Bisexuality/Lesbian/Straight Womans' Sexuality Books

Fat Girl Dances With Rocks (Coming of Age)
by Susan Stinson

Fat 17-year-old Char gropes her way to happiness and self-identity via diets, pop rock, complicated dance moves, and pot while deciding whether she's animal, vegetable, or mineral. Her long-standing best friend, Felice Ventura, a former fat girl herself, now studies Vogue and Cosmo with an attention she gives no academic subject, save geology. Char looks up to Felice, who has a flair for cosmetics, hairdos, and shoplifting, but is confused when her friend kisses her on the lips, then abruptly leaves town until fall. As Char spends her seventeenth summer working in a nursing home, her perceptions broaden to take in beauty's myriad forms and manifestations--the meditative stride of an elderly inpatient, the convolutions of a wrinkled hand, folds of swollen flesh, an eagerly awaited letter. When she visits Felice in the desert, the inevitable coupling finally takes place. Shortly after, the earth really does move, but it's the result of secret underground bomb tests rather than a pledge of undying love. A bittersweet story of teen love.

What Women Want
by Patricia Ireland Dutton
hardback $34.95
Book Review By --Victoria A. Brownworth

It's deja vu all over again. Patricia Ireland's book, What Women Want, is yet another example of that tired cliche--mainstream feminism out of touch with American women. President of the National Organization for Women (NOW) and titular head of the mainstream feminist movement, Ireland is about as connected to American women as Bob Dole is to the American worker. Over two-thirds of working women make under minimum wage; a third are victims of sexual assault; a third are victims of domestic violence; over half experience sexual harassment or sex discrimination on the job. None of these issues appears in What Women Want.

Part personal memoir, part political manifesto, What Women Want tells the tale of Ireland's feminist vocation, a short version (starring Ireland) of the failed fight for an Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution and culminates in a call for action against the dangers of the anti-abortion religious right (that they are also anti-queer escapes mention).

Biography first and foremost, What Women Want puts Ireland in the feminist driver's seat. Unfor-tunately, she is both unlicensed and dangerous. Ireland discovered feminism during her second marriage when, as an airline stewardess with a "primo" health plan, she assumed her husband would be covered by her medical insurance. When she found he wasn't, she sought legal redress. Her success lead her to law school, a successful legal career in Miami and culminated in her accession to leadership in NOW.

On the surface, What Women Want seems a simple tale of one woman's dawning feminism and where it led her. However, Ireland's noblesse oblige blunts the impact of important political events and her visceral dislike of and insensitivity to women not of her class or race runs as shocking commentary throughout the book.

Working briefly as a waitress, Ireland states, "felt like dying." Filing suit against Pan Am, she is incredulous that no other woman has done so. As a corporate attorney in Miami she refuses divorce and domestic abuse cases. She repeatedly typecasts women based on appearance.

Her sensitivity to race issues also lacks. She tells (and approves of) the following joke: "Why do Latin Americans like Miami so much? Because it's so close to the United States." When she must move to Washington for the NOW job, her husband stays in Miami to tend to their avocado and mango groves--begging the question of what labor they employ. (Kathie Lee Gifford could plead ignorance; what's Ireland's excuse?)

Dismissive toward working-class women and Latinos, her attitude toward queers comes as no surprise. Ireland tries hard to distance feminism from the taint of lesbianism, starting with herself. Ireland's eagerness to detail her heterosexual exploits throughout the book does not extend to her decade-long lesbian relationship with Pat Silverthorn.

This dismissal of her own bisexuality, coupled with the fact that Ireland sees no link between the religious right's violent response to abortion and its terrorizing of lesbians and gay men nationwide, indicates how dangerously out of touch she is. And while NOW under Ireland has embraced other multicultural issues, the organization, with a semi-closeted lesbian as its leader, has taken no stand on issues of major importance to lesbians--from reproductive rights to anti-queer violence.

Ireland takes credit for a great deal, from the actual writing of this book (which was ghost-written by a male journalist, lesbian novelist, and a few others) to serious changes within the feminist movement. Yet she remains ignorant of what most women want and need: jobs, equality, freedom from violence. What Women Want is meant to be a paean to mainstream feminism and its queen, Ireland. It is rather a damning portrait of an inauthentic woman and a faltering political movement.

A Movement of Eros
25 Years of Lesbian Erotica
Edited by Heather Findlay
Richard Kasak

Reading erotica collections is a bit like opening a huge tin of assorted chocolates--especially if one is a chocoholic as I am. Every piece becomes a new adventure, some dark, some light, some solid, some soft. You take that first bite of the first piece and feel the flavor of the chocolate merge with its creamy filling and it overwhelms the tongue and palate and your senses whirl. You savor the taste to the last drop before swallowing and then taking a breath, try another and satisfy your craving all over again. So it is with A Movement of Eros, edited by Heather Findlay.

Each of the thirteen stories in this collection has been carefully and lovingly selected from some of the best lesbian writers of erotica we have. It is an erotic adventure culled from various sources and represents every aspect of lesbian life. Some are excerpts of novels, some complete short works and some are stream-of-consciousness poetic narratives that read almost like dreams. There are stories of love and lust, passion and sensuality, power and dominance, cruelty and kindness, and all contain the emotional entanglements and the delicate, intricate merging of political, social and emotional issues that lesbians must cope with simply because we exist.

The balance of tone and theme is significant to the structure of the book as is the language each writer uses. Jewelle Gomez' "Water With the Wine" captures perfectly the slowly growing love between an established black academic and the much younger white woman who pursues her with a gentle elegance and fierce passion. "Jessie's Song" by Chea Villanueva is a taut, raw, cold-edged portrait of the streets and girl children forced by poverty and the indifference of the world to sell their souls and survive by their wits and anger.

Tee Corinne's "Vibrator Party" confronts issues of breast cancer and mastectomies and the myriad emotional problems and fears that women cope with as survivors. It is a beautifully written testament to courage and friendship and the ability to reach out and receive love and sex in all its wonderment. >From Leslie Feinberg's brilliant Stone Butch Blues, there is a poignant excerpt that will have you running out to buy the book if you haven't read it or give it to a friend if you have.

There are dark stories here also about control and submission that are rough and edgy and may be sexually controversial for some, but far too good not to be read. "The Wager" by Artemis Oakgrove and "The Marketplace" by Laura Antoniou are extraordinary, and Pat Califia's "The Surprise Party" is a corker indeed--not to be missed. Add this wonderful collection to your library. It will be dog-eared in no time.