SIREN'S SOAPBOX
June 4 - September 30, 2020
all material copyright © 1998-1999
dr. gloria g. brame
SIREN'S SOAPBOX
June 4 - September 30, 2020
all material copyright © 1998-1999
dr. gloria g. brame
If you're kinky...can you please spare a few minutes for a worthwhile project?
From September 30th to November 15th, I will be conducting the first-ever demographic survey of kinky adults. With your help, this historic survey will find answers to many thus-far uninvestigated but very important questions about adults who engage in BDSM/fetishes, both as a sexual subculture and as members of society at large.
Unlike other surveys which ask about sexual practices, this one targets demographics: economic class, educational and professional background, family relationships, political and religious beliefs,and attitudes towards BDSM, including experiences with therapists.
I'm doing the survey for two reasons. First, people frequently ask me for statistical data on such things as "do all SMers come from abusive homes?," "are all sub males high- powered executives?," "are SMers more educated than other people?" and other critical issues. I've always wondered about these questions myself, but know of no sources for reliable data on them. (If you do, though, feel free to drop me a line, and I will compare any existing results to the ones I get in my final report.)
Second, while I've considered doing a survey for years to get answers to such questions, the workload involved was daunting. But now I have the perfect excuse. By completing an independent research project, my graduate school, the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality (IASHS) will change my Doctorate of Human Sexuality to a PhD. A minor change but one that is important enough to me to enroll for another semester and to undertake this project.
Also very meaningful is that this project is being conducted under the aegis of the IASHS. Their supervision of and support for this project enhances its credibility. With the school's name behind this, respected scholars, educators, and researchers in the field will take notice of the results. Participants, meanwhile, can be assured that this is a legitimate academic study: a committee of sexologists and senior faculty will be scrutinizing the results.
Please check out the BDSM/FETISH DEMOGRAPHIC SURVEY now. While there, you can also read the Survey FAQ. The FAQ provides details on my background, on IASHS, as well as information on my research goals, my methods, who should participate, how the results will be used, how you can help me to make this project a success, and more.
PLEASE tell others about it and encourage them to participate as well. The more people who submit forms, the more meaningful the final data will be.
Thank you in advance for taking this survey. Not only will you be helping me, but you will be contributing to a project that could help change public perceptions about kinky adults.
Check out the brand new column for October 1999 by bob harris in PERSPECTIVES OF A MALE SUBMISSIVE
What do Carmelite nuns and lifestyle slaves have in common? Find out in SM Perspectives, where readers confess all.
My AOL CHATS HAVE MOVED to a new day and time. Talk to me on AOL on Mondays at 10 p.m.
The first-place winner of the Fall 1999 Erotic Fiction Contest was just announced. Read Will's comments on the submissions, and the first of the stories.
Please don't forget to take the BDSM/fetish survey! Deadline November 15, 2020
Tell me something. On the Donny & Marie Show today, a sweet young starlet burbled, "I'm a shoe fetishist!" while Donny fondled the bizarre footwear she had toted along as evidence. The audience hooted and applauded; Marie laughed appreciatively.
What would happen if you or I said that on Donny & Marie Show? Of course, the Osmonds wouldn't have an out-of-the- closet sadomasochist on. But let's say they did. Would the audience hoot and applaud? Or would the crowd grow hushed with embarrassed surprise--already knowing that we are sexual perverts and therefore that everything we say is suspect and likely to be depraved?
Lately, I feel like I'm drowning in SM trendiness. I don't mind being drowned in SM...it's the trendiness that bothers me. The superficiality. The sound-bytes jetting through air so fast no one examines what any of them mean. The endless product positioning.
You can't watch TV, movies, or read magazines now without perceiving that over half the content (above and beyond obvious ads) is actually promotion for one kind of a product or another. Sometimes the product is a Hollywood star; sometimes it's a car or a brand of cereal.
Now SM is a product. It's being marketed to the masses. Fetish clothes, gargantuan Tom of Finland bodies, extreme sadism, and theatrical D&S; make professional wrestling a true SM grand guignol. It's being sold at exorbitant prices to the elite. The fashion press was agog when Christian Dior's 1999 collection had a bondage/fetish theme. Even ultra-staid Chanel has introduced a few SM/fetish-inspired pieces this year. Meanwhile, "shoe fetish" has become today's breezy term glamour editors to describe anyone who likes shoes. An ad I just saw in Vogue showed a bitch-in-heels mercilessly grinding her stiletto into the hand of an abject male.
Oh, yeah, baby. Make me wet, popular media! I used to have to pay good money for this kind of stimulation. Now bits and bytes of the new Fetish Nation are piped into my home on Donny and Marie.
But what about us so-called perverts? The non-trendy ones. The ones who will still have fetishes long after the fashion magazines move on to their next trend. The people for whom a fetish is an intense, serious and intimate experience; something that goes to the core of who we are and whose intensity cannot be communicated in sound-bytes. The ones who don't wear leather or boots to make a fashion statement but because it resonates profoundly with our identity.
Will we ever get to speak our truths in a popular national forum without frightening the sponsors or enraging the audience? Will those who exploit SM to sell product ever risk an honest dialogue about it?
Or will SMers and fetishists be the only ones who do not profit in Fetish Nation?
WHAT'S NEW updated September 24, 2020
It's getting controversial! SM Perspectives debates the differences between BDSM, D&S;, and SM. What do you call your style of sex play?
My AOL CHATS ARE MOVING to a new day and time. Beginning September 20th, I'll be live on AOL on Mondays at 10 p.m.
The first-place winner of the Fall 1999 Erotic Fiction Contest was just announced. Read Will's comments on the submissions, and the first of the stories.
Pundits are calling it "The Summer of Hate" and clergy are decrying the erosion of our national morals. The usual suspects are being blamed: media (liberals) show too much violence; Hollywood (Jews) glamorizes violence; rockers (hippies) and rappers (African-Americans) incite violence. So I will join the fray and lay the blame where it really belongs: on the Republicans. Not all of them, certainly, but that reactionary clique which forged an abiding philosophical alliance with the Conservative Religious Right.
It all began with "Family Values." In theory, family values sound like something we should all support. We all have families and we all have values. The term conjures pleasant images of an Ozzie and Harriet paradise, where everyone feels a good-humored, patient affection for every else.
But "family values" was never about Ozzie and Harriet, much less about the American dream of a life of civil and personal freedoms for all in a land where great people may come from the most humble of circumstances. By making "family values" part of their platform, the GOP articulated a commitment to pursue a conservative, Fundamentalist Christian political agenda. The Reverends Falwell and Robertson may never have slept in the Lincoln Bedroom, but they got their money's worth of political influence in Congress, where it counts.
Touted now from every legislative forum are the "family values" of people who are pro-life but anti-gay; who close their eyes to hate crimes while claiming to follow Jesus Christ; who welcome white supremacists in their clubs and churches while barring blacks, Asians, or lesbians. These family values are basic: my family (white, Christian people who think the way I think and pray the way I pray) hopes your family (anyone who is not my family) dies or is, at least, denied the freedoms to which I am entitled.
"Family values" is and has always been about hatred. It's about exclusion and fear of the other. It is about limiting other people's rights and tacitly condoning crimes against them. Rev. Falwell had plenty to say about the possible sexual orientation of a Teletubby. He made no such lament about the murder of Matthew Shepard or the bombing of abortion clinics; he remains silent on the shootings in Indiana and California. Similarly, then-VP Quayle saw fit to protest when Murphy Brown became a single mother yet, now in the midst of a presidential campaign, has nothing to say about the lynchings and murders of minorities.
When the architects of the "Contract With America" incited national paranoia about the evils of government it seemed almost inevitable that a Timothy McVeigh would emerge. And why are we surprised to discover that assassins, thugs, and survivalists have now formed murderous tribes known as the Aryan Nations? Bigots were the audience Newt Gingrich was playing to in his speeches and the one he wrote to in his novel, whose telling historical scenario envisions a Nazi victory in World War II. This is the audience that Bob Barr and scores of other GOP politicians pander to at all-white, all-Christian country clubs, cocktail parties and prayer meetings.
Until the GOP takes a stand against the hate crimes, and makes it known that it supports the true American dreams of equality, fairness, and peaceful diversity in our great country, the murders will continue. Until that philosophical blood-pact with bigots and hypocrites is broken, hatred will remain a family value.
WHAT'S NEW updated September 14, 2020GLORY SPEAKS is the transcript of a talk I gave in one of the Net's busiest BDSM chatrooms. New on 9/9/99
The Question We All Must Face is bob harris's hot new column for September in Perspectives of a Male Submissive
SM Perspectives is back! What do you call yourself?
Check out the Kink Links Catalogue for over 175 brand new links.
For those of you who were wondering why it got so quiet around here the last week or so, a brief explanation: I vanished!
After trying to relax at home and regenerate some of the braincells that died during the last couple of intense years, it became increasingly obvious that the only hope for rest was to escape all things electronic, including the phone and the PC. So, on impulse, I located a cabin near the Appalachian Trail in North Georgia, overlooking the Toccoa River.
My impromptu vacation passed in a blur of simple, sybaritic pleasures. At last there was time for dreaming, time for silence; I could gaze for hours at the sky or wordlessly soak in a hot-tub on the deck; no duties called me away from the river, which lazily gurgled and rushed. At night, foxfire glittered on the shores and the moon and stars filled the river, seeming to light it from within.I have traveled to many beautiful places but North Georgia's crude roads and dense forests work magic on my soul.
Wherever you are, I hope you too will spend a few days this summer dreaming your happiest dreams, bathing in clear waters, and surrendering to the natural beauty of the world.
RECENT ACQUISITIONS is the newest addition to Armed & Dangerous: a post-modern primer of perverse paraphernalia
Submissives Need to Take A Stand On Abuse by bob harris is this month's hot new column in Perspectives of a Male Submissive
The Fall 1999 Erotic Short Story Contest closed its doors last week. Thanks to all who sent work. Winners will be announced by September 1st.
TEMPUS FUGIT! If you want to submit one of your BDSM stories to our Erotic Fiction Contest you'd better get cracking. DEADLINE AUGUST 1, 1999! Read the Guidelines , and learn about Will Brame's future plans to change how we go about publishing contributors' fiction in this domain.
Since my last full update to this page, a few more of you have requested that I write up my delightful experiences at Mr. S. in San Francisco. There have also been inquiries about the videotaped tour of my own little SM lovenest which I prepared as part of my doctoral project.
Behold Armed & Dangerous, A Post-Modern Primer on Perverse Paraphernalia. Those of you who want to know whether I'm going to sell the videotape will get your answer here.
Armed & Dangerous features two detailed illustrated essays on SM toys and we perverts who love them. The essays are not X-rated: they are designed to be both educational and sexy. In the first one, SM Toy Show & Tell, I take readers on a 9-page virtual walk through my private dungeon. The photos show a wide variety of tools and toys, large and small; the text explains what you're looking at.
The second pieces is an essay about my phantasmagoric sojourn in Richard Hunter's private dungeon. I did not take any photos of his space however I did purchase a big box of equipment from his store. So the photos which will accompany this second essay will show the tantalizing new toys I've just added to my collection.
Time permitting, I plan to finish the entire thing by the end of next week. This will be a big and meaty feature. Some of the graphics are large, too. So unless you have an hour or so to linger, you may want to visit in stages. In fact, you can start your journey right now: SM TOY SHOW & TELL was just finished on July 22nd. Enjoy!
THIS AND THATIf you missed it last time, take a few minutes to stop and smell the honeysuckle in my garden.
Finally, Will and I have been discussing a way to generate some income to support this site. We've decided to try opening an on-line boutique for SM esoterica. I won't spoil any surprises: suffice to say it will be a very different kind of shop, specializing in the unique and the unusual. We haven't set a target date for opening but hope to launch it by the end of the summer.
New for July: Rejoice in the soil! Celebrate summer! Visit my garden!
Garden Book 1999: DREAM OF THE POSSIBILITIES is a detailed pictorial of the world that I've created outside my front door.
Beginning with pictures of the backyard from 1991, when I first moved to Atlanta, this tour shows you the astonishing changes in the landscape that have occurred over the years. Travel at your leisure through twenty-two new pictures and eight pages of explanatory text. My dog makes a special appearance and at long last I provide an answer to the burning question: "Do dominatrices have mothers?"
Thanks to those of you who wrote to say you'd like to read about my visit to Mr. S in San Francisco and the tour of Richard Hunter's dungeon. I will try to get to it in the next week or two.
I keep forgetting to mention it--or perhaps I am blocking it out--but I've got articles in Cosmo's current special issue, ALL ABOUT MEN. The issue should be available on most newsstands from now through the end of the summer. The issue is, yes, you guessed right: all about men! Or at least the kind of men that make Cosmo girls pant. The first piece is a shortie: I got a bunch of guys to confess some of the tackiest things they did on or with their dates. (All I can say is never to underestimate the depravity of mankind.) The second one dishes out advice on what to do when your man wants to talk dirty in bed.
Alas, Cosmo would not let me simply advise "You go, girl!"
And speaking of talking dirty...don't forget that our Erotic Fiction Contest is currently running. If you write erotica and have a short story that you would like to see published in our Erotic Library, please Read the Guidelines, and send in your work. DEADLINE: August 1, 1999. Judge: Will Brame.
NEW BOOK NEWSThings are moving apace at Simon & Schuster on the production of my new book, COME HITHER. The book has just completed its final editorial cycle, and the legal department just gave its stamp of approval. To my amazement, they asked for very few changes, and those they requested were minor. Yesterday I saw the cover-art for the first time. It is, in a word, UNIQUE. I don't know yet what, or how much, my editor will allow me to put up here as a preview, but I hope to get at least a few excerpts up over the next couple of months.
As time permits, I'll be adding more new features throughout the summer. Let me know if you'd like to recommend some new features, or to request updates of particular pages. I read all your email and try to implement your feedback and suggestions whenever I can. So if there's something you're dying to see here, drop me a line.
The big news, though, is that by delivering the lecture--which was videocast to a committee of senior faculty members--I crossed the final hurdle. On Thursday, June 24, 1999, the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality awarded me the degree of Doctor of Human Sexuality. I'm a sex doctor! I can buy all the pornography I want now and claim it's for research purposes! (Well, you see how MY mind works.)
Once I recovered from this happiness (a process which involved a few hours of dancing around the hotel room and several bottles of Gloria Ferrer blanc de noir), I emerged from the Marriott refreshed and ready for perversion.
With my submissive travel companion in tow, I went to the awe- inspiring SM paradise known as Mr. S, owned and operated by Richard Hunter, a man of true genius. As you might guess, I've visited lots of adult toy shops in my life, in a lot of major cities in the US and a few cities abroad. I have never seen anything that holds a match to Mr. S for inventiveness, quality, or sheer quantity of merchandise.
Mr. Hunter was kind enough to give us the royal tour and, impulsively, I decided to spend a small fortune. My one condition was that everything had to be a unique style or design. Richard was easily able to oblige. He also honored me by inviting us upstairs to his private residence. Never have I seen a space more beautifully appointed for SM play of every possible kind. We put my submissive friend in dozens of devices that day, from rigid steel stocks to cages and an isolation booth.
I'm thinking of writing an essay about meeting this extraordinary man. If you'd like to read such an essay, let me know, and I'll try to get to it soon, while the memories are fresh.
I've just refreshed the Dominant Ideas sub-site, and have added new materials.
Brand new! Perspectives of a Male Submissive, by bob harris explores the realities of the SM relationships. From a gay perspective, but applicable to all submissives in the lifestyle.
Literary Kink is a newly revamped selection of works with SM themes by classic English writers. Read excerpts from James Joyce's sensationally kinky private letters!
Sweet Services, my primer on SM etiquette for submissives, has been edited and revised.
Enjoy the new stuff! More is coming soon!
THERMOPYLAE is growing! New for June:
SUDDEN GROWTH
SPURT
I'm making a bunch of changes around here. Most
notably, I'm concentrating on improving the
literary resources here for writers in all genres,
and particularly for poets and writers of erotica. As I go along, I will also be refreshing
formats, fiddling with graphics, and giving
a number of pages a face-lift to make your visit
more pleasurable. Another change is that I've decided to eliminate
my "What's New" page. From now on, folks who go
there from links throughout the site will be
automatically directed to this homepage. This
way you can count on all the latest site
news to be posted right here, in one place. Thanks for dropping by! And please don't forget: I will be
traveling from June 21 to June 28th and may not have access
to my email during that time. So either hold off emailing me
until my return, or please be patient if it takes me a while
to respond. Merci. For those who have been keeping up with the endless stream of
verbiage which I spew just for you, now, at long last, I've got
some happy news to report. The director of my graduate school invited me to give a
lecture on my research for Different Loving and the
forthcoming Come Hither: A Common Sense Guide to Kinky
Sex. This means I'll be flying out to
San Francisco in a couple of weeks. The school will tape the
lecture and add it to their extensive library of videotapes by
and for clinical sexologists. To spice things up, I thought it might be nice to add visuals
to my lecture. So Will and I are discussing plans to do a home-
made video which features an SM show-and-tell. The inspiration
came from an experience we had some years back. In 1994, we
presented a paper to the regional conference of the Society
for the Scientific Study of Sex (Quad-S). The highlight of
our lengthy academic spiel was, without doubt, our toy
demo. It's amazing how attentive an audience becomes when the
person on stage is holding a whip. At Quad-S, we displayed about a dozen BDSM toys and explained
what each one was and how each was used. This time, we'll aim to
be more comprehensive. We will also shoot in a dungeon, so we
can include some large-scale pieces. This won't be a domination
video. Our efforts will, we hope, result in a basic educational
tool to acquaint people with the huge range of options for safe
and pleasurable BDSM play.
If all goes as planned, I'll screen the video at the graduate
institute and donate a copy to their extensive sexological
library. AND...assuming that the tape does not turn out to be
hideously amateurish, and that we remember to load film in the
camera, we may offer it for sale here. We'll let you know. Meanwhile, though my trip starts off with business, it will
end with pleasure. After all, I will be in San Francisco, SM
Capitol of the Universe. As soon as my academic obligations are
fulfilled, I intend to take a sexological field trip of the
Gloria Brame kind. Put another way: I want to party! I'll update this page at least one more time before leaving.
Stay tuned for announcements of more new stuff that will be
coming on-line before I go.
June 4, 2020
LITERATI!
Visit THERMOPYLAE, one of the hippest poetry zines on the Web, and read the radical poetry of Michael Benedikt. Also check out a new never-before-published short interview with Mark Strand. All new for June 4.
THE END IS COMING!
At long last we are ending our open call for BDSM poetry. At midnight tonight, it's all over. So rummage through your drawers and pull out your best for the Kinky Poetry Contest. (Hey. You know which drawers we are talking about!) To win a spot in the chapbook, you MUST follow the editor's guidelines. So please READ ZEE ROOLZ!.
Okay, you can take your hand out of your drawers now.
Fiction writers ho! Will Brame is gearing up to announce the Summer 1999 Erotica Contest. Start whipping your stories into shape. To see the kind of work that's won before, giddy-up and go to the Different Loving Erotica Library.
O! WHITHER I HAVE WANDERED or Why I've withered as I've wandered
Write, write, write. It seems that for the past few years, it's all I've done. (Okay, okay, maybe I did cruelly torment a swarm of subbies along the way.)
In 1998, I wrote two books: DOMINA and CONSENTING ADULTS (which is now titled COME HITHER--don't even ask.... though maybe I'll tell you one day...when you are least expecting it.).
SO. Daedalus wanted the first by June, and Simon & Schuster needed the second by November. Sure. I do fine without sleep. After awhile, going without sleep makes life kind of psychedelic.
Then, suddenly, Daedalus suspended operations just as DOMINA was going to press. According to my agent, no mainstream editor would even read it. So on impulse, I self-published it.
I also went back to school last year. At the age of 43, I am completing my education with a doctorate in clinical sexology. The Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in San Francisco accepted me as a long-distance student.
(As part of my studies, I watch hundreds of hours of naked people having every type of sex and clothed people lecturing about the kind of sex the naked people are having. Some might consider this to be nice work if you can get it....)
Meanwhile, my father was dying. My mother was having a nervous breakdown. My husband got a terrible flu. My slave got a terrible flu. I got a terrible flu. Things unraveled and re-raveled only to unravel again. I had to ask for a three month extension on COME HITHER. Finally, I sent it to my editor on February 18th. Exactly one week later, my father died.
The day I sent my book to S&S;, my periodic employer, Cosmo, called, asking me to write a couple of pieces for their annual "All About Men" issue. This special issue should start showing up on newsstands in a few weeks and will stay there all summer. One of my articles advises Cosmo readers about kinky sex. At first, I thought the editors wanted advice on bondage, spanking, fetishism, and cross-dressing. As it turned out...well...errrr....not quite (though bondage is still there). Visitors to this site may be amused (if not perplexed) to see what Cosmo editors think is kinky.
I wrote a lot of other stuff too. I contributed an essay to Prometheus' forthcoming memorial chapbook for SM activist Leonard Dworkin ("Leonard X" in DIFFERENT LOVING), who died suddenly last year.
Anyway...I have written and written and written...and now I am trying to catch up on life Away From Keyboard. This sudden capitulation to 3-D means that, well, first it means I will have a REAL LIFE. And second it means it is taking me longer than hoped to update the site. But there will be lots of changes around here this year, so be sure to check back from time to time.
Meanwhile, thanks for your patience.
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