The On Our Backs Guide To Lesbian Sex

[nannah]

So … a friend lent this to me, because I wanted to know more about, well, “”lesbian sex””, after coming out in my mid twenties and knowing very little. I was expecting tips and tricks, lgbt sex ed that’s obviously not covered in school (but really … what was?), and I was Really Hoping for some trans inclusion. What I got was a mess of Very dated information -- and in its defense, On Our Backs was a magazine with articles from as early as the 80s. However, I wish it had updated its information -- at least a little! Especially when it came to respecting identities ... and "including" some really uncomfortable pedophilia fantasies. I never want to associate that with lgbt sexualities. Ever.

Book content warnings:
- Pedophilia!
- neutral attitude towards cheating
- casual cissexism, like “boobs are a part of the whole womanly package” (p.35), the usage of the term “bio men, bio boys” etc.; the terminology leaves out non binary people as well
- rape & incest fantasies
- there is a chapter on cutting (beginning p.133) read at your own risk -- and one on burning right after that
- Blatant transphobia. They include trans men in this book about lesbian sex (a couple chapters actually), but have no mention of trans women -- at all
- roma slurs
- trans slurs

I’m going to try to make this short and summarized, because my notes are … very long and pretty intense.

I went into this book expecting actual educational articles, and didn’t realize “On Your Back” was a magazine beforehand. This book includes many articles from that magazine, including some from the 80s -- without any editing. Unfortunately, that means a lot of that information is extremely outdated. Not about sex! But about lgbt people in general. Especially trans people: trans men were included as being part of the lesbian community, and trans women weren’t even mentioned. To add to this, the reason trans men were included was literally, and I’m quoting a trans man from the book, “because I have a vagina”. Also, “trans people were referred to by slurs (which would be more okay if the articles’ writers were trans … which they weren’t). Reading this in 2020 (and with the book being published in 2007, it really should have been updated!) was very, very difficult.

If the articles weren’t able to be edited, at the very least they could’ve had notes to show how some terms or information were incredibly outdated -- or at the very, very least, put dates by the articles to show when it was written. That takes very little effort.

So … I’d like to think I’m relatively open minded. The book spent a lot of time on kinks, and that’s fine. Except for what it considered “kinks”. Pedophilia is not a kink. Hard stop. I can’t tell you how many chapters contained either women talking about their extremely young partners (and these women were 40-50+), or women talking about role playing with an extreme age gap, or women talking about going online to fantasize about sex with women much, much younger than them. Or even just the book itself normalizing this with its “role playing tips” or articles talking about past loves or past experiences or current experiences, etc., involving pedophilia as a kink.

It also has very, very little mention of nonbinary lesbians (again, could be because of how dated the articles are … though it said it contained a mix of old and new ones. I’m just not sure). Every time packing is mentioned, it’s for kinky purposes only. In a sex ed book, I was hoping for a wider range of … well, education.

Anyway, I won’t let this get too long, even though my notes span … ah, several pages. Let’s just say while did learn some things, I was also incredibly disappointed.