Gay Pride Special - 10% Off

Recently, someone asked us, “What’s Stonewall?” It was a fair question. This curious soul hadn’t yet been born when the raids in New York City’s Greenwich Village came to a head one late June night in 1969 at the Stonewall Inn just off Sheridan Square. Thirteen men were arrested. By the next morning, hundreds of gay men and lesbians were protesting in the streets. Stonewall was the dawn of Gay Pride.

Most LGBT people remember hiding in their lives, whether as a kid in school just coming to terms with being gay, or as an adult working in corporations where a wedding ring - whether or not you’re legally married - is de rigueur. It still happens.

It takes courage to bare your sexuality to the outside world. Sometimes it takes courage to practice your sexuality at all. It takes special courage to stand up for the rights of other people to openly practice their sexuality.

So we salute those high-school students in the small town of Clovis, New Mexico, who had the courage to include gay couples in their yearbook.

We salute the courage of all the people, gay and straight, who call and write to us from all over the world where “deviant sexuality” is not tolerated - from small towns in Arkansas and Texas and Trinidad to cities in Poland and Lebanon.

We salute the California Supreme Court for overturning the ban on same-sex marriage.

In honor of those courageous acts, and in celebration of Gay Pride Month, we are pleased to offer 10% off all items at Fatale Media through the month of June. Order three or more DVDs and you get free shipping in the U.S.!

We are as committed as ever to showing sexuality in a real and positive and authentic way, and we thank you for having the courage to stand beside us.

Happy Pride!

Nan & Christi
nan@fatalemedia.com
christi@fatalemedia.com

The director and star of Afterschool Special has a new all-girl band that been playing around New York City.

These girls are wild! And they’ve agreed to write the next Fatale Sex Tips column, slated for publication on May 16, 2008.

In the meantime, check out their two sites for more about Karen’s band, Royal Pink:
RoyalPinkrocks
RoyalPink

We were delighted to see Catherine Plato’s Lesbian Life entry at About.com this past month. You can read the whole piece here.

She selected the “Best Porn by and for Lesbians” and Fatale is there! Carolyn Caizzi’s steamy sweet vid Coming Home made the Top Ten, as did two S.I.R. titles and many other titles that are Fatale best sellers.

For Coming Home, which features four vignettes, Catherine wrote, “The first of this series of vignettes features a big, curvy butch-femme couple: the deliciously hot women we never get to see in mainstream porn.”

Why shouldn’t lesbian flicks show what we really look like? Real lesbians, with real lesbian lovemaking, allow us to see ourselves for who we really are. Okay, maybe the dykes onscreen are a little less inhibited than we are in everyday life, but that’s the great thing about who we are and what we do.

Check out the other titles mentioned in Catherine’s Lesbian Life column – Sugar High Glitter City, Annie Sprinkle’s Herstory of Porn, Hard Love and How to Fuck in High Heels and Shine Louise Houston’s excellent videos.

Yours in good love and sex,

Nan & Christi
nan@fatalemedia.com
christi@fatalemedia.com

We promised you a while back that we’d try to find out some more information about the status of On Our Backs. We have some good news.

As you may know, H.A.F. Publishing sold On Our Backs and Girlfriends magazines in 2004. You can still check out On Our Backs’ Web site, www.onourbacksmag.com, but both magazines ceased publishing at that time.

According to Heather Findlay, the publisher, she is “still considering relaunching both Girlfriends and OOB online.”

Until that time, if you want back issues of On Our Backs, you can order them for $8.95 per copy, which includes shipping. She has issues available from 1998 through 2004. Simply e-mail Heather with the subject line “OOB Back Issue.” Heather’s e-mail address is hfindlay at hafpublishing.com (her address is written out here for security).

Want to know more about the history of On Our Backs, how it was founded by Nan and her partner at the time, Deborah Sundahl, and edited by Susie Bright? Check out Susie’s loving history here: http://susiebright.blogs.com/History_of_OOB.pdf

Fatale started as an offshoot of On Our Backs. We care about On Our Backs because our histories are forever entwined. There’s more about Nan, On Our Backs and Fatale here under “Who We Are and What We Do”: http://www.fatalemedia.com/about.html

Yours in good love and sex,

Nan and Christi
nan@fatalemedia.com
christi@fatalemedia.com

Are strap-ons an issue? You might wonder. Since the advent of Bend Over Boyfriend, straight folks are really getting into the idea of women strapping it on for men’s anal pleasure. But lesbians and strapons go way back. (Some people spell strapon as one word; some use a hyphen.)

Each of us has a different memory of our first encounters with strapons. Femmes didn’t used to strap on at all, or hardly ever–strapons were the purview of butches–but Jackie and Shar and a whole generation of women said, “Screw that!” They’ll strap it on when and where they want to.

When Suburban Dykes was released, Miss Sharon Mitchell showed up wearing a terribly sexy strap-on, the epitome of the butch top who taught those girls a thing or two.

Are strap-ons a distraction? They can be for those who aren’t familiar or comfortable with them, but for those of us who like the sensation, the passion only increases. There’s nothing quite like a romp with that strap-on to help ease the way.

What was your first encounter with a strap-on? Tell us your story here.

Yours in good love and sex,

Nan & Christi
nan@fatalemedia.com
christi@fatalemedia.com

We received an interesting letter from a reader who asked, “I have a question about strapons. Is it possible for a woman to wear a strapon underneath her pants or jeans, as long as they’re not too tight? I’ve seen pics of boyshorts for women at Victoria’s Secret that might enable a woman to wear a strapon. But I wanted to know for sure. Could a strapon fit into a woman’s underwear and pants? Would it depend on the size of each item?”

Carol Queen does a great job showing women how to strap it on in Bend Over Boyfriend, and lesbians have many, many role models in lesbian DVDs.

Here are some more strap-on tips:

– Buy a strapon that fits you. If you’re lucky enough to live in a city with a sex-toy store, go there and try on the harness in the dressing room…over your underwear. If you don’t live near a store where you can shop in person, go to a reputable Web site, look around and be sure to check their returns policy. Check out Toys in Babeland’s “How to Choose a Harness” page here.

– If you intend to wear it under jeans or pants, make sure the pants are big enough and have enough give in the butt so that you don’t get the equivalent of panty lines…in this case, strap-on lines.

– You can wear a strapon underneath or over your underwear, but we don’t recommend wearing a strapon with a thong or g-string because the straps can get caught in the thin fabric.

– Strap it on tight! This is important. The strapon needs to sit flat against your skin or underwear.

– If you’re packing–wearing the strapon with a hard or soft dildo–pick a dildo that’s small enough so that your jeans or pants don’t feel too tight. You want to consider if you’re going out in public too. Do you want everyone to see a long hard schlong down your leg? Or don’t you care? As long as you can walk comfortably, suit yourself.

– If you’re packing underneath a pair of underwear, consider wearing boxer shorts or men’s underwear, which has a place for you to pull out your piece and display it. If and when you’re ready, that is.

– Some women like something inside them while wearing a strapon, but in our experience, this is the exception. Those internal muscles are necessary for making love to your partner. Enjoy the clitoral stimulation, and the sheer excitement of sex with a strapon–pleasing your partner.

– Experiment! Most women have more than one harness and use them for different purposes, and to suit their moods. Two-strap harnesses give flexibility, but you might want to try a one-strap harness. You might have a favorite dildo for a girlfriend and another one for packing and hot dates at the local bar.

To see how several different couples make love with strapons, check out Full Load: Scenes from ssspread.com.

Here are some of the more explicit DVDs with strapons.

Straight videos:
Bend Over Boyfriend- Carol Queen gives very clear instructions
Bend Over Boyfriend 2 - More rockin’, less talkin’

Lesbian videos:
The Crash Pad Series Volume 1 - New from Shine Louise Houston
Full Load: Scenes from ssspread.com - Vignettes and explicit strapon scenes
Hard Love and How to F*ck in High Heels - Lots and lots of dildos in all different colors
Suburban Dykes - A classic with Nina Hartley

Dear Nan and Christi,

I am curious about what happened to On Our Backs Magazine. Is it still available? I haven’t been able to order it on their site or find it anywhere else. Thanks!

BTW, Fatale Media is wonderful

Thanks for doing what you do.

Sarah
Grand Rapids, Michigan

…………………………………..

Dear Sarah,

You’re not alone in missing On Our Backs magazine, “Entertainment for the Adventurous Lesbian.” Founded in 1984 by Nan and Deborah Sundahl, On Our Backs broke all the rules—real lesbian porn for real lesbians. Fatale got started not long after that, in 1985, and was intimately tied to On Our Backs until 1994, when the magazine was sold.

Susie Bright, On Our Backs’ most visible editor (she was editor from 1984-1991), has written a fabulous tribute to the magazine, with lots of pictures from the original issues. Read it here: http://susiebright.blogs.com/History_of_OOB.pdf

When it was last publishing magazines, H.A.F. Publishing owned both On Our Backs and Girlfriends, which H.A.F. sold to a place called Underground Networks in San Francisco. Nothing has changed on the site since 2006, when the sale completed. There have been no updates.

We wrote and called Alice Hill, founder of Underground Networks and RealTechNews. It so happens she’s also a fellow alumna of Christi’s from Sarah Lawrence College. We want to know the status and plans for continuing On Our Backs. We haven’t heard back from her yet, but stay tuned.

We also put in an e-mail to Heather Findlay at H.A.F. Publishing, to see if she still has back issues of On Our Backs for sale. If she does, we’ll let you know.

Want to see what those “adventurous lesbians” were doing when they weren’t posing for On Our Backs? Check out Pepper and Reeva in Hungry Hearts and Pepper, Nina Harley and Miss Sharon Mitchell in Suburban Dykes, still Fatale bestsellers. And romantic too!

Yours in good love and sex,

Nan and Christi
Fatale Media

Valentine’s Day arrives in less than two weeks—picture Eros with his arrow of love getting ready to zoom into your life for a day. Are you ready?

Romance counts. It makes the hard times softer, easier to get through. In any relationship, ours included, wooing keeps love alive. The thrill of the chase may be just beginning or already over, but the extra courtesies and kind gestures that fuel romance also fuel abiding love for each other. Valentine’s Day is a day to remember and honor romance.

So if you haven’t already, now’s the time to plan a wonderful, romantic Valentine’s celebration. Perhaps it’s flowers and chocolate and an evening out on the town. Perhaps it’s a long weekend at a romantic getaway.

And if for some reason you have to be alone, treat yourself to an evening you’ll remember. Do something different. Try something you’ve never done before. Do something you’ve promised yourself you would.

We’re going to be staying home on Valentine’s Day. We’ll cook a special dinner—perhaps lamb chops with a salad of red lettuce and a lemony vinaigrette. There’s a chocolate ganache cake we both love. Decorated with raspberries, it’ll be the perfect accompaniment to watching Sugar High Glitter City, our favorite sexy movie to watch when romance comes knocking on Valentine’s Day.

What’s your Valentine’s Day romance quotient? You can comment here.

Yours in good love and sex,

Nan & Christi
nan@fatalemedia.com

christi@fatalemedia.com

Ingrid Wilhite died in San Francisco on Tuesday, January 15th, of brain cancer. She will be buried near her family in Boise, Idaho. A memorial service is planned in the Bay Area.

If you don’t know Ingrid’s name, you probably heard of Fun with a Sausage or L’Engenue, both porn videos some of the first ones distributed by Fatale. They played at the film festivals back in the early 1980s right as the lesbian sex wars were heating up. 

“People loved them,” Nan says. “Lesbians were taking themselves so seriously in those days, it was grim. Then along came Ingrid and she made them laugh at themselves. Her sense of humor was a delight.”

We mourn the passing of a witty, intelligent woman who wasn’t afraid to break the rules and jump-start the lesbian porn revolution.

That revolution has led to the success of Fatale Media, S.I.R. Video, Blank Tapes, Pink & White Productions and many, many more women who take the camera—and their sexuality—into their own hands.