Welcome to NSFW Sunday! The most wonderful time of the year!
+ Clarisse Thorn’s Interview with a Sex-Positive Feminist offers a look at the creation and evolution of Sex-Positive Feminism:
“… right now, I think women are encouraged to be into sex, but we’re encouraged to be into sex in a very performative way, and we also aren’t supposed to be too excited about sex, because then we’re seen as “easy” or “slutty”. There’s nothing wrong with doing sexy things because you like looking sexy, but I think a lot of women feel as though we MUST look sexy in a certain way, and that’s really limiting and stifling. On the one hand, if we don’t seem to enjoy sex in this very performative way then we’re seen as “prudes”; at the same time, if we seem to enjoy sex too much then we’re seen as “sluts”. It’s a tightrope.”
+ Last week, 300 British women participated in the Muff March to protest gynecological cosmetic surgery, such as labiaplasty and vaginal rejuvenation, and public obsession with public hair removal. According to the Guardian: “There is a growing concern among women that their genitals don’t “measure up” to the ideal touted by the global pornography industry – which for the past two decades has been busy infiltrating mainstream society.”
+ On that note, another trend piece (slightly a few years late?) about the end of pubic hair in The Atlantic this week: The New Full-Frontal: Has Pubic Hair in America Gon Extinct? The article focuses only on heterosexual women and the demands of their male partners, and we wonder, as we so often do, how it would be different in lesbian relationships.
“As usual, the woman who approached me after my TEDx talk wanted me to tell her that it was demeaning to see women tied up and spanked. And as usual, I told her I didn’t feel that way at all. I told her that I am a woman who likes to be tied up, blindfolded, spanked and devoured. And that it takes an enormous amount of strength to stand up and say that. To ask for it. To be good, giving and game sexually and get what I want. It takes courage to trust so completely that I can get what I want… Sometimes, the strongest decision you can make is the decision to not control things.”
+ The New York Times features Dita Von Teese: What I Wore .
+ Betty Dodson answers the question, “why is it so hard for (some) women to orgasm manually?” from a woman who can only come with her vibrator.
“Learning how to orgasm later in life is no easy task. The strong vibrations of a sex toy can help to awaken a long slumbering clitoris. While a few of us are fortunate to have a partner with the right touch, still we are so conditioned by romantic love stories and vanity that we’re unreasonably self conscious and can’t be ourselves. Adult masturbation in private can come to our rescue.”
+ 2011 in Celebrity Cleavage: The boys at COED Magazine have been keeping track..
+ Historical sex: basically the same as contemporary sex.
“Since the sexual revolution of the ’60s, we tend to think that sexuality from the Baby Boomers back to the beginning of time was a long history of repressed urges, prudish fundamentalist restrictions and brutal rape politics.
But it turns out that a lot of what BBC dramas tell you about sex in history is just a fanciful cover for sex lives that didn’t differ that much from our own.”
+ Muerte Pequena is a sex-radical tumblr: “Reality doesn’t impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another. No more walls.” {Anais Nin}
+ Babeland in Glamour Magazine on how to talk dirty: “The cheapest, easiest way to spice up your sex life is to talk dirty. There are three easy ways to get started. Say what you are doing, i.e. ‘I love being on top! This is so hot!’ Say what you want to be doing i.e. ‘I want you to wrap your arms around me from behind,’ or talk about a total fantasy that isn’t really going to happen, but that turns you on…”
+ Real South African Beauty: “Photographer Jodie Bieber’s photography series “Real Beauty” was inspired by a few events as well as taking inspiration from the Dove campaign which showed ordinary women in their underwear advocating and speaking for real beauty. This series questioned how South African women saw themselves and what their definition of beauty is. Across all communities that she examined, she found that South African women, also hold “unneccesary perceptions of self doubt around themselves and their beauty from an early age.” Unlike the Dove ads, Bieber shoots these women in their homes, allowing them to pose in whatever position makes them feel most beautiful, and with no photoshop! That means all bumps, scars, cellulite, tatoos, and extra curves are left in for the viewer to see. It’s nice to see physical reflections of what every other woman looks like and have that shown as real and beautiful.”
+ Canada, the United States, and Britain vary wildly on what sex ed classes should include. In the United States, most discussions are about abstinence and whether sex ed should be taught at all; in Britain, respondents were more likely to get useful information about sex from media than from school or family members; and in Canada, respondents felt sex ed should begin at age 11 or younger and include the widest variety of topics, including sexual orientation and pleasure along with diseases.
+ Last-minute sex-toy shopping? Babeland has lots of ways to do this and so does Good Vibrations.
+ Dorothy Snarker celebrates Genderfuck Thursday with the shirtless edition.
We claim no ownership or copyright of any of the images posted in this post. If one of these images belongs to you and you would like it edited or removed, please contact us and we will do so immediately.
Disclaimer: All of the photographs on NSFW Sundays are taken from various tumblrs and do not belong to us. All are linked and credited to the best of our abilities in hopes of attracting more traffic to the tumblrs and photographers who have blessed us with this imagery. The inclusion of a photograph here should not be interpreted as an assertion of the model’s gender identity or sexual orientation. If there is a photo included here that belongs to you and you want it removed, please email our tech director at cee [at] autostraddle dot com and it will be removed promptly, no questions asked.
