Ask the Reverse Cowgirl: Editing the Letters Project

Hi Ms. Breslin,

I'm quite a fan of your two Letters blogs; I've found them to be wonderful bits of insight straight from the relevant sources.

I saw a recent blog post that commented on your editorial role, showing that you only fix punctuation and a few other bits for readability. I was hoping you could elaborate a bit on how you select the letters, too, to help publicize any potential publication bias (on top of the inevitable self-selection bias that exists). I may be making the incorrect assumption that there are many that come in that you don't publish, but knowing that would be helpful, too.

If I've missed previous discussion of this topic somehow, my apologies.

Thanks!
Ian

Ian:

You're welcome! What you're referring to here, for those following along at home, is the Letters Project: Letters from Johns and Letters from Working Girls. (If you can't figure out what they consist of, I don't know what to tell you.)

Some chick got all up in arms over this issue on a comment to a post about the project that was on Boing Boing. Up until then, I was fixing the punctuation on the letters for clarity. Since then, I haven't been, unless it's something like the first letter of a sentence or a dash where there should be a hyphen. So, the letters run pretty much as I get them now, thanks to that lady.

How do I select the letters? Well, when they arrive in my email box, I read them, and at that point the main thing I'm trying to do is figure out if it's a real letter or a fake one. For some reason, I've gotten a strangely large number of letters that I'm pretty sure are written by men who are pretending to be a woman who has sex with a working girl (a "jane"). I asked a shrink what he thought of this, and he said: Gay. I say, no way. I don't know what's going on with that, but I think it has to do more with inhabiting the sexuality of a woman more so than it has to do with being gay. I don't get a lot of fake letters from johns, per se, except from the guy in BROOKLYN who wrote in ALL CAPS and got into a car accident at the end of his letter in which his PENIS was almost damaged but then wasn't, which he said was an act of God.

I would say I've posted about 3/4 of the john letters. I haven't posted a few of them because they were too gross, too totally boring, or too self-important in some way that just, like, repelled me. I get a lot of letters with johns rapping about how much the chicks really dig them, and she came for real but only with them, and other guys to these girls are johns but not them, and it's not like, you know, this is a showcase for them to explain to the world how much prostitutes love them. That's what TER is for.

I would say I've posted about 2/3 of the working girl letters. Sometimes, they miss the mark, for reasons I can't put my finger on quite yet. They're confused, turned around on themselves. I got one recently that I won't be running from a chick in Germany that involved way too many bodily fluids. For me, anyway.

Generally, I would say most letters get published. And I love, I mean really love many of them. If you're interested, my all-time favorite john letter is "I Am Ashamed of Nothing I Have Done," and my favorite working girl letter at the moment is a letter I should have titled "I Am a Journalist Call Girl." It might sound retarded, but I love that these men and women were brave enough to write these letters.

Mostly, I think they're love stories. Because that's love, isn't it? Totally stripped down bare yourself in front of another to ask that you be loved in spite of yourself.

I wish I would get more.

XOX

The Reverse Cowgirl

Email of the Day

Dear Susannah,

My name is [redacted woman's name] and I am from Germany. Today I read your article referring to your Gangbang experience. I must admit that I was quite shocked as I tried to imagine the extend of that situation. How were your emotions on the scene? Did the woman made the impression that she was enjoying what was going on? Was it humilating? Primitive? You seem to be very open minded regarding sexuality--also porn and other business which envolves sexuality. But do you think that these absolutely extreme dimensions of sex are necessary? How far should it go?

I'm really interested in your answer because to me it is absolutely fascinating but also deterrent at once.

Yours [redacted woman's name]

Welcome To Ask The Reverse Cowgirl

Today, I'm launching a brand-new Reverse Cowgirl feature: "Ask The Reverse Cowgirl." Last week, I conducted a poll, asking if you would be interested in a forum where I'd answer reader questions. 42 percent said yes, if it gets you laid. 36 percent said yes, unconditionally. 7 percent said the idea made you afraid. 7 percent said no, don't do it. And 5 percent said it depends. So, I've decided to do it. This isn't one more boring advice column. In fact, it's not really an advice column at all. It's a place where you can find out more about what lies at the outer reaches of the sexual frontier in the 21st century. From strange sexual practices to deeply fascinating perversions, from the global sex trade to the American porn business, from virtual sex to robot love, or anything else that isn't the usual, run of the mill, dull sex advice crap, I'll give you the answers no one else will. Think of me as Virgil to your Dante in a XXX Divine Comedy. What's Busby Berkeley Bukkake? Are fluffers real or Porn Valley unicorns? What's the day to day life of an autofellator really like? How do women with two vaginas do it? And who won the "War on Porn," anyway? In addition, ATRC sees the return of comments, which I haven't had on a blog since some idiot posted his amateur erotica to Reverse Cowgirl 1.0. Ready? Let's go.