FAT SEX WEEK: Interview with Queer Porn Star Sophia St. James
In mainstream porn, I am seen as a plumper or BBW, ebony or urban. In queer porn, I am just me. I don’t mind being labeled because I am ebony and I am of size, but I am also a hell of a lot more than that and in queer porn the other parts of me are valued as well. I have said this many times, porn is the only industry that can get away with being sizist, racist, classist, homophobic, ablest, and bigoted. However, if you surround yourself with empowered, fierce people it’s not a problem. In mainstream, I am not small enough to be in ‘regular’ porn and I am not big enough to be in most BBW porns. But in queer porn, I am accept for my style, beauty, and sex appeal. I have not experienced direct negativity from being in porn when it comes to my size or ethnicity, but I have experienced indirect negativity as well as seeing my friends and others deal with it. My goal is to make my own queer fierce femme realness genre versus trying to fit in with one. I also enjoy being able to educate my heterosexual cis gendered male fans about what queer is and how sexy it can be.
FAT SEX WEEK: Seven Ways To Be a Good Ally to Your Fat Lover
I’ve been asked by people on different ends of the fat lover spectrum about advice being a good ally. From the “My lover doesn’t see how beautiful she is and won’t have sex with the lights on,” to the “My lover uses the term fat to describe themself but I’ve always thought of that as a derogatory word… isn’t it?” For FAT SEX WEEK I’ve highlighted some of the best ways to be a good ally to your fat lover.
This is all from my limited perspective, you should obviously be in good communication with your lover to find out what works for them and how they operate in the world. Communication is an essential sex toy!
This advice applies to folks of all sizes, not just thinner folks partnered (in all the myriad ways one can partner) with fat folks. And a lot of it is good advice for sex in general, regardless of whether or not your partner is fat.
My Reading with Empowering Astrology
Last week I had my astrological chart read by Katie, the bombshell behind Empowering Astrology. I had met her once before years ago and upon one glance at my chart she knew that the previous few months (because of Pluto sailing through my chart) had been “like a nuclear bomb went off” in my life. She had no way of knowing but I had lost a job of five years and my apartment became uninhabitable in that span of time. That little nugget stayed with me and I had always wanted to come back for a full chart reading.
Your astrological chart is basically a map of the stars as they existed at the exact time and location that you were born. When people say “I’m a Capricorn with a Virgo rising and my Moon is in Scorpio,” what they mean to describe are aspects of their personality as dictated by the positions of certain celestial bodies when they entered this world. Lesbians and woo-oriented queers use astrology as code with one another all the time, so it’s helpful to know those basics. You can get a free chart at astro.com if you know your birth time and location.
Just Text Them: Four Text Message Ideas to Ask Your Friend to Go to the Next Level
I received the following comment to my popular blog post, Nobody Ever Died of Awkward: The Queer Fat Femme Guide to Battling Insecurity and Asking People Out:
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Many times when asking someone out I have relied on a friend to basically write the script for me. Here is some sample language you can use to ask this lucky girl if she wants to go out with you:
How I Decided to Join a Gym
Up until October of 2011, I had never once joined a gym.* I debated for a long time joining the Bed Stuy YMCA before I took the plunge and I had a pretty detailed thought process that might help folks out there deciding whether to join a gym.
Blogging For Human Rights Day and A Big Project
I love it because while it is such a huge project, it is meant to work in small scale. The thing about human rights violations world-wide is that it can be really alienating and frustrating that there’s nothing we can do individually to make a difference so we often default to nothing. But by reaching out to individuals and harnessing the power of each person to commit to do something to help life change, all across the globe, the world really can change.
Things That Delight Me
I’m sitting in a West Philadelphia coffee shop drinking all the cheap beverages (iced coffee, green rooibus tea, soon to be followed by CHAI probably, caffeine I’m getting crazy on you) and working on my book. So far my shitty first draft* is 30,000 words long and that is an incredible jaunt down my emotional, sexual and party roads for the last four years. Someday soon I will share it with you, dear readers, in a form you can hold in your meaty paws and will hopefully make you laugh and cry and want to go out and have hot fat sex.
In the present time, however, I have some stuff that delights me that I want to share with you.
50 Shades of Glitter: On Self-Examination and Shifting Desires
If we’re coming from a place of acknowledging there are so many different ways to be Femme, why is it valid to make a blanket statement that people aren’t attracted to Femmes at all?
I also want to make it clear that this post is as much addressed to Femme-identified folks who don’t do Femme on Femme Action (FOFA) as much as non-Femme identified folks.
I’ve addressed this tired line before, focusing on debunking Femme as high maintenance. Now I want to focus on shifting desire and whether the idea that one can actually say they all the time never are attracted to Femmes.
Summer Update and Magic Mike
When I embarked on the journey to write a memoir this summer, stepping out in faith with no book deal lined up or anything, I swore I wouldn’t end up like so many of my favorite bloggers who sort of disappear when they are writing a book. And then I did it! I disappeared. When you pour yourself into something 1,000 words at a time and it’s a lot of hard stuff you don’t necessarily want to look at or think about it gets really difficult. So it’s all, write, self-care, write, live a new adventure over here.
Everyday Glitter: Glamping Edition
This year, I focused on letting go of my high expectations for doing things and let the Goddess be my scheduler. It made things really beautiful with a lot of opportunity for quiet Shavasana. The glory of a digital camera and my relentless documentation of my queer life has helped these past few years for me to record precious memories, and 2011 Fest for me was not spectacular or earth shattering. It was better than that, a lot of joy in the everydayness of two weeks in a wym-created wilderness civilization. I barely make any of my photos public but I wanted to share a little of what makes this place so special to me.
EVERYDAY GLITTER THE FIRST: SPA TREATMENTS IN THE WOODS
Towards a Spiritual Definition of Wymhood: Working Towards Trans Womyn’s Inclusion at the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival
Why, in a space so inherently Womyn-centric, lovingly built from scratch by Wym hands, where we worship the Feminine divine either explicitly or implicitly, are we dependent on a patriarchal medical definition of sex to define who we bring together to celebrate wymhood and all it can be?
It is an incredible effort physically, mentally, financially and emotionally to attend the Festival. The wyms who are drawn to it are drawn for a reason.
Femme Solidarity Workshop at the Philly Trans Health Conference
I live tweeted the workshop and got quotes as best as I could truncate while things popped around the room. Ultimately, I really enjoyed that the discussion centered around addressing misogyny in queer spaces and how that affects spaces like the PTHC where femininity can be drowned out by a “dudely” privileging of masculinity. I thought it was a good conversation to have and in a free-form workshop like the one we were in, even though it didn’t really address Femme solidarity directly.