Prolific writer, photographer and sexual activist David Steinberg was recently named Erotic Photographer of the Year. His photographs of disabled people having sex are getting a lot of press now, but David has a long history of sexually progressive work.

After penning an essay on men and porn in the ’80s, he found himself leading workshops on “Eroticism, Pornography, and Sexual Fantasy.” Being involved in the male-feminist movement, he helped men reconcile their sexual feelings and fantasies with their feminist politics.

Steinberg has also authored several books, and penned a long-running sex column, “Comes Naturally” for the San Francisco Bay Area’s much-missed alternative weekly, Spectator. Being one of the visible and outspoken guys working in the realm of feminism and sex, he’s got a lot to say on the topics of masculinity and sexuality.

What message are you trying to convey with your photos?

I want my photographs to suggest that there are more important, more fulfilling things to be pursued through sex then what we see through advertising or mainstream movies or pornography. Intimacy; the sense of surrender; moving out of conscious control and into other arenas of experience are all possible through sexuality. What I’m trying to photograph is people who are experiencing sex in that way.



Is this a message that’s important to men specifically?

Yes. I’ve been holding men’s groups for years. When we talk about sexual stuff, I ask: What is this all about for you—this thing called sex? What makes for a powerful or rewarding experience? [The answer was usually] being sexual with a beautiful woman—ego gratification. At best in mainstream culture, we are encouraged to think about sex as exciting, fun. Which is great, but we are not encouraged to think about sex as intimacy, about the power of the connection you can make with a partner.



What have you learned by observing people having sex?

It’s a funny thing … after having done a shoot and going over the photos for hours, I feel like I know the couples amazingly well; [maybe] better than they know themselves. I know who is going to split up. I know who is going to stay together. If you look carefully, it’s all there.

How would you define true masculinity?

My father is 90 and supportive of my work, but when I got involved with transsexual people, it proved difficult. He said: “I don’t know what that means! What does that mean to say, ‘I was in a boy’s body but I knew I was a girl?’” [I said], “Well, how do you know that you that you are really a man? Do you see yourself as a man because everybody has always told you that you were a man, because you have a penis, or what?”



When I ask that question of myself I have to say, I don’t know, but I certainly feel that my own life has been enlarged and been made much happier once I learned I could make conscious choices about what aspects of socially defined masculinity I wanted to hold onto, and what I wanted to move away from.

What were some of the choices you made in moving away from traditional masculinity?

I made an early decision in my life to be the primary parent. I decided, I’m not gonna work fulltime, I don’t wanna be the secondary in this thing that is too wonderful. There is so much that men deny themselves.

So, why is there so little exploration of male sexuality in our culture?

I think that the critique and analysis of women’s sexuality largely came out of the feminist movement. I was involved in, what we called, the men’s pro-feminist movement. This goes back 25 years. There was some discussion on our sexuality there, but it was not the major focus. That movement being much, much smaller, [it] did not generate the same kind of analytical thinking about our sexuality. … It’s too bad because I think traditional male gender roles in sexuality are as limiting and damaging as the traditional roles for women’s sexuality. In the early days of the men’s movement, we were sitting around, asking if we want to promote change among men what do we have to offer? Other than feeling guilty about repressing women or something like that.



What did you come up with?

What we felt we had to offer men was better relationships with their partners, and particularly with their children. Traditional male priorities cut men out of meaningful understanding and relationships. The other thing we felt we had to offer men was a much richer sexuality. If you are working a high-stress, 60-hour-a-week job that takes you out of town a lot, after a wacked day, a meaningful sex life is not your interest. That meant getting men to look at what they wanted from sex differently than what the mainstream culture teaches men to do.

Do you think there are more men questioning their gender roles?

If I thought the guys I’ve photographed were representative of anything, it would give me hope. These are men who are just softer, emotionally. Who are more able to be genuinely intimate with their partners. My guess would be men who make a point of focusing on being aware and expressive of a full range of emotions are able to move into sex in a deeper way. I think it happens in that direction more often then discovering themselves in sex and that feeling spreading to the rest of their emotional life.



What else have you learned from photographing guys having sex?

It’s really difficult to photograph men. So many men are not very expressive in their faces while they are being sexual. I don’t know if it is guys paying attention to not losing their erections or other performance issues. I can feel all kinds of wonderful stuff going on, but when you look at them, you wouldn’t know it.

What do you think of the stereotype of men not being as “connected to their emotions?”

I used to run a workshop on male sexuality for women. One of the most common things [I heard from women] was: “I’m with this guy. We have amazing sex and then in the morning he is… like gone. We were so close, so connected, and then in the morning he’s unavailable.”



Why do men become emotionally unavailable after sex?

I think guys think they are just gonna have a fun time. It’s gonna be sexy, not interested in involvement or anything deeper. Because sex is as powerful as it is, sometimes a big door opens up inside you. Suddenly, your emotional guts are all over the table. I think sex, touch, it is powerful in that way. Suddenly, you are dealing with the fact that you never got touched as a child, suddenly you are dealing with the time something happened and you were embarrassed. Suddenly, all sorts of larger issues, even existential ones leap up, and there you are in the middle of them.

I think women are more prepared for this, less frightened. For some guys in this deeply intimate, exposed place with a person they hardly know, they wake up in the morning and just start putting a wall up, really fast.



One of the wonders of sex and one of the things that interests me so much is that it’s this part of life that opens so many doors and can give you an opportunity to look at childhood joys and traumas. One of the sad things about sex, particularly for men, is that the culture shoves a version of sex down your throat that is just poor, pale version of what is really possible. In reality, sex is a very big thing. And like most big things, you can chop it up and force it to be small—but big things have a way of being big.

David is always looking for new people of all ages, sizes and sexual orientations to shoot. If you are interested, contact him at david@davidsteinberg.us. For more David, check out his books: Erotic by Nature: A Celebration of life, of Love and of Our Wonderful Bodies; Divas of San Francisco and The Erotic Impulse.



(All photos, Copyright: David Steinberg)