From the category archives:

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  • L.A.’s porn Mistake | Lorelei Lee (Salon.com) – What performers like Hartley and I are equally opposed to is being condescended to by hypocritical zealots like Weinstein and Lubben who are obviously motivated by a concern for something other than our health and safety. Who have, in fact, shown a “blatant disregard” for the health and safety of industry workers by making it more difficult for us to use the protections we already have in place when their actions led to the closure of AIM.
  • Making a Fist of It: The Law and Obscenity | Freedom in a Puritan age – On Friday 6 January 2012, a historic case came to a conclusion in Courtroom 7 of Southwark Crown Court. Michael Peacock was unanimously acquitted, after a four-day trial that saw the outdated obscenity law of England and Wales in the dock…Peacock had been charged under the Obscene Publications Act 1959 for allegedly distributing ‘obscene’ ‘gay’ DVDs, which featured fisting, urolagnia (‘watersports’) and BDSM.
  • Ask Tristan: Sex Toys and the Law • Pucker Up – [Ed. note: For this question, I turned it over to my legal expert, Davis from Sexquire.] So what does all of this litigation mean to sex shop clerks? First, unless you are in Alabama, you have no reason to fear being arrested on obscenity charges for providing sex education about or selling these products as other than novelties.
  • Porn Star Activist Jiz Lee Talks About When and How Sex Workers Can Give Consent – San Francisco Art – The Exhibitionist – The ethics of consent is becoming a hot, vital topic of discussion in alternative sexuality communities. While talking about consent is something that never quite goes away, especially in BDSM communities, a lot of the dialogue doesn’t stray much beyond making sure that everyone is over 18 and knows his or her safeword. A few months ago, local activist bad-asses Maggie Mayhem and Kitty Stryker talked to us about their attempts to speak openly about abuse in BDSM and build “consent culture.” As they prepare to take those ideas on a cross-country tour, plenty of other people are continuing the conversation here in the Bay Area.
  • Kate Bornstein reading excerpt from her new book, “A Queer and Pleasant Danger”
  • The Case of Loving v. Bigotry – Slide Show – NYTimes.com – “In 1958, Richard & Mildred Loving were arrested in a nighttime raid in their bedroom by the sheriff of Caroline County, Va. Their crime: being married to each other. The Lovings…were ordered by a judge to leave Virginia for 25 years. The International Center of Photography is mounting a show of Grey Villet’s photographs of the couple in 1965 (January 20-May 6, 2012).
  • Eric Holder Expands FBI’s Narrow, Outdated Definition Of Rape- MANCHESTER, N.H. — U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has revised the way the FBI defines rape, the first update to the federal definition in nearly a century.The FBI’s Uniform Crime Report has defined rape as the “carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.” This definition was narrower than the one used by many police departments around the country, and women’s rights advocates said it led to the under-counting of thousands of sexual assaults each year.
  • Rape definition broadened to include men | CNN – The crime of rape will now be defined as “penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim,” the Justice Department said.

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  • Sexual Obituaries 2011 (Cory Silverberg) – People who choose to work around sexuality and gender often don’t get the acknowledgment from the mainstream media or from society as a whole that they would if their work was in another field. Every year, I feel this absence when I read the lists of famous people who died. Since 2006, I’ve tried to change that by sharing some of the sex and gender activists, educators, artists, and outlaws we lost in the year that is ending. Here is a list of sexual losses in 2011.
  • Director Dee Rees And Star Adepero Oduye Talk Coming Out & Coming Of Age In ‘Pariah’ | indieWIRE – Pariah is the story of Alike (Oduye), a black lesbian teenager living in Fort Greene and navigating between the aggressive gay nightclub scene preferred by her butch best friend Laura (Pernell Walker) and a closeted life at home, where her tightly wound mother Audrey (Kim Wayans) tries to dress her in pink cardigans and quizzes her about who she’s taking to the school dance.
  • Bondage Sex And The Liberation Of Culture – ErosBlog: The Sex Blog – For anybody with an interest in cultural history — and especially, aspects of cultural history that have ever been covert or officially suppressed, like porn — it’s this “everything floats up to the surface and becomes visible, in time” aspect of the Internet that is most miraculous. It’s far from complete, mind you — we have many centuries of recorded culture that have yet to be digitized and brought up from their buried layers of stone and canvas and paper and cellulose and vinyl and magnetic tape.
  • 2011 Top Ten Sex Questions (Cory Silverberg) – I don’t dig into my statistics all that often, but once a year I like to see which questions and answers were the most popular…These ten questions are from the 105 Sex Questions that I’ve answered on the About.com site.
  • Navigating Love and Autism – NYTimes.com- Only since the mid-1990s have a group of socially impaired young people with otherwise normal intelligence and language development been recognized as the neurological cousins of nonverbal autistic children. Because they have a hard time grasping what another is feeling — a trait sometimes described as “mindblindness” — many assumed that those with such autism spectrum disorders were incapable of, or indifferent to, intimate relationships. Parents and teachers have focused instead on helping them with school, friendship and, more recently, the workplace.Yet as they reach adulthood, the overarching quest of many in this first generation to be identified with Asperger syndrome is the same as many of their nonautistic peers: to find someone to love who will love them back. [via Violet Blue]
  • When Will a Gay Pro Athlete Finally Come Out? — New York Magazine – “Something has happened in the last year,” says Jim Buzinski, co-founder of OutSports, an advocate for and chronicler of gay sports issues for more than a decade. “It’s almost like homophobia is no longer considered cool in sports.”
  • Australian Passport Gender Options: ‘Transgender’ Will Be Included | HuffPo – Australian passports will now have three gender options – male, female and indeterminate – under new guidelines to remove discrimination against transgender people, the government said Thursday.

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Bookmarks

by Viviane on 09/15/2011

in del.icio.us,sex

  • Michele Bachmann’s HPV Vaccine Safety and ‘Retardation’ Comments Misleading, Doctors Say – ABC News – The medical community issued swift criticism Tuesday after Rep. Michele Bachmann dragged the safety of the vaccine against the human papillomavirus (HPV) into the political spotlight, reigniting the controversy over the risks and necessity of vaccinating children.
  • When Sex Bloggers Get Slut Shamed | Charlie Glickman – It probably shouldn’t surprise to anyone that, in general, women in the blogosphere get a lot more harassment than men. After all, just walking down the street, women get a lot more harassment than men.
  • Assistance Needed – A Call For Help « PassionAndSoul – As many of you may have heard by now, I have had severe health concerns since mid-July. These are connected to my long term health issues, but I am in the midst of a flare up. Between July and December, I have had to cancel 13 gigs related to my health. Folks have asked for some time how they can help. This post is the answer.
  • Everyone Loses on Booberday Except Google+ – Technology – The Atlantic Wire – A breast cancer meme has broken out on Google+: Booberday. As the name suggests, it involves breasts, specifically, "posting photos of women's cleavage under the guise of fighting breast cancer," explains Jezebel's Margaret Hartmann. On the surface it's just boob shots, which some might call demeaning. But we're talking about breast cancer, so it's all good, right? Not really. Booberday is demeaning to women, makes men look bad, and doesn't help the cause. The only winner we see here: Google+.
  • Contraceptive Comeback: The Maligned IUD Gets a Second Chance | Wired – When the Mirena first hit the US market, so few women were using IUDs that many doctors didn't even know how to insert them. Today, the devices are recognized as safe, and 2 million US women have a Mirena.
  • Frank’s Story (Runner’s World) – Frank Shorter is the father of the modern running boom. An enduringly popular speaker, he spins a captivating narrative about winning the 1972 Olympic Marathon. The story he hasn't told is the dark truth about his own father.

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Bookmarks

by Viviane on 06/26/2011

in del.icio.us,sex

  • New York Allows Same-Sex Marriage, Becoming Largest State to Pass Law – NYTimes.com – “Lawmakers voted late Friday to legalize same-sex marriage, making New York the largest state where gay and lesbian couples will be able to wed and giving the national gay-rights movement new momentum from the state where it was born. “
  • Thousands Cheer Same-Sex Marriage Law in Euphoric Pride Parade – NYTimes.com – “They came to shout, dance, cheer, strut, hug and shed tears of joy, knowing that on July 24, when the law takes effect, the season for tears will begin in earnest…The focus of much of the cheering was Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, who made legalization of same-sex marriage part of his election campaign and visibly led the fight for its approval in the Republican-led State Senate. Mr. Cuomo marched with several local politicians, including Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the New York City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, who is openly gay. But there was little question that the governor was the parade’s rock star, eliciting shrieks as he made his way down Fifth Avenue. “
  • Gail Dines, SlutWalk, Saudi Arabia and The Place of Porn in a “Just Society” | violet blue ® :: open source sex – A professor of sociology and women’s studies, Dines shows a shocking disregard for women’s experience. She infantilizes “sluts” and women who consume porn (about whom I’ve never seen her make more than a passing reference) as women making not their own choices, but choices dictated exclusively by the pressures of men. Meanwhile, men make choices based exclusively on the pressures of porn. Which are driven by the desires of men. It’s a classic circular argument that places the responsibility for men who behave reprehensibly on the shoulders of women who self-identify as sluts, and of men who don’t always feel like making eye contact with their girlfriends during sex…But Dines is far more dangerous than that, because after decades teaching women’s studies, she doesn’t seem to have learned the explosive danger of the term “normal.”
  • Sexual Orientation and the Law: A Research Bibliography – A research bibliography of legal literature discussing gay, lesbian, transgender and bisexual persons, their rights and their families. Edited by law librarians from the American Association of Law Libraries Standing Committee on Lesbian and Gay Issues.
  • Thanks, but no thanks! | Fearless Press – Keep in mind that you do not need to have a reason to say no – you are entitled to say no for any reason (or even no reason) at all. It’s YOUR decision whether to play or engage in sex. You also do not need to give them a “rain check” or tell them maybe another time unless you want to – in fact, in my experience it’s been worse for me to tell them “maybe” instead of just saying no and leaving it alone.

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  • My Family Found out I Blog About Sex | BlogHer – “Have you considered changing your name?” the message from my aunt read. “Our name is too obscure and boring, don’t you think? The famous do better with something catchy and bright.”…This wasn’t a compliment. It was a very polite way of saying that what I was doing with my life — writing about sex — was not in keeping with the image my father’s family desires for itself.
  • Dissent Magazine – Arguing The World – What Gail Dines Doesn’t Get About SlutWalk – Dines shares more common ground with SlutWalk than she realizes. The organizers are not celebrating the word “slut” or “promoting sluttishness in general.” The SlutWalkers are marching in solidarity with all women who have been dismissed, degraded, or hurt by the label. They are marching against sexual violence and the ugly stereotypes that help to perpetuate it.
  • Botox and Better Butts? What Messages Are We Sending to Young Girls? | RH Reality Check -
  • Uganda’s LGBT Activists Get a Temporary Victory | violet blue ® :: open source sex – The reprehensible “anti-gay” bill in Uganda has been dealt a blow by that country’s brave LGBT activists and the world human rights community. In a nation where homosexuality was already illegal, and punishable by 14 years in prison, this law would have made things even worse, establishing the death penalty, among other things, for having gay sex while HIV positive.
  • Bill Sienkiewicz And Frank Miller’s Wonder Woman: Bondage (Bleeding Cool) – DC Comics never saw this image. Neither Bill Sienkiewicz nor Frank Miller intended it to go public. But when it was sold, despite assurances that it wouldn’t go online, somewghere alon the line, it got sold to someone who didn’t know about that requirement.
  • NCSF Wallet Card – A pocket reference for dealing with law enforcement
  • ‘Paying For It’ Without Regret: An Intriguing Graphic Memoir Of Prostitution : Monkey See : NPR – It’s not that getting dumped by his girlfriend soured Canadian cartoonist Chester Brown on the notion of romantic love, exactly. Because to sour on something, one would have to, at some point, feel strongly about it. And given the facts on evidence in Brown’s latest autobiographical comic, the guy’s not much for strong emotion. No, the Chester Brown we glimpse through the tiny black and white panels the artist arranges with such exacting precision is a creature of intellect. His approach to sex, in the wake of his girlfriend’s rejection, is one of cool logic, dispassionate conclusions — and some very literal cost-to-benefit ratios.

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  • Queeriodic Table | Xtra! – Inspired by a blog post of a periodic table made entirely of cupcakes, artists Jen Crothers and Kona thought a queer version would be an ideal way to raise money for Out in Schools’ annual fundraiser, High School Confidential.
    “What queer doesn’t love smart and delicious in the same thing?” asks Kona. The pair quickly realized that the logistics of baking 112 cupcakes was beyond their collective skill set and instead parlayed the idea of a queered periodic table of elements into a set of posters and buttons.
  • Understanding humankind. (Interview with Bacchus of Erosblog) – They are places in life, where a compendium of wisdom, art and eroticism collide to form a unique entity, beautiful on it´s virtues and the way it is presented to the world (in fact available for averyone) that special place is Eros Blog.
    The ruler of this crazy world is Bacchus, someone who is totally motivated to show the world the bast regions of human mind, human and non human sexuality and how the work of erotic artists (of all kinds, and times) in general, is maybe the path that lead us to finally understand our past, present and future as humankind.
  • Sock Puppets, Jack Puppets, and Spotting Sexual Predators | violet blue ® :: open source sex – Socks are an oft-used tool of those who like to whip up controversy about themselves, as well as emotional infants who can’t accept contradicting ponts of view – not to mention people who just want to promote themselves, and are not always malicious trolls.

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  • Rules of Misbehavior – Benjamin J. Dueholm – Dan Savage, the brilliant and foul-mouthed sex columnist, has become one of the most important ethicists in America. Are we screwed?
  • Trve West Coast Fiction: Spoiled (or why I sometimes feel like a rapist) | Danny Wylde – Having sex with beautiful women for a living is fun – except when it’s not.
  • ‘Game of Thrones’: Making Sense of All the Sex – Atlantic – Ultimately, Game of Thrones is about power, and the consequences of sex—both immediately and years down the line—can mean the difference between gaining and losing it. Westeros is not a modern or progressive world, and sex and violence remain its primary trades. Viewers who find either untenable should steer clear.
  • Getting Away with Murder on Long Island – Some of those 10 people might be alive today if it hadn’t been for the lackluster response of law enforcement and the press coverage of the case — much of it sensationalist and dehumanizing — all because of the first victims’ sex-worker status.
  • The Perversions of Campus Sexual Culture – Brainstorm – The Chronicle of Higher Education – In other words, campus sexual culture in its dominant, heteronormative form is kinda f#%@ed up. Sexual desire is wrapped up in public humiliation, drunkenness, and yes, I’ll say the word, patriarchy. It’s not that I don’t get how such things can be sexy, how humiliation and domination in conditions of inequality can be turned into pleasure. But what is interesting is the very conflation of that pleasure with both profit and publicness, a visual pornification of power inequities so beautifully symbolized by the booty cam at Yale or the drunk college “chix” porn site.

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  • The Health of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People: Building a Foundation for Better Understanding – Institute of Medicine – To help assess the state of the science, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) asked the IOM to evaluate current knowledge of the health status of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender populations; to identify research gaps and opportunities; and to outline a research agenda to help NIH focus its research in this area. The IOM finds that to advance understanding of the health needs of all LGBT individuals, researchers need more data about the demographics of these populations, improved methods for collecting and analyzing data, and an increased participation of sexual and gender minorities in research. Building a more solid evidence base for LGBT health concerns will not only benefit LGBT individuals, but also add to the repository of health information we have that pertains to all people.
  • Walk of Shame? Baby, I Strut | Sex and the 405 – In the past months I have spoken with people at Playboy and Fleshbot about properties like that of NakedCity, tossing around the incredible paradox posed by sex on the internet. The masses can’t resist sex. Any story about sex on any publication goes through the roof with views. Sex sells, goes the tired saying, and when you look at it this way, it does…But make a property devoted solely to sex and you find yourself in the precarious situation of being completely unable to show serious financial reward for your efforts. Sex, apparently, sells everything except advertising space and any hope of a decent search ranking.
  • Bringing up the rear – Tracy Clark-Flory – Salon.com – For my generation, the back-door option is like what the blow job was to the generation that came before — just a fun new taboo waiting to be broken. The phenomenon of heterosexual guys participating in all sorts of arse play is something different, though. I’ve seen female-on-male strap-on sex go from the sort of thing tittered about in women’s magazines to hearing a male friend once drunkenly blurting out in a bar that he loved it.
  • How a sex rebel was born – Sex News, Sex Talk – Salon.com – She may have traded in her punk rock leathers for one of the least erotic materials on the planet, but her fierce rhetoric about sexual freedom and pleasure has stayed the same.
  • Anne Roiphe: Sex, Art and Booze Back When Writers Broke Taboos | The New York Observer -
  • Why is this so hard? Google, Facebook and adult retailing | Econsultancy – My day-to-day marketing activities are somewhat different from yours. Instead of optimising campaigns and formulating strategy, with every day comes a new onslaught of ad disapproval, a rumour of a change in policy, a decline from an ad network or long email conversation with a boilerplate-spouting representative…In this article I’ll give you an insight into the surprisingly not-salacious world of Adult Retailing in relation to the internet’s biggest players: Google and Facebook.
  • Glee – Sexy – Sex Education on TV – The TV show Glee is great fun, but I feel like it has consistently done a terrible job talking about sex. Not only has it played young people’s sexual ignorance for humor value – a main character thought he got his girlfriend pregnant by being in a hot tub with her for much of the first season- it has allowed these misconceptions to stand as truth for months at a time.

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Bookmarks

by Viviane on 03/11/2011

in del.icio.us,sex

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Bookmarks

by Viviane on 03/02/2011

in del.icio.us,sex

  • Control Tower by Mistress Matisse – The Stranger – Because being a nerd—especially if one participates in nerd culture around things like comic books, science fiction/fantasy, RPGing, etc.—is excellent training for becoming an active member of the BDSM community. The young nerd, shunned by the elite, perforce becomes accustomed to hanging around other nerds and social outcasts of all types. Nerds thus develop a high tolerance for socially nonconforming people and come to feel that such individuals are, by definition, nicer and more interesting than the Cool Kids. They embrace being weird, in other words.
  • Majoring in Kink | The Eye – I’m at the semester’s first meeting of Conversio Virium, Columbia’s BDSM, or kinky sex, education group, witnessing famed fetishist Dov demonstrate “rough body play,” or “thug play.” The demonstration is instructional, with an emphasis on avoiding actual bodily harm, but it’s easy to forget this as Dov maneuvers her onto the floor, grip strong, demonstrating an impressive and creative repertoire of ways to twist her body and apply force.
  • The Cambridge Porn Debate Story « The Sexademic – I waited to hear what I knew would be many misrepresentations of the porn industry as well as false data. It came rather quickly when she stated that the average age of internet porn exposure was 11.
  • Sex, Law, and Cinema in the Digital Age (1989-2010) – James Fallows – Personal – The Atlantic – On that cheery note, here’s my survey of the key social, legal, cinematic, and technological moments of the last 22 years, with my take on how they delivered us (and by “us” I mean “me”) to where we are now.

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  • OSU Cancels Keynote Speaker Payment for LGBT Conference | KEZI – News video, with interviews with Tristan Taormino and OSU Modern Sex Organizer Rachel Ulrich
  • Tristan Taormino, Ann Coulter, And The Disgrace Of Oregon State University | violet blue ® :: open source sex – Oregon State University is doing a huge disservice to its students. Not only in missing the opportunity to have Taormino speak (an already-vetted speaker at dozens of universities) – but in assuming the students are ignorant about how taxpayer-speaker money is spent. Tristan Taormino takes private money to make pornography (among other sex ed products). OSU does not give speakers money to make products – unless OSU has something they need to tell us about paying for the creation of Ann Coulter’s 2002 book “Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right.”
  • Sex Conference Un-invites Keynote Speaker For Being Too Racy? | The Bilerico Project – There is speculation that the reason for the cancellation is due to her work in the porn industry. If so, the university has overstepped significantly in this case. First off, the talk is not about porn whatsoever and to make hiring decisions based on a contractor’s other unrelated employment sets a dangerous precedent around academic freedom. Secondly, if there was ever a conference where it is appropriate to invite a feminist pornographer to talk about their work, it would be a feminist conference titled Modern Sex. And finally, to turn away a feminist pornographer while allowing Playboy to annually spend a week on campus recruiting for the “Hottest Girls of the Pac-10″ smacks of a horrific double standard.<br />
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    The ironic part is that while Tristan’s speech was not about feminist porn, I will be presenting at the conference on that exact topic – and showing clips.
  • Pucker Up – OSU Press Release – Sex Educator And Speaker Tristan Taormino, Set To Give Conference Keynote, Uninvited By Oregon State University Because Of Her ‘Resume And Website’
  • Tristan Taormino, Modern Sex conference organizers weigh in on OSU controversy – National Sex & Relationships | Examiner.com – Oregon State University’s Intercultural Student Services (ISS) and Office of the LGBTQ Outreach and Services are presenting Modern Sex: Privilege, Communication, and Culture on campus, February 14-16, and controversy around the conference and its invited speakers came to a boil this week. Since my own coverage of the hubbub around Tristan Taormino’s canceled keynote lecture — and the university’s response — has been garnering significant attention, I took the opportunity today to speak at length with Taormino and Rachel Ulrich, co-organizer of the Modern Sex conference, for more on the story.
  • Oregon State U Shuts Tristan Taormino Out | Charlie Glickman – Second, it’s not clear to me how making porn invalidates Tristan as an educator or as a speaker. She is a porn producer AND a sex educator. And from talking with her, I know that each informs the other. But if anything, that makes her a better speaker on the relationships between feminism, sex and porn than most people. (Which is absolutely not meant as any slam against Tobi Hill-Meyer, who is also one of the best folks to talk about these topics.)
  • State Budgets, Higher Education, and Sexual Freedom | Sex In The Public Square – When experts are rejected because their work is controversial, we should be worried not only about sexual freedom but also about academic freedom more broadly. There are places where evolution is the hot-button issue, or where the politics of Israel and Palestine is the main cause of political concern.  We can’t ignore this instance of self-censorship simply because it has to do with sexuality. Once “we can’t afford to offend the legislature” becomes a widely accepted rationale for canceling or refusing to fund programs, we can expect to see many more threats to the foundation of public higher education in general.
  • Got a WordPress blog? This plugin tells you if any of your readers are on the Gawker hacker list | TNW – With Shared User Checker, WordPress admins are now able to detect which users have been compromised, making their own sites more secure but also giving the option to alert the users that they may have had their details stolen in the Gawker attacks.

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