The fabulous Greta Christina wrote an article the other day, in which she speculated on the reasons why there aren’t more men writing about sex. It’s a great piece and I highly recommend it. Actually, I recommend pretty much anything Greta writes.

My observations pretty much match hers. There are a lot more women who write about sex than men. She hits on some of the factors that contribute to that, and I think that there are some others that are worth delving into. I’m going to talk about sex educators and sex writers together because I see many of the same influences in both of these arenas. Anyway, I consider thoughtful sex writing to be one facet of sex education so it’s a somewhat unnecessary distinction, at least for the purposes of this piece.

Greta writes that one of the reasons that there are fewer men who talk, write or teach about sex is that “[w]hen men write about sex, on the other hand, they’re assumed to be drooling horndogs.” That certainly fits my observations. Men who want to talk thoughtfully about sex have to prove to their audience that they’re not creepy or just looking to get laid.

I certainly acknowledge that there are a lot of creepy guys in the world. There are a lot of predatory guys. There are a lot of manipulative guys. Most of them are looking to get laid, and many of them feel free to voice their opinions about sex and women. I really understand why many male sex educators & writers need to prove that they’re not one of these guys. However, one of the effects of that is that many men who write or talk about sex often avoid talking about their personal sexual experiences. It’s one way to make it clear that we’re talking about sexuality in general, not our sexualities in particular. That creates a distance that serves to insulate us in order to minimize the chance that someone is going to misinterpret what we write. Being able to do that is a skill that takes a fair amount of practice and a lot of people simply don’t want to bother or don’t know how to start.

Another reason is that sex and relationship advice is generally seen as part of the female sphere of influence. Some of that stems from the ways in which girls and women usually have a lot more practice at talking about and processing their emotional relationships than men do. When men start talking about these topics, we usually have more of a learning curve, simply as a result of not having had as many opportunities to develop those skills. And without role models to learn from, it’s harder for boys and men to acquire those skills, which reinforces the cycle. This is slowly changing, but it’s still a strong element. (This is also evident in the field of psychotherapy, which is heavily skewed towards women practitioners.)

Still another factor is that we have an overly simple and reductionist view of male sexuality. We have this idea that male sexuality is simple: get it hard, get it in, get it off. And we have this idea that female sexuality is this vastly complex, confusing terrain that requires a lot to make it work. But my experience is that men’s sexual desires are just as complex, tricky, rewarding, and fraught as women’s.

Of course, there are some differences. For example, a lot of girls and women don’t know where the clitoris is and I have yet to hear of a cisgender boy or man who didn’t know where his penis is. My observation is that while some women know little or nothing about their sexual and/or reproductive physiology, there are others who know a lot. Meanwhile, almost every man knows something about how his body works, but far fewer know as much about it as a well-informed woman knows about hers. It’s as if we’ve decided “I know where this one button is. There’s nothing else to know.” And so male sexuality gets reduced to that single function, which then becomes another self-reinforcing loop.

That means that a man who’s willing to talk about something other than “get it hard, get it in, get it off” risks the backlash that any guy who steps outside the box of masculinity risks. This is one of the consequences of sexism, homophobia, and gender essentialism, and not a lot of men have the tools they need to be brave enough to break free. I don’t think it’s a worthwhile endeavor to compare the impact of sexism et al on men versus women, and I have no interest in coddling men who aren’t willing to take the chance to step out of their boxes. But when we’re asking why there aren’t more men writing about sex, the ways in which sexism affects men is certainly part of the puzzle. And given that (heterosexual) men generally benefit from sexism in some very real, material ways, there are barriers to stepping outside of the box that other folks don’t experience in the same ways.

Having said that, there are some clear general differences in the ways that men and women experience sex, some of which I’ve learned from transgender folks. Several of the transmen I’ve spoken with have told me that when they started taking hormones, their sexual desires became more visual and more focused on their genitals and on penetrating a partner. By contrast, some transwomen have told me that their sexual desires shifted towards a more general, full-body experience. These aren’t meant to be representative of transpeople’s experiences in general, but I’ve heard enough of these stories to suggest a pattern. To me, this suggests that some of the differences in how people experience sex is grounded in biology. I believe that as long as we’re mindful of the existence of sexual diversity and we remember that we’re talking about overlapping bell curves rather than a mars/venus dichotomy, we can explore that.

But when you put these different pieces together, it’s easy to see where some of the barriers to men entering the sex writer/educator field come from. To the degree that men want to explore/discuss/write about their desire to satisfy (as Greta phrased it) “an animal urge to put a dick in a wet hole,” there’s not a lot of room to do that without being attacked as a perpetrator or a predator. And to the degree that men want to talk about their other desires, fantasies, and interests, there’s a whole lot of folks ready to discount them for being unmanly.

Making this even harder, most men don’t have as much experience in talking about these things as many women do, so there are often a lot of stumbles and mistakes. My observation from reading blogs and articles is that there’s no shortage of people waiting to attack someone for a clumsily-phrased idea, especially when it comes to sex. This tends to keep folks from being willing to dive into the water and as a result, many of the men who are interested in exploring sexuality topics don’t want to do it in such a public venue.

So I think that there are a lot of different pieces to this puzzle, but what they all seem to come down to is that men don’t write about sex because they don’t see other men writing about sex. All I can say to that is “Come on in. The water’s fine.”

Photo: Courtney Trouble

What is your favorite porno of all time?

My earliest associations with porn were always the male camaraderie that was so essential to the development of my own queer identity. I always got so much more pleasure out of socializing with boys, liking things boys liked, knowing things that boys knew, doing things boys did, wearing things boys wore, behaving like them, etc. My desire to fuck men was always tied up in a desire to be one – this is why I have had so much satisfaction identifying as a faggot.

My buddy Lucas used to housesit for a woman who had a huge porn collection. My other guy friends and I would go over and watch movies. I could of course never forget my first, which was Muffy the Vampire Layer. It was formulaic but campy, and I remember being impressed by how integral puns and parody was to sexually explicit movies. And of course, we all sat around pretending not to be totally turned on by the site of the ole in out in out, in which none of us had yet participated.

I started obsessively watching porn after college when I got the notion in my head that sex work would be a brilliant racket to support the rocknroll lifestyle I wanted. I was totally blown away by my discovery – countless women representing themselves as intelligent, creative, hypersexed, individualists consciously capitalizing on their own enjoyment of exhibitionism.

In particular I developed a fixation on Joanna Angel, whose movies revitalized my sex life with my then-partner. Identifying with her sexuality, personality and entrepreneurship inspired me to try my hand at pro-domming and eventually porn. And I got off watching her movies and feeling like I was watching someone I knew have sex.

I also loved NoFauxxx for the queer identity politics and body variety, Crash Pad for its realism and Madisonbound for the rampant kink. Courtney Trouble and Madison Young and Shine Louise Houston have given me so much work and opportunity. My porn career really is living proof that all you need to work with your idols is a little moxie and commitment.

What sex toy(s) do you like to use on film?

I love to wear larger-than-life cocks because the proportions look so great on film and because I feel like a giant boner is the perfect physical manifestation of how excited and energized I get when I fuck on camera.

I also love to use black leather impact toys like floggers and belts because I love capturing the ballistic movement, elegance and power of beating a submissive’s ass.

If you could have a Good Vibrations Shopping Spree, what would you put in your cart?

I hate shopping, but GV is dangerous for me, because no matter how much excessive money I spend there, IT’S ALWAYS WORTH IT. I love and practice safer sex on and off the clock, so I always get PJUR silicon lube, condoms and latex gloves. I’m a sucker for big, g-spot friendly, super-hard toys and natural materials, so I’ve been dying to get my hands on those Nob Essence wooden dildos, especially the Fling G spot toy! And I’ve yet to have the pleasure of the Eleven.

And I’d throw in every single book and dvd that they stock.

What was it like working on set for this film with Good Releasing?

Well, I’ve been fortunate enough to perform in five films for Good Releasing: Nostalgia, Seven Minutes in Heaven: Coming Out and Bordello for Courtney Trouble, and Macbeth and Fluid: Women Redefining Sexuality for Madison Young. My experience making all of these has several extraordinary things in common.

First of all, both Madison and Courtney encouraged me to meet up with my fellow performers and develop our rapport and our scenes together, which leads to some pretty interesting conversations in Mission diners and bars! “Hi, nice to meet you, we’re gonna fuck on Saturday, so what do you like?” My fellow cast members are always their own kind of expressive, progressive sexy,regardless of body or gender or identity- in other words exactly the kind of people I like to fuck, work with, and be around.

On set, there is a sense of truly radical creativity and respect among performers and crew. I wake up every day knowing that I did something right in my life because I get to perform an amplified version of my sexual id and gleefully, filthily generate sex positivity in my work!

If you could give one piece of sex advice, what would it be?

Fantasies are like dogs. They require training in order to bring you happiness. Walk your fantasies; don’t let them walk you.

What do you believe is the biggest myth about sex?

That it’s wrong or unhealthy to enjoy a fantasy, or act a way during sex and play, that you would never actually act out in real life. Indulge in your fantasies and desires, in your own masturbation life and in your relations with other humans. Anything within the realm of fantasy or played out with consenting adults is healthy. Enjoy the thrill of the taboo instead of giving in to shame.

Who are your influential co-stars, directors, both folks you’ve worked with and those you’d like to work with?

Courtney Trouble and Madison Young have given me so many opportunities. They both work extremely hard to represent queer identity politics and female empowerment in sexy, smart, funny, original ways. I don’t throw the word visionary around, but these women are it.

Carson is my co-conspirator in sex work, performance, writing, publishing, filmmaking, and leather-jacket-wearing – I am extremely proud to have enacted a bathroom duel between good-evil/white-leather-black-leather in Seven Minutes in Heaven: Coming Out and to know a woman who is so tough and brilliant and sly.

It has also been my pleasure to fuck, be fucked by, spank, tie-up, or boss around James Darling, Vid Tuesday, Mickey Mod, Maestro, Billie Sweet, Puck Goodfellow, Joline Parton, Sophia/Chocolate Chip, Sarah Lee Sinful, and Jae in Good Releasing movies.

I still have yet to fuck either of the aformentioned directors (hey ladies!). I would not turn down a gig with: April Flores, Jiz Lee, Billy Castro, Sid Blakovich, or Joanna Angel. And Lorelei Lee is the lifelong contract star of my heart.

How do you prepare for your sex scenes?

My partner is good enough to warm me up by fucking the shit out of me before a shoot (even when my call time is 9am!) and then providing tons of gushing post-shoot aftercare.

Also: tons of yoga. A good night’s sleep. Cutting back on intoxicants for a while to clear my mind and system. I do not cut back on food, however: good healthy energizing food, like what you would take on a long hike, is crucial to enjoying intensive performative sex, and way more important than looking half a pound skinnier.

What did/do you hope your performance(s) portray about sexuality?

All I can do is be myself and hope people are inspired by my natural shamelessness. Tina Horn is my rampant candid sexual persona: a queer, switchy, campy, cerebral weird-bodied faggot with an utter lack of fashion sense.

How has having access to sex-positive information and support change your life?

I would quite simply not be the happy healthy person I am today without these resources and community.

What projects are you working on now?

I was the first producer for Dark Horse Theater/Pink and White’s new project Point of Contact, where I documented my sexual mischief. I’m working on new content for that site for June.

I am teaching a beginners’ but comprehensive spanking class called Bottoms Up at Good Vibrations in April for tops and bottoms.

I’m headed to Toronto in April for the Feminist Porn Awards! As always, I am rocking and rolling, writing and distributing my zine, doing readings and performance, writing for AORTA magazine, and doing education and professional fantasy exploration in the East Bay.

Where can fans find more of your work?

My blog is http://tinahorn.blogspot.com/

Follow my ass on twitter: @tinahornsass

I’m on Facebook as Tina Horn

This article originally appeared on SFGate.

It’s bad enough that I have just learned that some workplace firewall software won’t let you look up porn, restaurant reviews, OR sex education (yes, really, there is a website category called “sex education” in which the Center for Sex & Culture plus many other legit sites are included, and at least some firewall programs disallow it — presumably they so fervently don’t want to encourage lunch hour trysts in the janitor’s closet that they won’t let the inmates look up safer sex questions on their morning coffee break). Really, that’s bad enough. But an even more widespread problem is occurring: Apple is yanking its (wait for it…) sex apps!

Loads more info here, and here’s more:

http://www.tgdaily.com/business-and-law-features/48531-report-apple-purged-over-5000-overtly-sexual-apps

http://www.dailytech.com/Apple+Gets+Strict+on+Adult+Apps/article17753.htm

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/apple-porn-purge-sex-themed-apps-smart-move/story?id=9919620

http://www.pcworld.com/article/190028/not_all_adult_iphone_apps_purged_from_app_store.html

http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/02/apple-vp-attempts-to-explain-double-standard-for-risque-apps.ars

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2360271,00.asp

It seems that several complaints about porny apps have reached sensitive ears in the corner offices high above Cupertino, and three main reasons are cited for the resultant purge: the App Store has been so overrun with sex apps that people couldn’t find the other stuff they wanted to download; women with iPhones have felt the sexual app content demeaning (and here I should be very clear and say some women, because of course other women have been happily downloading frisky apps, not to mention creating them and posing for them–like the Suicide Girls, who are hopping mad that their plans for world domination no longer include the iPhone); and, very predictably, What About The Children?

I had a perfectly sensible idea about this situation the other day and wish I’d had time to write about it before Apple apparently used the secret mind-reading app it had installed on my iPhone without my knowledge (is it a function of the GPS system? Exactly how paranoid do I need to be?) to suck the useful thought right out of my head and claim it as its own. As I began to write this, news is that Apple has created an App Store “explicit” category, to which I would like to say: What, you hadn’t created one before!?

(More on this: http://www.macworld.com/article/146694/2010/02/appstore_explicit.html)

Perhaps it is just that I toil in the fields of sex education and so am aware of how concerned (nay, freakin’ freaked out) some Americans are about sexuality-related issues, even very non-porny ones. But it comes as no surprise to me that 1) people download tons of these apps, which range from goofy to explicit to informational, 2) certain other people find this upsetting, and 3) this is suddenly a PR nightmare even though, given numbers 1 and 2, it was completely predictable. And it can be readily fixed! Corral the adult apps in one place so they are easy for interested adults to find, plus both hard for disinterested adults to find and curious youth to access. See how simple that was?

Let’s go back to two of the elements of sex-positivity. Everyone has a right to the sexuality (and/or information or entertainment) that is natural and interesting to them (young people excepted, granted; this is how our culture attempts to encourage disaffected youth to actually live through adolescence, by promising them adult perks and pleasures on the other side). AND, a consent-based understanding of sexuality means that people also have the right NOT to be troubled by sexual content they choose not to view.

These two things are hardly mutually exclusive. Cable TV manages fairly well to give its users the technology to block adult material; computer software exists to do the same thing on your laptop. Back in the days when people were sent things through the mail (I know, what a quaint recollection, eh?), porn companies would send an envelope with another envelope inside, telling you that in opening the inner envelope you were about to encounter porn. It didn’t say “Porn!” on the outside envelope, because that would make the other people in your apartment building want to steal your mail.

Today, we receive an email with a spicy, hint-hint intro, and then are invited to click on a link that gets us to the site where the pictures are. Why can’t the App Store take a page from this book? They could certainly congregate all the adult apps together (and in fact, if they care about customer service, they could order them even more carefully than that: sex info here, gay stuff there, nakedness only over here, games in another listing, explicit content — no, I mean really explicit, I’m not sure why all these folks think mere nudity is explicit) in the App Store equivalent of a double envelope.

This would serve two salutary purposes — keep it out from under blue noses (and anyone else who’d prefer not to see it, and kids), and it would make it easier for you and me to find what we want, when/if we want it. Nobody loses here, people! Except possibly the bluenoses themselves, some of whom are so absexual* [footnoted below] that they want to find that stuff randomly so it’ll give them a conniption fit-slash-hard-on. You can tell these people apart because some of them say, “Drat! I happened upon objectionable content I would very much prefer not to have seen!” and the other ones say, “You people will not stop shoving this trash down our throats!” (Bonus points if they go on to say “…until we gag!”)

See, people think I’m just a porn-monger, but I am so much more; I’m a social scientist. I’d be very happy to see us build a world together where all the adult content you or I could possibly want was available to us, and not to people who didn’t choose to see it, because that way we’d soon see who would seek it out just so they could fulminate. I believe that’d be useful knowledge to have, plus oh so entertaining.

Now I just have two nagging business questions for Apple. First: Why are the people who don’t like elements of your product the ones you feel you need to please? With all the happy (or happy enough) users who’ve consumed iPhones and shopped the App Store and have not worried about the sex-related apps, either because they like them or they just don’t give a damn, why throw the baby (who can no longer be shaken, thanks to last month’s app purge) out with the bathwater? Don’t they understand that when they delete zillions of apps, they both do a kind of censorship to those who want them (in fact, they behave in a downright judgmental way to their existing customers, which is really offensive) and they economically harm app creators? Is that really what these guys want to do?

Because, I’ll say it again, they don’t have to proceed this way: they can corral the content and let only the people access it who want it (ooops, I really mean adult people; sorry, mature youth, check back later). They could even build a way to do this into the iPhone or iPad when you get it from the store: turn on or turn off the adult content access in the device. Sure, young people will attempt to hack this, but that’s good practice for the jobs they’ll have in a few years — it will just make them better citizens of the global info-age economy.

The bottom line for Apple appears to be its desire to have the iPad adopted in schools as a scholastic enabler, though (note to Apple, concerned parents, and everyone who doesn’t want youth to have access to porn) its sizable, clear screen and Internet access mean that each iPad issued to an underage person will need to come equipped with a hectoring adult who starts chiding the child every time they get curious and try to access Scarleteen, much less the Swimsuit Issue.

Was Apple perhaps hoping that this special add-on would be unnecessary because, let’s say, parents and teachers would cover that base? What, none of Cupertino’s finest ever snuck away as a 17-year-old with a purloined Playboy? Ahhh, how quickly they forget.

Listen, I don’t want youth to have access to porn any more than the next Concerned Citizen. I do want them to have access to good sex information, but that’s another topic; most of the App Store inventory that got nuked last week wasn’t actually good sex ed, though as usual they threw out the serious with the salacious. When, oh when, will our culture’s gatekeepers be able to tell one from the other?

But I find it so very ironic that when Apple cleaned house, they didn’t bother to sweep out the SI swimsuit issue or Playboy. That’s my second biz question: Really? So what this means is that we can deal in sexuality if we’re big and powerful enough? But if you’re a dork with an idea that you could write code to make boobies shake,** or you’re an actual sex educator, take a hike. (Or maybe those guys really do have a crazy soft spot for Playboy. Well, OK.)

Bottom line, the stunningly sex-negative message sent by the first news of the purge was: We could be shopping the App Store appropriately for adult stuff, but no — apparently Apple doesn’t want there to be an app for that.

Notes:

*Absexual: A term invented by my partner Robert and me meaning someone who not only disapproves of some or all sexual things, but gets turned on when they do so–sometimes, even, visibly entering the sexual response cycle. I wrote about it in my essay collection Real Live Nude Girl, and am working up to a new take on the topic.

**Boobie-shaking inventor guys: Hey, I know you’re real people, and I’m sorry I’m using the term “dork” here. I don’t mean it personally. I especially like that you can customize your app with the boobies you’d like to shake. This allows for a sort of post-modern and personalized interface with the machine that will need to become the rule in order for human-computer interactions to go to the next level; you guys are on the cutting edge, as far as I’m concerned.

Editor’s note: Wired magazine just posted an article about Apple’s secret IPhone developer agreement, which specifies:

A ban on public statements, forbidding developers to speak about the agreement.

Apps made with the iPhone software development kit can only be distributed through the App Store, meaning rejected apps can’t be served through the underground app store Cydia, for instance.

Apple indemnifies itself against developer liability surpassing $50, meaning if developers get sued, Apple will be liable for no more than $50 in damages.

No reverse engineering, or enabling others to reverse-engineer, the iPhone SDK.

No messing with Apple products. That means no apps that enable modifying or hacking Apple products are allowed.

Apple can “revoke digital certification of any of Your Applications at any time.” No surprise there: Your app can be pulled even if it’s already been approved, which we’ve already seen happen a number of times.