BDSM RTV MEDIA NEWS!!!!


02 july 2009


Waking hours: Sex writer Emily Dubberley


Source: www.independent.ie Irish Independent - Dublin,Ireland


I usually get up around 10am. I live with my partner, Sam. Usually we both get up at the same time. He’s a photographer. It’s really useful because we work together quite a lot, with him doing the pictures and me doing the words.


I loathe mornings but needs must and all that. Then I’ll go to my office which is at the top of the house.

I’m freelance. I write all my own books and edit magazines, too. I’m the founding editor of Scarlet magazine which is a sex magazine for women, full of erotic stories, with health and beauty features. I had previously set up cliterati.co.uk, a website for women. And I’ve just written a book called Friendly Fetish: A Beginner’s Guide to Kink. I write about sex for a living.
First thing I’ll do is check my emails. I get about 500 a day. Every morning I have to look through my spam filter and fish out 20 work-related emails, which have been quarantined because of their title content. It could be something about penis extenders or new vibrators. It could be a mail from a porn star I’ve booked in for doing an adult shoot for Knave magazine, a gentleman’s magazine I edit.

When I’m looking for a porn star for a shoot, I don’t tend to go for the spray-tanned, fake, plastic type of woman. I go for the girl-next-door type, all different sizes of breasts and recently we’ve used some fuller-figured women as well. It’s full nudity but not penetration. But instead of it being just a woman displaying herself, our shoots will have themes. The Knave issue I am editing right now has a film theme, so there’s an American Beauty shoot and another one is Cleopatra.

A lot of the time I will talk to the girls on email. If the girls don’t have any other shoots that week, I’ll ask them not to shave and let their hair grow a bit, so it looks more natural. But the landing strip is fine, too, because people are representing all different kinds of looks.

I got into writing about sex because I did a degree in psychology and specialised in sexuality. It was at a time when a lot of adult titles for women were emerging - Playgirl and For Women. I wanted to research male-versus-female attitudes to porn because, from a feminist perspective, I found it really interesting. It turned out that women were just as into porn as men but it had to be done in a slightly different way.

Women are more easily put off, for example, if one of the porn stars has got a horrible moustache or if the girl doesn’t look like she is enjoying herself. Women want more reality in fantasy.It’s wonderfully complex.

The rape fantasy is very common and they didn’t want that to come true but the idea of being touched by lots of anonymous hands and tongues, they wanted that to be a reality.

I wrote Friendly Fetish because I kept seeing fetishists getting misrepresented as dodgy perverts and actually the more I’ve worked in the industry the more I’ve realised that pretty much everybody has some naughty side, whether they’re public about it or whether they keep it to themselves and their partner.

For three years, I wrote a regular column where I would try something new. I went to an orgy; I spent a day being a dominatrix and I got to meet all these people on the fetish scene. Fetishists can’t have sex without the accoutrements. It could be bondage, spanking, dressing up or as simple as having an aphrodisiac meal together.

The book starts out with fantasies. It might be talking dirty to your partner or sharing a fantasy about the idea of being watched. But I always say that you should go very carefully and start with talking about the mildest thing and gauge from the partner’s response before you move on to sharing.

You can’t generally tell people’s sexual preferences by the look of them. I had a women in her 70s ask me if I thought she should be in a polyandrous relationship because she was dating two different guys and she wasn’t sure which she liked best. And I had a women in her 60s ask me to recommend a sex toy - I’ve tested 500 sex toys for work. I told her that sextoys.co.uk had a great range and recommended the Lelo Nea, which is shaped like a pebble with a dimple. It is small enough that you can hold it against your clit during sex. Although the Rampant Rabbit is one of the best sex toys, there are now far too many rabbit-inspired sex toys, when a basic clitoral stimulator, which you can get for £6, can do the job just as well.

Occasionally I’ll get turned on writing about sex, but 99 per cent of the time it’s just work. I love my job but there are times when I tire of it. If I’ve got PMT, the last thing I want to do is test three sex toys. I didn’t enjoy being a dominatrix. I liked being in charge but I didn’t like inflicting pain.
If you’re going to do any kind of fetish with someone, you have to have the bare minimum of trust, affection and respect. Ideally there should be love as well but that’s because I’m a monogamous person who believes in love. I think if you’re going to do anything naughty, it’s better to do it with somebody you love.

I will often stay up writing until 4am. When we go to bed, there’ll be times when Sam and I have a sex toy that we’ve got to test together but most of the time it’s the standard, long-term relationship thing, where we’re too tired to have sex. If we’re in the mood, the missionary position is a wonderful position. Sometimes we might try out the kinky stuff but most of the time it’s just a case of making love. The fetishes are for work.

In conversation with Ciara Dwyer
‘Friendly Fetish: A Beginner’s Guide to Kink’, by Emily Dubberley, is published by Piatkus, €21

From BDSM RTV Holland:
You can visit her website at: www.dubberley.com

Kiss from Tom Verhoeven