I am a therapist who is dedicated to doing therapy differently. To me that means being candid about my life and the roller-coaster ride existence is for all of us. I was married to a Presbyterian minister, then met the love of my life: a woman. Donna died five years ago, and now, at sixty-one years old, I’m embracing another unexpected kind of love.
I lead a weekly group for women, and I’ll be sharing Stacy Boe Miller’s essay “Sex in the In-Between” [May 2024] with them. I’m in awe of the author’s courage to be real. I can’t wait for the women in my group to be as stunned as I was.
I appreciate Staci Kleinmaier’s interview with Clarissa Smith on sexuality and pornography [“Is This Desire?” March 2024]. In the 1980s I was a member of Women against Violence in Pornography and the Media (WAVPM) in San Francisco. At that time feminists were appalled by the violence perpetrated against women in pornographic imagery, epitomized by Larry Flynt’s June 1978 Hustler cover showing a naked woman being fed into a meat grinder and emerging as ground meat. We were also concerned about the dangerous health and safety conditions for sex workers, especially porn actors and prostitutes. It was the beginning of Take Back the Night marches, which brought women’s rape experiences into the conversation—the eighties’ version of #MeToo.
To my knowledge no one in the movement thought that sex was bad for women. (We were having lots of it!) We were smart enough not to espouse censorship, knowing how it could be used against media we cherished. Our goal was to educate the public about the harmful female stereotypes that were portrayed in pornography, such as the nymphomaniac—ever ready to serve men’s desires—or the masochist who enjoyed getting beat up. We acknowledged that some women did enjoy sadomasochism. We were protesting the capitalist and patriarchal power structure, where men on top of the corporate ladder drew huge profits from women’s labor.
I thank Professor Smith for her academic work in porn studies, her points about the importance of pornography for teens who have limited access to sex education, and her discussion about how women can now create sexually explicit images that reflect the breadth of our experiences. It’s heartening to hear how far we’ve come in forty years!
As a longtime subscriber to The Sun, I look forward to receiving your magazine each month. Having never been interested in pornography, though, I found your March 2024 issue worthless. I sure hope the next one is a worthwhile read.
I am to a fair degree supportive of Clarissa Smith’s overall view of human sexuality and the place for erotic art in our lives. But I have been in the field of family-violence prevention for over three decades and recently have worked with men who’d been arrested for trying to buy sex and women who’d been sex-trafficked, and I believe some important issues were omitted from this interview.
Most of the men I’ve worked with were to some degree addicted to porn, in part due to the ubiquitous nature of it on the internet, and many of them developed unrealistic notions of sexuality and intimacy. For example, one man felt his marriage was a failure because his wife was unwilling to have sex eight or more times a week, and others were disappointed when their partners did not live up to the idealized body type, sexual proclivity, and level of desire portrayed in pornography. Many of the women I worked with had appeared in porn videos against their will, having been drugged, often when they were children. I wish the interview had more clearly outlined the harms of the pornography industry and its connection to sex trafficking.
It’s disheartening to see someone mischaracterize LGBTQ+ debates, as Clarissa Smith does in your March 2024 interview. The debate is not about “trans people’s right to exist,” nor is it based on “fears around nonheteronormative sexual practices,” as Smith says. Rather, the debate is about policies.
Many gender critics have been strong supporters of same-sex rights. Critics are, however, seeking to secure the integrity of female spaces and scrutinizing experimental medical procedures on minors. The actual debate boils down to questions like “Can a person opt out of their biological sex?” “Why do a growing number of young people believe their gender identity is different from their biological sex?” And “Does gender identity trump biological sex when determining public policy?”
We are in a dangerous moment. The rights of women to have spaces in shelters, prisons, and showers with no biological males present is threatened. There is a sudden rise in young people attempting to arrest and redirect sexual development, at times via surgeries with lifelong consequences. To communicate and eventually find answers, the debate first has to be articulated fairly and honestly.
Advocating for trans rights does not have to come at the expense of women’s rights. Both are integral components of a broader movement for gender equality and justice. Certain political actors have exploited these debates, framing them as a zero-sum game. Women’s rights and trans rights are not mutually exclusive: they intersect in complex ways that require nuanced and inclusive approaches to advocacy. Certainly there are unique challenges and vulnerabilities faced by women, but I believe we can recognize diverse experiences and identities, including trans, within the broader spectrum of gender.
In response to the concerns raised about the harms of pornography, I agree it is essential to acknowledge that some individuals may experience negative consequences in their consumption of pornography. But it’s equally important to recognize that not all experiences with pornography are inherently detrimental. Many people find pornography to be a source of pleasure, exploration, and empowerment in their sexual lives.
Rather than attributing all sexual problems to pornography alone, we need to consider the broader sociocultural factors at play, including societal attitudes toward sex, gender, and relationships, which have developed over centuries. This is why I advocate for more and better sex education (including porn literacy) for all ages, so that we can better understand the complexities of our own sexuality and work toward promoting healthy and consensual sexual experiences for all.
Robert P. Cooke’s “Mountain Flowers” [March 2024] made me recall my teen years and the wonderful mystery of sex. Once the hay was stacked and clothesline season had given way to winter blasts, I wonder if the speaker of the poem sustained his youthful fantasies by thumbing through the women’s-undergarment sections of the Sears, Roebuck & Co. and Montgomery Ward & Co. catalogs—poor substitutes for a pair of pink panties frolicking seductively in the wind.
I loved hearing Robert P. Cooke read his poem “Mountain Flowers,” about women’s underwear dancing on a clothesline in the summer breeze. The character and timbre of his voice added another dimension of wistfulness to his poem of youthful recollection and longing.
You can listen to the poetry published in our March 2024 issue at thesunmagazine.org/news.
My wife and I recently passed into our sixties and have lived the majority of our lives in the Grand Canyon backcountry, where internet access is sparse. It still seems novel to receive The Sun and the magazine’s newsletter in our email inboxes.
I am an emergency-room nurse and commute from Flagstaff to the hospitals of the Navajo Nation. I usually listen to podcasts and online tutorials, but recently I’ve been listening to the poetry published in The Sun. It is delightful to hear the authors read their poems aloud while I view the beautiful Arizona landscape.
