Bacchus

Sunni: Doesn't it help promote a perception of inferiority if many sex bloggers exaggerate their experiences? I don't mean stylizing real events into a juicy story, but flat-out making stuff up. Our society is so open sexually in some ways, and so uptight in others ... I can see where someone trying to learn and expand his or her thinking through reading sex blogs could be left feeling completely behind the times. I have to admit, I didn't know anything about anal bleaching or figging until I started looking through your site and others that you link to ... there's a lot of, um, unusual stuff that goes on out there! [laughs]

Bacchus: I would hope people aren't comparing their own sex lives to the reports of sex bloggers, and then feeling inadequate from the comparison. Honest or not, sex bloggers are pioneers of a sort. They aren't going to be writing about the middle of the bell curve. Except when they do. If you actually read all the sex blogs on my blogroll, you'll find plenty of tales of semi-rigid erections, elusive orgasms, good-but-perhaps-a-little-boring vanilla sex, all the things that make normal sex normal and unremarkable. My daily blog posts, on the other hand, do often have a sensationalist aspect; I'm pointing at the unusual or the exceptional precisely because it is different, and therefore interesting.

As for the exotic fetishes like figging, those are to some extent a creation of the internet. I remember when I first linked to http://www.figging.com; it had half a dozen links maximum, and when I did a Google search, those were the only mentions of figging on the whole internet. Since that time dozens of sex bloggers have talked about trying figging, and they frequently mention figging.com as the source of their inspiration. So an obscure Victorian practice -- if that's even true -- has exploded in popularity because of one web site striking a spark in an atmosphere of sexual curiosity.

There is one sense in which your concern about feeling behind the times is both legitimate and, I'd say, a very good thing. More popular fetishes -- bondage, erotic spanking, cross-dressing, that sort of thing -- have always been with us and have always had many practitioners. But, before the internet, most of the folks who enjoyed these fetishes thought they were in a tiny minority. Now, the internet makes it clear that almost everybody has a fetish of some kind. The lesson to take away is not that you're behind the times if you don't become a spanking, latex-wearing swinger who does water sports and rope bondage on alternate weekends; rather, the lesson is that if doing -- or even reading about or looking at pictures of -- one or two of these activities turns your crank, you're not a freak, you never were a freak, and, yes, you're going to be behind the times until you accept whatever fetishism you have as perfectly normal.

I guess a simpler way to put that is that there's a lot more fetish sensitivity out there than there is fetish activity. Lots of folks think a fetish is "hot" but don't dare act on that because they don't want to think of themselves as "kinky" or unusual. If sex blogging creates a sense that everybody else is doing it, and that prompts these people to say "What the hell" and try out a pair of leather bondage cuffs, I'd call that a good thing.

Sunni: It seems to me that sexuality is an area where intolerance shows up most, even among pro-freedom individuals. Subtle anti-homosexuality, questioning certain kinks -- especially BDSM ... have you encountered that kind of thing? How do you handle it?

Bacchus: I've encountered an amazing amount of this, and usually I handle it by laughing at it. It's a source of endless amusement to me that folks can be in favor of sexual freedom for "their" flavor of sex, but still disapprove of sex that's "too kinky" or whatever. Sexual freedom has got to be a two-way street; we must hang together or we shall surely all hang separately. There are still too many people -- including sexually progressive people -- who haven't let go of the arrogant myth that they know what's best for other people. Sex-positive they may be, but when they see gonzo porn or a harsh BDSM whipping, they simply can't wrap their little heads around the fact that the person being done unto is a free and independent person with a right to consent to what's happening. They'll start prattling about exploitation and degradation and human dignity, but what they're really saying is "That person shouldn't be free to make that decision, because I in my infinite wisdom know that decision is bad for them".

Sunni: What about the reverse -- kinky folks who'd sneer at someone like me, who's had a pretty unremarkable sex life?

Bacchus: I haven't seen this. Kinky folks might speak of "vanillas" as shorthand for folks who aren't kinky, but I don't usually hear a sneer with that; it's just handy shorthand for folks who aren't as likely to be understanding.