Mistress Talia: a sadistic domme

Public Sex: The Culture of Radical Sex by Pat Califia^* is highly recommended.

Yes, it's another title by Califia. Califia was a pioneer of sex-positive feminism, and has been angrily opposing the anti-porn feminazis since the 70s. We highly admire Califia's body of work, the thoughtful essays, amazingly hot erotica and practically useful manuals.

This particular book is intended to stimulate your brain, not your genitals. It absolutely will make you think. Regardless of whether you are sexually conservative or liberal, this book will challenge many of your own ideas about sexuality.

In the introduction, Califia writes:
"By 'radical sex', I do not simply mean sex which differs from the 'norm' of heterosexual, vanilla, male-dominant intercourse. People whose erotic practices are deviant do tend to acquire an outsider's critical perspective on marriage, the family, heterosexuality, gender roles, and vanilla sex. But being a sex radical means being defiant as well as deviant. It means being aware that there is something unsatisfying and dishonest about the way sex is talked about (or hidden) in daily life. It also means questioning the way our society assigns privilege based on adherence to its moral codes, and in fact makes every sexual choice a matter of morality. If you believe that these inequities can be addressed only through extreme social change, then you qualify as a sex radical, even if you prefer to get off in the missionary position and still believe there are only two genders."

As a sex radical, Califia addresses all sorts of controversial topics:

• sex worker's rights and the persecution of prostitutes and other sex workers from both the right and the left;
• how the fear of child pornography has been used to limit first amendment rights of adults;
• how age of consent laws have been used to persecute homosexuals and other sexual minorities, including the children they are designed to protect;
• pornography, both good and bad, and it's use by women who don't always buy into being 'victimized' by it;
• sadomasochism, especially with regards to feminism and lesbianism;
• the sexuality of teenagers and even prepubescent children;
• nonmonogamaus relationships, genderbending, and many other topics of interest to sex radicals.

This is just a sampling of the thought-provoking nature of Califia's work; some of these ideas can simply not be expressed comprehensively without reading the entire essay.

I found even where I disagreed with Califia's viewpoints, her arguments made me reconsider my positions.

Further, this book made me aware of the perversity of society's view of sexuality, the insanity of the notion that a "default" even exists for sexuality, the bizarre idea we have that there is any such thing as "normal" sex.

If you like thinking about sex, or thinking at all, I highly recommend Public Sex to you.

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^*The author formerly known as Pat Califia is now Patrick Califia-Rice, a FTM transgendered man whose journey is summarized on Wikipedia. I have always connected to the author's work from the perspective of a leatherdyke. I simply cannot wrap my mind around the idea that a man wrote them and find myself uncomfortable using male pronouns in reviews of these writings. I also feel that it would be both inappropriate and offensive to refer to the author by female pronouns. I've postponed writing reviews of the author's works, although they are some of the best and most profound writings within the BDSM community, over my discomfort with figuring out how to address this issue; however, these writings are important enough to me personally, and my own journey, that I really wish to discuss them, thus I compromised by avoiding using pronouns entirely in reviews of the author's works.