Pat Califia
Related: queer theory - sadomasochism - transgender
Profile
Pat Califia is arguably the most influential S/M commentator and pornographer working today. In the past Califia described herself as, "a dyke, a feminist, a pornographer, a sadomasochist, a poet, a storyteller, an omnivore, a pagan, a social critic, a sex educator, and an activist." In this interview Califia, now Patrick identifies as a "bisexual transgendered person, who will probably be living socially as a man sometime in the next year or two." He is also a therapist serving the needs of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities. --technodyke.comBooks
- Macho Sluts (1988) - Pat Califia [Amazon US]
The trouble with what literary people like to call erotica and what the rest of us know as porn is that either it's terribly hifalutin and trails off into a row of dots just before it gets good, or else it's dismally badly written. The great virtue of Macho Sluts is that Pat Califia is, apart from anything else, a damn good writer who doesn't smear Vaseline on the lens, as it were. I'm not the only person to testify that you don't have to be into S&M, or a lesbian, or even a woman, to enjoy this book. (Though if you can't imagine what it might like to be one or all of the above, then you won't find it very rewarding - like the person below who claimed that it was all sex scenes. Well, duhh.) The Calyx of Isis is one of the most extraordinarily arousing things ever written; truly, the hormones have reason, of which the stated sex on your birth certificate knows nothing. I wouldn't want to advise anybody not to read this book - but please, with a title like Macho Sluts, you should at least have some idea of what you're getting into. --lexo-2 for amazon.com - Public Sex: The Culture of Radical Sex - Pat Califia [1 book, Amazon US]
Among the beacons of sex radicalism--alongside Susie Bright, Carol Queen, Kate Bornstein, and very few others--Pat Califia has been writing angry, sex-positive essays and politically charged erotica since the late 1970s. The bulk of her many nonfiction pieces is collected in this reprint of a book first published in 1994, providing a lively, informal history of the sex wars of the '80s and '90s--from the absurd, puritanical Meese Commission Report to the antiporn feminists to the unexamined attitudes behind the popular Re/Search book Modern Primitives. The chief apologist for the S/M community and one of the strongest voices in the anticensorship fight, Califia is at her best when the subject is closest to home. Her peevish reflections on the stupidity and political shortsightedness of anti-S/M feminists and lesbians are a joy to read; you can hear the swish of her whip and the stamp of her boot heel. With its excellent introduction, this book should be on the shelf of every feminist, every lesbian, every sexual adventurer, and anyone who hopes to understand sexual politics in America. --Regina Marler
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