Book Forty-Eight: Pornology by Ayn Carrillo-Gailey
Ya'll (yeah it's Paula Deen time) I read this book back in July. Maybe earlier. I read it around the same time as when I read A History of Celibacy and that was in one of the first ten books I read. Goodness. I've been holding off on reviewing it on the chance that my mom will read it but at this point, with less than 2 weeks left in CBR III, I need to suck it up and just review it already.
So this book is by a supposed "good girl" who was once accused by her (ex) boyfriend of being "pornophobic". "Always up for a challenge" she decided to make a point and prove him wrong, making a list of all sorts of "dirty things" she could explore or do to make herself less freaked out by porn. Aided by her friends The Naughty Knitters, Ayn successfully does a number of things including but not limited to: visit a strip club, get a lap dance, go to a brothel, host a sex toy party, watch porn, read erotic literature, go to a sex shop, and use a vibrator. Throughout her journey (surprise surprise) she discovers that porn isn't as evil as she imagined it to be, she has a lot of fun and ridiculous things happen to her, and she improves her outlook to be more sex-positive.
I've been reading another book lately called What You Really, Really Want by sex-positive author Jaclyn Friedman. I really must confess (if you didn't know already) that I'm pretty clueless when it comes to such things as sex-positivity because sex is always a taboo subject in my house and most of the circles I ran with before college. Now I have a wide spectrum of friends, and almost all of them are incredibly patient and understanding of my foibles, and I thank them for introducing me to the concept of sex positivity. This concept seemed lost on Ayn at the beginning of the book, considering she was really all up in the Madonna/Whore conundrum and thought you couldn't be a "good girl" and like porn or anything sex related. I thought a lot of the book felt contrived and her silly situations she got herself into (her mom walking in on her sex toy party and thinking it was a tupperware party, meeting a guy she had a crush on at the sex toy store while wearing a cock ring as a bracelet ((a total accident, of course!)). But I really felt like she approaches the subject from a better perspective from Friedman because she actually had to go through all these things herself. I recently went to a talk by Friedman. The book is designed as a workbook and in the question and answer portion of the talk, someone asked her if she had done the exercises herself. She responded by saying she'd been too busy with her book tour, but of course she tested all the exercises on her "think tank" and she didn't really need to do it herself. That kind of attitude rubbed me the wrong way and for all qualms I had with Gailey's book at least she went through it herself in an authentic and genuine way.
Overall this book was quite the companion piece to A History of Celibacy and I will say although it's not erotic literature, reading this book definitely put me better in touch with my feelings around sex and my sexuality. It helped me to refocus and remain sex positive, and gave me hope that my "time" hasn't passed.
It's also awesome that I'm reviewing this book while I finish up another, From the Pews in the Back, a book about young Catholic women and their views of the church. Once again, I seem to have a knack for really getting books that just like to be contradictory of one another :) Stay tuned for the next review.
