Toxic Sex Toys with Smitten Kitten {featured video}

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The Psychological Underpinnings of Submission & Domination

Has spanking gone mainstream? asks Katie Roiphe in a Newsweek cover story in response to all the hype around the Twilight fanfiction slash "mommy porn" bestseller Fifty Shades of Grey. Roiphe notes the coincidence of this trend of women eagerly consuming fantasies of submission at a time when women are "in hard economic terms" less subjugated or dependent by men than before. May it be "that power is not always that comfortable, even for those of us who grew up in it ... that equality is something we want only sometimes and in some places and in some arenas .... that power and all of its imperatives can be boring"?

The theory of modern powerful women seeking submission for some reprieve is alluring, but is there much holding it up? Dr. Laura Berman supports the theory, arguing that "There are type A, alpha women who need to be in control of absolutely everything in their homes, in their children's lives, in their families' lives. They're deciding where they go on vacation, what kind of clothes their husband wears. A lot of these women grew up with lots of inhibitions and they're overwhelmed and exhausted by the need to control everything. For them, this is an exciting and erotic fantasy."

The Queer X Show: Feminist and Sex-Positive Sluts on Stage {featured film}

Emilie Jouvet
(Photo: Mélanie Bahuon)

Emilie Jouvet is one of the most exciting voices to look for within the movement of new, progressive sex film and porn. Firstly, her films are intriguing for their cinematic quality, delivering a raw, gritty, textured, underground, art house feel. And conceptually, they uniquely communicate the poignant poetics of French feminist theory, as well as the visceral soul of American queer activism. Fittingly, her latest film, Too Much Pussy! Feminist Sluts in the Queer X Show (2011), features both American and French performers, including Madison Young, a well-known San Francisco-based feminist, BDSM pornographer, and queer activist; and Wendy Delorme, a French performance artist and author of among others the feminist manifesto Quatrième Génération (Fourth Generation). She also co-wrote Too Much Pussy! with Emilie.

Debunking Claims about the Biology of Male Attraction to Teens {featured news}

National Review columnist John Derbyshire was fired this past weekend for his appalling remarks about blacks. But, notes gender studies professor, writer, and speaker Hugo Schwyzer, Derbyshire has expressed appalling remarks about women too, insinuating that women’s attractiveness begins to diminish before they’re old enough to buy a legal beer. Explains Schwyzer today at Role/Reboot: Derbyshire wrote in 2005 that “a woman's salad days are shorter than a man's—really, in this precise context, only from about 15 to 20."

In his refreshingly sharp column, Schwyzer debunks the argument that evolutionary psychology or biological imperatives bear Derbyshire out; the idea that men’s ephebophilia (sexual attraction to teens) is a “lamentably universal inevitability.” In response to a note Schwyzer received from a 33 year-old man, David, who expressed a desire to turn off his frequent attraction to high school girls, Schwyzer explains that: