Fat activism makes me feel sexy.

Being a fat girl in a short dress while walking around the Marina with an enormous whoopie pie filled with vanilla buttercream (thanks, Susie Cakes!) - as was the case on Tuesday - is an act of political resistance. Because fatties have so thoroughly been pushed into the margins of society and because food and fat have been so successfully demonized the potential to perform radical acts of fat love reside within all kinds of otherwise commonplace things. My short skirt, my whoopie pie are symbols of my refusal to capitulate.  

So, when I got an email last Thursday from some fellow fatties about a direct action flash mob (coordinated by Marilyn Wann, author of Fat?So!) to protest the Obesity Treatment and Prevention Conference at the Hyatt in SF, I was all about it. An aside about the word obesity: it's a medical pathology, not a politically correct neutral word. I don't...

Today, what are the master's tools? Where is the master's house? Who lives in it? Is it the same old crusty white folks? If so, do I want to live in the master's house? Do I need his tools? I liked the idea of screwing the master's tools (or at least destabilizing them) and opting for my own DIY, perhaps gold-encrusted fur-lined fabulous tool kit.

Tool 1: Sacrificing short-term advancement for long-term justice. You'll know it's justice if it's hard to do, makes you want to puke a little, and could seriously lose you some esteem in the eyes of colleagues.

Tool 2: Realize that injustices look and feel differently and may shift entirely depending on where you are. I learned this one from Amy Sueyoshi. The oppressed in one arena can become oppressors in another. Though women are oppressed by patriarchy, women of color are oppressed by patriarchy and racism. If they're in a space together, that means that women of color need more consideration to make sure that they are not silenced. In a room full of heterosexual women of color, queer women of color need more consideration to make sure that they are not silenced.

Tool 3: Learn to decode oppressive rhetoric. Racism and white supremacy are particularly well-coded, I've come to notice. Because racism is such an...

People in Denver don't seem to like animal print. It at least marks you as an outsider. Cheetah print and fishnets were all I'd packed for my weekend, so there was simply nothing to be done.

I get into Denver International Airport at 8:30pm, fresh from my first visit to Texas. Frontier Airlines serves warm chocolate chip cookies. They cook them during the flight, and so this tiny plane is infused with cookie perfume. It’s calming in a way that hermetically-sealed shimmery bags of pretzels just aren’t.

I get to my hotel around 10pm. The cumpolsory email-checking for which my generation is known ensues. I’m in Denver for the National Women’s Studies Association Annual Meeting. I’m presenting my research on fat women of color. I look at the conference schedule. Tomorrow. 9:20am: Indigenous Feminisms.

Shit. 9am....

I started this piece as an article for the NSRC, but wanted to flesh it out more here.

Never had I ever seen a pinata get fisted. Nor had I watched a human-sized pulsating vagina dance or a white baby's entrails get greedily consumed. But I saw it this weekend at the Brava Theater.  Xandra Ibarra, aka La Chica Boom, produces Kaleidoscope Cabaret, a show centered on people of color performance and race positive sexuality.

The...

It really irks me the way that my gramma has begun bringing up the baby thing. I'm officially living in sin, so I'm not sure whether our baby would find itself on the end of Satan's marshmallow stick anyway, but I don't like that just because I have a uterus means I have to use it.

And I know I'm not alone on this one. The industralized world is facing a declining birth rate (the US - whose OK-ish birth rate is due almost entirely to the immigrant population - is an exception). Denial isn't just a river in Africa for countries like Japan and Germany, whose incredible xenophobia + low birthrates have made their future look pretty bleak unless they start letting more immigrants in or they pay women to stop giving head and start putting that sperm in its rightful place!

A couple must make 2.5 babies in order to sustain its biological weight in the circle of life. And though I lurve me the idea of Mexican and African babies overrunning the gene pool, some people don't.

What I'm getting at is the why. Why aren't women willingly putting their pussies on the chopping block for little bundles of therapy-inspiring, sex-life-killing, marriage-ending joy? I can't quite put my finger on it. Some say it's the internet (and all the masturbating that goes along with the internet! Again, put that sperm somewhere useful, not your...

Spoiler alert: straight-ish girl talks about sex with men and the uses the word vagina.

20% of US men report using a vibrator.

As a girl who (a) loves having sex with men and (b) vibrators, I think we've lived too long in a world where never the twain shall meet. I know that people the world over are intellectually toiling over the ethics of vibrators: do they cause de-sensitization? do they make penises seem icky and anti-climactic? Do they make you gay? I say maybe, no, and only if you want them to.

I thought I'd give 3 ways that vibes make for improved sexy times:

(1) When with men, I use both a small vibe (mine is LeLo Mia lipstick vibe in dark pink) for smaller areas (you can buy bullet vibes online or in a sex shop for anywhere between $2 and $8 and if you're in a bind, put your phone on vibrate and use that) as well my trusty sidekick, Hitachi Magic Wand, during intercourse (Hitachi is a bigger investment, costing between $40 and $80 depending on whether you order it online or buy it in a store. Also, when using Hitachi you must be near an outlet or have an extension cord).

(2) Smaller vibes work very well for nipple, peri-anal (aka butt hole and the surrounding nerve-infused area) as well as frenulum stimulation. The frenulum is that sensitive bit right under the...

Is it just me or was Miss Piggy a fag hagging fat high femme top before anyone else was?

In reading Miss Piggy's Guide to Life (a highly, highly recommended text), I was reminded of how Miss Piggy was a hero of mine when I was just a little fat brown girl. I looked through this book, written in the year of my birth (1982), and Miss Piggy is wearing outfits that I wear only on my big girl bravest days. An orchid, veiled mini bowler, fur, and animal print in the same outfit? It reminds me of that time I went to a Prince-themed queer femme clothing swap last weekend.

And can't some frogs change gender.. ergo, could Kermit be a drag king or a trans man? Highly likely if you ask me.

Miss Piggy is a total queer icon. She's an affront to paradigmatic femininity (and Kermie, an affront to paradigmatic masculinity). She's a feminist and a body anarchist. In her Guide to Life she gives advice on how to stay fat and dispenses food philosophy: Sure, ice cream has lotsa calories, but it doesn't have as many calories as a lobster, a block of cheese *and* an ice cream!

I love that I watched her as a child. The reclamation of Miss P. is an exciting project. 

For a long, long time, I was very embarrassed of having brown nipples! I know, this sounds crazy, but I truly did find the mention of their tint to be blush-inspiring. I even wrote a whole monologue once about how I had learned early on that pink nipples were the thing to have. In the naughty movies I snuck as a kid, all the women were white and all of them had pink nipples. Pink nipples were (and are) omnipresent. So, imagine little 7-year-old breast fetishist me soaking up all these nipple images and quickly cataloguing what "sexy boobies" looked like. You can probably understand why I thought pink nipples ruled.

While in Thailand in June 2009 I went into Boots (a UK owned drugstore/toiletries place), and found on their shelf a cream that makes your nipples pink. Now, as you may or may not know, most people who aren't white have brown nipples.. some are cinnamony and some are almost purple-black, ranging from milk chocolate to dark chocolate. Yumm! This cream promised a "healthy" way to pink nipples: that pesky dark nipple skin would painlessly flake off revealing new "healthy" pink skin. Needless to say, I found this anthropologically fascinating but the breast activist side of me sighed a little sigh of sadness.

Thankfully, in talking to my...

In The Other Side of Desire, NY Times writer Daniel Bergner chronicles the erotic lives of 4 fetishists in what I consider one of the most sensitive, thoughtful, provacative books I've ever read on fetishists. A chapter is dedicated to each of their stories. The chapter entitled "The Phantom of the Opera" is dedicated to a foot fetishist named Jeff, who struggles deeply with his obsession. He tries to out himself to his wife and tries to fulfill his desires with sex work (which left him feeling "humiliated"). Jeff ultimately decides to pursue psychiatric help. As part of his treatment he is put on an anti-androgen called Lupron; essentially, he is chemically castrated. He felt that he was a freak with an unacceptable desire. He was half right. That his sexual urges and desires were focused on feet is what would be deemed an unacceptable desire. He wanted to be rid of it. He wanted to relinquish the ecstasy he experienced when he capitulated to his love of feet. He wanted to be normal.  

I'm a fetishist. Ever since I was a little girl, I've desired breasts in an insatiable way. They are the centerpiece of my complex erotic bouquet (if you will). When I read about Jeff, I wanted to talk to him, offer up my story, offer up my feet, tell him that some of the best sex I've had has been...

Reading Levine's book Harmful to Minors has brought to mind a question about the discussion around the pathologization of sexual violence. Levine brings up questions about whether it's the sexual nature of incest/adult-child sexual contact that harms children or the breaking of trust/exploitation of the powerless that actually cause harm.

I rememer a few years ago I was in a training course for sex educators. One of the facilitators brought up the issue of sexual violence. She said something like "people always say rape is about power and not about sex, but in my opinion rape is a lot about sex." I remember feeling deeply uncomfortable with her statement, but I gave it some intellectual consideration and Levine's book brought up the question anew for me.

So, here are my thoughts. I know that this discussion may be difficult/offensive to some. I am curious about people's thoughts and feelings around the issue and/or the folly of...

Last year I wrote Cosmopolitan Magazine a letter. I told them that the day that they put a fat a girl on their cover would be the day that I bought their magazine. A few years ago I decided to go cold turkey on Cosmo and all of its insidious sisters (Vogue, US Weekly). In short, cold turkey proved to be too difficult for even my radical feminist ass. So, I compromised. I can sneak peaks at the magazine when I’m in line at Safeway. And, yes, when I’m waiting for my chonies to dry at the Laundromat, I walk next door to the 7-11 and read entire editions. But I will not pay for the privilege. I can perv on Kim Kardashian’s amazing booty, but not a single hard-earned Virgie dollar will make its way into their pockets.

The recent Elle cover featuring Gabourey Sidibe made me wonder if I was ready to make good on my promise. Does the visibility of a dark-skinned, big-boneded woman prove that Elle has changed its ways? Will Gabby usher in a new epoch of fatty celebration or the possibility that significantly more cover shots will be of women of color. Methinks no.

Reading about the history of sex education, I can see snapshots in the evolution of "sex positivism" as a concept. Sex positive once meant to sex ed advocates the "elevation" of humanity above base and carnal instincts and the idea that sex ed wasn't just about itchy gross stuff on your no-no hole. Things have changed a bit since then.

Three years ago, when I was being trained as a sex educator by a sex-positive organization based in SF, there were sections devoted to porn, kink and even harm reduction tools for how best to have sex with a (hopefully consenting) dog. This is probably not the sort of thing Margaret Sanger would have been too stoked about.

When it comes to the sex ed debate and whether sex positivism has a place in the sex education of people under 18, the question is still - at its core - based on the premise that children need to be protected, that sex is a very important, very grown-up affair that children simply don't have the mental or spiritual/emotional faculties to fully grasp. Is this true? I have no idea. But as someone who was rearing for sexual contact from a young age (and who spent quite a bit of her childhood crying and praying for forgiveness after she'd masturbated in the bathtub thinking of Suzanne Somer's boobies), I can say that I would have appreciated a breakdown of what this "masturbation" thing was and that it actually wasn't bad for me (and maybe even that some...