‘The Position’

If you're looking for an online sex magazine with bite, you need to assume The Position (www.theposition.com). Published by New York's one and only Museum of Sex, this weekly webzine dispenses with the fiction and poetry, giving us fly-opening journalism and essays about getting it on. The main features often have a decided edge—fetishism, sex in space (a/k/a "the 200-mile-high club"), the intimate lives of nuns, sex scandals of the World Wrestling Federation, and the 100 biggest enemies of sex (all the usual suspects, plus Wal-Mart, John Gray, Oprah, and the state of Utah).

The Position is at the top of its form when Susan Shellogg gives a fascinating glimpse into the life of a call girl who services the UN. "What does a Third World diplomat want when he hits the streets of NYC for the first time? He wants to get himself inside a woman, and he's not thinking of a trip up into the Statue of Liberty. He's looking for some of that fabled Manhattan mink-hole, and he's plenty well-bankrolled by the sweat off the brows of the poor impoverished paisanos back home. . . . I've squealed like a pig for a Paki, grunted for an African prince from Guinea-Bissau, yodeled for a Yugoslavian. When I gave a guy an around-the-world, it really meant something." Sometimes the features fall flat, though. "Is Castro a Pimp?" promises to be a political exposé with sexual overtones but is just a pedestrian look at prostitution in Cuba.

The Position is certainly helped along by its impressive lineup of contributors, including postmodern porn artist Annie Sprinkle, feminist pornographer Candida Royalle, sex therapist Marty Klein, Herotica editor Marcy Sheiner, and ACLU president Nadine Strossen. Columnists include legendary sexologist Dr. Robert T. Francoeur and the heretical bishop John Shelby Spong, author of Living in Sin? A Bishop Rethinks Human Sexuality.

All of this only scratches the surface of what this juicy site has to offer. Click around and you'll find an article on the increasing number of gay three-way relationships and instructions for throwing an s/m party. The Position doesn't have much visual content, but what there is usually delves into the steamy past, with retro-erotica like photos from the Kinsey Institute, "Tijuana Bibles" from the 1940s, and a sex board game from Weimar Germany.