In particular, three discourses that intersect in lesbian-feminist pornography give it a central position for an exploration of the human body in American culture: the discourses around the (1) lesbian body, (2) social power difference and (3) feminism. Lesbian-feminist pornography is an interloper in several zones of cultural conflict at once-the body, gender, sexuality, race and class-and reveals some of the central erotic underpinnings of American feminism. As a specific subgenre, lesbian-feminist pornography, reduplicates this paradox, which is precisely what makes it so central to any analysis of how the flesh is discursivized to produce the body in a specific culture. Pornography itself is fundamentally paradoxical, assuming as it does that the body is both exquisitely fantastic and real in the most basic sense. Almost ten years ago, Califia transitioned from female to male he now lives as a bisexual transman in San Francisco.This paper focuses on erotic corporeality in lesbian-feminist pornography. Patrick Califia has written many books about radical sex, queer communities, and the repression of desire.

This new edition, part of Arsenal Pulp Press' Little Sister's Classics series resurrecting classics of LGBT literature, includes a new afterword by the author, and an introduction by Wendy Chapkis, a professor of sociology and women and gender studies at the University of Southern Maine in Portland. But readers loved it, and to this day Macho Sluts remains a vital and moving classic that still has the power to educate, radicalize, and expand our notions of the body's potential to provide us with pleasure, pain, and love. If any book is responsible for the formation of the modern lesbian leather community, this one is it.ĭespite its graceful language, imaginative scenarios, and abundant humor, the lesbian press trashed Macho Sluts, and it became a focal point for the infamous legal battles between Canada Customs and Little Sister's, the gay and lesbian bookstore. Nobody had ever written so frankly about the kinky potential of woman-to-woman sex (and nobody has ever done it any better). When it was first published in 1988, Patrick Califia's Macho Sluts, a collection of S/M stories set in San Francisco's dyke bathhouses, sex parties, and S/M gay bars, shocked the lesbian community and caused an upheaval in the field of queer publishing.

Macho Sluts by Patrick Califia-Rice