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  PRAISE FOR PATRICK CALIFIA & MACHO SLUTS

  “Califia, a champion of pornography as a key to adequately realized sexuality, is probably the most skilled writer of pornography working today if one measures talent by appeal across genders.”

  –—Joseph W. Slade, Pornography and Sexual Representation

  “Califia is in the tradition of philosophers Wilhelm Reich and Herbert Marcuse, the gay pioneer Harry Hay, the poet Allen Ginsberg, the journalist Ellen Willis, and the novelist Dorothy Allison, who calls Califia’s essays ‘lucid, intelligent, brave, and true.’ ”

  —The Progressive

  “Finally! The girl’s version of Straight to Hell, the written equivalent of Tom of Finland. No more nights spent appropriating gay or straight male porn because you thought women would never write that way.”

  —The Village Voice

  “Califia’s stories are intriguing, erotic, exhilarating, and unnerving. The sheer power of Macho Sluts in undeniable.”

  —Bay Area Reporter

  “Macho Sluts will make you rethink what you thought you knew about lesbian sex.”

  —Windy City Times

  “Macho Sluts breaks through the veils of silence that define, limit, and deny women’s erotic possibilities. Califia is more than just an author. She is a political rebel as well.”

  —San Francisco Sentinel

  LITTLE SISTER’S CLASSICS

  Macho Sluts

  PATRICK CALIFIA

  ARSENAL PULP PRESS

  Vancouver

  MACHO SLUTS

  Copyright © 1988 by Pat Califia

  Preface, foreword, introduction, and appendices copyright © 2009 by the authors

  First Arsenal Pulp Press edition: 2009

  First published in 1988 by Alyson Publications

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form by any means—graphic, electronic or mechanical—without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may use brief excerpts in a review.

  ARSENAL PULP PRESS

  Suite 101, 211 East Georgia Street

  Vancouver, BC

  Canada V6A 1Z6

  arsenalpulp.com

  Little Sister’s Classics series editor: Mark Macdonald

  Editors for the press: Robert Ballantyne and Brian Lam

  Text and cover design: Shyla Seller

  Front cover illustration: Michael Manning

  Little Sister’s Classics logo design: Hermant Gohil

  Photograph of Patrick Califia by Mark I. Chester

  Printed and bound in Canada on FSC-certified paper

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to persons either living or deceased is purely coincidental.

  Efforts have been made to locate copyright holders of source material wherever possible. The publisher welcomes hearing from any copyright holders of material used in this book who have not been contacted.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication:

  Califia, Patrick, 1954-

  Macho sluts / Patrick Califia.

  (Little sister’s classics)

  ISBN 978-1-55152-260-9

  I. Title. II. Series: Little Sister’s classics

  PS3553.A3987M33 2009 813’.54 C2009-902290-7

  Acknowledgments

  The following people helped me with this sordid escapade. Many of them are still speaking to me. Thank you.

  Jo Arnone, Cynthia Astuto, Beth Brown, Honey Lee Cottrell, Karen Johanns, Stuart Kellogg, John Kenny, Artemis OakGrove, Dana Rosenfeld, Gayle Rubin, Michael Shively, Jaini Simon, David Stein, Thor Stockman, Sharon Stover, Abby Tallmer.

  For Dorothy Allison, who gets the Redneck Trash Encouragement Editorial Award and who may be so completely sick of this book that she may never see this dedication.

  One more thing: wait until it’s your turn.

  Contents

  Preface

  Please Don’t Stop!

  Introduction

  Macho Sluts

  Introduction to the original edition

  Jessie

  The Finishing School

  The Calyx of Isis

  The Hustler

  The Surprise Party

  The Vampire

  The Spoiler

  A Dash of Vanilla

  A Note on Lesbians, AIDS, and Safer Sex

  Appendices

  On Our Backs review of Macho Sluts

  Macho Sluts and Little Sister’s: the Court Case

  In Appreciation

  Preface

  Macho Sluts is not the kind of book that you would have read back in high school English class, but it will blow your mind nonetheless. Among many things, it is first and foremost a wild and sensational piece of pornography. Whatever identity you bring to your first reading—whether you’re a woman or a man, straight or gay, femme or butch, vanilla or hardcore, trans, bi, queer, undefined, or who knows what all—there is something in Macho Sluts that will transform your ideas about sex and sexuality. The book’s audacity is complemented by the author’s generosity and fierce determination to be honest.

  And if you have the nerve (or stamina?) to return to these stories once you have read them the first time, their complexity will become more apparent. You’ll get a better sense of the artistry of the writing, for instance. You’ll see the breadth of the author’s themes and techniques as an ever more obvious and playful deconstruction of sexual expectations, the way we understand our sexuality, and present ourselves sexually. And you will appreciate that pornography can actually be a work of art, and a work intended to expand the mind, rather than to re-enforce stereotypes and provoke dismissive judgment.

  There are few words which can adequately describe the outright, unbridled glee that all of the people associated with this new edition feel with its publication. The people who fought that historic legal battle for two decades to defend expression rights in Canada still keep their day jobs at Little Sister’s Book & Art Emporium on Davie Street in Vancouver, after all.

  From the beginning, the treatment of Macho Sluts by the loutish drones of Canada Customs was as comical as it was sinister. The title of the book was like a baited hook for prudish censors. If even a single copy were included in a shipment from its American distributor to Little Sister’s, the entire shipment would be detained. From Canada Customs’ perspective, by ordering Macho Sluts we at Little Sister’s were attempting to import the worst, the filthiest, the most unclean type of literature. We were certainly treated like criminals for daring to bring this book into Canada.

  Repeatedly, the seized book would be reviewed by one Customs bureaucrat or another up the chain of command. In all of the memoranda that Customs would send out to its regional offices on the subject, its officials would have “guidance” for their judgment of whether the book was or was not obscene—according to Customs’ definitions. Over and over the book, given closer examination, could only be treated as having artistic merit, of being thoughtful in its themes rather than coldly exploitative, and then finally released to us. And yet, nearly every time we tried to order it again, the shipment would again be stopped or delayed, and we’d have to start from scratch. Of course, this context was all about potential readership, one supposes, because independent bookstores all across Canada could import the book if they wished, and without a second glance from Customs.

  One of the least palatable aspects of having to fight for freedom to read in Canada was that we found amongst our adversaries a camp of radical right-wing feminists for whom pornography and erotica were considered bastions of male power, and its authors and adoring fans were to be treated with disdain. Not satisfied with the absurd notion that their school of thought should be taken seriously by authors, readers, a
nd all who sought liberation, they acted (and succeeded, in the Butler decision) to implement their regressive ideas as law—all in the name of feminism and women’s rights. Thanks in part to a new generation of women who feel they can decide for themselves the varying degrees of importance they place on womanhood, liberation, sexuality, independence, personal and community strength, physical boundaries and gender uniqueness, the Dworkins and MacKinnons of twenty-plus years ago will, and should, be seen as historically important gender theorists, but misguided in their views toward pornography. If the seizure of lesbian and gay books prevented crimes against women or produced a Utopia where inequality and subjugation no longer exist, the evidence is elusive and fleeting, to say the least.

  Steeped in this murky legal thinking of post-Butler censorship, Canada Customs somehow managed to get worse at their job when it came to books. Many books that were being seized were by women, and meant for an all-woman audience. While these same books were being circulated and discussed in the US, Canadian readers were not so lucky. Ultimately, at the end of the day, and in the minds of every judge who took the time to get off on it, Macho Sluts may be the single reason that “artistic merit” came to mean so much under Canadian law.

  And yet, during the closing days of the Little Sister’s court case, as we attempted to win compensation for our legal costs, and as testimony by Canada’s top censoring official was taking place, copies of Macho Sluts were still being detained at the border.

  There is hardly enough room on any page to further rejoice in this new edition of a great book, and fewer places for the book to reside with greater reverence and adoration than the Little Sister’s Classics series. Wendy Chapkis provides an insightful new introduction to this edition, for which we are delighted and grateful. Thanks to Little Sister’s owner, Jim Deva, for his thoughtful afterword, and for his devoted thirty-year marriage to Little Sister’s Bookstore (with co-owner Bruce Smyth), and to the bookstore’s lawyer, Joe Arvay, for further revelations. The cover art, lovingly contributed by the outstanding graphic artist Michael Manning, speaks to the content and delivers the same seductive questions that Califia did in the original edition back in 1989.

  Finally, the author himself has written a foreword that is … well … the kind of dynamite we expect from him. Patrick, thank you for giving us Macho Sluts.

  —Mark Macdonald, 2009

  Foreword

  PLEASE DON’T STOP!

  A Sex-Radical Pornographer Looks Over His Shoulder

  PATRICK CALIFIA

  Why should anybody buy a book of lesbian S/M smut that was originally published in 1988, especially if the author is now using male pronouns and sporting a rather impressive beard, if I do say so myself?

  This question isn’t simply one about your budget, even though it’s a precarious time for international economies. And the Internet has kicked a big hole in the market for actual books printed on paper. These are facts discouraging enough to turn a lot of new talent away from the daunting task of compiling a long manuscript and toward blogging, Twittering, and other ephemera. This situation probably deserves reams and reams of analysis. But it’s pretty depressing, and it’s also a bit like complaining about the weather. Fruitless. I would rather talk about more juicy topics, issues of gender and sexual orientation and what tickles anybody’s fancy, and why.

  First, a little history, because this is no ordinary book of X-rated fiction. Its continued existence and popularity alone prove that. It also demonstrates that activism and grassroots community organizing really do work. That seems like a message worth passing on to a whole new generation of radical sex perverts who might otherwise sum up the vast amount of work that remains to be done, and perhaps give up, get burnt-out, go on anti-depressants with icky side effects like a total loss of libido, or at least have an extremely cranky weekend.

  I’ll yield to my roots in the early 1970s, with its dictum that “The personal is political,” and start with some autobiographical stuff that contributes to the uniqueness of Macho Sluts and the rest of the dozen or so books I’ve published critiquing received notions of what terms like “pain,” “pleasure,” “man,” “woman,” and “justice” mean.

  The manuscript for Macho Sluts was assembled during the last few years of my stay (or should I say exile?) in New York City. I had moved there from San Francisco after my community and a long-term relationship fell apart. All of the gay men I’d befriended were getting sick and many had already died in what was to become the AIDS epidemic. Yes, there was a very sexy woman/boy involved who drew me to the East Coast. But once that insanely passionate affair was over, I never put down roots there. The fast-moving city was fascinating, challenging, and amazing, but I came to realize that the Bay Area was always going to be my sexual and spiritual home.

  I had already been through quite a bit of the Feminist Sex Wars. I’d founded a lesbian-feminist S/M support group called Samois, named after the estate of the lesbian dominatrix in the Story of O. You had to be persistent and widely-read to find any reference to BDSM between women in the late 1970s. The Story of O was one of the few classics that everybody knew about. Samois was a high-maintenance group. My lover and I built close ties to the gay men’s leather community and other friends who were bisexual women or straight players. We also had transsexual women friends. This was important to us because we wanted to know about the whole community, not just one corner of it. We saw ourselves as sex radicals who analyzed and opposed all of the ways that the larger society tried to repress Eros. That meant that we wanted more freedom for sex workers, gay men and lesbians, bisexual people, transsexuals, young people, swingers (as they were then called), etc. This broad agenda was not shared by very many feminists then, and I’m not sure it is today.

  Many of the women who came to Samois were separatists. The only places we could find to meet were in our own homes. The local Women’s Center refused to rent a room to us. The photographs in our hallway that depicted a polymorphously perverse range of S/M techniques and practitioners were very controversial. I was always suspect in the group because I was a sort of spokesperson for lesbian S/M, the face most identified with our cause, and frankly, because I was a leader and did so much work on its behalf. This notoriety sprang mostly from the publication of Sapphistry: The Book of Lesbian Sexuality, a sex manual I’d written and published that caused a shit storm of angry reaction because it had chapters on transsexuality, butch/femme sexuality, and S/M. The bulk of pages that dealt with vanilla sex were largely ignored. By the way, that subtitle was the publisher’s idea, not mine. I never thought one book could tell the whole story of lesbian sexuality.

  While lesbian magazines and newspapers like Off Our Backs tore the book apart, as if it could single-handedly destroy feminism, it sold and sold and sold. Gay women were coming out of the closet in record numbers, and they wanted to know more about how to please themselves and their lovers. That didn’t make it any less traumatic for me to read the caustic reviews. I had poured so much of my own heart and soul into that book, largely because coming out had been a miserable business for me, and there had been no resources at all to help me with problems like difficulty having an orgasm or the daunting question of what to do with a woman who expected me to pleasure her. I wanted to break the silence about cunnilingus, sex toys, tribadism, masturbation, penetration, kinky sex, sexual health and prevention of STDs, group sex—anything I could think of that some woman somewhere might want to do, I wrote about. I was sick of the homophobic shame that colored our lives and made it difficult to take any joy in love or erotic abandon. Above all, I was sick of the “truism” that one woman would somehow automatically know how to get another woman off. Why should we have to fumble around in the dark when a little education could provide the lubrication to get past any unpleasant friction?

  Samois would never have come together without the community-wide publicity and controversy generated by Sapphistry. Before that, many people believed and stated in print that S/M was a “perversi
on” that only gay men practiced, not lesbians. I’m not sure where all of the straight kinky people went while such bold statements were being made. The East Village, perhaps? Orange County? But I digress. On my lonesome, I braved the antagonism of bar owners and the Women’s Center to put up flyers announcing an initial meeting. But I got very little thanks for sticking my neck out. In the 1970s, the only politically correct form for an organization to take was the collective, and all decisions were supposed to be made by consensus. Individuality was seen as patriarchal, and anybody who took initiative got hammered down. I hated this. I wanted officers for the group—officers who actually did their jobs—and I wanted to be able to have business meetings that ended before two a.m. That couldn’t happen unless we took a vote and settled things by a simple majority vote. Otherwise, one person who objected to what we wanted to do could filibuster and prevent us from creating a handout for orientation, selecting a logo, or making T-shirts. You did not want to be in the room if I dared suggest that we let bisexual or transsexual women join Samois. Ugly things were said that would have made any right-wing bigot proud. I never ceased to be amazed by the ways that feminism could be twisted to justify a morality that duplicated every prejudice held by fundamentalist Christians—except for the part about lesbians.

  Samois eventually exploded in a vicious bout of infighting that left all of us feeling deeply injured and shaken. But before the various rifts and factions tore the group apart, it managed to do some very good things to make it possible for S/M dykes to find one another and get information about how to act out their fantasies in a safe way that still allowed for intensity. First, we published What Color Is Your Handkerchief, a pamphlet I typed, laid out with rubber cement, and photocopied, then collated and stapled in my living room. It contained just about every article we could find on the topic of S/M, plus some graphics. Every small printing of the pamphlet sold out very quickly, despite the fact that local women’s bookstores either wouldn’t carry it at all or sold it from under the counter. That meant you had to ask for it, which was a daunting prospect if you knew the clerk was a hostile, anti-S/M, and anti-pornography devotee. That was the equivalent of coming out as a woman-hating pervert and could cost you your slot on the women’s clinic collective or your application for admission to a women’s studies department. Women got discriminated against for having leather jackets then. It was a heartbreaking struggle to see our world divided because some of us needed a different kind of sex in order to be satisfied. I never did get a clear description of what “good” feminist sex would look like, by the way, and am still waiting for that information.