The Reverse Cowgirl Diaries #2: Curious Erotics
Plus: Why are AI nudes so creepy?
Porn stars at the porn awards, shot by me in Las Vegas, 2013
Welcome to The Reverse Cowgirl Diaries, a behind-the-scenes look at my life as a sex writer and all the weird shit that entails. From my recent sexplorations to my current obsessions, this weekly newsletter takes you into the mind of someone who has seen too many porn movies. In RCD #2: Why are AI nudes so creepy? Is ethical smut a thing? Is it porn mail or porn male? Don’t forget to subscribe, like, and share!
All the Sex News That’s Fit to Publish
I didn’t publish anything new on Forbes.com this week, but I did publish a couple new short book reviews on my blog. Late last year I realized I hadn’t read any books, so I made it a point this year to start reading books again. Last week I finished reading two books with sex-related subjects: Charlotte Shane’s An Honest Woman: A Memoir of Love and Sex Work and Neil LaBute’s The Money Shot: A Play. Shane’s book is a really interesting look at sex work when your clients are the 1%, and LaBute’s play is an incredibly dumb play about two A-list actors about to do a love scene in which they have actual sex. I recommend the former and not the latter. You can read my short reviews here and here. Also, The Wall Street Journal has an excerpt from An Honest Woman here. If you want to see what else I’ve been reading, they’re all here.
Recent Peversions
At a certain point, Substack enabled a way for people who publish on the platform to generate AI images. Here’s what I got when I entered the word “porn” into Substack’s AI image generator. Personally, there’s nothing I find hotter than a nude woman with three legs and one arm that folds over backwards to embrace a hand connected to nothing. I wonder what she’s thinking about. Probably about how’s she going to get around with all these twisty limbs. What do you think she’s thinking about?
In Medias Sexus
One of the two books I’m writing is a novel set in the porn industry. The book takes place over the course of a single day. It draws on my experiences writing about the adult movie business, but the main character is nothing like me. In fact, the main character is a man. This project is a lot of fun. Writing fiction when the main character is a man and you’re a woman is great. Honestly, it’s freeing to not have to be in the female body for a while. It’s like cross-dressing, but in literature.
Dirty Pitches
As I’ve mentioned previously, since I write about sex, I get pitches from publicists for sex-related stories. This week there were two, one from a porn company and the other one from an adult toy maker. The porn company produces amateur porn but with the “ethical porn” label slapped on it. That has been done to death, so I passed. The adult toy maker was announcing a partnership with a woman who makes handbags. It was a collection of handbags with the adult toy’s brand on them. Meh, so I passed.
Speaking of emails, as I’ve mentioned before, I get a lot of emails from men who want to be porn stars because twelve years ago I wrote “The Hardest Thing About Being a Male Porn Star.” The emails usually come from faraway countries.
Here’s the latest:
I have received over a thousand emails from men who want to be porn stars
What I’m Obsessed With
Love Lies Bleeding is an incredibly strange movie. Did I like it? I’m not even sure. I dug the body horror, the macrophilia, and the surrealism, but the story line is a mess. After I posted my take on it on Instagram, I got more DMs from men about what they thought of the movie than I have from any other movie I’ve ever posted about.
Manohla Dargis says:
Most obviously, she upends the heterosexual coupling that powers so many movies, including gun-crazed noirs in which violence is sex (and vice versa).
Quickies
Apparently Ti West’s X triology is getting novelized
Male strip clubs are at war, it’s “Chippendales vs Strippendales”
Torture Garden’s next Los Angeles event is November 10
San Francisco is gunning for deepfake nudes
Check out the Cyber Clown Girls 4 Year Anniverary celebration
Looking for penis pants? Emily in Paris has them
I rewatched Zola for the cinematography
This book looks cool: I Am Gonzo (thanks, ineedtoread!)
Canadian pole vaulter, twerker, and 2024 Summer Olympics bronze medalist Alysha Newman is on OnlyFans
Plastique Tiara is fire
From the Archives
Revisit “Extreme Porn Crackdown,” my 2001 Salon expose of how the Los Angeles Police Department attempted to crackdown on producers of extreme porn.
These days, it seems like the Los Angeles Police Department has got a thing for porn. Understand, the kind of porn the LAPD wants is not just any kind. When it comes to the LAPD and porn, the LAPD wants the nastiest, dirtiest, most extreme porn around.
That’s it for this week! Don’t forget to subscribe, like, and share this newsletter.
xox
The Reverse Cowgirl
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Oh god, that AI image! I've just started using AI to generate images for stories, and it's definitely an occasional window into a chamber of digital horrors!