Lesbian plot-lines and story-lines generally fall under “cheesy” or “tragic”, but Ruth Gogoll of HuffPost Gay Voices has had enough, and has been running the el!es Lesbian Literary Awards for six years now.  She says:

I came up with the idea of a “lesbian literary award” to highlight all the wonderful lesbian romances out there. Two women getting involved and falling in love – even though there are a lot of problems to overcome – and then, a happy ending. Sex and Romance and Love and Tension and everything the lesbian heart desires.

Excuse me while I breath a fresh sigh of relief, happy in the revelation that another woman is sick of the ill-fated stories we’re bombarded with.

The idea for the Lesbian Literary Awards came to Ruth after her novel Taxi To Paris was rejected by German lesbian publishers for being too sketchy. They though it would paint her in a bad light. Perhaps someone forgot to look up the definition of “fiction”?

Taxi To Paris tells the story of a prostitute who falls in love with a woman, but has to decide whether she’s brave enough to face her feelings or stick to selling her body for money, while her love interest struggles to cope with what her job entails. Sounds like Germany made a bad decision.

Ruth Gogoll was not deterred by this minor set-back and went on to publish Taxi To Paris herself and set up her own lesbian publishing house, édition el!es. She says the publishing house is:

now open for all books written by or about lesbians, whatever the premise, as long as they’re love stories with happy endings

And so an idea sprouted from her wonderful mind and took the form of the Lesbian Literary Award.

Unpublished writers have the same chance at winning the award as published writers do. Instead of a panel of know-it-alls only accepting work that has been published during the year in the run up to awards, writers can submit their works right now, and the readers will choose which story they would like published.

The winner is not the only one to get a publishing deal from édition el!es, however. They also publish the second and third author to get the biggest votes and a few more.

It’s a great idea and a fantastic way to promote the writing of more believable stories and overall a better standard of lesbian writing. Anyone can submit as long as their work is between 60,000-75,000 words by the deadline of 31st March 2012, including a small biography, synopsis, and a short piece on how the story ends.

• For more information on the 6th Lesbian Literary Award go to: édition el!es

Related posts:

1. Cantwell wins Inaugural Player of the Year Award
2. GLAAD Media Award Nominations 2012
3. Review: Just Good Friends

Oh dear! It’s finally, here: Day 12, the last day of our 12 Toys of Christmas series – brought to you by Gaelick and Secrets Ireland.

We’re going out with a bang, with this classic from the Secrets Ireland store.

This really will make you ooh! and ahh!.

(Depending on your employer, these may be NSFW!)

Day 12: Jessica Rabbit Original

A favourite the world over, and Secrets Ireland’s most popular vibrator by miles.

The Jessica Rabbit Original shaft contains an abundance of pearl stimulation beads that massage you as the reversible rotating shaft gets to work inside you.

Simultaneously enjoy the soft multi speed vibrating bunny ears as they probe your clitoris.

Jessica is waterproof too so you can take your fun to the bath or shower.

Our most popular and best value rabbit by far… everyone should have one!

BOING.

Related posts:

1. The 12 Toys of Christmas: Day 10
2. The 12 Toys of Christmas: Day 6
3. The 12 Toys of Christmas: Day 9

• Hot off the presses comes a contribution from another of our new writers, Niamh Ní Mhaoileoin:

Patricia Highsmith, one of the 20th Century’s finest crime writers, is most famous for her Ripley novels and for Strangers on a Train, later adapted by Alfred Hitchcock.

In late 1948, while suffering from the chickenpox, Highsmith began her one non-suspense novel. The Price of Salt was a love story between two women, which has now been re-published under the title Carol.

Now, before any discussion of queer theory or historical significance or anything, let it be said that this book is a dizzyingly pleasurable read. It’s poetic, it’s sexy; it’s one to read cover-to-cover on a winter evening with a glass of red wine.

It begins with Therese who, in the tradition of 1950s pulp, is a green young girl who meets an impossibly sophisticated older woman and becomes overwhelmingly smitten. They meet in the department store where Therese is working and Carol is buying. In her infatuation, Therese sends Carol a Christmas card with her purchase and, in her curiosity, Carol calls her up and asks her to lunch. Sure, it’s implausible, but it’s fiction. Sometimes, only sometimes, writers should just make our daydreams come true.

That daydream is Carol. Highsmith is clearly as infatuated with her as Therese is. Carol is infused into every strand of the book; her name appears up to fifteen times per page.

The author based Carol’s appearance on a real woman she saw in a department store and her personality is the combination of the best traits of all the women Highsmith had ever been attracted too. She wrote her dream woman. In the process, she wrote everyone’s dream woman; beautiful, wealthy, hard-drinking and hard-to-get. Some people may think that the wide-eyed young Therese is good enough for Carol, but I’m certainly not one of them.

So, the serendipitous lunch begins a sublimely slow-burning romance which, of course comes with its complications. In the foreword to the new edition Highsmith described the era in which she was writing:

Those were the days when gay bars were a dark door somewhere in Manhattan, where people wanting to go to a certain bar got off the subway a station before or after the convenient one, lest they be suspected of being homosexual…

Highsmith’s biographer, Andrew Wilson, argued that Carol is an archetypal tale of McCarthy’s America and the initial buoyancy of the lovers is challenged by a vindictive husband, a private detective (it’s all very ‘50s), and a custody battle. Late in the novel, Therese suddenly becomes aware “that the whole world was ready to be their enemy.”

However, this novel is a landmark in lesbian fiction because Highsmith forces the reader to acknowledge that this is not a story of persecuted love. It’s a story of two lovers, who happen to be persecuted. She did so consciously, fighting the established tradition of lesbians in novels “who had to pay for their deviation by cutting their wrists, drowning themselves in a swimming pool, or by switching to heterosexuality (so it was stated), or by collapsing – alone and miserable and shunned – into a depression equal to hell”.

Even in a brighter time, Carol is a novel to rekindle your defiance.

Related posts:

1. Review: Just Good Friends
2. Review: Bossypants
3. Review: The Sealed Letter

The Sealed Letter is excellent for many reasons; it’s a great story beautifully written and the evocation of the period is fascinating. For the LGBT reader, though, there is an extra layer of interest.

Emily Faithfull is a well to-do woman at the centre of the fight for women’s rights in Victorian London. She owns a printing press and trains and employs women from the lower classes to show the world that they are as capable as anyone. To the gay reader this all shouts “dyke!”, may I also add that her nickname is Fido? Lesbalific.

One day, on her way to work, she bumps into an old friend, Helen Codrington. Helen is the rich wife of an older Naval officer and entertains herself with the many male companions who flit around her.

Fido is over the moon to see her old chum, who she seems…ahem….shall we say “to put on a pedestal”. Their friendship is so close to her heart that Fido allows herself to be used as an alibi for Helen’s affair, something she has no time for.

When Helen’s husband files for divorce, Fido is caught up in the middle of everything. Her trust of Helen is absolute, but will it be her demise?

It’s a wonderful story, but even more interesting when you consider that it’s all true. These people existed and Donoghue has penned her book as a fictionalised version based on the many newspaper articles about what was a scandal at the time.

The extra layers though, that make The Sealed Letter all the more juicy, are the lessons we learn about just how badly life was for women back in Victorian times. You and your children were owned by your husband. Once you married, you signed away everything including your identity. It’s all the more interesting, then, that Fido who was fighting against this idea is thrust right into the middle of its reality.

Related posts:

1. Review: Just Good Friends
2. Review: Bossypants
3. Review: “Carol” by Patricia Highsmith

I know what you are doing now, young Stephen. It’s early 1973. You are in the library, cross-referencing bibliographies so that you can find more and more examples of queer people in history, art and literature against whom you can hope to validate yourself. Leonardo, Tchaikovsky, Wilde, Barons Corvo and von Gloeden, Robin Maugham, Worsley, “an Englishman”, Jean Genet, Cavafy, Montherlant, Roger Peyrefitte, Mary Renault, Michael Campbell, Michael Davies, Angus Stewart, Gore Vidal, John Rechy, William Burroughs.

So many great spirits really do confirm that hope! It emboldens you to know that such a number of brilliant (if often doomed) souls shared the same impulse and desires as you. I know the index-card waltz of (auto)biographies, poems and novels you are dancing: those same names are still so close to the surface of my mind nearly four decades later.

And now, a second edition of the book “Dear Me: More letters to my 16 year old self” has been released, with letters from Alan Cumming, Gillian Anderson, James Belushi, Stephen King and more.

And here’s some more:

Gillian Anderson:

Follow your dreams not your boyfriends.

And Alan Cumming:

You will love and be loved and be rich beyond your wildest dreams, and the best thing about this richness is that it has nothing to do with money. It’s all going to be okay.

A teacher at drama school is going to tell you that you’ll never make it as a professional actor. He is wrong. Wrong to say it, and just wrong because you do okay. Try not to let it dent you too much.

You’re never going to have children, Alan. You’re going to try, in relationships with both women and men, but it doesn’t happen, and that’s okay too. Right now you have the happiest family anyone could wish for.

It really is all going to be okay. I’ll see you in 29 years. Enjoy it.

Sandra Bernhard:

You long for independence and applause, love and celebration.
Patience, my dear Sandy, that is the key to happiness.
Sitting quietly and knowing all good things are on their way.
It appears at times that they aren’t, but it’s just a test of your own inner emergency broadcast system.

My quick note to my 16 year old self would go something like this:

Chill out. It is all going to happen. And more. In 20 years, you are madly in love, well traveled and have no idea what you want to do when you grow up. The love thing may not work out the way you’d imagine right now, but that will be ok too. Might want to start reading up on liberal theologians, actually.

There’s a reason you can’t study and it’s not because you’re lazy so stop beating yourself up over it. You’re going to do something that seems incredibly unwise when you’re 17, but it turns out to be the right decision. Don’t make fun of the awkward kid. Life gets really hard before it gets unimaginably wonderful. You’ll fall in love when you’re not looking. Just follow your heart; it hasn’t failed you yet.

PS: If this note makes you figure things out early, it might be worth approaching Miss F*****, Mlle L******, or Mr D****** for a chat. Or your best friend’s boyfriend.

What would you say to your 16 year old self?

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Otherwise, unlike most lesbians my age, I seem to lack the Harry Potter-loving gene.

But last Wednesday, I saw Darren Criss perform in London, and he performed a couple of the songs from A Very Potter Musical and A Very Potter Sequel (those are the YouTube links). I also queued with people who had queued earlier that day in Leicester Square for wristbands to watch the red carpet event for the Harry Potter premiere the following day.

That was already a lot of Harry Potter. But then, I found an intriguing post by Racheline Maltese about the character of Snape, which made me think it might be worth having a read of all those books someday. She starts saying this:

One of the persistent criticisms of the Harry Potter series has been its portrayal of gender roles, and specifically its lack of representation when it comes to female heroism. While significant female characters exist in the form of Hermione Granger, Bellatrix Lestrange and Molly Weasley, each of these characters are largely defined by their relational roles: Hermione is Harry’s friend. Bellatrix is Voldemort’s romantically, or possibly erotically, chosen, and Molly Weasley is defined through her epitomization of motherhood.
Letters from Titan

She goes on to describe how female heroism in the Harry Potter stories is represented in the character of Severus Snape.

In fact, I’m now going to totally contradict myself and say that female heroism isn’t absent in the shadow of Harry’s journey, it’s just in a superficially male guise. That guise being the character of Severus Snape.

In many ways, none of what I’m about to go into regarding Snape is a particualrly unique phenomenon. There is, of course, a long history of queering the villain. However, as the series ultimately reveals, Severus Snape is no villain, which is what makes his representation of female attributes, and in fact, female heroism, so unique.
Letters from Titan

And today, another post came to my attention, in which Joy Engel (rather emphatically) explores an alternate (and more feminine) focus for the story.

On the other side of the common room, we have Hermione. Who is muggle born, which means she simply doesn’t have that same built-in support as Harry. She can’t go home to her parents and talk about how people keep trying to kill her because her parents just wouldn’t understand. And while she’s at school, instead of having every single teacher fall over their magic wand to get on her good side, she’s held down. People won’t stop talking about her Muggle parents and it’s all she can do to keep up her studies.

By which I mean, BEING BETTER THAN ALL OF THE SCHOOL.

And when Snape assigns homework Harry is all “Wah-Wah, there is sport tomorrow, fulfilling my responsibility will be so hard.”

Meanwhile Hermione is MOVING FUCKING TIME so she can take more classes. Because girl knows SOMETHING is happening and she needs to STUDY THE EFF UP.
Ophelia’s Webb

You know what? I’ve seen enough in the films to agree with her on that one.

And since we’re on the topic of Hermione, I’m going to take this bizarre post full circle, and leave you with Darren Criss singing Hermione’s song from A Very Potter Sequel, The Coolest Girl.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJb5Z33UJYU

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2. Christmas Day open thread
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I have to admit I was a little scared when reading Just Good Friends? as I really, really wanted to like it, because of the effort I knew had gone into it. All I can say is Phew!  Jane wrote Just Good Friends? because she was sick off looking for a good read and because she loves a good story. She has managed to produce both in this great first novel.

It tells the story of a group of women living in London. They are all loaded and living the perfect lives with the perfect husbands and the perfect children who are really being raised by the perfect nannies. Perfect! Except none of them are happy. It takes the fit to hit the shan for them to consider who they want to be.

The woman who holds it all together is Eleanor, a wonderful character who is only missing a twirly mustache and manic laugh to be the perfect baddie. She is, basically, a bitch. She is the top of the heap in her social group of yummy mummies and loves to rub everyone’s nose in it.

Eleanor’s friend, Ruth, is living her life in third gear, doing all the things she’s supposed to and she thinks she’s happy. Her husband not really rocking her boat is normal, right? Her closeness to her best friend, Helen, isn’t unusual, right? Drunkenly kissing Helen and self-imploding? Not so everyday.

Eleanor and Ruth are two great characters to balance the book: one is cerebral, always plotting and planning, never letting her heart get in the way; the other rules with her gut and can’t help but be open and honest. Both of them find their lives equally shattered, but then equally resurrected.

They live a life of secret longings for their families and, in Ruth’s case, a secret desire for ger best friend.

The one gripe I had with the book is that it feels over-written, with some descriptions too detailed and drew you out of the narrative, but to be honest that’s a pet peeve of mine so maybe I’m being picky. Plus this is something that is bound to happen when you self-publish and don’t have a professional editor in your corner.

Just Good Friends? is the perfect light read on your daily commute or at the beach; it’s funny (belly-chucklingly funny at times), engaging and has a warmth at its centre that would seduce anyone.

Check out Jane Reynolds online, where you can also buy the book

Buy the book on Amazon here

Related posts:

1. Review: Bossypants
2. Review: The Owls
3. Review: Break My Fall

I must take this opportunity to apologise to the very nice J1 youngster who thought she was on her way to an adventure in the US of A, but it got off to a sticky start with yours truly trying to stem the chortles for five hours on a plane.

I blame Tina Fey. For it was she who wrote the book that instigated the laughing that (probably) annoyed the 20-something and (maybe) ruined her American adventure. OK, slight exaggeration. She forgot all about me as soon as she put on her state-of-the-art headphones.

This whole scenario turned out to be the perfect situation to read Bossypants, Tina Fey’s debut. It is full of the everyday craziness of life that it suited my situation to a tee. Bossypants is exactly what you think it’s going to be; funny, irreverent, smart, sassy, but it’s also quite moving. Amidst the comments on her geeky, unsexiness as teen and commentary on making her way as a comedian, there is a gorgeously warm chapter about her father.

Fey grew up surrounded by gay men and women and it’s a testament to her parents that they didn’t mind, once she was happy. And happy she was. As a teen, she threw herself into theatre and met all sorts of people. She fell into writing and realised that she had a talent for comedy. Growing up in such an open way, also gave her an interesting view on life. You see all the craziness from the fringes.

There are chapters on dealing with sexism, dealing with nay-sayers and dealing with being a mother. All handled with grace and no lack of wit. Bossypants is a joy and as much as gift to a reader as Fey is to anyone who loves snarky comedy.

Have you ever been stuck on public transport reading a book that is so hilarious, that you try so hard not to laugh out loud, because we all know how annoying it is? Great craic isn’t it?

Related posts:

1. Review: Just Good Friends
2. Review: Sing You Home
3. Review: 510 Meters Above Sea Level

Quiet Riot Girl talks to Mark Simpson about his new book Metrosexy

What do you think of when you hear the word ‘metrosexual’? An attractive, young man, with a good haircut, who may or may not be checking himself out in the window of a store, in the shopping mall where he buys all the latest fashionable gear? Or do you think, as some people do, of a ‘fag’ or a gay man? Of someone so bothered about his appearance, that he may as well be a girl?

Mark Simpson, who first coined the term ‘metrosexual’ in 1994, knows exactly what the metrosexual is. In his latest book, Metrosexy, Simpson explains why the metrosexual is an important indication of how masculinity, and sexual identity, are changing. I spoke to Mark to find out why he believes ‘metrosexuality’ goes much further than (toned and moisturised) skin-deep.

Contrary to what you have been told, metrosexuality is not about flip-flops and facials, ‘man-bags’ or ‘manscara’. Or about men becoming ‘girlie’ or ‘gay’. It’s about men becoming everything. To themselves. In much the way that women have been for some time. It’s the end of the sexual division of bathroom and bedroom labour. It’s the end of sexuality as we’ve known it.

The narcissism that is ever-apparent for the metro-man, who needs mirrors like narcissus himself needed that pool, is not necessarily a negative, according to Simpson. Men in contemporary society are now able to admit to wanting to be ‘beautiful’ and to be appreciated as ‘objects of desire’ in a way that was previously reserved only for women. In the introduction to his latest collection of essays, spanning two decades, Simpson writes:

At the end of the first decade of the 21st century, metrosexuality, the male desire to be desired – by everyone, including and sometimes especially by other men – once regarded as pathological, perverted and definitely something to keep to yourself, is so commonplace as to be almost ‘normal’. Perhaps even – eek! – ordinary.

This ‘desire to be desired’ by men, is obvious everywhere in our culture, once you open your eyes and look, and Mark Simpson (below), a self-confessed voyeur, has been looking, very carefully. In advertising, for example, he shows how male models, including sportsmen, such as David Beckham and Rafael Nadal, out-pose and out-sex women.

Sporno does not just sell products, but also the ability of even the most ‘macho’ heterosexual sports stars to be ‘passive’ objects, for the camera, and the metrosexual gaze in general.

As Simpson has pointed out, Beckham (below, left) and other footballers have fought over their popularity with gay fans.

They want to be loved by other men for their bodies, not just for their ability to ‘get it in’ the back of the net.

Sporno is an example of how metrosexuality breaks down traditional models of masculine sexuality.

In other words, masculinity is no longer always heterosexual never homosexual, always active never passive, always desiring never desired, always looking never looked at.

Film and television, too, is splattered with images of men demanding to be looked at. A seminal image of the metrosexual noughties has been that shot of Daniel Craig, striding out of the sea with his manboobs gleaming in the sun. As Simpson has put it, ‘James Bond becomes his own Bond Girl’.

In an essay about American politics he tells us that even Obama (right) has become his own ‘first lady’. Look how well turned-out he is, how he smiles for the camera, how he never appears anything less than gym-toned. And, in a possibly disturbing distillation of this contemporary projection of mediated masculinity, Mikey Sorrentino of Jersey Shore fame has coined the mantra ‘GTL-gym, tanning, laundry’ to remind young men everywhere, that you must ‘keep young and beautiful, if you want to be loved’ (and be prepared to be filmed/photographed at any given moment).

Personally, I am quite ambivalent about the metrosexual. I welcome the way he blurs gender roles, and takes some of the pressure off women to always be the focus of attention and ‘objects of desire’. Incidentally, I do wonder sometimes why feminists go on so much about ‘objectification’ of women, when, from where I am standing, it seems to be men who are objectified as much as if not more than women these days, and enjoying it. Maybe women are feeling a bit left out?

But I don’t like the way the metrosexual presents such a bland, idealised and homogenised version of masculinity. It seems like a lot of pressure for men to be young, buff, fit, well turned-out with perfect hair and skin, 24/7. ‘GTL’ sounds like a very boring way to spend most of your time too. What about art? Music? Creativity? The metrosexual is an ad-man’s dream, always consuming, always improving himself. It’s not really my dream.

But I think overall I am with Simpson in my grudging celebration of metrosexuality, mainly because he writes so well. He makes metrosexuality seem, well, sexy! More seriously, I accept and welcome his arguments because he shows clearly how metrosexuality represents ‘the end of sexuality’ altogether in many ways. He explains in Metrosexy how it goes hand in hand with a relaxing of boundaries around men’s social identities and behaviours, including a lessening of homophobia.

The rise of male behaviours, practices and tastes that has been characterised as metrosexual has been made possible in large part by the decline in the stigma attached to male homosexuality. While this stigma made life rather difficult for homosexual men, it also had an instructive, not to say repressive, effect on all men.

I asked Mark how gay rights movements have responded to some of these changes in attitudes to sexuality and the blurring of the lines between men and women, gay and straight identities. His reply was interesting, and maybe not what the ‘movement’ would want to hear.

A lot of gays seem to have decided that they want respectability. But of course they call it ‘equality’. Perhaps they have an equal right to be respectable if they really want to be. Just as straights appear to be going ‘gay’, given the chance, in the form of metrosexuality, recreational sex, gays seem to be going ‘straight’.

It’s the inevitable result of the breakdown of the division between ‘gay’ and ‘straight’ and the crossover between the two. Sexuality no longer dictates lifestyle. And it’s not so surprising that it turns out that a lot of gays have made a fetish out of ‘normality’ and respectability – because it was denied them for so long. I expect though that many will tire of it more quickly than a lot of heterosexuals have.

Back in the 1990s, Simpson identified ‘lesbian chic’- you know, those photos of women celebrities snogging each other on magazine covers and at film premieres-as an example of the increasing acceptability of expressions of female ‘bi-curiousness’. He tried at the time to show how metrosexuality was the male equivalent, but nobody was listening.

It is this blurring of sexual orientation boundaries amongst men that some people have found hardest to…er…swallow.

So I asked Mark, if metrosexuality blurs the boundaries between gay and straight, and enables men to express their ‘bi-curiousness’, then why is it still not acceptable for men to be openly bisexual in so many contexts?

It’s still early days, remember. And we’re only just beginning to move away from the commonly held nostrum of the last thirty years or so that all women are bi, but any man who touches another man’s pee pee is gay.

Metrosexuality is definitely a form of bi-sensuality, or even bi-responsiveness. And it represents the opening up, in every sense, of men to new experiences. Including of course the concept of the beauty and desirability of the male. And his bits. In some – and increasing – ‘enlightened’ circles this is mostly unproblematic.

But a lot of people don’t want to accept that, because they don’t want men to have those kind of options. They want masculinity to remain repressed – and all about performance. I know how they feel. I’m a nostalgic too.

And in the case of some men, they’re literally scared stiff of having those options. They don’t trust themselves.

But despite the homo-anxiety that he triggers in many men, the metrosexual won’t stop shoving his pretty sexually-undefined ass in our faces. He symbolises men gaining pleasure from looking at themselves and each other, so you just can’t be 100% straight and metro. In the metrosexual noughties, some male stars have ‘come out’ as bisexual, or at least not necessarily only heterosexual. James Franco, Duncan James from the UK boyband Blue, and Tom Hardy for example. Forced to make a choice, who would he pick as a metrosexual icon? Simpson did not hesitate, and chose Hardy.

There is something quite inspiring about this married male Hollywood star’s open ownership both of his bi-curious past and his ambi-sexual persona. He looks like a good advert for metrosexiness: ‘Don’t be afraid to dream a little bigger, darling.’’

Metrosexy is available on Amazon Kindle
Mark Simpson blogs here
Article By Quiet Riot Girl

No related posts.

Sing Your Home centres on a couple and their journey, as a pair and then individually, to some place where they can live with themselves and the choices they’ve had to make. Max and Zoe have been married for 11 years and have been trying to have a baby for nine. They’ve been through IVF and have had one miscarriage too many for Max. He just can’t heal this one last time, so he leaves Zoe. From here the two go their separate ways but are destined to be linked.

Max goes to live with his brother, the bright-eyed boy with the perfect life and a good Christian household. There, Max disolves into alcoholism, eventually finding the thing that keeps his brother on top of the world – God.

Meanwhile, a distraught Zoe pulls the pieces of her life together and gets back to work as a musical therapist. Singing and playing music to people in much worse situations than hers brings her to a place of acceptance. She also finds love, with Vanessa, a school counsellor.

And here’s where things get interesting. Zoe and Vanessa want to use the embryos which were fertilised by Max back when they were married. But the God that Max now follows sees Zoe as living a life of sin. How can he allow his child to live there?

Such a story, in other other hands, could have been a scandalous pot-boiler. Picoult, though, has you feeling for everyone. Max; the lost man who just wants to do the right thing. Zoe; the woman who is so close to having the child she wants. Vanessa; fearlessly guiding her wife through choppy legal waters. Picoult is a gentle writer, creating tender people with real life needs and foibles, plus some hilarious side characters who will have you chuckling.

If there is anything negative about the book, I’d say that Picoult rushed it a bit. My reading of the time-line was Max and Zoe were married, had a miscarriage, divorced, Zoe got remarried to Vanessa, Max found God and then there was a court case all in the space of three months. Jimminies, talk about U-Haul!

Having said that, I started Sing You Home hoping it would be good, but once I started I didn’t want it to stop.

Related posts:

1. Missing Pieces: The Family Home & Finance
2. Review: The Sealed Letter
3. Review: Just Good Friends

• Cordelia Fine, “Delusions of Gender: The real science behind sex differences” (Icon Books Ltd., 2nd September 2010). Purchase.

• Natasha Walter, “Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism” (Virago Press Ltd., 4th February 2010). Purchase.

• Jenny Jacobs, “The Lesbian Dating Bible: An essential guide to instant gay-girl confidence” (Self-published.)

• Emma Donoghue, “Room” (Picador, 30th July 2010). Purchase.

• Shamim Sarif, “Wrote the Book, Made the Movie, Raised the Kids, Now the Blog: 21st Century Musings from an Exhausted Renaissance Woman” (Enlightenment Press, 1st edition 15th March 2010). Purchase.

Honourable mentions:

• Lesbian pulp fiction, of course!

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1. Staying enlightened
2. Review: The Sealed Letter
3. Rescheduled: Alexandra Stan to Play The George

Fine – a Research Associate at Macquaire University, Australia, and an Honorary Research Fellow in Psychology at the University of Melbourne – takes on pseudo-scientific assumptions in popular writing, which have again become so fashionable in recent years, which assert that there are innate biological differences between men and women.

Writers who argue that there are hardwired differences between the sexes that account for the gender status quo often like to position themselves as courageous knights of truth, who brave the stifling ideology of political correctness.

The effect of these assumptions is to dismiss or ignore critical thinking about gender roles, differential treatment of men and women, and the resulting detrimental effects on society as a whole because, of course, there is nothing to be done: such outcomes are simply a natural product of the fact that males and females are born different.

This way of looking at humanity is, obviously, dangerous. Thankfully, writers such as Fine – along with others such as Natasha Walter and Kat Banyard – are maintaining a watchful, expert and rational eye on the utter bilge penned by the likes of Simon Baron-Cohen, Susan Pinker and their ilk.

Drawing on the latest research in in developmental psychology, neuroscience, and social psychology, “Delusions of Gender” reubts these claims, showing how old myths, dressed up in new scientific finery, help perpetuate the status quo. Fine reveals just how easily the mind can be influenced and shaped, shows the substantial influence of culture on identity and, ultimately, exposes just how much of what we consider “hardwired” is actually malleable.

If history tells us anything, it is to take a second, closer look at our society and our science. This is the aim of Delusions of Gender.

The book thoroughly and meticulously sets out the evidence to show that each one of us is essentially socially constructed, the product of external factors.

Fine explains, using the available evidence, the psychological impact on the mind and the psyche of the sociocultural context in which it operates: this includes the subtleties of stereotypes and social expectations, as well as the more obvious forms of discrimination, exclusion and harassment. She also provides an anyalsis of claims surrounding male and female brain structures and the supposed role of sex hormones, to reveal gaps, assumptions, inconsistencies, poor methodologies and leaps of faith in contemporary science. Finally, she warns of the effects of both of these aspects in perpetuating gender stereotypes and imposing them on the next generation.

A great – and important – read.

• Cordelia Fine, “Delusions of Gender: The real science behind sex differences” (Icon Books, RRP £14.99) is out now.

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Living Dolls is a modern account of the injustices faced by women in today’s western society and the causes and facilitators of these. Natasha Walter writes from both a third party standpoint, and includes accounts of first hand experiences. As the name suggests, the book deals largely with commercialisation, and how it has played a huge part in the shaping of today’s narrow view of what it is to be female.

Beginning with young girls, Natasha gives us the earliest glimpses of the conditioning of women. She paints a pretty picture for us of girls at home watching their

Sleeping Beauty DVD, playing with a Sleeping Beauty doll complete with the same costume, while dressed herself in a shiny replica of Sleeping Beauty’s dress.

Robots spring to mind. (Or is that just my ‘techi-ness’ amongst so much pink?)

I digress … but Natasha has a point. We live in a commercialised society where it truly is possible for our girls to

trip off to school with Barbies or Bratz on everything from their knickers to their hair clips to their schoolbag, and come home to look at her reflection in the mirror of a Disney Princess dressing table.

Our incredible marketing strategies have accomplished the implausible, the fusion of girl and doll. And so, we have entered into the world of the Living Dolls.

The book’s main body encompasses a great range of issues. From pole-dancers, prostitutes and pornography, to the myths surrounding babies, brains and hormones; this book tackles it all with, uh, balls.

However, don’t let this humour fool you … this book definitely isn’t for the faint hearted.
Walter gives us a very stark and raw view of some very sketchy topics; lap dancing and pornography amongst them. Quoting young prostitutes on their ordeals, she never abstains from any details. The words are harsh, tormenting and all too real.

When first recommended the book, I guiltily though, ‘ugh, please don’t be one of those old fundamentalist feminist books….’
And yes, it does begin with this tone, but as Natasha gets into the reality of the injustice felt by modern women, she gains real ground and delivers her message with graphic power. At times heading to bed with this book I really did just want to cast it aside for my new The Picture of Dorian Gray, as it’s far from winding-down material.
That said, it’s an eye-opening read. Providing a reminder of the world before the hyper-sexualisation of women. For that alone it’s an important piece.

Would I recommend it? Not over tea and biscuits, but perhaps to fuel a violent debate.
It’s one of those books that is very difficult to get into, yet when you’ve hacked your way through the recycled chestnuts, it’s worth the work. The perspectives posed at times can be refreshingly powerful and hard hitting. Very anger inducing. Like The Magdalene Sisters, it’s not until you go through the infuriation at witnessing the events, that you can truly be informed of the reality of the situation.

So, yes, worth picking up from the library, as it’s an informative book; but it’s not a book to grab your pen and Santa list for. I feel bad saying it, but features of the book have real potential, but amongst the old hat views and slow progression, it’s just a bit of a trawl.

The message is powerful and should be heard, but it’s good intentions are, unfortunately, poorly executed in this case.

• Natasha Walter, “Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism” (Virago Press Ltd., 4th February 2010) is out now
  

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According to the book’s site it will help you decide…

• How to come out at school, at work, and to family.
• Locating hot dykes for fun and friendship.. whether you live in the city or in the sticks…
• Seducing your secret crush
• Becoming a know-it-all “sexpert”
• Attracting your soul mate online
• Your lesbian personality and what it says to other women
• Avoiding painful gay drama
• Cheating lesbian “bed death”
• Mysterious Lesbian dating “rules” explained
• Less than obvious “giveaways” that a luscious lady-lover is in your cross-hairs

Well that pretty much covers that!

Jenny has now gone one step further taking her book on-line.  I’d imagine the site could well be even more popular than the book.  After all, who among us wouldn’t like a few tips on gaining confidence?

On the site Jacobs is offering a 90% discount on the package for those of you interested in taking a survey.  This is to build up a “testimonial” section to the site, which is, of course, vital.  She is also looking for as much feedback as possible.

So if this is the kind of thing you think you’d find interesting you can download pack here.

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I wasn’t looking forward to reading this book, I must admit. A story about a child born to an abducted woman, living as a prisoner in the shed of a madman named Old Nick – not exactly up-lifting. How wrong I was. Uplifting is exactly what this is, poetic, profound and deeply moving.

Room is told through the wide eyes of Jack, an adorable five year-old who lives in Room, a 12-by-12 shed, with his Ma. He knows nothing of the outside world, believing Outside to be a fictional place only seen on television.

In some ways Jack is unlike any other child, locked away from the world; but he is also completely typical. He loves Dora The Explorer, Dylan the Digger and playing games with Ma in his own world.

If Jack is the innocent who needs saving and Old Nick is the dragon which needs to be slain, Ma is the hero. Abducted when she was 21, and locked away for seven years to be used as he wished, she never loses herself. She protects Jack from any threat or exposure to the reality of their situation. She teaches him schoolwork, she plays with him tirelessly and rares him to be strong and proud. So, when the time comes for him to be the hero, he knows what to do. Heroism in his DNA. JackerJack will do whatever it takes to save Ma.

I want to write more about the story but to do so would spoil what is, without a doubt, the best book I have read in many many years. I read it over two days, and when I put it down it never left me. It never will. Jack is a unique creation, a warm, often hilarious young boy with a huge heart.

Read this book. Please, I’m dying to talk about it.

• Emma Donoghue, “Room” (Picador, 30th July 2010) is out now
  

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Date: Saturday, 12 June 2010
Time: 8pm
Location: National Concert Hall, 2 Earlsfort Terrace, Dublin 2

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Shamim Sarif (left with her wife, Hannan, in the background) is the author of Despite the Falling Snow, I Can’t Think Straight and The World Unseen. She, along with her wife Hannan, produced and directed the film adaptations of the two latter films, which starred the gorgeous Lisa Ray and Sheetal Sheth.  Sexy lesbians falling in love, yes please!

Shamim’s work has always reflected her own life, indeed the story of I Can’t Think Straight is the story of how she met and fell in love with Hannan. So, it’s not surprising that she was scribbling away on a blog when making the films and when setting up the production company, Enlightenment Productions. It seeped into her home life too, giving us a peek into the life of two women raising their kids, loving their friends and running around like headless chickens.

Funny and insightful, the blogs follow Shamim’s life as an exhausted 21st century Renaissance woman. As the blog started to fill up and proved to be hugely popular, Sarif is publishing some of her musings in a book, Wrote the Book, Made the Movie, Raised the Kids, Now the Blog. The book includes an introduction by Lisa Ray who is a close friend of the couple as well as the star of the movies.

Lisa (right) has recently won her battle with a rare form of cancer. To make things worse, it turns out that her health care doesn’t cover the treatment she needed, so 10% of all sales of Shamim’s book will go to her.

To follow Shamim click on her Facebook or follow her on Twitter. For more on the book, click here

To see how Lisa Ray is getting along, you can go to her on Twitter

• Shamim Sarif, “Wrote the Book, Made the Movie, Raised the Kids, Now the Blog: 21st Century Musings from an Exhausted Renaissance Woman” (Enlightenment Press, 1st edition 15th March 2010) is out now
  

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You know Portugal: extreme western European country (snap!); with the Catholic conservatism (snap!); and the economy that didn’t really feel much of a boom over the past couple of decades before the bottom fell out of, well, everything (hm, that’s where Ireland and Portugal differ slightly).

Well, if you can imagine that society – like family-oriented, Catholic little Oireland, but warmer – and then ramp up the social conservatism just a little bit, that’s probably approaching the mind-set of one of their judges.

Yet, Portugal’s Constitutional Court – the highest court that can rule on issues of constitutionality – has today issued its judgment that expanding the definition of marriage to include same-sex relationships is permissible.

This is in the context of Portugal’s constitution, which obliges the state to uphold and protect marriage and the family.

Sound familiar?
(Well, apart from the clear absence of the DeV effect stamped all over Portugal’s founding document..)

Yet, here in Ireland, the Minister for Justice and Law Reform (he’s no longer Minister for Equality, since the cabinet reshuffle – appropriate, I think), Dermot Ahern, will hide behind “the advice of the Attorney General” – which is never published for all to see – and will insist that marriage equality is unconstitutional in Ireland. Even though in Ireland – just like in Portugal – it is for the highest court to decide on issues of constitutionality (in our case, it’s the Supreme Court), and not a political appointee.

Portugal’s President, Anibal Cavaco Silva – who referred the legislation to the Constitutional Court with his concerns – now must either sign or veto it within the next 20 days. If vetoed, the parliament may nevertheless have a majority to override the President’s veto.

So, should we regard this as something of a gauntlet, thrown down by a fellow staunchly Roman Catholic country?

Read more elsewhere:

• Boxturtle

• Euronews

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Image via Wikipedia

The first time you looked at the cover of one of Ann Bannon‘s books, you probably laughed, or groaned, or just put it back. On the cover of Ann Bannon’s book, Odd Girl Out, the blurb reads,

Suddenly they were alone on an island of forbidden desires.

Right. Next?

But wait, just read the first page. It begins:

“Mmmm…” Beth murmured as Laura’s hands began to trace the curves of her back. “Oh, that’s just marvelous.” She shivered a little and Laura trembled with her. “Under my pajamas, Laur.”

Wait. This was published when? 1957.  And it was followed by four more books in the series, following the gay lives of Laura, Beth, Beebo and Jack.

According to the author, she began writing the novel when she was a 22 year old housewife,

utterly unschooled in the ways of the world. There were millions living the same life; I was to be indistinguishable from them for many years, except for the fact, known very few outside my immediate family, that I was the one who wrote a series of lesbian pulp paperback novels under the pen name of Ann Bannon.

Ann Weldy, as Ann Bannon, wrote her first book about a university sorority house. The relationship between the two women was a subplot. After the publisher read it, she was told to rewrite it and focus on the relationship between the two women. Not a word was changed from the second version.

Lesbian novels such as Ann Bannon’s were marketed primarily to heterosexual men. However, lesbians — especially those isolated from the burgeoning gay scenes in the larger cities — found them and read them too. Reading these books, women struggling with their sexuality, identity and isolation could take refuge in characters with similar confusions and imagine themselves in New York City’s Greenwich Village where there was already a large gay scene.

Bannon wasn’t alone in her genre. There were plenty of other writers who wrote (almost universally using pen names)  lesbian pulp fiction. The reason for the enduring quality of Bannon’s work is in their difference. Written by a woman struggling with her own sexuality, who, like her readers, dreamed of freedom and community, her characters didn’t all end up married, crazy or dead, as lesbian characters so often seemed to in other books.

The first character we meet is Laura Landon. She’s a freshman in university and develops a disasterous infatuation with an older, popular student named Beth. Very feminine, coming from privilege, Laura spends the duration of an entire book dating men and wanting Beth. The books follow Laura’s story primarily, from her desire for Beth, to finding herself in New York City and her complicated relationship with Jack, an older gay man who recognises Laura’s struggle before she is ready to.

Perhaps the most unusual and memorable character makes her first appearance in the second book in the series, I am a Woman. (You want to know what the cover of this book says?)

The sudden realization made her gasp — she could fool herself no longer. She wanted a woman… she wanted a woman terribly…

From the stage adaptation of Beebo Brinker

Back to Beebo. Everyone who knows me knows I have a Beebo Brinker crush. She enters the story when Laura notices her in a gay bar.

There was a girl at the bar, standing at one end, in black pants and a white shirt open at the collar. Her hair was short and dark… There were some other people with her and they were all talking, but the short-haired girl seemed somehow apart from them.

It’s the final book in the series, a prequel titled Beebo Brinker, before we learn Beebo’s story. Her character is a real butch archetype from a time when femininity and masculinity were possibly as strictly regulated as they have ever been. In Beebo, we see not simply a struggle with sexual desire, but with gender identity. Beebo, whose name is Betty Jean, is too tall, too broad, handsome rather than pretty, and strong. She takes jobs well below her abilities because they afford her the freedom to wear trousers. Beebo is by times charismatic, confident and headstrong, then all at once desperate and uncertain. Even in the Village, Beebo is one of a kind. Her identity and her inability to live any other way condemns her to the fringes of society, while the other characters mix in and out of mainstream life, passing as straight.

You’ve probably read them. Barbara Grier once wrote that Ann Bannon’s books “rest on the bookshelf of nearly every even faintly literate Lesbian”. So if you haven’t read them, do. Fun and easy to read, Bannon’s writing pokes at truths in a way that makes it so surprising that they were so widely read in the late 1950s, but not so surprising that they are enduring classics.

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What has this got to do with a lesbian blog you may well ask… and you’re right, ‘lesbian’ doesn’t even appear in the index! But I’d hazard a guess that as lesbians (and especially through puberty and the teenage years) many of us have fairly complex journeys with our bodies and the  tyrannies of an increasingly narrow beauty aesthetic for women – one that often bears little or no relation to women we find desirable or indeed any connection with our own bodies, desires and appetites.  Some studies (like this recent Australian one) have shown that, in general, lesbians have a healthier body image than heterosexual or bisexual women.  But even the language of such surveys shows we are not immune –  note it’s that we are, sadly,  ‘less dissatisfied’ rather than more delighted with our bodies… !

This series of essays by Orbach is very readable, analytical but not particularly academic.  It is very much in this cultural moment – so plenty of statistics about the (rapacious!) diet industry, plastic surgery trends and references to our reinvented  bodies in ‘second life’ .  She is fairly scathing about the so-called ‘obesity epidemic’, she sees BMI measurements as utterly fabricated, and offers the alarming fact that in the US there is almost as much spent on diet products as education!

“Diet companies rely on a 95 per cent recidivism rate, a figure that should be etched into every dieter’s consciousness.”

Indeed she threatened to sue Weight Watchers for false advertising..!  She  also presents an interesting statistic that low maternal weight (the newly-coined ‘pregnorexia’, fuelled by celebrity culture) is a trigger for infants to become overweight as adults, priming the infant to ‘act like a famine victim’. She notes that body hatred is one of the West’s hidden exports- citing a shocking statistic that 50% of Korean girls seek a ‘westernising ‘eye procedure.

“Celebrity culture has brought us an invidious version of sharing. By creating internationally recognisable iconic figures, it appears to be inclusive and democratic. In reality the visual nature of our world sucks out variety and replaces it with a vision that is narrow and limited as far as age, body type and ethnicity are concerned. The sexualisation of our children’s world is caught up in a consumerism and a false erotic, leaving them confused about the sexual as they are about where their bodies and their body-based needs begin and end.”

Orbach notes that the idealised female body has almost yearly modifications- increasingly taller, bigger-breasted- every modification rendering it more precarious, and of course less attainable. And this whole notion of ‘attaining’ the perfect body, whether buying it through bogus wonder-drugs, a surgeon’s hands or the middle-class obsession with body-sculpting in gyms,  comes under scrutiny.  On a personal note, my half-sister who is six foot tall was offered drugs (which she refused) during her pregnancy to ensure that her daughters would be of a more ‘normal’ height… how times have changed,  a six foot woman is now considered a super model!

Drawing very directly from her work as a therapist, Orbach explores the ‘hated body’ through various case studies- and, in deeply psychotherapeutic fashion, puts a lot of store in experiences of food, touch and safety in infancy.   There’s nothing shockingly new in this book, but it’s timely, stimulating and necessary to remind ourselves of these issues.  Her aim makes utter sense to any of us who want to enjoy diversity in our bodies and those we love:

“Our struggle is to recorporealise our bodies so they become a place we live from rather than an aspiration always needing to be achieved.”

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