The Dog Collar Murders Read Online Free PDF

women shouted that there was no difference, that both were products of the pornographic imagination, which essentially objectifies women and separates their sexuality from their personalities. And other women thought there was a difference—that Miko was showing women the way they really were and not all prettied up for the camera. They thought that Miko’s video would actually turn off most male viewers. It turned off a lot of women anyway.”
    “Is that what they’re still arguing about?” I asked.
    “No, it’s taken a new turn. It started when Miko was talking about being an erotic dissident and this contingent of women took over and said Miko wasn’t really, that she still was representing established notions of sex, that it was just the same old vanilla sex as always. That they were the real sexual outlaws, because they were pushing the boundaries back.”
    “They’re the S/Mers,” someone else said. “One of them’s even wearing a dog collar with a leash attached.”
    “This I have to see,” I said, and squeezed into the room.
    Nicky Kay, the woman I’d seen at the Espressomat the other day, was standing up in front of the roomful of women and talking. I hardly recognized her. Gone were the Oxford shirt, jeans and glasses. She was wearing a silky sort of see-through dress with black lacey underwear and a garter belt holding up sheer black stockings. Her eyes were heavily made-up and she had a hectic flush to her cheeks, and around her neck was a dog collar, black leather studded with silver spikes, the leash dangling over one shoulder. Next to her stood Oak, in black leather pants and a leather vest with no shirt underneath, wearing heavy black boots. On her wrists were wide leather bracelets with studs.
    “Most of you know nothing about S/M and yet you condemn it,” Nicky was saying. “What is it you’re so afraid of? The lesbians here talk about being a minority sexual community and yet they refuse to allow us to have a forum to speak. Christians Against Pornography is invited to speak on a panel—not even about sexuality, but about pornography—but we’re not invited. Why are we so threatening? I’ll bet most of you haven’t even thought about it. You take your cues from the rest of society, which is repressive and puritanical. You take your cues from the wave of the feminist movement that says sex is something that men do to us, that women don’t like. Even the lesbians here are ashamed of female desire—or their lack of it. A lot of lesbians became lesbians for political reasons, not because of being attracted to women. It’s that wing of the feminist movement that doesn’t want us to speak our desires, that wants to silence us!”
    “S/M isn’t about sexuality, that’s why!” someone shouted back at Nicky. “It’s about degradation and patriarchal power and woman-hating!”
    I saw Hadley over in a corner of the room and tried to move in her direction.
    “S/M is about power, that’s true, but it’s about the flow of power. Power in heterosexual relations is frozen and static, with one side always dominant and one side always submissive. S/M is about movement and the exchange of energy.”
    Oak took up her line smoothly. “Unlike in the so-called real world, nothing in S/M is ever done without the consent of both people. That makes things a lot clearer and cleaner. There’s a lot less of the emotional bullshit and power games between S/M dykes than between vanilla dykes.”
    “Sex between most lesbians isn’t mutual,” affirmed Nicky. “It’s just a trade-off, first me, then you. But in S/M the possibility exists of opening all the way up, breaking limits you thought you had, satisfying yourself and your partner with incredible erotic intensity.”
    In spite of myself I was listening hard. That part sounded great. But…
    “Why don’t you talk about the pain and humiliation, Nicky?” A woman said. “About women with scars from razor blades all over their breasts, about