with homosexual tendencies began to gain a voice and threw off the cloak of shame that was traditionally worn and ‘came out’ as it were.

They were the true pioneers of the movement and have opened the flood gates of acceptance that have allowed the young people of today to kiss a same sex partner in the street, to hold hands, to cuddle in public, to hold highly esteemed positions in the corporate and public world and to marry their same sex partner. So, to my mind, the struggles of GLBTQ of today are minimal to what their forebears have been through.

What were the risks you faced in releasing the film The Set in 1970? Is there any risk in releasing the novel version of The Set today? Do you anticipate any societal scrutiny or backlash?

I felt no risk when I sold the film rights because the book is of a sociological nature, covering every aspect of life, adventure, the seeking of a career, family relationships, social behaviour, heterosexuality, nymphomania, older woman attracted to a younger man, and of course… homosexuality. It was only when the producer indicated the book was too large to be filmed in its entirety and that he would have to cut it that I had reservations. And it was not because of the demand, “I want you to lift every homosexual reference from the book and write a screen play on that”. It was the fact that my baby, the book I had spent almost ten years creating was to be cut to the bone. That my years of work would be relegated to a 130-page script, that was the thing what worried me. I was worried further when, upon arriving on set for the first day of filming, I discovered that the script that I had diligently written had been re-written and toyed with by not only the producer, but by his 24-year-old third wife and also Elizabeth Kata who had written the book A Patch of Blue. I was devastated to see the ruination of a previously polished and highly tuned script and spent my short time on set leaping in front of the camera’s yelling, “Cut! That is not the dialogue”. It got to the stage that the actors were ignoring the director and coming to me in a clandestine manner to ask for interpretations and the correct lines to say. Understandably the director was angered by this and I was packed up and sent out of town on a phony publicity tour so a lot of the film went through without my input or salvaging and ended up in what I thought at the time was a ‘cringeworthy state’. So the risks I faced at that time, and they were real risks and they did eventuate, was one of being a laughing stock, of being embarrassed for creating such a badly written script.

Understandably, but in a way, viciously, the film was slaughtered by the press. Although thankfully, and through the loads of publicity we had received during the making of the film, the general public were keen to see it and it became one of the highest earning Australian films of that time. Ironically, it has now become a cult film and enjoys Film Festival Showings through out the world to hand clapping and cheering young gays.

I now look forward to redeeming myself with the book. I certainly do not fear any backlash and would in fact welcome it if it came because the book is a true diary of the 50s and 60s, written at that time with the thought processes and mentality of one who lived them. So the only scrutiny I may receive will be from the ‘Literary Set’ who may think my raw descriptions of sexual intercourse, particularly the male-on-male and the female-on-female, although delicately done, may be pushing the boundaries. But I wrote the book to entertain, to inform and to illuminate. And I used the thread of both homosexuality and of the life saving movement, although poles apart in terms of subject matter, as a manner of education. Only a few know of the intricacies of the homosexual mind or of what they do behind closed doors, and only a few know of the fears and the dangers faced by the Australian Surf Life Saver and having had experience, either practical or by observation and research of both, I used them as a thread for the narration of the book.

I am pleased too, to have waited this long to publish, for had I taken the poorly paid offers to do so during the 70s, the book would have gone out as a contemporary novel. Now it is released as an historical, true diary of the 60s and gives an insight to the young readers of today how youth lived in that day, and to those of my own age, it will bring back so many memories of the way we lived and of what we thought.

What affect do you believe the film The Set has had on Australian GLBTQ culture? What affect do you believe the novel The Set will have on today’s Australian GLBTQ culture?

I know the film liberated a lot of young men, particularly when it was released. I know because I receive letters and emails even to this day from people who are now established businessmen, and even one from a New York lawyer, who thank me for allowing them to know that their feelings and instinct was not abnormal and that there were others out there like them. The film, they tell me, was a release, an opening of a door to lead a liberated life.

And in these later years, I notice young girls are coming to view the film as well, even though there is only a fleeting reference to lesbianism in the film they cheer and clap every time it is mentioned. They tell me, after the showing, that they absolutely love the film. So it has given many young men and possibly a few girls, a look at the sort of life they previously only fantasized about. It has given them the courage to come out of their shells and seek what they want. During these later screenings, I’m talking from 2000 onward, both males and females come to me to express their dismay at the manner the homosexuals of the day were treated.

The film has also been used as research by Ricardo Peach for his thesis that gained him his Doctor of Philosophy. Ricardo compared the homosexual life in Australia to that of their counterparts in Africa and commented that The Set was the first film to depict homosexuals as everyday people with regular jobs and an accepted appearance without the usual mincing outrageousness usually depicted.

And a Harley Street Psychiatrist asked to view the The Set by a censorship body in the UK came back with the reply, “Normal people acting in a normal manner”.

The book, on the other hand, can be enjoyed by all. It is not, I hasten to add, a gay and lesbian work. Although, I am happy to note that the gay and lesbian brigade in both the UK and Australia have taken it on as their own. It is also a general read for everyone who enjoys a page-turning yarn. Although I do surmise the younger generation of gays who now roam freely and without fear of prosecution or violence, will be appalled by the treatment of homosexuals in the book and of the clandestine efforts they resort to in an effort to protect themselves.

I really want the book of The Set to be taken as a work of entertainment, not as a drum-beating Gay Liberation scribe but, on the other hand, I want the gay reader to enjoy the work and to revel in the fact that their gender is being used as an everyday part of life, which it is, and has been, since man began.

What do you mean by: “The big screen adaptation of The Set could only ever hope to be a shadow of the real story”? In what ways does the novel adaptation expand on the real story that the film version could not?

No film, adapted from a large novel, can ever depict that story as the writer envisaged it. Disregarding the budget, no film can realistically be longer than two hours and it is obvious that if one squeezes a 500-page novel into a 150-page script, something has to give. And surmising we could do a 500-page script and shoot it as well (we’re getting into the mini series here), the thought processes, and the innuendos described by the author for his characters cannot be depicted on the screen, perhaps the actor may try to convey it, but it is not the same as having it spelt out in black and white print. But having said that, I do want the film to be remade and by God I’m having offers coming out of the woodwork, but this time I am being ultra careful as I will not allow the film to be made with the same embarrassment I experienced in 1970. As I mentioned before, I am leaning closer to doing a mini series because I do wish to cover every aspect of the content that is explored in the book.

You’re celebrated for playing ‘tough guys’ in action films such as Mad Max – acting work that has inspired Quentin Tarantino to call you “a legend”.  Ironically, most of your films appeal to a predominantly heterosexual male demographic. Has being an ‘out’ gay male actor made it difficult for you to land these roles? What bearing has your homosexuality had on your acting career?

The procurement of my acting work has always been based on my appearance and my ability to do the job. Fortunately I started acting at a very young age and because no matter what one does, be it cooking, needle work, performing operations, or pulling teeth, one is surely going to improve with experience, so by the time television came to Australia and with it the feature film, I had cut my teeth on stage work from the age of twelve, standup comedy from 14, educational radio drama from 16 and interspersed this with training from an off-shoot of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, weight training and martial arts. So by the time I was asked to audition for film and television, I was highly trained and experienced.

One’s sexual preference should not affect his ability to play the role he is offered. After all, gay or not, one is first and foremost an actor. And, in my own case, I have now performed in more than 80 feature films and over 2000 television roles, plus probably 50 stage plays in which I have played the gamut of hero, monster, womanizer, drag queen, boxer, wrestler, incestuous father, stroke victim, truck drivers, policemen, cowboys, bikers, and a serial killer. I have performed comedy, horror, drama and Shakespeare and never once was my sexual preference ever raised.

What do you say to other ‘tough guy’ gay actors who are contemplating staying in the closet to ‘protect’ their acting careers?

That has never been a problem in Australia, although I do believe it is an issue, or at least it was during the 50s and 60s and into the 70s in America. And I know of a number of actors over there who were forced to hide their preference during that time. Although I do believe it doesn’t matter now. Homosexuality is widely accepted in the streets, in the home by fellow family members and by big business, so why shouldn’t it be accepted in the world of make belief. In fact it appears to be a trend and a social high if one, particularly in the entertainment world, is supposedly gay.

There are a lot of tough guys out there, some in the film business others in areas of entertainment such as wrestling, boxing, martial arts, football, who happen to be gay so a sexual preference “does not maketh the man”. So I have no comment to make to anyone who wishes to hide their sexual preference, actors or not. I do remember though, when I first came to Sydney from my home town of Adelaide to break into the ‘big time’ and was called to see a well known producer. He greeted me warmly enough but after he had eyed up my rather attractive female companion whom I had chosen to take with me, he commented, “I do admire you Mister Ward, coming here, as a man, to try and break into films”.

So maybe being gay may have well been the way to go.

But I did pretty well anyway. Eighty films, 2000 television shows… That producer by the way, I think he’s forgotten it was me that he insulted that morning, because he’s now one of my biggest fans and a constant employer.

Do you plan on writing any other GLBTQ-focused films and/or novels? What projects are next on the horizon for Roger Ward?

Yes, I am working on a sequel to The Set, it will revolve around the five protagonists again but this time they’ll be in their 20s and it will be set in the USA, based around the film world.

I also have a trilogy based on two brothers who are war correspondents, and right now I’m looking for a suitable publisher or agent. They contain high action, romance and comedy. The first of them opens in Iraq and moves to New Zealand. While the second features New Zealand and Tahiti, and the third is set in New York and Iraq.

My other writing credits, films, documentaries, mini-series and TV specials are little known, hidden as they have been behind a pseudonym, as it was discovered long ago that despite the establishment not objecting to a gay actor playing the heavy, they did draw the line when that same actor dared to write a novel or film.

So I’m coming out now!

The book of The Set is now available in book shops throughout the UK and Australia and can be purchased from Amazon. It is also available as an ebook.

Anyone who has even the briefest acquaintance with nightclubs in recent years will have seen girls dressed as Playboy bunnies in almost just their underwear, replete with stockings and suspenders, quite as frequently as one will see girls who are, indeed, dressed only in their underwear or a bikini. Perhaps less often, one will see girls on dance floors kissing each other in order to garner male attention. The latter scenario usually creates quite a scrum of groping limbs where not an eyelash is batted by either side – though some may be fluttered.

Of course, it could be that this reviewer consorts with the seamier side of society but, more probably, it illustrates that the subjects of Natasha Walter’s book, Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism, are commonplace in modern life. The same also goes for pornography, strip clubs and, probably less common, but not much more taboo, prostitution. In her chapter about pornography Walter gives statistics from a 2007 Canadian report showing that 90 per cent of boys aged 13-14 and 70 per cent of girls the same age had viewed pornography, so it’s no great stretch to imagine that most people have seen porn at some time (take a look at Spike’s most popular articles). No stag night, or business lunch, for that matter, seems to be complete without a visit to a strip club – but if that doesn’t do it for you, then why not take a plane to Amsterdam to really see the groom off with a bang, so to speak.

Indeed so commonplace are these elements discussed in Walter’s book that to object to them is viewed as the highest prudery. Therefore, it is testament to Walter’s skill that she is able to maintain a non-judgemental perspective throughout the book and repeats that there is obviously nothing wrong with the desire to appear attractive and that, with something like pornography, it is the individual’s choice whether to enjoy it. And it would seem that the promoters of lad’s mags and pornography alike are keen to emphasise that the whole thing is a matter of choice.

It is this idea of ‘choice’ that Walter opposes: the choice to be ‘empowered’; the choice not to be stuck in a dead-end job if you can use your body your make more money; the choice to divorce emotion from sex (both professionally, if you are, say, a pole dancer, and in your personal life); but it all seems to boil down to the choice to accept the notion that, in order to be a liberated modern woman, you need to be hyper-sexualised and turn yourself into a parody of a glamour model or even an R&B performer – this misogyny repackaged as feminism. As one burlesque performer interviewed in Living Dolls puts it, “serving up misogyny with a tasteful package of feathers”. Whilst more literal in the burlesque dancer’s case, it nicely illustrates how this has become part of the status quo, right down to the marketing of the provocative Bratz dolls to little girls.

The two most prominent arguments about working in the sex industry seem to be of the ‘it’s just a bit of fun, and everyone wins’ kind or the ‘it’s unfortunate that they have to do it, but they do get paid’ kind. If we discount the idea that women get into it because they like sex as risible (though that could be one reason for initially entering the business), money is obviously the chief preoccupation and is an understandable concern. But, as Noam Chomsky points out, arguing that it’s a good thing because they get paid is like arguing in favour of sweatshops because those workers (usually women) are paid and consented; and that we need to eliminate the conditions where women cannot get good jobs. There is, of course, the caveat to that argument that not everyone can be a doctor or a lawyer and, taking our society as we find it, some people have to perform minimum wage jobs – so what are they to do? Not counting exceptions such as Jenna Jameson, who produces her own pornography films, for every performer whom we might think of as well paid, imagine how much money the owners of production companies make. Even the most autonomous female performer, director or producer is still fuelling the needs of an industry that, in the vast majority, caters to the male desire. As Chomsky flatly states, women in pornography are “degraded as vulgar sex objects” and this is echoed by Ellie, a lap dancer interviewed in Living Dolls, “If you say it’s really degrading, and you did that, it says so much about you, or it feels as if it does. But it is degrading.”

In 1971 a debate about feminism (filmed as Town Bloody Hall – see link below) was held at the Town Hall on West 43rd Street in Manhattan. Speaking were prominent proponents of feminism and women’s rights Jackie Ceballos, Jill Johnston, Diana Trilling and, the biggest draw, Germaine Greer. Chaired by Norman Mailer (described by Greer as an embodiment of “the most powerful figure… in male elitist society, namely, the masculine artist”) on his best form, the atmosphere captured in the film almost crackles with passion, there’s something of the rock concert about the whole event and I struggle to imagine a packed hall with such intensity of feeling, banter and heckling flying between Mailer and the audience, happening today. In 1970 Clive James, in a review of The Female Eunuch for The Observer, airs his concerns that the real message of Greer’s work will be obscured by the deluge of publicity surrounding the author. Is there any room in the modern media for feminism between Katie Price busting out of the gossip column and ‘boys will be boys’ stories about the sexual practices of footballers?

So has feminism stalled?

One might be led to think so by Martin Amis’s last novel The Pregnant Widow, which suggests that the sexual revolution somehow lost its way, and by the somewhat shrugging acceptance of the empowerment theory by people like pornography director, Anna Span: “Women are exploring their bodies more”. However, one of the most affecting voices in the book, a teenage girl called Carly, rebuffs this idea. For Carly the pressure placed on young women to conform to a certain type of image of womanhood is “just like you don’t have any choice”. Thus, the only ‘choice’ women really have is to conform.

Another girl points out that she didn’t have the voice to speak out against her friends, boys and girls, that she didn’t know there was anything wrong with the pressure put upon her, like Carly, to look a certain a certain way and become sexually active. This seems to be the crux of the matter, girls need to be equipped with enough knowledge to speak out when they feel objectified and not just about the biology of sex. As Walter says, there is nothing intrinsically with wrong with strip clubs, porn, etc. but, while they can be fun, “in the current context, in which women’s value is so relentlessly bound up with how successfully they are seen as sexually alluring, we can see that certain choices are celebrated, while others are marginalised, and this clearly has a major effect on the behaviour of many men and women”. As for men, obviously one could never, nor would want to, stop them desiring sex, but if, as Walter suggests throughout, women are truly empowered at an early age, given the full range of real life choices available to them and taught that they don’t need to be, or idolise, so-called sex symbols, then perhaps that way there can be a complimentary, gradual effect on the male psyche.

The point is, however, that feminism cannot be rushed and is, and always has been, a continual struggle. Walter points out that those who criticize the status quo suffer opprobrium and are branded with that most disdainful tag of ‘elitist’, hopefully it will be clear from this article that this author is not afraid of such things.

Further Resources:

• Town Bloody Hall on YouTube
• Noam Chomsky on pornography
• Natasha Walter’s homepage

The status of sexual minorities in today’s India is in a state of transition after homosexual sex was decriminalised in 2009. While the legal judgment can be framed as a move towards a more inclusive and secular society where religious beliefs against homosexuality cannot prevail over human rights, sexuality continues to be a controversial issue, stirring the political and cultural agendas. Through a brief excursus of the legal battle to decriminalise homosexuality in India, the opposition from various political and religious entities, and the persistent discrimination and violence suffered by gay citizens, I would like to open up a discussion around concepts like democracy, globalisation, secularism and modernity. The complexity of the Indian socio-political landscape is a good case in point to show how such concepts are far from clear-cut.

On July 2nd, 2009, the Delhi High Court pronounced a ‘reading down’ of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code, effectively decriminalising consensual homosexual sex between adults. After a eight-year-long legal battle initiated by NAZ Foundation India, an organisation working with HIV-positive people, homosexual sex ceased to be a punishable crime. Section 377 (as other parts of the Indian Penal Code) had been introduced in 1860 by Lord Macaulay, at the time of the British colonial domination of India. I arrived to Delhi only days after the judgment, and witnessed a sustained media attention for the following weeks. All the major national newspapers reported the news on the first page. The judgment was called “historical” and “a great, albeit belated, step towards globalisation”, “a landmark judgment”, “sexuality equality”. However, the same day protests started to mount against the legal judgment from various sources. A member of a centrist political party urged the government to appeal to the Supreme Court of India, as the ruling on homosexuality would sadden the old people of India and cause the country’s culture to “crumble”. Lalu Prasad Yadav, a widely-known political figure, said, “Yes, homosexuality is a crime… Such obscene acts should not be allowed in our country. The society is adversely affected”.

Religious leaders from Hindu, Muslim, Christian and Sikh communities unanimously expressed their discontent with the ruling (a rare example of inter-religious solidarity) , citing the ‘unnaturalness’ of gay sex and some advancing the hypothesis that such a decision would in fact help the spread of AIDS. Such oppositions to the Court decision translated in eight counter-petitions filed to the Supreme Court over a period of four months.

The debate around secularism in India was sparked, in recent times, by the death of thousands of people in Gujarat in 2002, a planned massacre supported by the rightwing political party BJP. Such an event, the looting and ferocious murders of thousands of Muslim citizens, was in many respects unprecedented in its scale and organisation, so much so that it has been called “genocide”. Tensions between Hindus and Muslims reached a new high with the Gujarat episode, and called for a reflection on the state of democracy and secularism in India.

Since the end of British colonial power, India had to forge a viable, strong national identity in the struggle for independence. Tensions between different religious groups, political ideals and castes emerged already during Gandhi’s time. Despite Nehru’s secular stance, which inspired the political and social policy of modernisation in India for decades after Independence, conflicts within the management of the republic emerged, particularly with regards to religious and ethnic minorities. India, as an independent nation, relied on the centrality of a strong state in administering national and state policies and on a ‘secular’ constitution.

The configuration of the meaning of secularism in the Indian context does not rely simply on the division and independence of the state vis á vis religion; rather, the dialectics of the relationship between the state and its citizens is complicated by other intersecting factors. If we think of the Gujarat massacre as a horrid example of the ‘clash of religions’, it is obvious that religion refers less to matters of faith and belief than to ideas of identity and political culture. Religion is changing, or rather, penetrating various dimensions of human experience. Is the separation between state and church, seen as the pillar of secularism, enough to guarantee social and civic pluralism, respect for human rights, and democracy? The case of India offers interesting points for reflection on the meaning of secularism and its relation to democracy and rights, in particular with respect to minorities.

Anthropologist Peter van de Veer remarked that any democracy, albeit modern, is always founded on the unequal power that the majority has over minorities and that, as such, from the point of view of a given minority “there is not much reason to fear a religious majority more than a secular one” and that the connection between secularism, pluralism and tolerance is one borne out of a specifically European enlightenment tradition. Given that the power of the majority will always imply that the minorities will have to comply with decisions they might not agree with, how is this power deployed by a secular state? In India the state was a strong presence particularly in the first decades after Independence; it exercised direct control over the country’s economy and it was aided by the political continuity afforded by a powerful governmental coalition. The fact that the state had a strong impact on development policies and the economy does not mean that it could guarantee peaceful coexistence among the various ethnic, religious and political groups of Indian society; one only has to think of the ongoing conflict in Kashmir, or the insurgent Maoist guerrilla in the central state of Chhattisgarh, to get a sense of the struggles the state has to face in order to keep the country unified (if not united). Issues of sexuality, and especially of queer sexualities, don’t seem to be directly related to the political life of a country; at most, they remain at the margins of the political agenda. Yet in the last two decades Indian politics devoted quite some time and effort toward the management of sex.

In the last two decades, India has witnessed a renaissance of the Hindutva ideology; the configuration of Muslims as enemies of the nation found its most destructive outcome in the destruction of the Babri Masjid (a mosque) in 1992, and ten years later in the above mentioned state-backed extermination of Muslims in Gujarat. Hatred based on supposedly religious foundations coexists, in the more recent Hindutva programmes, with campaigns to eradicate Western influences from India. The socio-cultural changes brought about by globalisation and the liberalisation of economy in 1991-1992 are seen as morally corrupting and dangerous for the imagined Hindu identity of India. It must be noted, however, that it was the BJP (the mainstream rightwing political coalition) who launched the now infamous ‘India Shining’ campaign before the 2004 elections; after running the country for the previous five years, the BJP sought to present a new image of India as a modern country, focused on progress, unprecedented growth and global aspirations: from the point of view of economy and foreign investments, interaction with the West was more than welcome. It should not be surprising that the Hindutva ideologues chose to concentrate instead on issues of sexuality and morality as the preferred loci where corrupting influences would spread.

With regards to sexuality, it must be said that ideas of properness and respectability had begun to circulate and be debated already during colonial times. The origins of discourses around the sexuality of Indian women can be traced back to the nationalist project of casting a radically different model of femininity and sexuality from that of the European invader; values such as chastity, wifehood, motherhood, purity and domesticity came to symbolise a form of resistance to the colonial rulers, and women cast as the ideal bearers of such values. If, for some, the Indian nation is imagined partly through powerful symbolic references to sexuality, one can easily see how the emergence of queer subjects and other sexual subalterns (like the sex worker) asserting the right to express their sexuality is not only a question of sex, but it becomes cultural and political. It seems as if sexuality – and in particular non-normative sexuality – easily becomes one of the most important sites where articulations of identity and rights, but also violence and abuse are experienced; sexuality is also one of the main sites where individual subjectification meets power discourses; where secular guaranteed rights do not always supersede religious beliefs; the site where, in fact, the oppositional model that sees secularism as a synonymous for individual rights and liberties and religion as a static, repressive ideology is an imperfect one.

I would like to focus here on two inter-related cases where Hindu-right supporters advanced their protest against what they saw as expressions of moral decadence that came from the West: the spread of HIV/AIDS in relation to homosexual sex, and the screening of the movie Fire by Deepa Mehta. Both events received extensive coverage both in mainstream media and in academic discussions on India’s democratic future in the face of religious and political extremism.

Many organisations working on sexual health issues started to operate in India at the time when the AIDS epidemic was spreading in the country. One of them was the NAZ Foundation Trust, who also initiated the petition against Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. In 2001, the Lucknow offices of NAZ and Bharosa (another sexual health organisation) were raided by the police and their workers arrested; NAZ and Bharosa worked primarily with men who have sex with men by visiting the parks and other public places where such practices were widespread and educating people on the risk of infection. The police confiscated educational material on safe sex and condom use claiming that the organisation were distributing obscene material and encouraging sex against the order of nature, and were hence able to use Section 377 to prosecute the NGO workers. A few years before this incident, medical teams visiting the Tihar Jail in New Delhi had found several cases of HIV infection due to widespread sodomy among male inmates, and had recommended the provision of condoms; the prison authorities refused on the grounds that such an initiative would further encourage criminal sex practices and would implicitly admit the existence of homosexual sex in prisons. Such extreme episodes reflect an attitude that circulated among right-wing politicians such as Bal Thackeray (leader of the rightwing group called Shiv Sena), who claimed that AIDS was a Western disease imported into India through decadent Western practices, and that foreign NGOs were only paid to produce ad hoc statistics about increased sexual activity in India in order to discredit the country.

The release of the feature film Fire by female director Deepa Mehta in the autumn of 1998 caused violent reactions in several Indian cities. Women activists from the Shiv Sena demanded that the film be banned in Maharashtra as it was morally offensive. Hundreds of people vandalised and forced cinema theatres to close both in Mumbai, where the protest had originated, and in other cities such as Delhi, Pune, Surat. The incidents were followed by extensive media attention and politicians’ statements regarding the film. Fire is the story of two women, unhappily married to lower-middle class Hindu men, and their romantic homosexual relationship as it develops among the daily chores and the rituals of a typical north Indian extended family. The film gathered positive criticism abroad and enjoyed a certain success in India too, although it doesn’t belong to mainstream Hindi cinema (also known as Bollywood). The relationship between the two wives develops into a lesbian one, and the film contains a couple of love scenes that are fairly unusual in popular Indian cinema. Predictably, Shiv Sena’s chief Bal Thackeray stated that the lesbianism portrayed in the movie was a phenomenon imported with globalisation, alien and extremely dangerous for the social fabric of India. In another interview, Thackeray admitted that, had the film focused on Muslim women, he would have found it acceptable: in both cases, homosexuality is configured as something alien and foreign, whether it comes from the decadent West of from the ‘internal’ Muslim enemy.

The controversy surrounding Fire was part of a concerted attack by the Hindu Right on films, art, and images: as visual culture spread in the 1990s as a result of the diffusion of foreign media and the beginning of the computer age, the Hindu Right used cultural production to wage their war against immorality. It is interesting to note that by casting homosexuality as foreign, what the Hindu Right did was to enforce an idea of hetero-normativity as a nationalistic, anti-colonial move. It was in this political and cultural climate that activists and NGOs started their battle to repeal Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code; it took eight years, and during this time the terms of the debate have shifted considerably. The first petition against 377 focused on health concerns, claiming that section 377 prevented organisations from carrying out important HIV/AIDS prevention work; the government of India dismissed it, claiming that repealing it would provide license to criminal and immoral behaviour and that criminal law must reflect public morality. In 2009, after other organisations joined in signing the petition against section 377, the High Court judgment, invoking inclusion and non-discrimination as basic Indian values, seemed to testify to a truly historic ideological change.

Now that the legal battle has been won, and the Court expressed a progressive message, one would expect a supportive reaction from the government of India. And yet, after the ruling passed and the counter-petitions were filed, it was reported that the central government (centre-left Indian National Congress) still had not taken a clear stand on the issue. Would it support the High Court or the political/religious homophobia? Interrogated on the matter, majority politicians claimed that they needed more time and before making any official statement they wanted to ‘access the public mood’ on such a sensitive issue. One might argue that, even though Hindutva ideologues were not in the picture any longer, the state failed to position itself in favour of the decriminalisation. As for ‘the public mood’, and aside from the openly hostile views of religious leaders, the comments expressed by readers on the main newspaper websites show how divisive the issue of homosexuality still is. While some readers welcome the change as an example of democracy and secularism, others argue that the court’s decision does not reflect the views of the majority of people. A brief sample from the Times of India website:

Its all an example of Democracy , Untill and unless if someone is not making harm to others , it can’t be framed as Illegal.People have full right to live in their own way in a democratic and secular country atleast.Its all a matter of perception for society.(D.R. from Hyderabad)

I do not agree with the judges decision to legalise homosexuality. If the media reports on the growing number of homosexuals/ lesbians, then why cant the media see the majority of the society is against this decision. Does the majority need to take a procession to voice their protest? Very soon we will have these guys holding hands and walking on the streets, same sex marriages and even worse our country will have increase in HIV cases. Sodomy cases will increase. Surely, the HC judges decision is demeaning (Or demonising) our society. Hope better sense prevails or else our country will go to ruin. (C. from Mumbai)

This is one of the biggest progrssive action taken up by India in this 21st century. Our country is the largest democracy and we must not deny the rights of the sexual minorities. (N. from Delhi)

india is gone (M. from Delhi)

On April 7th, 2010, Professor Srinivas Ramachandra Siras, a retiring teacher at the Aligarh Muslim University, was found dead in his residence. Although suicide seemed most likely, the official cause of death was never declared. Two months earlier, Siras was fired after a videotape surfaced of him having sex with another man in his apartment. As homosexuality is not a criminal act anymore in India, professor Siras appealed to the court in Aligarh and was given his job back, but as his sexual orientation was a publicly know fact, he experienced harassment and marginalization. Whether he killed himself out of shame over being caught on video or because of the humiliation and discrimination he suffered afterwards is uncertain. His sexual partner, a rickshaw puller, tried to set himself on fire in July, after being not only shamed but also repeatedly beaten by the police, who initially suspected him of the death of Siras.

I think the case of professor Siras is emblematic. Where is the progressive, democratic and inclusive society? What was the use for Siras to appeal to the institution of the Court, thus gaining his right to work back, only to be blackmailed and marginalised?

In relation to the marginalization and abuse that gay citizens such as professor Siras continue to experience despite formal justice, what can be said about democracy, secularism and modernity? Should we be inclined to think that all the people who maligned Siras until his death were religious extremists? Or, like some could argue, that India as a society is perhaps not ready to accept sexual diversity – as if we in the West were? What interests are being protected by allowing discrimination and violence against sexual minorities?

Societal attitudes are not easily formalised, and a legal pronouncement is clearly not enough to change them. This is nothing new. What I find problematic when discussing social developments in non-Western societies is that common categories and concepts don’t seem to work too well, if taken for granted. I feel uncomfortable in using the words ‘democracy’, ‘modernity’, ‘justice’, ‘secular state’ – the dramatic events unfolding in India remind me how these noble concepts are never stable, never achieved once and for all. Someone is always excluded, left out, for the benefit of the majority.

When the Hindu Right decides to target movies and other cultural products in order to advance its repressive ideas, it does so precisely because popular culture is the ideal terrain to plant the seeds of intolerance and extremism; when mainstream Indian media enthusiastically reports a historic change for homosexuals in India, it nonetheless makes sure to clarify that gays will not be able to marry, a welcome tranquilliser for the public who might worry that the most important social institution may be at risk. Even though sexuality (as well as religious belief) belongs to the domain of the private in any democratic and secular society, one can see how some sexualities don’t seem to fit too well into the social fabric; they may be perceived as threatening, disruptive, polluting. Hence, it is important that their existence, even when sanctioned by the law, is kept away from the eyes of the ‘silent majority’: some sexualities are more private than others as the values they convey are not acceptable. Contrary to what the majority of commentators said on the eve of the decriminalisation of Section 377, in the case of professor Siras the legal change did not have a positive impact on the visibility of homosexuality or the right to positively affirm his sexual orientation. On the contrary, his ‘outing’ took the form of a scandal and marked the beginning of prolonged harassment that had tragic consequences. That homosexuals are citizens enjoying equal rights within an inclusive society was clearly not enough to save Siras’s life. Perhaps in mainstream debates on democracy and secularism the concept of equality has been overdetermined at the expense of the concept of difference. Acts of abuse, discrimination and violence such as the one I reported compel us reflect upon the meaning of equality and difference. I offered the example of India because the very recent events I presented offer, in their dramatic and extreme developments, a picture (even if fragmented and incomplete) of the relation between state and individual encompassing variations which go beyond the traditional Western dualistic model. Variations that, if taken into consideration, could help us question our definitions of secularism, modernity and democracy.

Over the last few years Chuck Palahniuk has revelled in the sordid, the grotesque, and the downright dirty like a particularly literate pig in shit, and for many readers his decision to set a novel within the pornography industry must have seemed like a marriage made in Heaven, or at least the more carnal parts of Hell. He seemed to have reached his high (or low) point with the short story ‘Guts’, which also made a gruesome appearance at the start of his pseudo-horror novel Haunted, but Snuff threatened to eclipse even that snippet of filth when it came to bodily fluids, disgusting urban myths and the deviant imagination.

Unfortunately Snuff comes as something of a disappointment after all that expectation, a few muffled grunts in a dimly lit room when we were hoping for a glorious pop-shot. There’s still plenty to keep the Palahniuk fans happy, including a vast number of his trademark factual asides and fictionalised urban mythology, but somewhere in the mix the story goes missing. If you strip out the non-fiction snippets and deviations from the main narrative, you’re actually left with a story that could have been told in a handful of pages. Snuff would make a great short story, but as a novel it feels thin and drawn-out.

We should attempt at least a brief description of the book’s events, although it’s hard to summarise the minimal plot without revealing everything in one ill-judged full-frontal shot. Legendary porn actress Cassie Wright is intending to make history with a 600-man gang-bang, and the event is to be captured on film with the explicit intention of reviving her flagging career. The narrative flits between four characters in the waiting room, where the 600 prospective porn stars stand around in their jockey shorts awaiting their thirty seconds of fame: there’s Sheila, Cassie’s assistant and right-hand woman; Mr. 600, also known as Branch Bacardi, a veteran porn star; Mr. 137, also known as disgraced TV presenter Dan Banyan; and Mr. 72, a young unknown who claims to be Wright’s abandoned child.

As events unfold there are a few surprises thrown in, particularly when it comes to the relationship between Cassie Wright and Branch Bacardi, but these are largely secondary to the constant stream of anecdotes and factoids about the porn industry, Hollywood starlets, and the history of human sexuality in general. There are even parallels drawn to Valeria Messalina, the wife of Roman Emperor Claudius, but there’s no disguising the fact that most of Snuff exists as a vehicle for a potted history of the sex industry as seen through Palahniuk’s distorting eye, along with an entertaining list of fictional porn movie adaptations in the margins (Chitty Chitty Gang Bang is a personal favourite).

As such Snuff is entertaining enough, but on the strength of Palahniuk’s other work you’d have to say that he could do better. The fragmentary narrative device doesn’t always work, especially when the characters’ voices all start to bleed into one, and as the plot races along to its premature conclusion you can’t help wondering if you’ve missed something along the way. While Fight Club and Survivor treated us to a wonderfully skewed version of the world, driven by a sense of anger and injustice, Snuff often feels like nothing more than a collection of dirty schoolboy stories.

Of course, Chuck Palahniuk is such a master of the English language that he manages to make the most sordid sex act or human degradation resonate with a warped minimalist poetry, but it’s not quite enough to hide the hollowness at Snuff‘s core. Even at his worst Palahniuk is still more interesting than the vast majority of contemporary novelists, but Snuff falls a long way short of the pornographic masterwork that we’d all hoped for. Like every porn movie ever made, this is a novel that eschews plot in favour of titillation and plenty of naked flesh – and ultimately it pays the price.

Bettie Page Confidential

See all books about Bettie Page at Amazon.co.uk | Amazon.com



Directed by Mary Hannon and starring Gretchen Mol [Bettie Page], this film celebrates the equally despised and distinguished iconic heroine, in part responsible for the advent of modern pornography.

It is a significant problem when a director attempts to chart the life of a relatively lifeless person, or more to the point, attempts to examine the biographical account of an individual’s life who, whilst very good at their trade, never had the imagination to leave their singular sphere of existence – whether that be Iris Murdoch, Alfred Kinsey, Mahatma Gandhi or in this case, Bettie Page. This is not an outlook grounded in my own pomposity, in which I imagine myself to live outside the singular existence of my everyday life – I have not done this, but neither would I want a film made of my life, should I become a notorious model. (This is not going to happen anytime soon). It is possible that given Bettie Page’s life, no film should have been made of it – other than for democratic means of a public record of a cultural icon. In sum, as a work of art, its value lies in its recording of a vital cog in the cultural machine.

However, I suggest this, not to cast the film into eternal damnation but as an issue of where the film begins – in the depths of sexual perversion and sadism. That is where Bettie Page lived. From her childhood in Tennessee through to her posing trips in Miami, she is a cog in the machine, taking the money where she knows she can get it and to deceive herself that her sexual subversion is some kind of acting career. The film frequently slips through scenes of Page’s wanna-be acting career, which never truly takes off.

I therefore think that the director confronted the most significant problem that a film-maker would need to – that Page had a meaningless trashy-porno life in which she existed as a cog in a brutally unforgiving machine of desires. What’s more, the sexually light photographic entertainment of Page skilfully appears as an extension of her earlier experiences of childhood abuse and teenage gang rape. We often like to talk of that good old-fashioned distinction between light-hearted entertainment and tough illegal porn. Yet, the film reminds me – as much as Andrea Dworkin’s texts on modern sexualised legislation do – that this is an irrelevant distinction. To be an “actor” within the industry is essentially to be an automaton in a genuinely brutal industry – the product of which is the abject debasement of the self.

What immediately takes me by surprise in the film is the subtle and respectable portrayal of Page. It shies away from scenes of sexual abuse, leaving the audience with only smatterings and likenesses of an abusive childhood. It is often sensitive to Page’s impressions and feelings of living as a model – in spite of mainstream public controversy – whilst she tirelessly suffers at the mercy of apish and sadistic desires. It is equally respectful of her attitude to religion and how Page came to make sense of her Christian convictions whilst following a sexual career which she is told is antithetical to the teachings of the Bible. As such, Page offers naïve excuses to those who question this conviction – among others, Adam and Eve lived naked in the Garden of Eden, so, it therefore seems correct to infer that those who are clothed are the people we should really be worried about. … An interesting point Page.

Whilst Page’s Tennessee-outlook on theology may prove mildly irritating, it is this naivety, vulnerability, disillusionment and lack of confidence in character that is most humanizing and most humbling. She desperately strives to be an actor, and even assumes her modelling to be a form of acting, to such a degree that the film demands that the audience gently celebrate the failure – the most important of which, for Page, appears to be not meeting the grade for a scholarship to Vanderbilt University. Her overarching vulnerability is not comprehended as financial security in life but rather as the predicament in which she seems completely incognizant of the nineteen fifties mainstream disgust at “sexually deviant” literature whilst simultaneously becoming its most “notorious” icon. Not until a boyfriend addresses this deviancy does this entire plot seem to dawn on her.

With an outstanding performance by Gretchen Mol, coupled with a carefully crafted approach by Hannon, the film subtly details the notorious life of a primitive porno-heroine. Set among the welcoming industry of pornographers, in open conflict with American public opinion and legislation, the film superbly delivers a personal outlook of the modern heroine’s experiences, defining both the degradation and happiness of Page’s life.

[Ed note - this interview was conducted before Abby Lee's real identity was revealed by a "quality" Sunday newspaper days after the publication of GWAOTM. You can read about Abby being stalked by journalists and the subsequent fallout on her blog. More happily, you can find out about the Girl's Top 10 Sex Toys on Lovehoney, plus her recommendations of sex toys for men and sex toys for couples.]

Getting the book published must be a real buzz. Do you plan to keep going with the blog and write more books (ie go pro), or will working in film remain your priority?

It has been a real buzz, yeah: I’m very excited about it all. I really hope the book will reach more people that would otherwise not have read the blog, and that that will get them reading about sex too. It would be wonderful if a debate about sex could ensue – it’s about time we talked openly about it, I think. As for continuing the blog, well, I’ve been writing it for over two and a half years and I have no plans to stop yet: I enjoy it too much. I think as long as it gives me pleasure and I have the time, I will keep going with it. I am currently working on another couple of book ideas which I hope to develop further; it would be wonderful if I got to pursue even more of my writing now.

You get a lot of comments on your blog and you interact a lot with your readers. How much time does it take up? Do you generally like your readers – do you think they get where you’re coming from?

I do try to reply to comments on the blog as best I can, because the interactivity between my readers and myself is an important part of the blogging experience. I don’t get a lot of time to do this though, so my input can be a bit sporadic at times. That doesn’t seem to matter though: often my readers will be having a debate with each other in the comments box and I really enjoy reading their opinions and views.

Overall my readers are a pretty clued-up lot and I feel hugely complimented that they enjoy reading my words – and come back for more. Occasionally I get the odd troll – who really doesn’t get what I am about, or who feels they need to make a moral statement about women/sex/sexuality – but my regular readers will challenge their views and often, come to my defence too. When I started the blog, I never thought that complete strangers would be arguing my perspective on sex; I am honoured that they do.

There also seems to be a burgeoning community of other sex bloggers (for want of a better phrase) – has that let you meet new friends online or off?

I’ve met quite a few bloggers actually, both sex writers, and non-sex writers. I’m not sure if we’re a ‘community’ as such, but there does seem to be a kind of ‘blogger’s code’ which we all uphold: respecting privacy and anonymity, regardless of the subject matter we write about. It has been very refreshing to meet other sex bloggers – to know that I am not alone in my thoughts – and I count a few of them as good friends. Ironically, the bloggers I’ve met are the only people that know ‘me’ as well as know my blogging persona; none of my offline friends know I write the blog.

Can you talk as frankly to your real life friends about your feelings as you can write them down for the blog?

Sadly, no. I am reasonably open with my friends generally, but the explicitness of my thoughts – both sexual and emotional – are hidden from them. I’d love to tell them all about the blog and book, but it would really be like them reading my personal diary, which is not something I want to happen!

What’s your best / worst experiences to come out of writing the blog and being a minor Net celeb (albeit anonymous)?

The best thing to come out of writing the blog, is to know that I have, in some way, touched some people. Receiving emails from both women and men telling me I have struck a chord with them, or that they empathise with me, or that they have learned from my experiences, makes what I do seem so worthwhile. I never thought that there would be so many people who connected to my writing; with the thousands of emails sent to me, saying exactly that, I guess I was wrong.

The worst thing to come out of writing the blog, is, I suppose, the fact that I – and my life – still have to remain so hidden, and that I can’t enjoy the success my writing has achieved. I’m in no rush to lose my anonymity – I really do need to uphold my, and others’ privacy – but it’s frustrating that I can’t proudly state out in the open, that the blog and book are my doing. So, sadly, there’ll be no book signings, or meeting my readers, or anything like that. It’s a shame, but I’ve made this bed now, so to speak, so I’ll just have to lie in it…

With the blog to book angle and the witty explicit sex discussions angle, there will be inevitable comparisons to Belle De Jour’s debut. Did you read and/or rate her book?

I’ve been reading Belle’s blog since she began writing it; it was what inspired me to start my own. I haven’t read her book, so couldn’t comment, though I would say from her blog, that I think she’s a superb writer and although her writing is a bit emotionally distant, I love her style. I have no idea what she’s like as a person, but I’d definitely meet up with her for a beer: I think we’d have a few laughs. And perhaps exchange some sex tips too.

Do you think there’s more room for more women to write sex blogs? Is it good education for men to be reading this stuff so they can get more of a clue about what women are really after?

I think there’s room for everyone to write sex blogs, not just women. I am overjoyed that there seem to be so many female voices out there though: it’s about time that a different – non-sexist, non-passive, progressive female – perspective on sexuality broke though into the mainstream, so the more of us doing it, the better.

As for men reading and learning, well, from the amount of emails I get from men, it does appear that this is the case; that they really DO want to know what women want, not just so they can please women, but so they can enjoy sex more themselves. If just one couple have better sex as a result of a guy reading my blog, then I think that’s an achievement and something to be applauded.

If a girl wanted to start out writing her own thing or getting involved with talking to others on their own blog, what would you advise?

Would it sound corny if I said ‘just do it’? Because really, that’s all she’d need to do: just start up a blog and write – that’s all I did. I wrote for myself, from the heart; I have always been honest and open about my thoughts, and somehow, picked up readers along the way who wanted to read what I wrote about. And whilst doing it, I learned of others doing the same, and have made some good online friends as a result. It’s worth doing – if you have something to say, and the time and dedication to say it.

Given your anonymity, how peculiar did it feel to meet up with Lex from Naked Loft Party when he’s already familiar with your entire sexual gamut? Is there something liberating about that? Does it create new taboos? Or does it just make everything exceedingly polite?

It was brilliant fun meeting up with Lex from Naked Loft Party [NSFW, unsurprisingly]. It was a bit odd, with both of us having pseudonyms and not knowing what each other looked like – it felt like a blind date when we met – but it was wonderful to finally meet in the flesh, so to speak, the man whose writing I had admired.

It wasn’t odd at all that he knew of my entire sexual history, because firstly, I also knew of his, and secondly, I knew from his writing that he was very open-minded person and would think nothing of any of my sexual escapades. So when we met, I felt relaxed in his presence; it was a meeting of minds – of like-minded minds – and the connection we had online, translated into a face-to-face one immediately.

It actually did feel very liberating meeting him, because I could be myself completely and not maintain a facade – it felt like a huge weight was lifted from me, very refreshing.

A lot of your posts recognise that women should be able to be wholly uninhibited in bed without being chastised for doing so by men, other women or society in general. Do you think things are getting better for women in that sense?

I think, and hope, that we are moving in the right direction with this. I do, of course, support the view that women are not passive creatures who have sex ‘done’ to them: we have wants and needs and desires, just as men do. However, I don’t want to preach that women ‘should’ have to be some kind of ‘tiger’ in the bedroom, because I think that gives off the wrong message to young women and men: sex should be about equality, about two people sharing something, about having fun, not about one person fulfilling a fantasy representation of what their sexuality ‘should’ be.

Saying that, whilst I do seriously question the view of female sexuality in the media (given that women are almost exclusively either ‘pure virginial’ types, or ‘naughty slutty’ types), I also think that women do need to get more active in bed and take charge of their sexuality – regardless of how society views them. We need to move beyond the stereotypes and create a new version of our sexuality; one that will encompass our desires and wants – from our viewpoint.

Hopefully by doing this, more women will be able to state their needs; will be able to express their wants; will be able to take a more active role in their own enjoyment; and as a result, both women and men will have better sex. That’s what I reckon, anyway, and from the emails I’ve been sent, I suspect many others think this way too. My fingers are crossed that this happens: having a more open dialogue about sex can only be a good thing.

And finally – do you have any words of advice for young people?

First, have oral sex, and by this, I mean TALK about it. People need to be able to have an open dialogue about sex before doing it, then they’ll be able to discuss what they want and how they feel. And, as a bonus, talking about it can be like foreplay – it can be very erotic to discuss what you might like to do – so having a dialogue is an important part of the sex act.

Second, I would always advise having safe sex. I always have condoms on me, and think anyone thinking of having sex, should do so too: there is no excuse. Boys need to practise putting them on when alone, so they become familiar with them; girls can practise putting them (with their hands or mouth) on a sex toy or even a cucumber, for that matter. The point is to get familiar with them, so it becomes part of the sex act: it can be very erotic doing so. If someone refuses to use a condom, then refuse to have sex with them: it’s just not worth the risk – to either person. Saying ‘no’ to sex should be just as acceptable as saying ‘yes’, in my opinion.

Lastly, having an open mind, a willingness to learn, being giving, and being considerate, are much more important qualities to have in bed, than attempting to be the world’s greatest lover. Talking about what you want with your lover, expressing how you feel, being safe in what you do, will all contribute to a good time – so have fun!

See the Girl’s Top 10 Sex Toys on Lovehoney

The Possibility Of An Island – Michel Houellebecq

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“The universe is nothing but a furtive arrangement of elementary particles. A figure in transition toward chaos. That is what will finally prevail. The human race will disappear.” – M. Houellebecq, The Guardian, 2005.

As Houellebecq continues his literary voyage through the irrationality, hedonism, and chaos of the modern world, his most recent book questions the possibility of human love in the not so distant future, providing that refreshing je ne sais quoi that I have been longing for among many contemporary literary talents.

In a nutshell, The Possibility of an Island reveals the story of a stand-up comedian, Daniel, and the personal narratives of his cloned descendants thousands of years after the end of mankind as we know it. It examines the fragmented histories of the clones, projecting and reversing its subject through history.

After thousands of years of earthquakes, disaster and war, the earth has become a wasteland and the human race a savage pack of animals. Thus, the modern world has, in the full light of modernity and reason, fallen into barbarism.

The cloned descendants of Daniel exist in a safe compound with the luxuries of preservation, social reproduction, cloning and constant modification of human beings. From Daniel1 through to Daniel24, and Daniel25, each begins to speculate on what it means to be and live like Daniel (the original human) as perceived through his diaries. In particular, the focus is on what Daniel and previous clones mean by ‘love’ and ‘sex’ in their diaries and recollections. Even though Daniel, the original human, struggled with the notion of love, he knew of it. His futuristic clones eventually have no grasp of love as they live sedate in their preserved environments.

It often approaches a novelistic critical theory as each successive Daniel clone looks upon the previous Daniel’s in a critical and reflective way to realise the joys and limits of these pre-existences. Through the perceived experience of eternity and immortality (the promise of cloning), the subsequent potentiality of love, or believing in such a concept, meets its demise.

The title itself is never fully elucidated upon. However, through Houellebecq’s esoteric poetry clues, the reader is led to understand that the “possibility of an island” equates with the “possibility of love”. In one of the final chapters, a modified neo-human reflects on a poem written by Daniel (a human), the final verse of which is:

And love, where all is easy,
Where all is given in the instant;
There exists in the midst of time
The possibility of an island.

Concerned, as the entire book is, with the possibility of love, it charts the reflections of Daniel’s descendants through various “neohuman” communities in an attempt to comprehend love in its debt to fleeting snippets and moments in history. He typically paints relationships as they come and go with temporary and varied reflections – in his typically humorous-cynical style.

The tales of sexual perversion, including his obsession with genitalia, are as transparent as in his previous novels – particularly Platform, Atomised, and Lanzarote. This is no bad thing. Houellebecq clearly has a talent for putting to paper the short-lived nature of sexual relationships. In fact, the entire book is clearly a testament to the possibility of love in light of the fragmentary, chaotic and tragic condition of history. Of course, not everyone will enjoy his descriptions of sexual acts – you name it, oral sex through to orgiastic fondling – and it is best to know your friend well if you are about to buy it as a gift for them.

A redeeming feature of Houellebecq’s sexual odyssey – as with the journey through Bangkok’s sexual tourist culture in his earlier book, Platform – is that the events are frequently related to ageing. This gives his experiences a touch of humility. The events are not told through the eyes of pure and perfect sexual barbarism and savage passion. Houellebecq’s text is a perfect reminder that glorious sex never lasts and something always goes wrong (especially as Daniel grows older). This, I felt, was related to a larger theme in the book – the capacity for future generations to experience their limitations through the study of previous ones. After all, it is only through the examination of Daniel’s history that Daniel1, Daniel24 and Daniel25 begin to struggle with the idea of love in their increasingly loveless semi-consciousness.

Following Houellebecq’s court case in France in 2002, subsequent to the author being tried (but then acquitted) for inciting racial hatred, one would expect an equalled level of anti-religious sentiment. There is, but it is well directed through the telling of a history of a new religion throughout the book. This is achieved by reporting Daniel1′s commitment to Elohimitism. It represents the largest fraudulent commercial religious dogma the world has ever seen and in principle, it stands for nothing. It sweeps across the globe quicker and more forceful than Christianity. Its promise is eternity. It holds that each person’s DNA will be frozen after death and each will be reborn when suitably developed technologies of the future rise. If you sense overtones of George Orwell here, be advised, it smacks of Orwellian critique – Houellebecq exchanges the political dogma of “Big Brother” for the omnipresent religious dogma in the neohumans, the “Supreme Sister”.

Houellebecq is concerned primarily with chaos. The writings of Houellebecq – including his latest novel – essentially assume a world of chaos. The conscious perceptions of characters relate to the impeding doom and chaos of an uncontrollable social world. In this chaos, his tragic characters exist within a culture of liberal individuality but are viewed as debauched rats offered the consolation of short-term love in modernity. In essence, people are a random collision of elementary particles formed loosely in space and time, heading towards an ever-increasing chaotic world.

There is such a feeling in his own philosophy that the liberal state, a makeshift society, ideology and individual have achieved such a grand place in the modern world, that from their very birth they have transcended the things that made them – that is to say, they become the essence of an uncontrollable dominating chaos encroaching over his fatigued, battered and sick-of-life characters.

The picture of chaos is the natural sense in which irrational man deals with the space in which he is chaotically thrown yet depressingly determined. Houellebecq sticks fast to the notion of determinism – especially with regards to age – in spite of his theory of human beings acting as elementary particles floating in the irrational world of religious schisms and ideologies. All religion is undermined in his novels, portrayed as the workings of irrational man. Rational philosophy, thus, provides false hopes. The philosophy of the “irrationalists” on the other hand – with citations of Nietzsche on almost every other page – is the centrepiece of Houellebecq’s philosophy. Indeed, it should be: if there is no sense of irrationality, criticism, stupidity, ignorance or even reaction towards rationalised ideologues in the modern world, then the chances of exposing the true humanity of a character is very slim.

With its peculiar taste for irrationalism and chaos, I would recommend this book to anyone searching for that missing something in modern fiction.

One night, twenty-four-year old recent Minnesota transplant Diablo Cody was walking home from her dull ad agency job when the words “Amateur Night” on a topless bar’s marquee beckoned irresistibly. Even though Cody had only once been inside a strip club – and, with her idyllic middle-class upbringing, devoted boyfriend and conspicuous lack of emotional scars, hardly fit the stereotype of a sex industry worker – one try-out as an amateur led to a year of professional hard graft as a stripper, lap dancer and peep-show performer. The equally hilarious, titillating and gruesome account of her exhausting adventure, Candy Girl: A Year in the Life of an Unlikely Stripper, is far more than just another stripper memoir or dispatch from the dark side: Cody’s analysis of what she found within the walls of upscale men’s clubs and sleazy sex palaces, and within herself, is shot through with a laser-like wit and punk rock sensibility likely to influence all political shades of opinion on sex jobs and raunch culture. Cody – who’s now hung up her white platforms to work as a successful screenwriter and arts editor – talked to me on the phone from Minneapolis.

– Even jaded readers will be fascinated by some of the real-life characters in your book. Like the jizz-licking guy at the peep show.

He’s the celebrity of the book! He would come crawling in and lick up as much as he could. The thing that was really fascinating about him was that he was so clean cut. He was the last guy you would ever think had a habit like that. I shudder to think about it.

– What else did you come across that fazed you?

You know, people who just had really strange fetishes. Incest would come up a lot: People who would want you to masturbate as their sister, or their mother. That was something I was not comfortable with. I tried to be pretty game, but that really freaked me out. And, you know, a lot of cross dressers. There seemed to be a lot of men who wanted to come in and talk about gay sex. To me that was really surprising, that they though of the booth as a safe haven for their fantasies, even though it was obviously straight-oriented entertainment. That was weird.

– So you became a stripper as an experiment – were you surprised to find you became addicted? And was it the money or the attention?

Honestly, I never made that much money compared with the people I worked with. So for me I think it was about the attention, but also sort of an external thing. I found it to be cathartic, a very weird, twisted form of self-expression. I think I got addicted to just how subversive and how fun it was compared to my every day life.

– And you didn’t derive any particular satisfaction from, say, when you got a promotion at the advertising agency where you worked.

Right, I didn’t at all, and it surprised me, because if I got twenty toy shows at Sex World [the porn emporium where Cody worked as one of the "dolls" who are displayed and selected for peep show performances] in a night I would feel proud.

– Is this something mainstream feminism has still failed to sufficiently acknowledge, how satisfying it can be to wield one’s sexual power in this way?

It can. I think it’s something that third-wave feminism has recognized. On the other hand the one thing people have failed to recognize is just how unsatisfying and unfulfilling the corporate world can still be for women. Because no matter how much we’ve progressed, the glass ceiling is still so much in place. And I honestly felt kind of degraded in my day-to-day life, at the white-collar jobs, because I was always being undersold. Whereas in the sex industry it was so straightforward.

– But which would you say is the more exploited group in a strip club: The girls who work, or the men who hand over the money?

Some of the needier customers, the men who were looking for an emotionally connection, were really preyed upon. They were definitely manipulated and victims in that way. But most of the time, the women were disenfranchised. It’s the societal model for a woman to be revered and worshipped as a thing of beauty, and in a strip club, it’s actually the complete opposite. You have a roomful of beautiful women, trying desperately to woo these men.

– Competing with each other.

Exactly. And it really turns the men into little emperors and the women into these sad, groveling creatures. So that was the one aspect that disturbed the heck out of me. You know, I always thought that strip clubs would be the kind of places that celebrated beauty and femininity and it’s really not the case.

– How much do the men kid themselves that it’s anything other than a financial transaction?

Funnily enough, a lot of them sexualize the financial aspect of it and find it a turn-on to be paying for a lap dance or for female companionship. There were others who were obviously in massive denial and seriously wanted to believe, “oh, this girl really cares about me, she told me her real name,” not knowing that the same girl was mocking them in the dressing room and had given them a fake real name. Every dancer I knew had an onstage name and a fake real name for when she really wanted to sucker a guy. But he would actually believe that you shared that information with him because he was so chivalrous and truly respected women. You know, “I can earn her trust.” A lot of guys just want to be the white knight, that’s the persona they assume when they walk into the club. Like they’re going to find some poor little lost girl and save her.

– What do you think about what Ariel Levy has called “the rise of raunch culture”, and the argument that the phenomenon of women visiting strip clubs is regressive rather than empowering?

I guess I’m emblematic of this raunch culture she talks about. I’m the foul-mouthed, trash-talking, salty sex worker who has a lot of fun with that stuff. And I guess I don’t read that deeply into it. I think that any time people get to reverse roles it’s empowering, and for women who get to objectify other women it’s a role reversal, it’s empowering and it feels good. There’s just no way around it. For me, from a purely hedonistic standpoint, I find women attractive, so it’s fun to go to strip clubs and it’s fun to watch porn.

– In the book you describe meeting a high school girl who’s working in a strip club, and for her it was a regular part-time job, no big deal. What does that say about American culture?

I mean, just equating material things with sexuality has become a totally mainstream concept. You hear it in the music… stripper culture is totally mainstream now, obviously. Now there’s stripper aerobics, t-shirts for girls that say “Porn Star”, all that kind of thing. And it’s not the world I come from. I came of age in the nineties, when we had Riot Grrl music and it was just a more feminist time. I know I’m being a hypocrite by saying that I don’t think a high school girl should be involved in the sex industry, but at least by the age of twenty-four or twenty-five I had lived enough to be able to make that decision for myself.

– What would you say to a woman who’s read your book, thinks it sounds like an interesting job and is going to try it?

I would say try it, slowly. And make sure that you maintain control of yourself in the situation at all times. That includes maintaining some level of sobriety. Because honestly, the people who fall down the rabbit hole are the ones who get involved with drugs.

– And the ones who cross the line into prostitution?

Exactly, yeah. You really have to know your boundaries. In a lot of cases I think that escort work and prostitution, to me that’s just another more extreme form of sex work. I don’t beat around the bush. I knew a lot of strippers who were really quick to point out the difference between them and prostitutes, but honestly I don’t see that big of a difference. It’s a controversial viewpoint, but I know that I was selling my body and selling my sexuality and I’m not really sure how much bigger a step it would have been toward becoming an escort. It’s all so closely related that it struck me as funny when girls would get extremely offended by that comparison. I would think, you’re in a peep show with a dildo up your twat and you’re asking me to show you more respect!

– So do you have any regrets?

There are times when I wish I had attempted to take it even a little more seriously than I did. Because it would have been interesting to see what it was like to get really entrenched in the lifestyle and be one of the upper echelon performers. Obviously I have a physical limitation in that regard because I don’t look like a ten.

– And you don’t want to get big fake boobs?

Exactly, I didn’t want to go that far. But at the same time part of me wondered what it would have been like if I had gotten big fake boobs and gone the whole nine yards, had that ambition that some of those girls have. Because then I really could have gained insight into what that life is like, from a purely anthropological standpoint.

– But you would never go back and do it now?

Right – I think it was pretty obvious when I was doing it that I was kind of a dilettante. I probably wouldn’t go back and do it now, but I miss it. I still feel a little twinge when I pass a strip club, and sometimes consider going in.

A collection of essays from women working in the US porn industry and women consuming porn outside it, Naked Ambition is an intelligent and provocative survey of pro-porn female opinions. There’s little in the way of gushing praise about the industry itself – most of the writers agree that newcomers get eaten alive if they don’t know what they’re doing. Tera Patrick’s essay is a good illustration of the pitfalls involved and her own fall and rise on the back of her initial calamities. But where these pieces take off is in praise of porn as something liberating, both in its production and its consumption.

Many women involved in porn are not porn stars – they are businesswomen and entrepreneurs too, or they are pro-porn journalists, marketers and writers, who have turned porn on its head and are using it to create their own independence, whether or not they appear in front of the camera. For some, like Wired sex and tech columnist Regina Lynn, innovations like cybersex have been crucial in helping her overcome chronic shyness to enjoy real relationships. For others, like Emily Dubberley and Violet Blue, setting up their own websites and blogs have been how they’ve created their own burgeoning careers writing about all aspects of sex. In other words, women in porn is not just about some blonde girl humping in front of a camera.

Naked Ambition showcases a variety of attitudes of women in how they think about sex and how they think porn can help make people’s sex lives – and so their lives – better. The adult industry is two-faced in this sense, in that some of what it does – sex toys, better sex guides, erotica etc – is genuinely helpful, and some of it is irredeemably nasty -see Tera Patrick’s essay again for examples. What "nasty" is, and who should decide what it is, and how it is regulated, remains the eternal question. What many of the women do in Naked Ambition is define what their own idea of sex is, which flies in the face of the norms of what women are supposed to like. Some of those opinions may seem distinctly distasteful, like Mason’s descriptions of the extreme videos she directed and shot, but the fact she’s discussing why she likes this kind of porn – and why the girls shooting it like making it – brings it out into the open. As such, the perspectives they bring to the porn industry and its product are genuinely illuminating, if disconcerting.

This is in no small part to the tight editing of Carly Milne, who put together the anthology (and who, a long time ago, gave me free lance work for now-defunct Canadian magazine Can Say). Carly ran the Pornblography blog for a couple of years and worked as a porn industry publicist while she was researching the book, so she has first hand experience of its machinations. What’s best about Naked Ambition is that it feels like thirty one shots of mind tequila – thirty one great essays and arguments and experiences that engage with you bluntly and directly, and that are laced with the greatest aphrodisiac – intelligence.