Macho Sluts

PRAISE FOR PATRICK CALIFIA &
MACHO SLUTS

“Califia, a champion of pornography as a key to adequately realized sexuality, is probably the most skilled writer of pornography working today if one measures talent by appeal across genders.”
–—Joseph W. Slade,
Pornography and Sexual Representation

“Califia is in the tradition of philosophers Wilhelm Reich and Herbert Marcuse, the gay pioneer Harry Hay, the poet Allen Ginsberg, the journalist Ellen Willis, and the novelist Dorothy Allison, who calls Califia's essays ‘lucid, intelligent, brave, and true.' ”
—The Progressive

“Finally! The girl's version of
Straight to Hell
, the written equivalent of Tom of Finland. No more nights spent appropriating gay or straight male porn because you thought women would never write that way.”
—
The Village Voice

“Califia's stories are intriguing, erotic, exhilarating, and unnerving. The sheer power of
Macho Sluts
in undeniable.”
—
Bay Area Reporter

“
Macho Sluts
will make you rethink what you thought you knew about lesbian sex.”
—
Windy City Times

“
Macho Sluts
breaks through the veils of silence that define, limit, and deny women's erotic possibilities. Califia is more than just an author. She is a political rebel as well.”
—
San Francisco Sentinel

LITTLE SISTER'S CLASSICS

Macho Sluts

PATRICK CALIFIA

ARSENAL PULP PRESS
Vancouver

MACHO SLUTS
Copyright © 1988 by Pat Califia
Preface, foreword, introduction, and appendices copyright © 2009 by the authors
First Arsenal Pulp Press edition: 2009
First published in 1988 by Alyson Publications

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any form by any means—graphic, electronic or mechanical—without the prior written permission of the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may use brief excerpts in a review.

ARSENAL PULP PRESS
Suite 101, 211 East Georgia Street
Vancouver, BC
Canada V6A 1Z6
arsenalpulp.com

Little Sister's Classics series editor: Mark Macdonald
Editors for the press: Robert Ballantyne and Brian Lam
Text and cover design: Shyla Seller
Front cover illustration: Michael Manning
Little Sister's Classics logo design: Hermant Gohil
Photograph of Patrick Califia by Mark I. Chester

Printed and bound in Canada on FSC-certified paper

This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance of characters to persons
either living or deceased is purely coincidental.

Efforts have been made to locate copyright holders of source material
wherever possible. The publisher welcomes hearing from any copyright
holders of material used in this book who have not been contacted.

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication:

Califia, Patrick, 1954-

Macho sluts / Patrick Califia.

(Little sister's classics)
ISBN 978-1-55152-260-9

I. Title. II. Series: Little Sister's classics

PS3553.A3987M33 2009    813'.54    C2009-902290-7

Acknowledgments

The following people helped me with this sordid escapade. Many of them are still speaking to me. Thank you.

Jo Arnone, Cynthia Astuto, Beth Brown, Honey Lee Cottrell, Karen Johanns, Stuart Kellogg, John Kenny, Artemis OakGrove, Dana Rosenfeld, Gayle Rubin, Michael Shively, Jaini Simon, David Stein, Thor Stockman, Sharon Stover, Abby Tallmer.

For Dorothy Allison, who gets the Redneck Trash Encouragement Editorial Award and who may be so completely sick of this book that she may never see this dedication.

One more thing: wait until it's
your
turn.

Contents

Preface

Please Don't Stop!

Introduction

Macho Sluts

Introduction to the original edition

Jessie

The Finishing School

The Calyx of Isis

The Hustler

The Surprise Party

The Vampire

The Spoiler

A Dash of Vanilla

A Note on Lesbians, AIDS, and Safer Sex

Appendices

On Our Backs review of Macho Sluts

Macho Sluts and Little Sister's: the Court Case

In Appreciation

Preface

Macho Sluts
is not the kind of book that you would have read back in high school English class, but it will blow your mind nonetheless. Among many things, it is first and foremost a wild and sensational piece of pornography. Whatever identity you bring to your first reading—whether you're a woman or a man, straight or gay, femme or butch, vanilla or hardcore, trans, bi, queer, undefined, or who knows what all—there is something in
Macho Sluts
that will transform your ideas about sex and sexuality. The book's audacity is complemented by the author's generosity and fierce determination to be honest.

And if you have the nerve (or stamina?) to return to these stories once you have read them the first time, their complexity will become more apparent. You'll get a better sense of the artistry of the writing, for instance. You'll see the breadth of the author's themes and techniques as an ever more obvious and playful deconstruction of sexual expectations, the way we understand our sexuality, and present ourselves sexually. And you will appreciate that pornography can actually be a work of art, and a work intended to expand the mind, rather than to re-enforce stereotypes and provoke dismissive judgment.

There are few words which can adequately describe the outright, unbridled
glee
that all of the people associated with this new edition feel with its publication. The people who fought that historic legal battle for two decades to defend expression rights in Canada still keep their day jobs at Little Sister's Book & Art Emporium on Davie Street in Vancouver, after all.

From the beginning, the treatment of
Macho Sluts
by the loutish drones of Canada Customs was as comical as it was sinister. The title of the book was like a baited hook for prudish censors. If even a single copy were included in a shipment from its American distributor to Little Sister's, the entire shipment would be detained. From Canada Customs' perspective, by ordering
Macho Sluts
we at Little Sister's were attempting to import the worst, the filthiest, the most unclean type of literature. We were certainly
treated
like criminals for daring to bring this book into Canada.

Repeatedly, the seized book would be reviewed by one Customs bureaucrat or another up the chain of command. In all of the memoranda that Customs would send out to its regional offices on the subject, its officials would have “guidance” for their judgment of whether the book was or was not obscene—according to Customs' definitions. Over and over the book, given closer examination, could only be treated as having artistic merit, of being thoughtful in its themes rather than coldly exploitative, and then finally released to us. And yet, nearly every time we tried to order it again, the shipment would again be stopped or delayed, and we'd have to start from scratch. Of course, this context was all about potential readership, one supposes, because independent bookstores all across Canada could import the book if they wished, and without a second glance from Customs.

One of the least palatable aspects of having to fight for freedom to read in Canada was that we found amongst our adversaries a camp of radical right-wing feminists for whom pornography and erotica were considered bastions of male power, and its authors and adoring fans were to be treated with disdain. Not satisfied with the absurd notion that their school of thought should be taken seriously by authors, readers, and all who sought liberation, they acted (and succeeded, in the Butler decision) to implement their regressive ideas as law—all in the name of feminism and women's rights. Thanks in part to a new generation of women who feel they can decide for themselves the varying degrees of importance they place on womanhood, liberation, sexuality, independence, personal and community strength, physical boundaries and gender uniqueness, the Dworkins and MacKinnons of twenty-plus years ago will, and should, be seen as historically important gender theorists, but misguided in their views toward pornography. If the seizure of lesbian and gay books prevented crimes against women or produced a Utopia where inequality and subjugation no longer exist, the evidence is elusive and fleeting, to say the least.

Steeped in this murky legal thinking of post-Butler censorship, Canada Customs somehow managed to get
worse
at their job when it came to books. Many books that were being seized were by women, and meant for an all-woman audience. While these same books were being circulated and discussed in the US, Canadian readers were not so lucky. Ultimately, at the end of the day, and in the minds of every judge who took the time to get off on it,
Macho Sluts
may be the single reason that “artistic merit” came to mean so much under Canadian law.

And yet, during the closing days of the Little Sister's court case, as we attempted to win compensation for our legal costs, and as testimony by Canada's top censoring official was taking place, copies of
Macho Sluts
were still being detained at the border.

There is hardly enough room on any page to further rejoice in this new edition of a great book, and fewer places for the book to reside with greater reverence and adoration than the Little Sister's Classics series. Wendy Chapkis provides an insightful new introduction to this edition, for which we are delighted and grateful. Thanks to Little Sister's owner, Jim Deva, for his thoughtful afterword, and for his devoted thirty-year marriage to Little Sister's Bookstore (with co-owner Bruce Smyth), and to the bookstore's lawyer, Joe Arvay, for further revelations. The cover art, lovingly contributed by the outstanding graphic artist Michael Manning, speaks to the content and delivers the same seductive questions that Califia did in the original edition back in 1989.

Finally, the author himself has written a foreword that is … well … the kind of dynamite we expect from him. Patrick, thank you for giving us
Macho Sluts.

—Mark Macdonald, 2009

Foreword

PLEASE DON'T STOP!

A Sex-Radical Pornographer Looks Over His Shoulder

P
ATRICK
C
ALIFIA

Why should anybody buy a book of lesbian S/M smut that was originally published in 1988, especially if the author is now using male pronouns and sporting a rather impressive beard, if I do say so myself?

This question isn't simply one about your budget, even though it's a precarious time for international economies. And the Internet has kicked a big hole in the market for actual books printed on paper. These are facts discouraging enough to turn a lot of new talent away from the daunting task of compiling a long manuscript and toward blogging, Twittering, and other ephemera. This situation probably deserves reams and reams of analysis. But it's pretty depressing, and it's also a bit like complaining about the weather. Fruitless. I would rather talk about more juicy topics, issues of gender and sexual orientation and what tickles anybody's fancy, and why.

First, a little history, because this is no ordinary book of X-rated fiction. Its continued existence and popularity alone prove that. It also demonstrates that activism and grassroots community organizing really do work. That seems like a message worth passing on to a whole new generation of radical sex perverts who might otherwise sum up the vast amount of work that remains to be done, and perhaps give up, get burnt-out, go on anti-depressants with icky side effects like a total loss of libido, or at least have an extremely cranky weekend.

I'll yield to my roots in the early 1970s, with its dictum that “The personal is political,” and start with some autobiographical stuff that contributes to the uniqueness of
Macho Sluts
and the rest of the dozen or so books I've published critiquing received notions of what terms like “pain,” “pleasure,” “man,” “woman,” and “justice” mean.