The best lesbian erotica of 2006

[lunabee34]

My husband brought home The Best Lesbian Erotica of 2006 today, and it is shaping up to be a quite interesting read. I read the author bios first, like I always do, and one of the writers, Skian McGuire has an lj--an_gadhar. The bio uses the pronoun "hir," as do a handful of the others, and I'm afraid I don't really know what that means. Anybody can fill me in?

I've only read one or two of the stories the whole way through, and the rest I've just skimmed over, flipping back and forth between stories. The first story is really hot and really sweet; it's called "Silver Dollar Afternoon." We're both breathing hard, and I want to push into her so much that I do, with painstaking slowness but smooth and deep, leaning in until we're belly to belly and she's full of my cock, gasping and arching her hips into me. I slide my hands behind her head and pull her close, making my strokes short and small, working my hips to please her . . . It's at this moment that I wish the cock I'm using was my own flesh, wish I could feel her warm and wet gripping me, loving me from the inside out. *fans face*

One of the things that's surprised me the most about this book is that a majority of the stories seem to be about women who wear fake penises all the time. And while some of the stories about these women don't do anything for me, mostly because the ones I don't like are about dom/sub relationships and that's really not a dynamic that interests me overmuch when it's the default setting of a relationship, others are just really hot. Like, hot hot.

So, new book. *runs off to the bathtub*

*g*

Comments

[saifai.livejournal.com]

Not really my cup of tea, but I can appreciate the hotness of it all. :)

Not sure about hir, but I think that "herr" is German for Mister. I would imagine that hir is something along those lines. I wouldn't really swear by that though...

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Gloss pointed me to the definition below. Thanks for trying to help though. :)

[saifai.livejournal.com]

Huh. I hadn't any idea such a word existed. Learn somethin' new every day. *gr*

[gloss]

Hir (pronounced heer, according to El GF) is a gender-neutral pronoun like zie & zir. So I expect the author is trans or nongendered. *g*

*fans self* That excerpt? YES. :D

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Thanks so much for that link; the FAQ there is really informative. Let me ask you just to be sure that I understand what you mean about trans and nongendered (I know, I know, I'm pathetically ignorant). Transgendered means that a person identifies with the sex opposite of what they are biologically born with, right? And I'm guessing nongendered people don't identify with either gender, or else both?

Oh, Gloss, I have stayed awake reading this book, and I have all kinds of things to say about it and questions. *g* Expect lesbian porn post spammage from me in the next couple days. LOL

[gloss]

Transgendered means that a person identifies with the sex opposite of what they are biologically born with, right? And I'm guessing nongendered people don't identify with either gender, or else both?
Mmm, basically, yep. And transgendered, of course, isn't the same as transvestite, and - thenotoriousg reminds me to point out - transgendered is a broader category than transsexual. The latter group seek some medical/surgical/hormonal alterations to bring their bodies closer to their felt gender.

I loooooooved your reaction post! Going over there to respond now. Also, I'm very cross with myself for deleting my Susie Bright-dildo icon. :(

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Oh I bet that icon was great! :)

Thanks for the clarifications.

[executrix.livejournal.com]

What this country needs is a good five cent neuter pronoun! I think of ze, zir, and hir as ways to not-have-to-decide, e.g., "If I did a good job writing this story, I hope the reader will have zir hand in zir pants."

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Heeeeeeee.

In the link that Gloss gives, it also lists pers as a possible. I can't believe I'd never heard of any of these GNPs before.

[kitty-poker1.livejournal.com]

Well, you learn something new every day. I didn't have a clue about the meaning of 'hir' and I'm glad to have it explained.

I'm slightly bothered by the fact that many of the women in the fiction wear fake penises. I'm not into femslash, at all, but surely lesbian relationships aren't about one of the partners pretending to be a man? There are many aspects of sex which don't involve vaginal penetration. Some of them enormous fun. *g*

You have a great husband. We're very lucky to be able to discuss our kinks with the ones we love most, aren't we?

[executrix.livejournal.com]

Hey, I even have a matching icon!

There are sex toys for penetration that are designed *not* to look like penises, but depending on the lesbian relationship, some of them do involve (a) transgendered partner(s)--someone with masculine gender some or all of the time despite a female body. And we do live in a society that makes penises more of a big deal than other body parts. So sometimes strap-ons *are* about accessing male power, sometimes about controlling it or subverting it. Hey...it's just like fanfic!

And both in fandom and in society, clearly there are many examples involving ex-presidents and peanut butter* to show that it's common to think "penetration" = "sex" "any other kind of sexual activity" = "foreplay."


*Not together!

[kitty-poker1.livejournal.com]

Cool icon! I feel right at home. I need a kitty to cuddle.

I don't really understand the point of sex toys that look like penises in every anatomical detal. Once they're in use, surely that's unimportant? Who cares if there's a perfectly designed slit on the head? The only worry is if the batteries will last out.

I do understand about trans-gendered women feeling the need to take a traditional male role, including vaginal penetration with a faux-penis. As trans-gendered men may feel the need to take what is considered the female, i.e. submissive, role in their relationship(s). 'Society' has shaped us all, whether we like it or not. You put it beautifully, and thank you for the care with which you replied to my comment.

Funnily enough, I'm just reading a Spander in which Xander is wondering whether frottage counts as sex. My view would be a big Yes! Sexual behaviour is as varied as the number of people on the planet. As long as it's always consensual, with partners who are capable of giving consent, I'll give it a thumbs up, every time. *g*

[executrix.livejournal.com]

There was a long-ago "Dykes to Watch Out For" cartoon where there was a sex toy demo at the bookstore and there was a debate about whether it made *any* sense at all to use a condom when going down on a fake dick.
It's also perfectly possible to buy double-ended devices, which *really* subverts the question of fucking and being fucked.

lunabee: I just threw a copy of Amy Bloom's "Normal," a great book about various kinds of gender issues, into the box with the Derby, it's for you and you're welcome to pass it around. One thing that really surprised me reading about Female to Male transexuals is that a lot of them are opting to have surgery to increase the mobility of their clitorises but not to construct anything that looks like a penis--it made me realize how much I considered having a penis central to starting out or becoming male.

I haven't seen it because I don't like sad movies, but there's a doc called "Southern Comfort" about a FTM who had the cosmic bad luck to be dying of cancer of the uterus, and about his MTF life partner. Now, that's one version of WNGWJLEO that I can get behind.

PS--most Kitty Poker players don't want to *cuddle* their winnings.

[kitty-poker1.livejournal.com]

LOL. Wearing a condom while going down on a fake dick is just silly, except if it's to reinforce safe sex behaviour. I've heard about the double-ended devices, and can see the attraction. I'm straight, not oblivious. They could reach the parts even Heinekin can't. *g*

Remind me never to watch that movie. I avoid sad movies and fic like the plague. The only movie called 'Southern Comfort' I've seen had Keith Carradine as star and I really don't think we're talking about the same one. I have absolutely no idea what WNGWJLEO means.

*g* I'm a pathetically needy cuddler. Luckily, my cat is too.

[executrix.livejournal.com]

PS--I never know which abbreviations to spell out!
WNGWJLEO: We're Not Gay, We Just Love Each Other, a subject on which I have ranted, like Cordelia dating guys with Porsches and hair plugs: A Lot.

[kitty-poker1.livejournal.com]

LOL! I should have friended you a long time ago. Have you read Ahestele's 'Midnight at LAX'? One of the characters (a flaming gay guy and Xander's best friend) says something along the lines of 'We don't talk about our feelings. We're mens!' I thought that encapsulated the difference between men and women, sexual preferences be damned.

[executrix.livejournal.com]

kitty_poker1: I don't know the Buffy fanfic literature well at all--I think of myself as somebody who likes Buffy but isn't a Buffyfan.
One thing about a lot of slash couples, though, is that some of them are Two-Guy Couples (Mal/Jayne f'rex) some of them not so much (Jim/Blair comes to mind). And not being human affects Spock's Guy status to a certain extent.

[kitty-poker1.livejournal.com]

Ah, but Spike and Angel aren't human. That's a big part of their attraction. My first slash love was Jim/Spock, even though I was too young to recognise it at the time.

The other-worldiness and willingness to deny their demons for love of a human gets me every time. *sigh*

[executrix.livejournal.com]

I wonder if it makes a difference if someone was never human or used to be and stopped? In my first fandom, Blakes7, one of the characters was a member of a semi-telepathic race that reproduced by cloning, and I always wondered (now that we're so close to Freud's 150th birthday) how a complete disconnect between sex and reproduction would affect psychoanalysis.

[kitty-poker1.livejournal.com]

I used to watch Blakes 7, though on a casual basis. It was never one of my fandoms. Is that Cally you're referring to? I vaguely remember her being telepathic but not that her race reproduced by cloning.

A complete disconnect between sex and reproduction would have put Freud out of work. Although, sometimes a cigar really is just a cigar. *g*

In the case of gay couples, there is that disconnect. I haven't observed that my gay acquaintances' relationships are any different than mine and my husband's, though. All intimate relationships come with attendant highs and lows, it seems.

I've never thought about whether or not being an ex-human or ex-demon would make a difference. That's an interesting question! In the fic I'm reading, Spike has become human but he still has the memories of being possessed by a demon. He doen't behave as William but as a cross between William and Spike. Of course, that's only one writer's take on the situation. LOL

[executrix.livejournal.com]

Cally 'tis. Although now that I'm in Firefly I have to stop and think which one's Cally and which one's Kaylee (and I think there's a Cally in BSG?) Yeah, they had little 15-compartment egg trays. Maybe they would have found something else to worry about.

Anyway, these days if you had a dollar for every gay couple with kids you could retire!

Wiser heads than mine have tried to make sense out of the whole relationship between First Evil-type vampires and run-of-the-graveyard vamps, and whethr you're still the same person or not.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

I LOVE that fic! I really, really do, and that flaming old queen is one of the best parts of it.

[kitty-poker1.livejournal.com]

Isn't he? I adored him. He was so grounded and confident, where Xander needed help

[gloss]

Wearing a condom while going down on a fake dick is just silly
Um, it's really not. For lots of reasons, including hygiene.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

And executrix pointed out below the whole you can't go from the back end to the front end without hygiene risks, which of course I knew, but wasn't thinking of when I first read these stories.

[gloss]

Hee, totally. Plus, cleaning toys can be a bitch, especially if you're in a drop your pants & screw kinda mood. *bg*

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

And that "Silver Dollar Afternoon" has a nice moment where the narrator's accidentally left the dildo and the lube in the other room and has to go retrieve them. I love those nods to realism in fic--of course, you don't always just magically have what you need to hand, especially if you get all lusty and forget your itinerary. LOL

[kitty-poker1.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I don't get it. I would assume a normal person would take it out of the bag, wash it down with hot water and disinfectant and proceed to use it to manufacturer's specifications. A condom really would seem redundant when no bodily fluids are involved.

[kitty-poker1.livejournal.com]

I'm sorry. I meant no *exchange* of bodily fluids. I realise that's a crucial difference.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

I think if there was only going to be a blowjob on the strap-on, then it wouldn't really matter. But, in these stories at least, the blow job is always followed by some manner of penetration, so there are bodily fluids in that way.

Xander in your icon totally looks like he's fantasizing about Spike. Naughty Xan. LOL

[kitty-poker1.livejournal.com]

Still learning new things here! Thanks for that explanation. All becomes much clearer. :)

He does, doesn't he? I love a naughty Xander. LOL

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, Normal is terrific. And the Kafka analogy she uses helped me immensely in trying to grok the idea of identifying as transgendered. Toby Davis' The Naked I: Monologues from Beyond the Gender Binary has also helped a lot and I recommend you see it if you ever have a chance to. [It's a performance, like Eve Ensler's VMons, so not available on video. It's been performed at a number of schools and at some conference type thing whose name escapes me.]

It's also perfectly possible to buy double-ended devices, which *really* subverts the question of fucking and being fucked.

I absolutely adore the idea of such devices, from a mutual pleasure standpoint, but I'd never thought of articulating it quite as you had, which makes me enjoy it even more.

Oh, and as for choosing to construct a penis or not... my understanding is that the medical technology right now is really limited so that's one major factor going into FTM people's choices. It has been interesting, though, having conversations recently with a colleague about trans issues -- her assumptions about surgery and what it means to choose it or not, and my much more nuanced understanding thanks to a number of years engaging with the issues (not personally identifying as trans, but knowing a number of people who did and reading up on the subject and listening to them).

[executrix.livejournal.com]

Here are the materials for a course I took a couple of years ago, including a unit on transexual issues:
http://web.gc.cuny.edu/clags/SeminarsSP05.htm

Replying to hermionesviolin: there's nothing like transexual surgery to emphasize the differences between penises and phalluses! And, when you think of it, when FtM operations were first done, they could do even *less* to construct a working penis, but it was assumed that an important part of the surgery was to give it the old college try.

Haven't read it myself, but there's a collection called "Dick for A Day" consisting of essays and stories about, well, you can guess. Personally I wouldn't want one even for a day, but different strokes. (Or, for a Mother's Day MPreg moment, different storkes for different folks.)

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

I don't know. There have been times I really wanted a dick--mostly concerning issues of peeing

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

You said grok.

*loves*

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

*grins* I was trying to come up with the word/phrase I wanted for that sentence and realized that "grok" was exactly it. Is a very useful word.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

That's another thing I wondered about. Most all of these stories do use the condom on the fake penis which does seem kinda pointless; I thought maybe it was just in case your partner's fake penis wasn't clean enough or something.

What do you mean by the mobility of their clitorises? Like stretching them out? I just have this funny image of providing their clits with bus passes. LOL

[executrix.livejournal.com]

Spring Break--Clits Gone Wild! Technically I believe the correct term is increasing mobility by cutting the suspensory ligaments. But hey, I'm too squeamish to even watch "House" so don't go by me.

It's a good idea to wash anything that goes into a partner's ass before putting it anyplace else, so condoms on sex toys can save a trip to the bathroom to wash up (although changing condoms in midstream, as it were, can be pretty inconvenient too). But mostly I think it's a Solidarity With People For Whom Condoms Are a Life and Death Issue thing.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

I agree with you. If there's getting off, there's sex being had, even if it's watching each other masturbate. That's so having sex. :)

[hermionesviolin.livejournal.com]

I'm not into femslash, at all, but surely lesbian relationships aren't about one of the partners pretending to be a man?

But penetration doesn't necessarily mean one of the partners is pretending to be a man. Even female-bodied individuals who are attracted to other female-bodied individuals can enjoy the feeling of penetration.

I really dislike the idea that there is One True Sex Activity for any giving pairing (penis-in-vagina for m/f, anal penetration for m/m, and cunnilingus for f/f).

[kitty-poker1.livejournal.com]

I totally agree with you. In fact, that was the point I was making. There are as many variations of sexual behaviour as there are people on the face of the earth and it's wrong to categorise people.

I'm straight. So what? That doesn't make me wrong or right, it just makes me not interested in having sex with other women. It's so small, so minor. I'd rather read about people being nice to one another. Their sexuality is of supreme indifference to me.

There is No True Sex Activity. There's a huge range. What upsets me is when children or mentally incapacitated people are sexually abused. That's something to get angry about, not people who are perfectly capable of giving consent and choose to have sex with someone of their own gender.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

But penetration doesn't necessarily mean one of the partners is pretending to be a man.

No, of course not. But some of these stories did give me that uncomfortable vibe. I'm gonna post about that in a minute.

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

I'm slightly bothered by the fact that many of the women in the fiction wear fake penises.

*nods*

It bothered me, too. I'm about to make another post now that I've finished reading the book and I'm going to talk about how that makes me uncomfortable.

My husband is awesome!!!! He bought it for me because I'd had a bad day. Now that's a pickmeup gift. :)

[kitty-poker1.livejournal.com]

On the other hand, I've had a couple of marvellous conversations here, thanks to you. You're a doll, Lorraine, and I'm confident you're happy to be a facilitator.

Yay for J! He's truly a man. He understands and loves you. Many people spend their whole lives looking for that. He's a very lucky man. *hugs*

[lunabee34.livejournal.com]

Awwwww. You're a doll too. I so can't wait to meet you. The time doth rapidly aproacheth. *g*