Interview: Karley Sciortino

For this interview installment, we got together with Karley Sciortino, the mind behind Slutever, a blog primarily focusing on the darker aspects of sex that aren't necessarily discussed over lunch with your mother. Sciortino also contributes articles to Vice, Dazed and Confused and Interview Magazine.

Firstly, what would you say is the point of Slutever? (Would you say that the point of it has changed since you started it?)

I definitely think the point has changed. When I started the blog in the summer of 2007, the intention was mainly to keep a written record of my life. At the time I was living in a squatted, abandoned hostel in London with 12 other people--all of us in our early 20s. It was the sort of house where it wasn’t out of the ordinary to come home to a living room full of naked people on DMT performing masturbation rituals, or a homeless Romanian family baking bread in the kitchen. Like literally, both of those things happened. So I started writing the blog mainly to document all the weird/hilarious/gross stuff that went on in the house. But as time went by, and as my daily life has become less “crazy” (i.e. I now live in a normal apartment, no longer eat out of garbage bins, and only sleep with one person), Slutever has evolved into what I like to think of as an investigation into modern sexual behavior. It’s more interview based now, less about me, and more about exploring SEX in general. Like I recently shadowed a dominatrix for a week, for example, and yesterday I interviewed a middle aged married woman who is a sex slave to a quadriplegic. That’s cumming soon...

You expose some pretty dark stuff on your site. This is mainly an issue for social theory, but do you think reporting things like licking alien bodily fluids off of someone else’s boots, or snorting ketamine while engaging in group sex influences the perspectives of people who follow your updates?

You mean people’s perspective on life in general? Well, I hope so! Sex is really weird and complicated, which isn’t something that’s necessarily taught to us growing up, so talking openly and realistically about all the dark, strange stuff we’re into helps us to better understand our sexual desires and experiences. I think a lot of things that are commonly perceived as being abnormal or “taboo” are actually pretty common. We’re all freaks on the inside.

You’re cute. I know that people are under the illusion that that’s down to opinion, but my opinion is gospel. Do you think people would have as much interest in your site and stories if they were written by some balding sweaty fat fuck with a bad rash?
Thanks! (*wink*) Hmm, I hope they would! Actually, I rarely put photos of myself on my blog. It’s only recently, since I’ve gotten into making little video diaries, that I’ve been more visually featured on Slutever. So I think it’s possible that in the past some readers didn’t even know what I looked like. But if people come to the site just to check out my boobs, I don’t really mind that either.

I just finished reading your post on female ejaculation. You tackle a lot of subjects that people keep their top button done up about, and with a frank honesty, even if that means, such as this case, that you know little about it. What gives you the courage to be that honest about the mysteries still surrounding sex?

Well (as I’m sure you know) the thing about writing is, it’s a very solitary experience. It’s not scary or embarrassing for me to write a blog about my masturbation habits from the privacy of my own bedroom, just like it’s not scary or embarrassing to write in a diary. And after I put a blog out there into the internet realm, I basically never think about it again. So it’s not very courageous really. It’s only on very rare occasions that the over-sharing gets a little weird, like the other day, for example, when my seventh grade teacher sent me a Facebook message saying that she and some of the other teachers at my junior high have been reading my blog, and find it “entertaining in a twisted sorta way.” That was a little too real for me.

If your views on sex were put on a compass similar to the one used to label people politically, there is no doubt you’d be on the far left. This extreme view leads to some interesting debates: when is the age of consent for you? Are there any particular acts that you don’t agree with ethically, or wouldn’t consider for your site?

Well, obviously in America the age of consent is 18, which admittedly I think is a bit old. In the UK it’s 16, which seems more realistic. These cases of a 20 year old boy being charge with statutory rape for sleeping with a 17 year old girl seem a bit crazy. It’s just all relative. Sure, I think 17 yr old boys are beautiful sometimes, but I don’t want to sleep with a 17 yr old. I’m 25, so we’d be missing that needed “connection”, or whatever cheesy word you want to use. I don’t really understand why anyone wants to sleep with kids. They’re clearly bad in bed.

As for ethics, as long as a sex act is consensual on both parts, I’m not really one to judge. Incest is a specific topic I’m kind of interested in, but I’ve yet to really talk about it because it’s a hard topic to breach without sounding “too much”. I do think it’s kind of hot though, in a Dreamers sort of way. Although I don’t want to fuck my brother. But I wouldn’t be opposed to watching someone else fuck their brother, for example. At least I think anyway.

I’m completely straight, but I kind of think your brother is hot (I saw a picture of him on the internet; don’t forget how creepy the internet can let people be). How do you take the uses and contradictions of ‘sexual labels’ such as ‘straight’, ‘bi-curious’, etc.?

I think using sexual labels is fine, if only for that it helps us to communicate and understand each other. I say that I’m bisexual because it’s easier than being like “Well... I’m mainly straight but sometimes I like to have sex with girls, but I’ve never been in a relationship with a girl, but I’m not ruling out the possibility... blah blah blah.” But I also think it’s fine to be sexually fluid, and not self-identify as any specific sexual orientation. I mean... whatever, right?


But as for you wanting to do it with my brother, well, it’s very rare for a person to fall on a far side of the Kinsey scale--most of us are somewhere in the middle--so I don’t think it’s abnormal to be “completely straight” and have the occasional homosexual leaning. Most people have the potential to be sexually attracted to both genders, for sure.

Check out Slutever right now; remember, it's probably NSFW! Cheers Karley!