Filling a Much-Needed Void

Bidding is open for the WisCon or Bust fundraiser auction.

The item I am offering (ms. or book proposal crit) is here: http://community.livejournal.com/con_or_bust/4170.html

There are some stylin' items up for grabs. I see one or two things I may well bid on myself.

Go forth and biddify!

FYI: I'm donating a professional manuscript or book proposal critique as an auction item for the (Wis)Con or Bust: Fans of Color Assistance Project fundraiser.

Details here.

Bidding will go live on March 18.

In a spirit of public-mindedness I have drafted a speech for John McCain's use. Here it is, in its entirety.

America, we stand here on this historic occasion to thank you for your support as well as for your thoughtful antagonism. It has been a long and hard campaign and we have truly done our best. In the end, both Governor Palin and I agreed that we subscribed to the old adage "may the best man win." So we voted for Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Now, if you'll excuse us, I've been aching to bang the Governor for months now, so we're going to go back to the campaign bus and if the bus is a-rockin', don't come a-knockin', you betcha. You celebrate your way, we'll celebrate ours. That's the American Way, gosh darn it.

Anyone up for helping a hapless researcher?

My next nonfiction book is about the history of heterosexuality (working title: STRAIGHT: On Men and Women and How It Matters). I'm looking for some help in researching a couple of issues having to do with psychology and psychiatry.

Some of you very smart people may know this: is there a decent single-volume history of theories of sexual orientation/preference (and/or theories of attraction)? I don't care what the disciplinary bent is. I'm mostly looking for a timeline without having to do all the digging myself.

Please note that yes, I am aware of, and am reading, writers like Kraft-Ebbing, Havelock Ellis, Magnus Hirschfeld, Karl Ulrichs, u.s.w.; the issue is not access to or interest in primary texts. Rather the issue is time, and some secondary or tertiary source(s) that would help me use my time more effectively in working on this aspect of the book would be greatly appreciated.

I'm also looking for the best possible scholarly critiques of Freud, probably two or three of them but not more than that. (Again, time is an issue, and this is a general-audience book and not a dissertation, besides.) One of the critiques should be feminist. The others can be from any perspective.

Specifically, I want something that talks about Freud's "The Tendency to Debasement in Love," "Anatomical Sex-Distinction," The Sexual Theories of Children," "Infantile Genital Organization," "'Civilized' Sexual Morality, and the "Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality." Or some subset of these texts, I suppose.

Would anyone second a recommendation for Jerome Neu as a critic I should read?

If you vote for someone because of the color of their skin, that makes you a racist.

If you vote for someone because of the configuration of their genitals, that makes you a sexist.

Vote for the candidate based on whom you think is best-suited for the job at hand. Because when it comes to bodies? Everyone's got an asshole.

Hey y'all --

For those who might've missed it yesterday, I am selling off the last of my stockpile of the out-of-print but much-in-demand Big Big Love and the not-out-of-print Zaftig: Well Rounded Erotica to raise money for a very good cause.

I was selling copies of my other books too, but they're all gone now. But you can still get copies of Big Big Love from me for half of what they're going for on Amazon Sellers's Used and New listings.

And guys? I'm down to my own shelf copies after this. I won't be selling any more. So if you want one, or know anyone who does, now's the time.

See the sale post for ordering info.

First, jumping on matociquala's bandwagon, and in the interest of lightening my shelves a little bit, a book sale.... for a good cause.

What I'm Offering, And For How Much

-- 10 8 6 copies of my out-of-print Big Big Love: A Sourcebook on Sex for People of Size and Those Who Love Them for sale at $50 per copy including shipping.
(Note: I understand that used copies are going for something like $100 via Amazon Sellers and suchlike.)

-- 5 3 copies of Zaftig: Well-Rounded Erotica for $25/copy

-- 2 1 copiesy of Unruly Appetites for $25/copy ALL GONE

-- 2 1 hardback copiesy of Virgin: The Untouched History for $30/copy ALL GONE

-- 5 3 paperback copies of Virgin: The Untouched History for $20/copy ALL GONE

Books can be inscribed to the person of your choice, and mailed to any address you specify.



Why I'm Doing This

I have a good friend, the mother of my godson, who is a single mom struggling to keep her year-and-a-half old business going, and who is going through some very difficult times. Her business, called Living Legacy Development, is a cleaning/maintenance company that not only provides top-shelf eco-friendly service in the cleaning and maintenance departments, but which does so by providing employment and mentoring to teenagers from the Baltimore City schools... something that is desperately needed and which is desperately scarce in this city of high unemployment, high poverty, huge addiction and violence and truly piss-poor social services and schools.

This employment makes all the difference in the world to the teens that work for Living Legacy. Some of them have been able to use their earnings to do things like help their families move out of homeless shelters, help pay medical costs for siblings or parents, or insure their own access to adequate clothing and food and school supplies in families where the money for those things either just doesn't exist or is diverted away from the childrens' needs due to addiction issues.

Just in the past year and a half since Living Legacy began, Living Legacy workers have also begun to do the kinds of things Living Legacy was founded to help them do: several workers and now-former workers have parlayed their employment histories with Living Legacy into vocational internships and college scholarships. These are kids who, for the most part, have very little in the way of resources, and who, being both black and poor, face a hell of a lot in terms of prejudice, but who have enormous amounts to offer. The chance to work at all would be, for many of these kids, a big deal. For them to have the chance to work for a company with progressive values and a profound ethic of support and loving kindness like Living Legacy is an immense gift.

Living Legacy has, to date, been an entirely self-funded business: my friend who owns and runs it took out a second mortgage on her house to finance startup costs, and basically struggles like hell to make ends meet and get everything (supplies, wages, workers comp, etc.) paid for out of the company earnings. As for a lot of self-funded entrepeneurs, this means that things are often precarious, financially. This is particularly true in summertime, when many of Living Legacy's institutional clients -- they do a lot of work for charter schools -- dries up.

Here's where my books and your money come in! My friend, Living Legacy's owner and manager, desperately wants to file for 501c3 (American tax-exempt charitable organization) taxation status. Having this status would enable her to apply for badly-needed grant money for which Living Legacy is currently ineligible, would lessen the business' tax burden in many ways, and would offer a path for people who wanted to support Living Legacy's work to make tax-deductible donations. It would, in short, make a world of difference to a company, and the woman behind it, who are doing so much to make a world of difference for kids who desperately need it.

BUT: filing for 501c3 status takes money, both in terms of a $500 filing fee and in terms of legal assistance to make sure all the paperwork is filed appropriately. And money is exactly what they don't have to spare.

I want to give Living Legacy the money to file for 501c3 status, or at least to get them within a range where it would be feasible for them to do the rest of the funding themselves.

I can't afford to do this all by myself. But through the magic of the Internet, and people who like to read dirty books, perhaps we can do it together.

SO: BUY A BOOK. I'll reimburse myself for packing and postage and pass the rest on to Living Legacy.

HOW TO PLACE YOUR ORDER

Email me directly at hanne.blank@gmail.com

Please put LIVING LEGACY BOOK SALE in your subject line

In the body of the email, please tell me which books (and how many) you would like to buy and to what address(es) they should be sent. Also include info on whether you would like the books inscribed, and how they should be inscribed if you'd like something specific.

I will respond with an e-mail giving you payment information.





==========

Live in the greater Baltimore area? Want to hire Living Legacy? They do housecleaning of all kinds, but also yard work, interior painting, heavy cleaning (they have done a fair bit of post-construction cleanup work), and so on. Call Erica at Living Legacy Development, at 410 419 3554 or 410 243 2161. Tell her Hanne Blank sent you. They do fabulous work.

I'm assuming you've all heard about the upcoming online fundraising auction Live Long and Marry?

If you haven't, bidding goes live on July 1.

And if you poke around, you may discover that I've offered something for this auction that I have never offered before and will probably never offer again...

Just remember, bidding goes live on July 1.

I'm sad to say that I've had to cancel my plans to attend WisCon this year, but glad to say that it's for a good cause.

I will miss reading your tea leaves at Gathering, and am particularly going to miss getting to see and hang out with a bunch of y'all, but I will be busy finalizing the sale of our current house, the purchase of a new house, and packing for the move. The move has been in the works for a while, but the wheels of real estate move at their own speed and the timing just didn't work out to keep WisCon in the mix.

We'll be moving to a lovely little 170-year-old mill cottage on a dirt road on a hilltop... that is still here in the city, in one of those little Brigadoonish places that for some reason the march of the American ethos of "if it's old, tear it down and put up something new, huge, and hideous!" has happily elected to ignore.
( Cut for photos. )

There is a fireplace in the kitchen (I was standing in front of it to take the above photo) and there are lilacs and witch-hazels in the dooryard, camellias and hydrangeas and lots of happy violets in the garden. It's been intelligently updated indoors, and has been well-loved and well looked-after and for a house its age, has very few things that need to be mended.

I'm looking forward to it a great deal. Have a wonderful WisCon. I look forward to hearing all about it. I plan to be there next year.

It is the Second International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Wretch Day. In honour of this fine holiday, which was, incidentally, invented by the most excellent and talented papersky (go buy her books!), I proffer forth here a bit of my work, free of charge, for anyone who would like to enjoy it.

It is a short story that was inspired by a necklace made by elisem. The necklace was given to me as an anonymous gift a while back, and so I decided it would be a friendly gesture to make the story it inspired a gift as well. The necklace is named "Strange Queen," ( but the story is called 'Sympathy'. )

As we all know, many women long to give a swift kick in the balls to some male person or other. Yet all too often women are prohibited from doing so.

Sometimes this is due to our culture's repressive attitudes toward female violence or because of societal pressure for women to behave in "ladylike" and feminine ways. At times women must censor themselves from administering a good solid boot to the greater masculine crotch due to historically justified fear of reprisal. At yet other times it is nothing more or less than men's self-serving, self-glorifying attitudes toward their precious little patriarchal testicles that lead them to cravenly avoid supporting women's emotional and political expression.

All in all, we live in a culture that routinely prohibits women this useful and healthy outlet for the outrage that almost every women eventually feels as a result of living in a sexist patriarchal society. Indeed, we live in a culture which punishes women for even thinking or talking about expressing their rage in this way.

This must change, and men, who after all have an obligation to help redress thousands of years of unearned patriarchal privilege, also have a moral obligation to help solve this problem.

To this end, we propose a community-based Open Source Swift Kick to the Balls Project.

Like other Open Source projects, the Open Source Swift Kick to the Balls Project (OSSKBP) relies on a wide pool of volunteers working together for the common good.

The Project has very simple parameters and it basically works like this:

Men who are open to being given a swift kick in the balls need do nothing. Women will simply assume that any man not clearly indicating his position vis-a-vis being kicked in the balls with an approved OSSKBP badge or pin is open to being kicked in the balls, as any progressive, free-thinking, feminist man ought to be, by any woman who wishes to do so.

However, we also recognize and affirm that not all men will be so willing to serve. Therefore the OSSKBP provides two other options.

1. Men who would like to be asked for permission before a woman administers one or more swift kicks to their balls shall wear the offical OSSKBP "Ask First Pin" at all times. This is a black lapel pin with a lavender question mark on it.

Because of the serious and comprehensive respect with which women's desires vis-a-vis having their bodies touched by others are uniformly greeted in our culture, women will sometimes abide by any given Ask First Pin wearer's stated preference about getting a kick in the balls at the time that he is asked. At other times, however, women may make their own decisions as to whether or not to give him a quick kick in the nuts regardless of the male's expressed preference. Fair's fair.

2. Men who do not wish to be kicked in the balls at all must wear a large visible official "No Kicks, Thanks" badge at all times, including when swimming, showering, and sleeping. They may also wish to avoid areas where large numbers of women are present, particularly at night. Some men may also wish to invest in assertiveness training, sympathetic female bodyguards, body armor, or sessions with a personal self-defense trainer to increase their ability to resist undesired kicks. As these methods have long been considered completely adequate for women who wish to avoid sexual predation we feel that they are all that is necessary here.

Men choosing the "No Kicks, Thanks" option should be aware that they will be ridiculed publicly for their sexism and misogyny and their indefensible, self-serving, anti-female pursuit of their own selfish bodily autonomy. (It's not like getting kicked in the nuts does them any lasting harm, for heaven's sake.) Men who comply with all of the above and still end up getting kicked in the balls will be advised that they were asking for it, and that women can't be blamed for what happens when a man walks by with his crotch just hanging out there where it becomes a target of opportunity. (Besides, if a man weren't really willing, deep down, to get kicked in the balls, he wouldn't have stood still for it. Everyone knows that.)

Thank you for your participation in the Open Source Swift Kick to the Balls Project.

We had a visitor appear at the back door today. It's the first time we've ever had a visitor come to the back door. It's certainly the first time we've had a visitor hang upside down on the screen of the screen door, too.


So far we have been unable to figure out what his (and it's definitely a male) motivation for this visitation is. There's no interesting food out there, certainly not attached to the house or near the door, and no interesting holes in the side of our house that it might be interested in getting into. At least none that I could discern... and being a Midwesterner who grew up in houses of a vintage where squirrels did sometimes get into the attic and/or the walls, I have a keen eye for such things.


Why today? Why our back screen door as opposed to any of the other options on our block? Why upside-down?

It's all a mystery.

If any of you are in or near Charlottesville, VA, I'll be speaking there on Friday night. I'm the guest of Planned Parenthood of Virginia at the Virginia Festival of the Book and will be in dialogue with Ruth Gaare Bernheim, associate director of UVA's Institute for Practical Ethics and Public Life, on the subject of "Abstinence, Education, and the Politics of Virginity." It's free and open to the public.

Info and venue coordinates here: http://www.vabook.org/site08/participants/details.php?partID=326

In the process of sifting through the sediments of my basement, I have been unearthing many things.

Among the things thus brought up, like eyeless creatures of the abyss, into the abject light of day there are some which I do not wish to keep, yet am stymied as to an appropriate mode of disposal.

These are items which I cannot viably donate to any charity. Nor can they really be recycled in the conventional way. I suspect they could be sold, but that is a road down which I have no desire to travel.

And so I turn to you. Because, as everyone knows, All Answers Exist Somewhere In The Collective Consciousness Of LiveJournal.

Today's crop of otherwise irredeemable cellar-dwellers is a small cache of virginity-fetish porn and sex toy items.

These were purchased as research items when I was working on Virgin: The Untouched History, what with the local libraries just not having all that many copies of Cherry Pie or Barely Legal in the stacks for scholarly review. They have not been wanked over (to the best of my knowledge) or, in the case of one particular item, wanked in (more critical). They're sanitary, in other words, and essentially unused.

There are some magazines, a DVD of truly regrettable cinematographic aspect, a package of China Shrink Cream (for you astringents-up-the-chocha devotees), and, as the proverbial icing on the cake, a livid pink rubber male masturbation sleeve apparatus that was sold under the name "Lotus Blossum Pocket Pal" and whose packaging claims it to have "a real hymen." (This must surely make the use of said appliance all the more alluring for the swashbuckling Hands Solo seeking to dock his Millennium Falcon of Love in its willing, if inanimate, confines. There is, after all, a first time for everything. Even a disembodied handful of pink plastic poontang.)

I offer it all up, lock, stock, and pink plastic barrel, to anyone who is interested in

a) making art with it
b) taking photos and/or video footage of the art sie makes with it and sharing them me and the world via the Internet.

I will hold you to this agreement. Public humiliation will be employed if necessary.

So.

I know there are some wonderful, creative, political, fascinating artists out there in LJ-land. If you're interested in making some art that incorporates virginity fetish porn/sex toys, please let me know. Links to any online images or documentation of other art you've done would be very welcome, but are not mandatory.

*tap* *tap* *tap*

This thing on?

I guess it is.

Hi!

We're moving house in pursuit of more Lebensraum and some garden space. We aren't 100% sure where we're moving to yet, although we're working on that.

I thought I'd mention it, though, in case any of y'all know of anyone in the Baltimore area, or someone who might be moving to the Baltimore area in the near future, might be interested in buying our house, the Little Purple Rowhouse That Could.

( A little description... )

I'm inviting anyone who wants to come to join me for a Dia de Los Muertos gathering at the stone Labyrinth at Stadium Place, 900 East 33rd Street, Baltimore MD [Google Maps], on Saturday, 3 November, 2007, from 3 to 5 pm. The labyrinth is directly across the driveway from the YMCA, you will see the white colonnade beside it when you drive in to the parking area. There is plenty of free parking. The address is also serviced by public transit.

Feel free to bring photos and mementos of your ancestors or other beloved departed ones to place at the center of the labyrinth. Bring some marigolds (real or fabric -- both are traditional), a sugar skull if you have one (or maybe a plastic one if you don't?), and some snacks and beverages to share with your beloved dead and living friends. Walk the labyrinth if you like, or just hang out in the colonnade sharing a beautiful November afternoon in memory of those who came before us.

A short while ago, the divine Lioness, elisem, emailed me to say that an individual who wished to remain anonymous had expressed the desire to buy her necklace-crown Strange Queen for me. Would I be willing to accept such a gift?

I hardly knew what to say, except for "why, yes!" and "thank you."

Strange Queen arrived today.

( I am delighted and grateful and shiny. )

Thank you, Anonymous Benefactor, whoever and wherever you are. It is splendid and I am thrilled to be swanning around in such a thing.

I'm inviting anyone who wants to come to join me for a Dia de Los Muertos gathering at the stone Labyrinth at Stadium Place, 900 East 33rd Street, Baltimore MD [Google Maps], on Saturday, 3 November, 2007, from 3 to 5 pm. The labyrinth is directly across the driveway from the YMCA. There is plenty of free parking.

Bring photos or mementos of your ancestors (or other beloved departed ones) to place at the center of the labyrinth. Bring a candle in a flameproof, wind-proof holder, and marigolds (real or fabric -- both are traditional) and some snacks and beverages to share with your beloved dead and living friends. Walk the labyrinth if you like, or just hang out in the colonnade sharing a beautiful November afternoon in memory of those who came before us.

Just noting that the submissions period has opened for Project: QueerLit (info and rules here), a fantastic indie literary competition for unpublished novelists who have novels with queer content to enter (writers may or may not be queer themselves).

The Project: QueerLit contest celebrates and brings media attention to unpublished authors of queer writing and opens doors for publication of their work. The contest is open to any unpublished author of an English-language novel with queer and/or bent content.

Authors may not be previously published or contracted to be published for a novel in any form. Previously published chapbooks, nonfiction, shorter fiction and collections of short fiction, and other work published in multi-author collections, magazines, etc. does not disqualify them. A novel with queer or bent content refers to a novel of any genre or blending of genres with LGBTIQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Intersex, and Queer), or with alternative themes, situations, voice, or characters. The author (and the novel) does not have to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersexed, or queer to be considered. Queer in this context can also mean a bent or outsider worldview.

All novel submissions are "blindly" reviewed (without knowledge of author’s identity) and rated (on originality, storyline, voice, and, characterization) by members of the Project: QueerLit Advisory and Review Committee, and another applicant.

From these ratings, the top-rated group of twenty-five Semi-Finalists, three Finalists, and a Winner(s) are selected and awarded.

Additionally, aside from the ratings, at least one novelist will be selected from all of the submissions as the Grand Prize winner(s) and awarded.

Full Disclosure: I am a member of this year's Advisory and Review committee, meaning that I am one of the judges. No, it won't help you win. But I figured I should mention it.

Please forward / repost this at your leisure.

After having tried to work things out among our feline family for almost a year, my Belovedary and I have come to the conclusion that it is for the best if we try to rehome our youngest cat.



This is Inspector Qiao.

Basically, he's a fantastic cat -- playful, snuggly, sweet-tempered -- as long as he has his humans to himself. He is also great with our dog, with other human visitors, and (so far, his experience with them has been limited) with children.

The problem for us is that he needs to be an Only Cat. When our other two cats enter the picture, he becomes positively awful, and his MO appears to be one of seizing as much of the available resources for himself, whether that means terrorizing the other cats out of competition, physically beating up on them, or acting up so that the humans will stop paying attention to the other cat(s). It's been a problem since he came into our house as a little scrap of an alley kitten, and although we were hoping he would outgrow it, he has not. In fact he has settled into it, because our eldest cat is 16 and diabetic and slow, and she cannot stand up to him so he abuses her mercilessly. He is also sometimes rather awful to our five-year-old cat, but as she is less than half his size and weight (she's abnormally small), I worry about that, too.

The result is not just that the other cats get terrorized. It's also that Qiao gets squirted, scolded, yelled at, and time-outed all the time (no fun for him), and the two of us having to constantly deal with and discipline him (no fun for us), and try to find ways to give attention and care to the other cats that don't simply make it all worse. This last is frankly the most aggravating aspect for me because trying to ameliorate the effects of his competitiveness just makes him more competitive toward the other cats, and the cycle just worsens/shortens.

It's not been working out well for some time, on that level, and now we have come to the conclusion that it's probably not going to get much better, and we would be best served to try to find him a good home where he can be Only Cat. He's great with dogs, as I said above. But not cats.

If any of you who are reasonably local -- where "local" equals "within three or so hours' drive of Baltimore" -- would be interested in giving him a home as an Only Cat, or know and can vouch for someone who would, please let me or perigee know. We'll be happy to bring him to you.

He is up on all his shots, healthy, FIV and FeLV negative, neutered, and comes with his own travel carrier, a supply of kitty toys he likes, a bag of his favorite crunchies, and lots of cute. He likes to be held on his back like a baby, sometimes, and he loves to drape himself over half of your lap when you sit on the sofa. He is a big fan of plastic bottlecaps, cornstarch packing "peanuts," and Q-tips as toys, and will beg most entertainingly for Q-tips. He also will eat nearly anything, which makes for hours of fun giving him things like a strand of cooked spaghetti (which is first a toy, then a snack) or a green bean. He has never sprayed, he is a neatnik about using the litter box, and generally he's very well socialized as long as there aren't any other cats around. He *loves* feet, and sometimes armpits, so if you have any stinky boy people around your house (or are a stinky boy person yourself), he will probably make love to your feet and shoes frequently.

He's a big handsome boy and I am a little envious of whoever gets to have him as his fully-matured solo self, because I think he has the makings of a superlative Lord of the Manor.

If you would be at all interested in talking to us about the possibility of giving Qiao a post in your household, please email us -- hanne.blank at gmail is probably the best bet.

Thanks for reading this.

PS: Yes, you may repost this if you like. Thanks.