Full Exposure: Opening Up to Sexual Creativity and Erotic Expression Read Online Free PDF Page A

go public in our own words, because the only protection we have after we come out is finding our allies.
    “Well, the problem is with the ones who want to be blatant,” some say. My late lesbian aunt, of all people, had a huge chip on her shoulder about drag queens, gay parades, and any sort of “blatant sexual display,” as she would call it. But this was the very same aunt who would never wear a dress, even the time I saw my mother cry at the kitchen table and beg her. This is the aunt who thought she was passing for straight in a polyester pantsuit, with an application of lipstick that looked like it had been painstakingly etched on by a kindergartner. When I became aware of gay history, I fantasized that I would call up my Aunt Molly, and we would talk for hours about how things used to be in the forties and fifties when she first came out in the San Francisco gay community. Instead, I thought she was going to chop my head off.
    “What is the point in talking about any of this?” she said. “You and your blatant carrying-on are going to be the death of us.” Well, I was wearing jeans and a T-shirt with bright pink women’s symbols on it, but so were a thousand other women on the streets of Berkeley, where my aunt lived at the time. I still think

    she looked more butch than any of us. I didn’t say that, though; I just said I felt that things that hurt would never change if we didn’t talk about them. I might as well have sung “Kumbaya” to the Marine Corps. Molly worked herself into such a lather that she left and called my mother—who was completely in the dark about her sister’s love life—to complain that I was sending “unwanted homosexual literature” to her home, and threatening her reputation.
    What a battle. I felt like driving up in front of her house with a big lavender triangle bus and a bullhorn, yelling, “Come out, come out, wherever you are!”
    The year before Molly died, she did come out to my mother. My mom was seventy and my aunt was sixty-eight. My mom loved her so much, and Molly’s secret—whatever its point was—had been so painful. Yes, my aunt believed that her privacy, her security, was threatened because of the erotic blabbermouths, the gay rights militants, the militant sex-positive posse. I could never argue her into sympathy or support for all the flamboyant examples—however crass or cheesy—who made it easier for others to share a little of who they are sexually with their family or friends—let alone walk down the street in a parade. Molly was labelled by others “blatant” because of how she looked, and she hated that—she felt like she was just being herself, natural. I was blatant because of what I said out loud; and it’s true, I had a lot more control. Was the issue privacy, or was it stereotyping, having your identity defined by others?
    As a nation, we’ve ignored the real carnage of privacy rights and indulged ourselves with the hasty and exploitative prejudices of intolerant voyeurs. By allowing ourselves to become the Tattletale Nation—we’re taping this, right?—we have become obsessed over the trivia of privacy, the mechanical details of

    erotic disclosure. But where is our genuine regard for an individual’s own definition? Even sympathetic critics have asked me if it hasn’t ruined my sex life to have talked about myself so publicly. They picture me as a hollow shell, with all my sex life scooped out and baked for commercial consumption. But no, choosing to tell my own story to my own audience has never ruined anything for me. It’s only when my words have been usurped by others that I have felt the rub of my pants being pulled down.
    CHAPTER FIVE ‌
    TALKING ABOUT IT

    S o many people say they don’t like “talking” about sex. They find it clichéd, insulting, insensitive. I am sympathetic despite the fact that I have talked about sex loudly and often. There are two big problems with sex talk: the vocabulary is lousy, and the sex