Wenches of Yesteryear 01.01.01 Why Scarleteen? | Hanne Blank and Heather Corinna Amidst the recent wave of "new" reports that teens define sex as intercourse, and abstinence-based sex education isn't working, Heather and Hanne revisit and reprise Scarleteen's mission and explain why the current state of sex education in our culture really is a matter of life and death. 11.29.00 From the Left and Right |Nicole Blizzard Donna Minkowitz spent several years going undercover in churches and Religious Right meetings to learn more about them and why they seemed so intent on reversing many civil rights gained by the gay and lesbian movement over the years. She visited a meeting of the all-male "Promise Keepers" in drag, attended a Christian Coalition conference dressed as a conservative woman, and visited the "Focus on the Family" facility in Colorado just to name a few. What she found out was that she might have more in common with her supposed enemy than she thought possible. 11.08.00 The Morning After |Heather Corinna I'm feeling hung over from my one-night-stand with middle America, with the media, with a group of men with whom I'd rather have my toenails pulled out one by one by than crawl into bed with. The sad part is, really, that I don't feel any more disillusioned or unsupported than I ever have. 10.25.00 Love With The Proper familar, I Do |Heather Corinna Life is often more about simple inconveniences and poor timing than the stuff of high drama and tragic romance; life is more Marx Brothers than Sophocles. And so, there were no heinous dusty secrets in my great romance, but there were girlfriends I didn't like very much who seemed to appear just when I was prepared to make my entrance. There weren't continents or social classes to be crossed, but the monotonous drive to St. Louis, though far shorter, is no day at the park either, especially when you're driving through the heartland with pro-choice bumper stickers on your van. 9.27.00 That Which I Can, I Do |Heather Corinna I have come to define beauty in my life not as that which is lovely, lofty or pleasing, but simply as that which is compelling, and often uncomfortably so. As an artist, I crave beauty, yet this is the sort I crave, that which tears me to my bones and makes me look at them, unfettered and unadorned. It is the sort of beauty which keeps me awake at night, rather than lulling me into a restful sleep. 9.06.00 A Hypocrite's Chilren's Crusade | Heather Corinna and Hanne Blank Is plopping a button up or reporting a site as proactive as informing parents how to protect their children? Isn’t it more proactive and positive to eschew the practice of selling ANY sexual material which sexualizes a non-adult, whether he or she truly is under the age of legal consent or is simply advertised, bought, and sold as such?. 8.18.00 Safer Sex: The Public Variety | Heather Corinna When I first had an astrological reading done in high school, the reader told me I was going to have one hell of a hard time in my life, because I liked to caress and stroke the things most people refuse to touch at all. I am not alone in this. Most of the people I am close to, and the colleagues I respect most are the same way. It makes us brilliant. It makes us noticeable. It makes some of us famous. It also often can make us more famous as targets of hate or of fear than of recognition or praise. 8.02.00 Sex and the Real Nitty Gritty | Heather Corinna And it is at that point it becomes clear, as it always does, that television is not real life. There are few general statements one can make about the whole of the world, but one I know to be true is that the world, my friends, does not embrace a tart, unless she isn't REALLY a tart, deep down inside. 7.25.00 Bisexuality and Bias | Heather Corinna Here's a newsflash: bisexuality is not nonmonogamy, and single-sex partnership is not an instant mix for trust or acceptance. Bisexuals do not need to be with more than one person any more or any less than lesbians or heterosexuals do. 6.29.00 My Father's Daughter | Heather Corinna Were my father anyone else, or were he a prototypical father, I may not have grown up largely thinking that sex was something people do, that can be pretty to watch and have many facets, all of which are okay if people are responsible and kind. Were he anyone else, I would not have asked "why" quite so much, nor would I have continued to reach for things just beyond the grasp of my small fingers. 6.21.00 Zen and the Art of Sex Advice| Heather Corinna For some strange reason, many people equate "learning" sex or intimacy with learning to do something rote like cooking a particular dish, riding a bicycle, or memorizing a bus schedule; they think it something they can learn once, and never need to learn again. I would gander that many feel that way not because they truly think it is that simple, but because they direly want it to be that simple. 6.10.00 Intelligent Pornography| Heather Corinna [F]or any of us to assert that by no means is something pornographic -- to anyone -- is truly to simply say that our own taste can dictate what is or is not by definition pornographic. And none of us have that power, thank goodness. If we did, we could then dictate what did and did not, could and could not arouse every other human being, unilaterally. Not only would that make sex terribly uninteresting, it would make it utterly inhuman. 6.01.00 Truth in Sexualizing| Heather Corinna We all know that sex isn't always pretty, it isn't always erotic or arousing, it isn't always sincere, and it is very, very rarely just about sex. I think very few of us, if we're truly honest with ourselves, really want to see that all the time because it makes us have to analyze ourselves in a realm in which we'd rather avoid thinking; in a realm in which we would prefer to be in beginner's mind -- almost to the point of being childlike, or primitive -- as much as possible. 5.24.00 A Meditation on Erotic Communication| Heather Corinna In learning to speak about sex, there is no need to add flowers where there be none, or reach for something coarser or more shocking than what we seek to express. In learning to express desire and sexuality, as in learning to express anything, the work to be done is accomplished with a simple recipe: add equal parts emotion, bravery, vulnerability and absolute necessity, mix well, and pour. 5.17.00 Sexuality Without Walls | Heather Corinna Women are not going to benefit from sexual material and information if the partners in whose hands they place their bodies don't have it either, regardless of their gender, nor if they cannot be compassionate, knowledgeable and accepting of their brothers, fathers, husbands, and the masculine aspects of their own psyches. No one can benefit from a sexual spectrum that opens up to them widely, then offers four walls with no windows... no matter what their gender or sexual identity. 3.28.00 My Feast, My Grandmother's Fancy | Heather Corinna More often than not, the city I am in vanishes, shifts when my senses take the helm. More often than not, "food" is simply not an apt description for what I take in with my mouth, and where my mouth takes me. 2.21.00 Jilling Off, Judy Jetson Style | Hanne Blank With that as conceptual background, it's easy to imagine a magical teledildonics in which the experience and the interface is effortless, responsive to biofeedback, and truly becomes something in which your every wish is your teledildonics equipment's command. 2.14.00 Better than Chocolate: Sex Education | Heather Corinna When we rue the state of romantic love, union and sexuality in the world, and wonder why we have the troubles we do, in many cases, the most honest answer is from those who don't seek to answer at all, but instead, to question. 2.08.00 About that Condom | Debra Hyde Recently, I came across the Rochester, New York news story of a condom discovered within a time capsule from 1873. The condom, found in a sealed envelope and placed within a book, surprised city officials and its presence was quickly labeled the work of a prankster. But something about the date, 1873, sounded familiar to me and I wondered if the condom planting was really the prank that everyone assumed it to be. 2.01.00 Reclaiming the Dew for My Feet | Heather Corinna If the political is personal, someone needs have a chat with my libido, because after a couple weeks like this, sex is the very LAST thing I want to do: with myself, with my partner, and yes, even with Edward Norton or Angela Bassett if they showed up at my door. 1.24.00 Russian Roulette with All the Chambers Full: An Open Letter to The Adult Industry Heather Corinna and Hanne Blank With a recent flurry of adult film actors testing positive for HIV who have performed and filmed unsafe sex both before and after their positive test results, we're seeing that the purportedly kinder, gentler, more caring and health-conscious adult industry is just so much window-dressing. Reprinted in Batteries Not Included, March, 2000 home