***shameless self-promotion***
You can get my latest book, The Frog Prince’s Daughters, for only $1 until mid-August. Check it out.
***shameless self-promotion***

Girlebooks aims to make classic and lesser-known works by female writers available to a large audience through the ebook medium ie see here for well-formatted classics in ebook format for your Stanza or other ebook reader (that just happen to be written by women).

While we’re on the girl theme: this is pretty old news, but last month, new owner/publisher of an erotica magazine announced that women can’t write the specific kind of sex she personally likes to read. To me, it was plainly a publicity stunt and worthy only of being ignored. What’s interesting about 1) an erotica magazine aimed at a male audience wanting writers who write sex that supposedly appeals mostly to men, and 2) someone saying something stupid, stereotypical and generalised about women? Happens every day.

However, ABC’s Book Show did think it was worth following up, and last week aired an interview with the woman making the comment and an Australian erotica writer arguing the matter. My main problem with the publisher’s comments is she’s one of those women who are damn contemptuous of women; as the writer points out, it’s odd to be so gender-specific when both men and women write both types (action-driven vs character-driven). It’s also boring to fall into the old stereotype about women not enjoying sex – and food – enough. It’s also disingenuous to start off by claiming she never said ‘all woman’ can’t write sex and women just look for things to be offended by when a) it seems like everyone looks for things to be offended by (just ask The Chaser) and b) that was her exact intention, for publicity.

And it’s also obtuse to complain that women write about sexual politics instead of sex when she should know that women can’t get away from sexual politics when they’re trying to just enjoy uncomplicated sex – and that is not all women’s fault.

Here I will dredge up an example from something I read at least ten years ago in a Cosmo or a Cleo or one of those magazines meant to teach women how to attract and pleasure men. The feature was stories about bad sex from the man’s POV. One story was from a guy who left a party with a girl and had sex with her in a park on the way home. Here’s the perfect woman, then, by the above criteria, she likes uncomplicated one-night-stands in risque places and doesn’t require ‘a day and a half of foreplay’ first.

But, wait, you ask, wasn’t it stories about bad sex? Why, yes it was. The sex was bad for the guy because his partner was rather vocal about enjoying herself. I mean, he says, I didn’t expect her to have a bad time as such, but I didn’t think I was doing such a fine job that she should have been making that much noise. Right. That story has bugged me for a freaking decade.

Let me now make a generalisation of my own: men are pretty much guaranteed an orgasm whether their partner is competent or not. It might be bad sex, but they get an orgasm, so it wasn’t a complete waste of time. Women are pretty much guaranteed to not have an orgasm if their partner is incompetent (unless they do it themselves), so then it’s just plain old bad sex. And above we have a prime example of why, then, a healthy sex-loving woman might end up with a slightly complicated attitude towards sex, when she risks wasting a one-night-stand on a guy who might, as it turns out, not actually expect her to enjoy herself all that much. Oh, guilt and double-standards and slut-labels and all that shit, be damned – it’s all about the higher risk of bad sex and that in turn is mostly about the partner’s attitude.

Ahem. The Booker longlist is out. Almost half the list have either already won once or have been shortlisted before, while there’s a handful of first-timers. I find the Booker very hit and miss for my personal tastes; I’ve outright hated winning books before, but I’ve also loved winning books before. I have a friend who only reads the Booker winners and shortlist, which means I’ve had some pretty awful (to my tastes) books foistered on me to read.

And, not really about writing as such, but a really fascinating look at the role of the editor in Hansard in making what politicians say more accurate than what they actually say…