Archive for May, 2009
Feminist Porn 2009
As mentioned in my previous post about Feminist Porn, the awards ceremony was held on April 24 in Toronto. The winners of this year’s FPA (and with a strong dyke presence) are :
Hottest Kink Movie
Perversions of Lesbian Lust Vol.1 | Madison Young; Madison Bound Productions
Steamiest Trans Scene
Crash Pad Series 2- Unlocked | Shine Louise Houston; Pink and White Productions
Sexiest Straight Movie
Intense Desires | Eli Cross ; Lennox Films
Hottest Mature Couple’s Movie
Bill and Desiree: Love is Timeless | Tony Comstock; Comstock Films
Most Sensual Softcore & Golden Beaver Award for Canadian Content
Man of My Dreams | Mimi Balfour; Cleopatra Productions
Steamiest Educational Series
Red Hot Touch Series | New World Sex Education
Sexiest Dyke Movie
One Night Stand (Pour Une Nuit) | Emilie Jouvet; Hysterie Productions + Fatale Media
Most Deliciously Diverse Cast
Roulette | Courtney Trouble; Nofauxxx Productions
Heartthrob of the Year
Dylan Ryan | For work in Strap-on Motel, Sex Mannequin, Crash Pad Series Volume 3, Champion, Perversions of Lesbian Lust: Volume 1 and Lesbian Life: Real Sex San Francisco.
Heartthrob of the Year
Tyler Knight | For work in Chemistry 4 and Intense Desires
Indie Porn Pioneer
Movie of the Year
Champion | Shine Louise Houston; Pink and White Productions
[nicked from GoodForHer]
Like buses coming in threes
Same-sex marriage news updates.
- The Maine House of Representatives has passed a bill allowing same-sex marriages in the state. That, together with it passing Senate, places the bill before Governor Baldacci. He has a few days to make a decision to approve or veto the bill.
New Hampshire and New York could take up similar SSM bills in their lower houses as early as next week. [via NT Yimes]
ETA: An hour after the bill was passed, Governor Baldacci signed it into law. He wasn’t entirely happy to do so 
but he did the right thing. Civil matters belong to the government. The Governor’s statement is here. Maine is the 5th US state to legalise SSMs, and Baldacci the first Governor to legislate it.
- Washington D.C. councillors voted to recognised SSM from other states (half-measure if you ask me). The Mayor apparently supports it, but as Washington D.C is federal territory, this measure will have to be approved by the committees in the US Congress that oversee D.C. If Congress does nothing, after 30 session days, the measure becomes law. [via AAP]
- Finally, a SSM challenge in Greece. A local court has ruled that two homosexual civil weddings performed last year are invalid. “The couples had said they took advantage of a loophole in Greek civil law, which does not specify gender in matrimony…”. An appeal will be lodged with the intent of taking the case up to the European Court of Human Rights if necessary. Interestingly, the lesbian couple have a joint tax file. [via News]
Prop 8 challenge – decision still reserved
The State Supreme Court of CA has postponed it’s decision by a month, till June 3.
Toothpick House by Lee Lynch – reviewed by Fran Walker
Annie is a blue-collar, hard-drinking, bar-hopping, butch taxi driver who lives in a rented falling-down beach cottage. Victoria is student at Yale who has never even been to a bar, let alone guessed she might be lesbian. They fall in love, but as they’re both aware, that doesn’t guarantee their HEA. Love means hard work and sacrifice and risk.
Much of the book deals with the changes they have to make in their lives and their mindsets to accomodate their relationship. The progress of their relationship, their love, and their sexual interactions are beautifully done, with the characters, as individuals and as a couple, so well drawn and likeable that the HEA is as believable as it is welcome.
As Annie’s and Victoria’s lives change, so do the lives of their circle of friends. A lesbian becomes a feminist. A feminist becomes an activist. An activist becomes a lesbian. Annie’s house, the “toothpick house”, becomes an allegory throughout the story for Annie’s relationship with Victoria, and for women’s roles in the world: fragile yet timeless, vulnerable yet committed. It’s subtle, yet beautifully done, and brought full circle in the story’s last line.
Though the plot is largely internal and could be classified as literary, the prose is accessible and easy to read. It’s not quite as lean and polished as Lynch’s current works, but it’s easy to see that she’s been a skilled writer since before I was born, and the quality of the prose in Toothpick House is far, far above most of what is published today.
The story is a telling illustration of what gay life was like decades ago. I didn’t feel it was outdated, though. Not only are the characters’ experiences still valid to the lesbian experience today, but the story is such a good history lesson and reminder of where we came from and why it’s so important to hang on to the progress and rights we’ve gained. I’d love to see this book re-issued and made available to a new generation (or two) of readers.
* Fran Walker is primarily a writer of short fiction. Her non-fiction book, Lavender Ink: Writing and Selling Lesbian Fiction, was recently published by Bedazzled Ink Books. She can be contacted at franwalker@ihug.co.nz
Book read: The Swashbuckler by Lee Lynch (pt 2)
Because too much can’t be said about Lee Lynch’s books, here is another review of The Swashbuckler, this time by Fran Walker*. She’s also kindly shared her review of Toothpick House in the next post.
They meet. They become friends. Best friends. They cruise femmes together. But Mercedes grows up, so to speak, and Frenchy doesn’t. And so their lives diverge, meet, diverge, and meet again. With, finally, a happy ending for everyone.
The book is exquisitely written with Frenchy’s story told in the third person, past tense, and Mercedes story told in the first person, present tense, each with a very different and vivid voice. It’s a tribute to Lee Lynch’s skill that it seems unthinkable the story could be told in any other way, though normally you’d think that combination was just a recipe for disaster.
For me, the book was a huge learning experience. I never really got the butch versus femme stuff, and vaguely assumed it just meant how you dress and whether you like to cook or use power tools. I had no clue what “stone butch” really meant. The Swashbuckler, then, opened up a whole world for me and showed me where we came from, what lesbian life was like fifty years ago, and where the butch/femme roles came from. It was fairly depressing for me, too, to realise how damaging those role stereotypes must’ve been. “Butch” proscribed how you walked, how you drank, how you smoked, how you kissed, how you loved. (Christ on a cracker, I hope we’ve got past all that?)
Both characters are utterly believable. They leap off the page and into your head. Mercedes I loved. Frenchy I could understand and feel sorry for, but I never quite liked or admired her, even when she got her head together. So, although this book is, in terms of craft and complexity, a step up from Toothpick House, I have to admit that I liked the first book a bit better.
* Fran Walker is primarily a writer of short fiction. Her non-fiction book, Lavender Ink: Writing and Selling Lesbian Fiction, was recently published by Bedazzled Ink Books. She can be contacted at franwalker@ihug.co.nz
Pulp-a-thon
This has to be one of the funnest lesbian literary events, and for a good cause too.
The Lesbian Herstory Archives, located in Brooklyn, NY, USA, is having a Pulp-A-Thon fundraiser as part of their 35-year anniversary celebrations.
PULP-A-THON FUNDRAISER
Saturday, May 30th, from 9am to midnight.
at The Archives: 484 14th Street, between Prospect Park West and 8th Avenue.
Refreshments will be provided.
How can you get involved?:
Come and read or listen to other people read. Contributions are encouraged but optional.
Come and read, and get your families, friends, and colleagues to sponsor you. Sponsorships can be per page, per hour or a donation for the whole reading. Call the Archives at (718) 768-DYKE or email lhapulpathon@yahoo.com for sponsor forms.
How to donate:
– Get people to sponsor you and have them go to this link: http://www.lesbianherstoryarchives.org/donorform.html. (Be sure to mention “pulp-a-thon 2009” on the secure payment form in the “fax number” tab).
– Get people to sponsor you and bring the money to the pulp-a-thon.
– Get people to sponsor you and have them call (718) 768-DYKE to make a contribution via credit card.
– Get people to sponsor you and have them mail a check to LHA at P.O. Box 1258, New York, NY 10016. Mention pulp-a-thon on the check.
– Contribute at the door.
– Contribute online, via credit card or via mail, as outlined above.
Pulp novels reached their peak in the 50s and 60s and are what writer/Archives co-founder Joan Nestle calls “survival literature.” As the late Jaye Zimet said in her book Strange Sisters, “before the sexual revolution of the 1960s, these books offered a thrilling peek into an erotic underworld of deviant passions and scandalous couplings.” So come, listen, read out loud and discover these novels once considered taboo.
Any questions please call the Archives at 
718-768-3953
or email lhapulpathon@yahoo.com.
http://www.lesbianherstoryarchives.org/calendarspec.html#event1
The readings will be a hoot.
Amazon the Gouge
I don’t know if I should be giving Amazon this much airplay – everyone else already does – but it continually amazes me how Amazon continues to ooze into the nooks and cracks of ebusiness for the purpose of gouging its customers by the cents.
Latest news is that it is charging Kindle users, by the megabyte, to send personal documents.
[via Gizmodo - extra points for the Xena fanfic mention]
It’s a sport to see how low Amazon can go.
Lesbian news, from the tiny to the mature
Hey hey, Kelly McGillis has officially come out. Hah, my gaydar was working when I saw Top Gun the first time.
I think she looks sexier now than twenty years ago. 
Now I HAVE to get The Monkey’s Mask – the movie, not the book, although the book is fantastic and you should read it.
.jpg "The Monkeys Mask")
Video interviews with Kelly McG on AfterEllen and SheWired.
In other happy female news, a boffin has discovered an all-female ant colony that reproduces by cloning. Well, she said ‘asexually’ but I’d like to think the ants have recreational sex on the side, or at least orgasm to have babies.
