sexed

The Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health Appeals Pawtucket Zoning Decision

by Viviane on 11/29/2009

Pawtucket, RI November 26, 2009 â€“ The Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health (CSPH), the first non-profit sexuality resource and information center in South Eastern New England, is set to go before the appeal board on November 30th @ 630pm to challenge a zoning decision that prevented it from opening in September.

After a controversial zoning decision was made by Pawtucket zoning officer Ron Travers, The CSPH was not permitted to open. The reason for denial was a lack of zoning clause for â€œeducationâ€ to take place within the Grant Building. The CSPH was not permitted to open because its mission states it works to provide education.

After numerous national and local news organizations picked up the story and interviewed city officials, it became clear that the Pawtucket city officers had given pre-textual reasons for not allowing The CSPH to open. Harvey Goulet, the Cityâ€™s director of administration, was quoted as objecting to â€œthis type of businessâ€ as â€œnot really something we feel is appropriate for our city.â€ The ACLU has weighed in on the battle regarding adult sex education stating in a press release â€œthe cityâ€™s intent is to suppress the speech that would occur at the Center. Such content-based discrimination raises serious constitutional concerns.â€

Liberal, conservative, moderate and libertarian news media have all been in favor to allow The CSPH to open and they agree that the location and the presentation are appropriate for the environment it is currently housed in. Neighbors of The CSPH have housed petitions requesting the center to be able to open. Providence Journal writer Bob Kerr and popular conservative talk radio host Dan Yorke have both voiced support for The Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health.

Ms. Andelloux, the director of the non-profit Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health is a certified sexuality educator who wants to provide the adult community with a safe place to access information about sexuality issues. The Appeal Board meeting will take place in the Monday, November 30th, at the Pawtucket City Hall, 3rd floor at 630pm. The public is invited to attend.

For questions or statements contact Megan Andelloux at 401.345.8685

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If you’d like to express your support for the CPSH, here’s a form letter Megan sent me. You canÂ fax a letter to (401)772-3356 or call (401) 728-0500 and ask for Anna Salum to voice your concern on Monday. Here is a sample copy of one:

City of Pawtucket Board of Appeals
137 Roosevelt Avenue
Pawtucket, RI 02860

Dear Members of the Appeal Board,

I am writing on behalf of The Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health (CSPH) and itâ€™s founder/director, Megan Andelloux. I want to voice my support for The CSPH, the positive work it will do and the vital services it will provide.

As a person I appreciate that there will be a place where one may openly seek medically accurate, safe information about a subject that is often hard to address. As a business owner, I appreciate the passion and dedication that Ms. Andelloux is applying to starting a ground-breaking, non-profit organization in Pawtucket, RI.

Lastly, as a concerned citizen outside of Pawtucket, I am in shock that the members of this city would object to bringing more revenue and visitors because they believe of a â€œlack of zoningâ€. I have been reading the newspaper articles since the beginning of this situation and it has become glaring obvious that this lack of zoning is a veiled attempt to cover the cityâ€™s panic about talking openly on sexuality issues. With prevailing attitudes like this, it is apparent to me that the CSPH is arriving just in the nick of time to open our minds and our hearts to a world of new possibilities.

I urge you to support the entrepreneurship of Ms. Andelloux and to support the growth of Pawtucket through business people who think outside the box.

Sincerely yours,

Tagged as: education, sexed, sexuality

Bookmarks for November 24th

by Viviane on 11/24/2009

in del.icio.us, sex

Chris Carr Photo: Casting for male and female models in DC and NY… – I am working on a Photo project titled, “Sex is a Weapon”. I will be shooting in DC and NY. You can see some of my work at http://eatthecakenyc.viewbook.com. This project will directly address sex and sexuality. Some of the images will be meant to challenge the observer, some of the images will be meant for me to challenge myself (take myself out of my comfort zone), and challenge people’s notions of sexuality and intimacy.
My influences for this are Mapplethorpe, Newton and Richardson
Teaching With Twitter: Not for the Faint of Heart – Technology – The Chronicle of Higher Education – Opening up a Twitter-powered channel in classâ€”which several professors at other universities are experimenting with as wellâ€”alters classroom power dynamics and signals to students that they’re in control. Fans of the approach applaud technology that promises to change professors’ role from “sage on the stage” to “guide on the side.” Those phrases are familiar to education reformers, who have long argued that colleges must make education more interactive to hold the interest of today’s students.
Curbing Your Comments At Conferences – â€œAre attendees paying proper attention to the speaker, or are they busy monitoring the backchannel? Having laptops open for this is rude, and using them to target speakers is abusive. If event organizers allow this to happen, speakers will stop coming. Or speakers will change their message to a populist one, which is no good to anyone,â€ he says.
Sexually Transmitted Infection Rates Continue To Rise In The US | Kinsey Confidential – Yet more reason to support sites like Scarleteen: “Further, according to the work of Jessica Fields, a sociologist at San Francisco State University, even when students do receive comprehensive sexuality education, the images they see and the content surround the lives and sexualities of white, able-bodied, heterosexual people; in her book Risky Lessons: Sex Education and Social Inequality, she notes that people of color, people with disabilities, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people do not see images of themselves, nor do they hear content that pertains to their lives and sexualities. Itâ€™s no wonder that these are some of the groups that also have higher rates of STIs.”
apophenia: spectacle at Web2.0 Expo… from my perspective – The problem with a public-facing Twitter stream in events like this is that it FORCES the audience to pay attention the backchannel. So even audience members who want to focus on the content get distracted. Most folks can’t multitask that well. And even if I had been slower and less dense, my talks are notoriously too content-filled to make multi-tasking possible for the multi-tasking challenged. This is precisely why I use very simplistic slides that evokes images for the visual types in the room without adding another layer of content. But the Twitter stream fundamentally adds another layer of content that the audience can’t ignore, that I can’t control. And that I cannot even see. …Speaking of which… what’s with the folks who think it’s cool to objectify speakers and talk about them as sexual objects? The worst part of backchannels for me is being forced to remember that there are always guys out there who simply see me as a fuckable object.

Tagged as: backchannel, danah+boyd, education, models, nyc, photography, presentation, sexed, sexuality, socialmedia, teaching, Twitter

Bookmarks for November 9th

by Viviane on 11/11/2009

in del.icio.us, sex

Text Scarleteen | Scarleteen – To ask Scarleteen a question via text, just text 66746 and start your question with the keyword ASKST.
it’s not rope: couture Shibari in Exit Magazine | violet blue ® :: open source sex –
Film Festival Secrets: Programmer Profile: Lisa Vandever of CineKink – Nothing wrong with a little titillation – or a lot – the CineKink audience has also become used to works that take an intelligent approach to sexuality, to depictions that move beyond the clichés, to portrayals that don’t denigrate or preach. They also join us for the sense of community you can get from experiencing a film in the company of like-minded others. And, of course, for some really killer parties!
This American Life | Ira Glass | Chicago Public Radio – Episode 393: Infidelity
Consumer Reports on condoms | violet blue ® :: open source sex – They also — frustratingly — gave me a password to view the subscribers’ only results of which condoms they tested and the results but told me I could not reproduce the findings. ARGH! I will tell you one thing I saw, however and hope it’s not a breach of their request: never, ever, ever use glow in the dark condoms. I’ll also add that I’m dismayed to see the best performers in their stress tests are condom lines that have additives and desensitizing lubricants on them: they’re apparently rated for performance, not body safety.

Tagged as: cinekink, condoms, erotica, Events, fidelity, film, marriage, monogamy, movies, nyc, relationships, sex, sexed, sexuality, shibari, texting

Bookmarks for October 25th through October 26th

by Viviane on 10/27/2009

in del.icio.us, sex

These are my links for October 25th through October 26th:

Scary Sex Toys â€“ Sex Toys That Are More Scary Than Sexy | Cory Silverberg – the sex toys below are ghoulish not just in their looks, but in misguided conception, poor design, and sometimes obvious danger.
Social Networking – Legal and Ethical Issues for Lawyers and Investigators | Private Investigator Public Records Internet Search Privacy Reporting – PI Buzz – Much of the discussion concerned access to profile content, – the difference between civil and criminal (where thereâ€™s the familiar prosecution/defense imbalance) cases – whether certain information should be private even if it can be viewed by unintended parties.
Kids and Sexy Costumes: The Problem With Halloween | BlogHer – Without a doubt, Halloween is a survivor; one that sticks around by absorbing the qualities of the culture in prominence where the holiday is celebrated. The truth of the matter is that Halloween is not a holiday for kids. The shift to kids is a very recent thing in its epic history, and I think the emergence of more and more sexualized costumes is both a reflection of our culture’s attitudes toward sex and an attempt to take the holiday back.
Dr. Dick on Demand: Sex and the Aging Male – Iâ€™m receiving a startling number of correspondences lately from older men and their partners, highlighting the sexual difficulties of the aging process. Itâ€™s not surprising that these people are noticing the changes in their sexual response cycle as they age, but it is astonishing that they havenâ€™t attributed the changes to andropause.
Editorial – Oklahoma vs. Women – NYTimes.com – What persuaded the judge was not the affront to womenâ€™s rights, but a technical defect: the law addressed disparate issues in one bill in violation of the stateâ€™s Constitution. Still, the victory for reproductive freedom is heartening.
How to Talk to Kids About Pornography – Tips for Parents on Talking to their Kids About Pornography | Cory Silverberg – If I could only give you one reason why you should at least think about talking to your kids about pornography it’s that, if statistics are to be believed, they are likely to encounter some of it before they reach an age where theyâ€™ll be able to critically understand what they are seeing.
Google Docs Batch Export – Now you can export all your documents, spreadsheets, presentations and PDFs from Google Docs in a ZIP archive.
Time to boycott Scholastic Books? Lauren Myracle’s ‘Luv Ya Bunches’ banned from school book fairs – Last week theSchool Library Journal and other sources reported that Scholastic Books is banning Luv Ya Bunches (a young adult novel by Lauren Myracle) from its book fairs because one of the main characters has gay parents and thus fails to “meet the norms of the various communities that host the fairs.”
Rainbow Response Coalition – Welcome to the home page of Rainbow Response, a grassroots coalition that brings together organizations and leaders from the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Questioning (LGBTQ) communities, along with traditional domestic violence service providers and government agencies. We collaborate to increase the awareness about Intimate Partner Violence (IPV) amid the relationships of LGBTQ individuals, educating within the LGBTQ communities and beyond.