Posts tagged as:

sextoys

  • 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 Michael Peacock was unanimously acquitted, after a four-day trial that saw the outdated obscenity law of England and Wales in the dock…Peacock had been charged under the Obscene Publications Act 1959 for allegedly distributing ‘obscene’ ‘gay’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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11/26/2010 9:00 PMto11/27/2010 2:00 AM
11/27/2010 9:00 PMto11/28/2010 3:00 AM
11/28/2010 1:00 PMto11/29/2010 8:00 AM

This event is open for leather women of all persuasions who enjoy woman to woman S/M. All S/M dykes, straight, bisexual and trans-sexual/gender women are welcome. FTM transgender bois/boys/men who feel they have a place in the S/M women’s community are also welcome. We ask that cis gender men, cross-dressers and transvestites please respect that this definition does not include you. We welcome you to join any of our many pansexual events at Play House which are held almost every weekend.

Cost: $25 per day, $75 for the weekend; off street parking available for $5 per day.

Location: Play House Studios in Baltimore, MD – street address provided when you RSVP to GlendaCPFA@aol.com

  • RSVPs are Strictly Required as this is a sex positive event!!!
  • Please bring something to share for our communal food table
  • Non-alcoholic beverages are available for purchase at the club
  • All experience levels welcome but you must be over 18 to attend
  • Over-night dorm style crash space is available for an additional fee of $25 per night;
  • A limited number of work exchange scholarships are available;

For more info please write GlendaCPFA@aol.com

Fetlife RSVP: http://fetlife.com/events/33708

Friday 11/26/10: 9 PM -2 AM: Open Play

Friday 11/26/10

10 PM Class: Empowerment Through Erotic Motion by grrlMel – This class is for anyone who wants to feel beautiful, self-assured, and sexy in the body she has right now not the one she hopes to have after her New Year’s resolutions. It is designed to help people harness their own sensual power and reconnect with the joy that comes from expressing yourself in musical motion — whether slow and steamy or high-energy and hot. I encourage everyone to be gentle with themselves they learn to strut their stuff, and shred their clothes (optional) and inhibitions with style and musicality. Come prepared to participate because you can’t learn to move by watching. (presenter bio at end of invitation)

Saturday 11/27/10:

2 PM Visionary Arts Museum (800 Key Highway, Baltimore, MD 21230) Dinner 6:30 PM @ Kumari (911 N Charles St.Balto, MD 21201) All are welcome, RSVPs requested to GlendaCPFA@aol.com – please specify museum, dinner or both in your RSVP and the # of people.

Saturday 11/27/10 9 PM – 3AM Open Play and the Wrestling Mats will be out!   And we are adding a Rope class to Saturday night, too.

Strip Tease and Lap Dancing Extravaganza at Midnight, please bring cash to tip the dancers, it’s for charity!

If you would like to participate in the NCSF Strip Tease and Lap Dancing Extravaganza Fundraiser, please notify Glenda and bring a CD or Mp3 player with your song(s) on it. If you choose to use an Mp3 player, please have your song(s) on it’s own playlist and clearly labeled! You may perform 2 – 3 songs depending on length.

Sunday 11/28/10 1 PM -8 PM: Brunch and Open Play

Sunday 11/28/10 3 PM Class: Strap-ons for Bigger Bodies – A word to the thick soul sistas: Do you find your strap-on sex difficult or clumsy? Is it hard to find a harness that fit you comfortably? Do you wish your dildo was an extension of yourself? We will walk you through how to find the right harness for your size, what to look for in your dildo and how to enhance your pleasure as the thruster while giving your partner that best ride possible. We will also show you different positions in our live demo and how to keep it safe and sexy. (presenter bio at end of invitation)

Please RSVP to GlendaCPFA@aol.com – RSVPs are STRICTLY REQUIRED so that we may bring you sex positive events. Even if you announced your attention to attend via the FetLife events page or a group posting please also RSVP via e mail. THANKS.

We ask that everyone bring something to share for our communal food table. BYOB is allowed but if you choose to drink, please drink only in moderation as inebriation is not appropriate for this event. Non-alcoholic beverages are available for purchase at the club.

Presenter Bios:

ABOUT grrlMEL: grrlMel has been dancing her whole life and teaching dance since 2004. Whether it’s West Coast Swing or Burlesque, she’s known for easy sensuality and her ability to connect to her dance partner and her audience. She focuses on teaching simple, sexy moves set to music (not dancing), to help you connect to your inner sensuality. I strive to provide a supportive environment where folks can relax, be gentle with themselves and gain confidence in expressing themselves through sensual motion.

ABOUT SARA: Sara Vibes was born and raised in New York City. She is a black, polyamorous, queer, kinky, Bi-dyke and an adopted daughter of a sex therapist who had specialized in sex and disability and was disabled herself. Sara knew she was poly when she remembered that her Ken doll dated all the Barbies! Sara is an active member in BDSM, LGBT, and Kink communities in New York City.

She is a founding member of Nina Hartley’s SexWise.me, a sex-positive online community. She currently works as a curator and contributor of SexWise Magazine and a moderator of the online forums. Sara has been interviewed by Nerve magazine and will soon be writing for Zora and Alice, an online magazine for young women of color.
@Sara_Vibes on twitter

ABOUT ASHLEY: Ashley Young is a teacher, writer and artist living in New York City. She identifies as a Fem Queer Dyke and is new to polymory as well as the BDSM scene. Ashley is a huge advocate for people’s fully sexually expressed selves and aspires to be a sex educator along with her partner in the near future. She sums up her poly lifestyle by saying, “I can’t tell the difference between a lesbian and a serial killer, so being poly with my partner has kept me level headed, drama free and allowed me to explore my sexuality with both women and men” @Indig09 on TwitterA

Please help us spread the word about Just Play by forwarding the info to your friends, tweeting your plans to attend and/or posting it to any group where it would be appropriate and welcome. Thanks so much.

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Bookmarks

by Viviane on 10/18/2010

in del.icio.us,sex

  • Follow That Story: Lara Jade Won Her Lawsuit | violet blue ® :: open source sex – Way back in May 2007, young female photographer (and aspiring fashion photog) Lara Jade Coton put a plea for help up on Flickr. One of her photos (that she had shared on DeviantART) was being used as an American porn boxcover — reprehensibly, it was not only used without permission but it was also a self-portrait she’d taken on a family vacation when she was only 14.
  • Sexual ‘thesis’ deserves zero out of 10 | Zoe Margolis – Perhaps her lack of self-awareness and her inability to provide a social critique are what has led to so much criticism, and the fact that she named people publicly is an obvious violation of others’ privacy, which clearly highlights her naivety. What worries me, though, is the widespread “slut-shaming” the author is now receiving from the media: her sex life is being routinely condemned. Were a man to have written this, he’d be getting slaps on the back (or have a movie made based on his life) for being a “stud”. Women who talk about sex instead attract newspaper headlines chastising them for their actions and have moral judgments cast on their behaviour which men do not have to endure.
  • Yale Fraternity’s Chant Reveals Depth of Our Culture’s Misogyny | Will Neville | RHRealityCheck.org – The problem isn’t that a group of young men at yelled something stupid, over and over agian. The problem is that I’m no longer sure we’re shocked by people who turn rape and sexual assault into some kind of a joke. It’s embarassing for those involved, sure. But the sentiment they expressed is shockingly — and terrifyingly — mainstream.
  • Jeff Koons’s “Made in Heaven” Series: A Critical Compendium | ARTINFO.com – Works from Jeff Koons’s “Made in Heaven” series — paintings and sculptures that depict the artist with his then-lover, Italian porn star Cicciolina, in a variety of romantic situations — have returned to New York, where many were first displayed in 1991 at the Sonnabend Gallery in SoHo. (Some pieces — of the slightly less hardcore variety — were shown at the 1990 Venice Biennale.) New York critics, with perhaps only one exception, have lambasted the current “Made in Heaven” show at the Upper East Side townhouse of Luxembourg & Dayan, following in a rich lineage of writers that have panned work. Over the past two decades, the series has earned near-universal scorn from most art critics and inspired some of the all-time-great takedowns in recent criticism.
  • My Mother And Her Vibrator | Pamela Madsen | Psychology Today – It lived in her closet for years. – until my mother turned 81. Every-time I brought it up. – mom would tell me that she was frightened of hurting herself. I would talk to her about this. “Come on mom – how are you going to hurt yourself?”.. She could never explain to me her fears, and in the end the vibrator remained unused…And then one afternoon my mother called me. I knew something was up at “Hello”. She had this cat who had caught the canary kind of voice….”Well, I used it!” She gushed.

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Bookmarks

by Viviane on 06/25/2010

in del.icio.us,sex

  • Vibrator Use Among Gay and Bi Identified Men – About.com Guide to Sexuality Cory Silverberg highlights findings by scientist Michael Reece, who recently published data about vibrating sex toy use among gay and bisexual men. "Along with Debby Herbenick and colleagues at Indiana University's Center for Sexual Health Promotion, Reece has managed to find the funding and time to conduct basic research on sex toy use that has long been needed," Cory writes.
  • Gay Workers Will Get Time to Care for Partner’s Sick Child – NYTimes.com – The new ruling indicates that an employee in a same-sex relationship can qualify for leave to care for the child of his or her partner, even if the worker has not legally adopted the child.<br />
    <br />
    The ruling, in a formal opinion letter, tackles a question not explicitly addressed in the 1993 law. It is one of many actions taken by the Obama administration to respond to the concerns of gay men and lesbians within the constraints of the Defense of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman as husband and wife.
  • The Myth of Lesbian Bed Death (Village Voice) – But where did this idea of “lesbian bed death” come from? Thank sociologist Pepper Schwartz, who, in her 1983 book American Couples, asserted that lesbians have less sex and intimacy than other couples. Although her methodology and results were later challenged, the idea of lesbian bed death has taken on a life of its own, with damaging results.
  • Talking Sex, With Kink Educators and Anti-Porn Activists | Amanda Hess (Washinton City Paper) – If KinkForAll and “Porn Harms” have one thing in common, it’s an obsession with airing taboos.

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tsv Sale at The Sensual Vegan

The Sensual Vegan is original eco-sex store! Shop for vegan condoms and safer sex supplier, organic & natural lubes, vegan BDSM and fetish gear, quality eco-friendly sex toys, natural body care, candles, and books – made for herbivores and those who prefer vegan, organic, natural products. The Sensual Vegan only carries the quality sex products that are free from animal testing and animal ingredients.

Furry Girl is running a sale until June 2nd:

From now until the end of June 2nd, use the coupon code MEXICO at checkout to take 20% of all orders places at TheSensualVegan.com, my little vegan/natural/eco sex shop.

Tired of your Hitachi’s cord not stretching far enough?  Get the cordless rechargeable Acuvibe, normally $80, for $64.  Into G-spot toys?  My very favorite is the silicone Faerie, normally $50, which you can now get for $40.  Want to make your pussy all strong and amazing?  Try the Kegelcisor, normally $85, on sale for $68.  Looking for a nonleather strapon harness?  I have the 5 most awesome ones, like the Joque in black and white, all reduced from $90-100 to $72-80 when you use the coupon code MEXICO.  Plus, all these prices include shipping (US only).

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Because of the possibility of a cease and desist order,  I’m reproducing MayMay’s post in full.  I’m not a programmer, but I do understand that gaming Google page rank is verboten. I had no idea you could redirect links in such a fashion. I have many links, both inbound and outbound on my blog, because I am all for sharing the link love, and providing context. AAG was very helpful in obtaining some donations from EF for Jefferson and his custody battle. I have a number of affiliate accounts, but have never had an EdenFantasys affiliate account.   I have never signed up, because of the way they worked with and then did not pay, Always Aroused Girl. This company’s inability to work professionally with sex bloggers is troubling.

Please feel free to cross post MayMay’s post with the correct attribution.

A lot of discussion is happening on Twitter.

To report website spamming or any kind of fraud to Google, use the authenticated Spam Report tool.

Update:  When reviewers started asking questions on the EF and on Twitter, their accounts got locked down, as part of a “cooling-off” period.  And a new hash tag sprang up: #Edenfallacys. There’s also an EdenFallacys site.

-Viviane

===========================================================

A few nights ago, I received an email from Editor of EdenFantasys’s SexIs Magazine, Judy Cole, asking me to modify this Kink On Tap brief I published that cites Lorna D. Keach’s writing. Judy asked me to “provide attribution and a link back to” SexIs Magazine. An ordinary enough request soon proved extraordinarily unethical when I discovered that EdenFantasys has invested a staggering amount of time and money to develop and implement a technology platform that actively denies others the courtesy of link reciprocity, a courtesy on which the ethical Internet is based.

While what they’re doing may not be illegal, EdenFantasys has proven itself to me to be an unethical and unworthy partner, in business or otherwise. Its actions are blatantly hypocritical, as I intend to show in detail in this post. Taking willful and self-serving advantage of those not technically savvy is a form of inexcusable oppression, and none of us should tolerate it from companies who purport to be well-intentioned resources for a community of sex-positive individuals.

For busy or non-technical readers, see the next section, Executive Summary, to quickly understand what EdenFantasys is doing, why it’s unethical, and how it affects you whether you’re a customer, a contributor, or a syndication partner. For the technical reader, the Technical Details section should provide ample evidence in the form of a walkthrough and sample code describing the unethical Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Search Engine Marketing (SEM) techniques EdenFantasys, aka. Web Merchants, Inc., is engaged in. For anyone who wants to read further, I provide an Editorial section in which I share some thoughts about what you can do to help combat these practices and bring transparency and trust—not the sabotage of trust EdenFantasys enacts—to the market.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Internet sex toy retailer Web Merchants, Inc., which bills itself as the “sex shop you can trust” and does business under the name EdenFantasys, has implemented technology on their websites that actively interferes with contributors’ content, intercepts outgoing links, and alters republished content so that links in the original work are redirected to themselves. Using techniques widely acknowledged as unethical by Internet professionals and that are arguably in violation of major search engines’ policies, EdenFantasys’s publishing platform has effectively outsourced the task of “link farming” (a questionable Search Engine Marketing [SEM] technique) to sites with which they have “an ongoing relationship,” such as AlterNet.org, other large news hubs, and individual bloggers’ blogs.

Articles published on EdenFantasys websites, such as the “community” website SexIs Magazine, contain HTML crafted to look like links, but aren’t. When visited by a typical human user, a program written in JavaScript and included as part of the web pages is automatically downloaded and intercepts clicks on these “link-like” elements, fetching their intended destination from the server and redirecting users there. Due to the careful and deliberate implementation, the browser’s status bar is made to appear as though the link is legitimate, and that a destination is provided as expected.

For non-human visitors, including automated search engine indexing programs such as Googlebot, the “link” remains non-functional, making the article a search engine’s dead-end or “orphan” page whose only functional links are those whose destination is EdenFantasys’s own web presence. This makes EdenFantasys’ website(s) a self-referential black hole that provides no reciprocity for contributors who author content, nor for any website ostensibly “linked” to from article content. At the same time, EdenFantasys editors actively solicit inbound links from individuals and organizations through “link exchanges” and incentive programs such as “awards” and “free” sex toys, as well as syndicating SexIs Magazine content such that the content is programmatically altered in order to create multiple (real) inbound links to EdenFantasys’s websites after republication on their partner’s media channels.

How EdenFantasys’s unethical practices have an impact on you

Regardless of who you are, EdenFantasys’s unethical practices have a negative impact on you and, indeed, on the Internet as a whole.

See for yourself: First, log out of any and all EdenFantasys websites or, preferably, use a different browser, or even a proxy service such as the Tor network for greater anonymity. Due to EdenFantasys’s technology, you cannot trust that what you are seeing on your screen is what someone else will see on theirs. Next, temporarily disable JavaScript (read instructions for your browser) and then try clicking on the links in SexIs Magazine articles. If clicking the intended off-site “links” doesn’t work, you know that your article’s links are being hidden from Google and that your content is being used for shady practices. In contrast, with JavaScript still disabled, navigate to another website (such as this blog), try clicking on the links, and note that the links still work as intended.Here’s another verifiable example from the EdenFantasys site showing that many other parts of Web Merchants, Inc. pages, not merely SexIs Magazine, are affected as well: With JavaScript disabled, visit the EdenFantasys company page on Aslan Leather (note, for the sake of comparison, the link in this sentence will work, even with JavaScript off). Try clicking on the link in the “Contact Information” section in the lower-right hand column of the page (shown in the screenshot, below). This “link” should take you to the Aslan Leather homepage but in fact it does not. So much for that “link exchange.”
edenfantasys company contact information 300x266 EdenFantasys’s unethical technology is a self referential black hole (Maybe Maimed)
(Click to enlarge.)
  • If you’re an EdenFantasys employee, people will demand answers from you regarding the unethical practices of your (hopefully former) employer. While you are working for EdenFantasys, you’re seriously soiling your reputation in the eyes of ethical Internet professionals. Ignorance is no excuse for the lack of ethics on the programmers’ part, and it’s a shoddy one for everyone else; you should be aware of your company’s business practices because you represent them and they, in turn, represent you.
  • If you’re a partner or contributor (reviewer, affiliate, blogger), while you’re providing EdenFantasys with inbound links or writing articles for them and thereby propping them up higher in search results, EdenFantasys is not returning the favor to you (when they are supposed to be doing so). Moreover, they’re attaching your handle, pseudonym, or real name directly to all of their link farming (i.e., spamming) efforts. They look like they’re linking to you and they look like their content is syndicated fairly, but they’re actually playing dirty. They’re going the extra mile to ensure search engines like Google do not recognize the links in articles you write. They’re trying remarkably hard to make certain that all roads lead to EdenFantasys, but none lead outside of it; no matter what the “link,” search engines see it as stemming from and leading to EdenFantasys. The technically savvy executives of Web Merchants, Inc. are using you without giving you a fair return on your efforts. Moreover, EdenFantasys is doing this in a way that preys upon people’s lack of technical knowledge—potentially your own as well as your readership’s. Do you want to keep doing business with people like that?
  • If you’re a customer, you’re monetarily supporting a company that essentially amounts to a glorified yet subtle spammer. If you hate spam, you should hate the unethical practices that lead to spam’s perpetual reappearance, including the practices of companies like Web Merchants, Inc. EdenFantasys’s unethical practices may not be illegal, but they are unabashedly a hair’s width away from it, just like many spammers’. If you want to keep companies honest and transparent, if you really want a “sex shop you can trust,” this is relevant to you because EdenFantasys is not it. If you want to purchase from a retailer that truly strives to offer a welcoming, trustworthy community for those interested in sex positivity and sexuality, pay close attention and take action. For ideas about what you can do, please see the “What you can do” section, below.
  • If you’ve never heard about EdenFantasys before, but you care about a fair and equal-opportunity Internet, this is relevant to you because what EdenFantasys is doing takes advantage of non-tech-savvy people in order to slant the odds of winning the search engine game in their favor. They could have done this fairly, and I personally believe that they would have succeeded. Their sites are user-friendly, well-designed, and solidly implemented. However, they chose to behave maliciously by not providing credit where credit is due, failing to follow through on agreements with their own community members and contributors, and sneakily utilizing other publishers’ web presences to play a very sad zero-sum game that they need not have entered in the first place. In the Internet I want, nobody takes malicious advantage of those less skilled than they are because their own skill should speak for itself. Isn’t that the Internet and, indeed, the future you want, too?

TECHNICAL DETAILS

What follows is a technical exploration of the way the EdenFantasys technology works. It is my best-effort evaluation of the process in as much detail as I can manage within strict self-imposed time constraints. If any of this information is incorrect, I’d welcome any and all clarifications provided by the EdenFantasys CTO and technical team in an appropriately transparent, public, and ethical manner. (You’re welcome—nay, encouraged—to leave a comment.)

Although I’m unconvinced that EdenFantasys understands this, it is the case that honesty is the best policy—especially on the Internet, where everyone has the power of “View source.”

The “EF Framework” for obfuscating links

Article content written by contributors on SexIs Magazine pages is published after all links are replaced with a <span> element bearing the class of linklike and a unique id attribute value. This apparently happens across any and all content published by Web Merchants, Inc.’s content management system, but I’ll be focusing on Lorna D. Keach’s post entitled SexFeed:Anti-Porn Activists Now Targeting Female Porn Addicts for the sake of example.

These fake links look like this in HTML:

And according to Theresa Flynt, vice president of marketing for Hustler video, <span ID="EFLink_68034_fe64d2">female consumers make up 56% of video sales.</span>

This originally published HTML is what visitors without JavaScript enabled (and what search engine indexers) see when they access the page. Note that the <span> is not a real link, even though it is made to look like one. (See Figure 1; click it to enlarge.)

Figure 1:

figure 11 300x241 EdenFantasys’s unethical technology is a self referential black hole (Maybe Maimed)

In a typical user’s browser, when this page is loaded, a JavaScript program is executed that mutates these “linklike” elements into <a> elements, retaining the “linklike” class and the unique id attribute values. However, no value is provided in the href (link destination) attribute of the <a> element. See Figure 2.

Figure 2:

figure 2 300x241 EdenFantasys’s unethical technology is a self referential black hole (Maybe Maimed)

The JavaScript program is downloaded in two parts from the endpoint at http://cdn3.edenfantasys.com/Scripts/Handler/jsget.ashx. The first part, retrieved in this example by accessing the URI at http://cdn3.edenfantasys.com/Scripts/Handler/jsget.ashx?i=jq132_cnf_jdm12_cks_cm_ujsn_udm_stt_err_jsdm_stul_ael_lls_ganl_jqac_jtv_smg_assf_agrsh&v_14927484.12.0, loads the popular jQuery JavaScript framework as well as custom code called the “EF Framework”.

The EF Framework contains code called the DBLinkHandler, an object that parses the <span> “linklike” elements (called “pseudolinks” in the EF Framework code) and retrieves the real destination. The entirety of the DBLinkHandler object is shown in code listing 1, below. Note the code contains a function called handle that performs the mutation of the <span> “linklike” elements (seen primarily on lines 8 through 16) and, based on the prefix of each elements’ id attribute value, two key functions (BuildUrlForElement and GetUrlByUrlID, whose signatures are on lines 48 and 68, respectively) interact to set up the browser navigation after responding to clicks on the fake links.

var DBLinkHandler = {
    pseudoLinkPrefix: "EFLink_",
    generatedAHrefPrefix: "ArtLink_",
    targetBlankClass: "target_blank",
    jsLinksCssLinkLikeClass: "linklike",
    handle: function () {
        var pseudolinksSpans = $("span[id^='" + DBLinkHandler.pseudoLinkPrefix + "']");
        pseudolinksSpans.each(function () {
            var psLink = $(this);
            var cssClass = $.trim(psLink.attr("class"));
            var target = "";
            var id = psLink.attr("id").replace(DBLinkHandler.pseudoLinkPrefix, DBLinkHandler.generatedAHrefPrefix);
            var href = $("<a></a>").attr({
                id: id,
                href: ""
            }).html(psLink.html());
            if (psLink.hasClass(DBLinkHandler.targetBlankClass)) {
                href.attr({
                    target: "_blank"
                });
                cssClass = $.trim(cssClass.replace(DBLinkHandler.targetBlankClass, ""))
            }
            if (cssClass != "") {
                href.attr({
                    "class": cssClass
                })
            }
            psLink.before(href).remove()
        });
        var pseudolinksAHrefs = $("a[id^='" + DBLinkHandler.generatedAHrefPrefix + "']");
        pseudolinksAHrefs.live("mouseup", function (event) {
            DBLinkHandler.ArtLinkClick(this)
        });
        pseudolinksSpans = $("span[id^='" + DBLinkHandler.pseudoLinkPrefix + "']");
        pseudolinksSpans.live("click", function (event) {
            if (event.button != 0) {
                return
            }
            var psLink = $(this);
            var url = DBLinkHandler.BuildUrlForElement(psLink, DBLinkHandler.pseudoLinkPrefix);
            if (!psLink.hasClass(DBLinkHandler.targetBlankClass)) {
                RedirectTo(url)
            } else {
                OpenNewWindow(url)
            }
        })
    },
    BuildUrlForElement: function (psLink, prefix) {
        var psLink = $(psLink);
        var sufix = psLink.attr("id").toString().substring(prefix.length);
        var id = (sufix.indexOf("_") != -1) ? sufix.substring(0, sufix.indexOf("_")) : sufix;
        var url = DBLinkHandler.GetUrlByUrlID(id);
        if (url == "") {
            url = EF.Constants.Links.Url
        }
        var end = sufix.substring(sufix.indexOf("_") + 1);
        var anchor = "";
        if (end.indexOf("_") != -1) {
            anchor = "#" + end.substring(0, end.lastIndexOf("_"))
        }
        url += anchor;
        return url
    },
    ArtLinkClick: function (psLink) {
        var url = DBLinkHandler.BuildUrlForElement(psLink, DBLinkHandler.generatedAHrefPrefix);
        $(psLink).attr("href", url)
    },
    GetUrlByUrlID: function (UrlID) {
        var url = "";
        UrlRequest = $.ajax({
            type: "POST",
            url: "/LinkLanguage/AjaxLinkHandling.aspx",
            dataType: "json",
            async: false,
            data: {
                urlid: UrlID
            },
            cache: false,
            success: function (data) {
                if (data.status == "Success") {
                    url = data.url;
                    return url
                }
            },
            error: function (xhtmlObj, status, error) {}
        });
        return url
    }
};

Once the mutation is performed and all the content “links” are in the state shown in Figure 2, above, an event listener has been bound to the anchors that captures a click event. This is done using prototypal extension, aka. classic prototypal inheritance, in another part of the code, the live function on line 2,280 of the (de-minimized) jsget.ashx program, as shown in code listing 2, here:

        live: function (G, F) {
            var E = o.event.proxy(F);
            E.guid += this.selector + G;
            o(document).bind(i(G, this.selector), this.selector, E);
            return this
        },

At this point, clicking on one of the “pseudolinks” triggers the EF Framework to call code set up by the GetUrlByUrlID function from within the DBLinkHandler object, initiating an XMLHttpRequest (XHR) connection to the AjaxLinkHandling.aspx server-side application. The request is an HTTP POST containing only one parameter, called urlid, and its value matches a substring from within the id value of the “pseudolinks.” In this example, the id attribute contains a value of EFLink_68034_fe64d2, which means that the unique ID POST’ed to the server is 68034. This is shown in Figure 3, below.

Figure 3:

figure 3 300x199 EdenFantasys’s unethical technology is a self referential black hole (Maybe Maimed)

The response from the server, shown in Figure 4, is also simple. If successful, the intended destination is retrieved by the GetUrlByUrlID object’s success function (on line 79 of Code Listing 1, above) and the user is redirected to that web address, as if the link was a real one all along. The real destination, in this case to CNN.com, is thereby only revealed after the XHR request returns a successful reply.

Figure 4:

figure 4 300x199 EdenFantasys’s unethical technology is a self referential black hole (Maybe Maimed)

All of this obfuscation effectively blinds machines such as the Googlebot who are not JavaScript-capable from seeing and following these links. It deliberately provides no increased Pagerank for the link destination (as a real link would normally do) despite being “linked to” from EdenFantasys’s SexIs Magazine article. While the intended destination in this example link was at CNN.com, it could just as easily have been—and is, in other examples—links to the blogs of EdenFantasys community members and, indeed, everyone else linked to from a SexIs Magazine article or potentially any website operated by Web Merchants, Inc. that makes use of this technology.

The EdenFantasys Outsourced Link-Farm

In addition to creating a self-referential black hole with no gracefully degrading outgoing links, EdenFantasys also actively performs link-stuffing through its syndicated content “relationships,” underhandedly creating an outsourced and distributed link-farm, just like a spammer. The difference is that this spammer (Web Merchants, Inc. aka EdenFantasys) is cleverly crowd-sourcing high-value, high-quality content from its own “community.”

Articles published at SexIs Magazine are syndicated in full to other large hub sites, such as AlterNet.org. Continuing with the above example post by Lorna D. Keach, Anti-Porn Activists Now Targeting Female Porn Addicts, we can see that this content was republished on AlterNet.org shortly after original publication through EdenFantasys’ website on May 3rd at http://www.alternet.org/story/146774/christian_anti-porn_activists_now_targeting_female_. However, a closer look at the HTML code of the republication shows that each and every link contained within the article points to the same destination: the same article published on SexIs Magazine, as shown in Figure 5.

Figure 5:

figure 5 300x199 EdenFantasys’s unethical technology is a self referential black hole (Maybe Maimed)

Naturally, these syndicated links provided to third-party sites by EdenFantasys are real and function as expected to both human visitors and to search engines indexing the content. The result is “natural,” high-value links to the EdenFantasys website from these third-party sites; EdenFantasys doesn’t merely scrounge pagerank from harvesting the sheer number of incoming links, but as each link’s anchor text is different, they are setting themselves up to match more keywords in search engine results, keywords that the original author likely did not intend to direct to them. Offering search engines the implication that EdenFantasys.com contains the content described in the anchor text, when in fact EdenFantasys merely acts as an intermediary to the information, is very shady, to say the least.

In addition to syndication, EdenFantasys employs human editors to do community outreach. These editors follow up with publishers, including individual bloggers (such as myself), and request that any references to published material provide attribution and a link back to us, to use the words of Judy Cole, Editor of SexIs Magazine in an email she sent to me (see below), and presumably many others. EdenFantasys has also been known to request “link exchanges,” and offer incentive programs that encouraged bloggers to add the EdenFantasys website to their blogroll or sidebar in order to help raise both parties search engine ranking, when in fact EdenFantasys is not actually providing reciprocity.

More information about EdenFantasys’s unethical practices, which are not limited to technical subterfuge, can be obtained via AAGBlog.com.

EDITORIAL

It is unsurprising that the distributed, subtle, and carefully crafted way EdenFantasys has managed to crowd-source links has (presumably) remained unpenalized by search engines like Google. It is similarly unsurprising that nontechnical users such as the contributors to SexIs Magazine would be unaware of these deceptive practices, or that they are complicit in promoting them.

This is no mistake on the part of EdenFantasys, nor is it a one-off occurrence. The amount of work necessary to implement the elaborate system I’ve described is also not even remotely feasible for a rogue programmer to accomplish, far less accomplish covertly. No, this is the result of a calculated and decidedly underhanded strategy that originated from the direction of top executives at Web Merchants, Inc. aka EdenFantasys.

It is unfortunate that technically privileged people would be so willing to take advantage of the technically uneducated, particularly under the guise of providing a trusted place for the community which they claim to serve. These practices are exactly the ones that “the sex shop you can trust” should in no way support, far less be actively engaged in. And yet, here is unmistakable evidence that EdenFantasys is doing literally everything it can not only to bolster its own web presence at the cost of others’, but to hide this fact from its understandably non-tech-savvy contributors.

On a personal note, I am angered that I would be contacted by the Editor of SexIs Magazine, and asked to properly “attribute” and provide a link to them when it is precisely that reciprocity which SexIs Magazine would clearly deny me (and everyone else) in return. It was this request originally received over email from Judy Cole, that sparked my investigation outlined above and enabled me to uncover this hypocrisy. The email I received from Judy Cole is republished, in full, here:

From: Judy Cole <luxuryholmes@gmail.com>
Subject: Repost mis-attributed
Date: May 17, 2010 2:42:00 PM PDT
To: kinkontap+viewermail@gmail.com
Cc: Laurel <laurelb@edenfantasys.com>

Hello Emma and maymay,

I am the Editor of the online adult magazine SexIs (http://www.edenfantasys.com/sexis/). You recently picked up and re-posted a story of ours by Lorna Keach that Alternet had already picked up:

http://kinkontap.com/?s=alternet

We were hoping that you might provide attribution and a link back to us, citing us as the original source (as is done on Alternet, with whom we have an ongoing relationship), should you pick up something of ours to re-post in the future.

If you would be interested in having us send you updates on stories that might be of interest, I would be happy to arrange for a member of our editorial staff to do so. (Like your site, by the way. TBK is one of our regular contributors.)

Thanks and Best Regards,

Judy Cole
Editor, SexIs

Judy’s email probably intended to reference the new Kink On Tap briefs that my co-host Emma and I publish, not a search result page on the Kink On Tap website. Specifically, she was talking about this brief: http://KinkOnTap.com/?p=676. I said as much in my reply to Judy:

Hi Judy,

The URL in your email doesn’t actually link to a post. We pick up many stories from AlterNet, as well as a number from SexIs, because we follow both those sources, among others. So, did you mean this following entry?

http://KinkOnTap.com/?p=676

If so, you should know that we write briefs as we find them and provide links to where we found them. We purposefully do not republish or re-post significant portions of stories and we limit our briefs to short summaries in deference to the source. In regards to the brief in question, we do provide attribution to Lorna Keach, and our publication process provides links automatically to, again, the source where we found the article. icon smile EdenFantasys’s unethical technology is a self referential black hole (Maybe Maimed) As I’m sure you understand, this is the nature of the Internet. Its distribution capability is remarkable, isn’t it?

Also, while we’d absolutely be thrilled to have you send us updates on stories that might be of interest, we would prefer that you do so in the same way the rest of our community does: by contributing to the community links feed. You can find detailed instructions for the many ways you can do that on our wiki:

http://wiki.kinkontap.com/wiki/Community_links_feed

Congratulations on the continued success of SexIs.

Cheers,
-maymay

At the time when I wrote the email replying to Judy, I was perturbed but could not put my finger on why. Her email upset me because she seemed to be suggesting that our briefs are wholesale “re-posts,” when in fact Emma and I have thoroughly discussed attribution policies and, as mentioned in my reply, settled on a number of practices including a length limit, automated back linking (yes, with real links, go see some Kink On Tap briefs for yourself), and clearly demarcating quotes from the source article in our editorializing to ensure we play fair. Clearly, my somewhat snarky reply betrays my annoyance.

In any event, this exchange prompted me to take a closer look at the Kink On Tap brief I wrote, at the original article, and at the cross-post on AlterNet.org. I never would have imagined that EdenFantasys’s technical subterfuge would be as pervasive as it has proven to be. It’s so deeply embedded in the EdenFantasys publishing platform that I’m willing to give Judy the benefit of the doubt regarding this hypocrisy because she doesn’t seem to understand the difference between a search query and a permalink (something any laymen blogger would grok). This is apparent from her reply to my response:

From: Judy Cole <luxuryholmes@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: Repost mis-attributed
Date: May 18, 2010 4:57:59 AM PDT
[…redundant email headers clipped…]

Funny, the URL in my email opens the same link as the one you sent me when I click on it.

Maybe if you pick up one of our stories in future, you could just say something like “so and so wrote for SexIs.” ?

As it stands, it looks as if Lorna wrote the piece for Alternet. Thanks.

Judy

That is the end of our email exchange, and will be for good, unless and until EdenFantasys changes its ways. I will from this point forward endeavor never to publish links to any web property that I know to be owned by Web Merchants, Inc., including EdenFantasys.com. I will also do my best to avoid citing any and all SexIs Magazine articles from here on out, and I encourage everyone who has an interest in seeing honesty on the Internet to follow my lead here.

As some of my friends are currently contributors to SexIs Magazine, I would like all of you to know that I sincerely hope you immediately sever all ties with any and all Web Merchants, Inc. properties, suppliers, and business partners, especially because you are friends and I think your work is too important to be sullied by such a disreputable company. Similarly, I hope you encourage your friends to do the same. I understand that the economy is rough and that some of you may have business contracts bearing legal penalties for breaking them, but I urge you to nevertheless consider looking at this as a cost-benefit analysis: the sooner you break up with EdenFantasys, the happier everyone on the Internet, including you, will be (and besides, you can loose just as much of your reputation, money, and pagerank while being happy as you can being sad).

What you can do

  • If you are an EdenFantasys reviewer, a SexIs Magazine contributor, or have any other arrangement with Web Merchants, Inc., write to Judy Cole and demand that content you produce for SexIs Magazine adheres to ethical Internet publication standards. Sever business ties with this company immediately upon receipt of any non-response, or any response that does not adequately address every concern raised in this blog post. (Feel free to leave comments on this post with technical questions, and I’ll do my best to help you sort out any l33t answers.)
  • EdenFantasys wants to stack the deck in Google. They do this by misusing your content and harvesting your links. To combat this effort, immediately remove any and all links to EdenFantasys websites and web presences from your websites. Furthermore, do not—I repeat—do not publish new links to EdenFantasys websites, not even in direct reference to this post. Instead, provide enough information, as I have done, so visitors to your blog posts can find their website themselves. In lieu of links to EdenFantasys, link to other bloggers’ posts about this issue. (Such posts will probably be mentioned in the comments section of this post.)
  • Boycott EdenFantasys: the technical prowess their website displays does provide a useful shopping experience for some people. However, that in no way obligates you to purchase from their website. If you enjoy using their interface, use it to get information about products you’re interested in, but then go buy those products elsewhere, perhaps from the manufacturers directly.
  • Watch for “improved” technical subterfuge from Web Merchants, Inc. As a professional web developer, I can identify several things EdenFantasys could do to make their unethical practices even harder to spot, and harder to stop. If you have any technical knowledge at all, even if you’re “just” a savvy blogger, you can keep a close watch on EdenFantasys and, if you notice anything that doesn’t sit well with you, speak up about it like I did. Get a professional programmer to look into things for you if you need help; yes, you can make a difference just by remaining vigilant as long as you share what you know and act honestly, and transparently.

If you have additional ideas or recommendations regarding how more people can help keep sex toy retailers honest, please suggest them in the comments.

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Bookmarks

by Viviane on 05/04/2010

in del.icio.us,sex

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  • Heads Up! Silicone Lube is Flammable | Charlie Glickman – I have to admit that it never would have occurred to me to check and see if lubricants are flammable. After all, when I think about the question of whether lubes burn, I’m thinking more about allergic reactions and yeast infections.
  • What I Write for Money, Honey | Chelsea G. Summers | Filthy Gorgeous Things – The great irony about it all is that I hold great ambivalence about my sex writing—the only writing that I have complete confidence in. While it’s true that in the kingdom of ambivalence I wear the royal skort and eat with the royal spork, I remain unwaveringly ambivalent about the sex-writing.
  • Anna Paquin Comes Out as Bisexual – Anna Paquin : People.com -
  • Can Animals Be Gay? – NYTimes.com – Various forms of same-sex sexual activity have been recorded in more than 450 different species of animals by now, from flamingos to bison to beetles to guppies to warthogs. A female koala might force another female against a tree and mount her, while throwing back her head and releasing what one scientist described as “exhalated belchlike sounds.” Male Amazon River dolphins have been known to penetrate each other in the blowhole. Within most species, homosexual sex has been documented only sporadically, and there appear to be few cases of individual animals who engage in it exclusively.
  • John Willie’s G-String Tie -
  • An Epidemic of Sex Addiction? | Dr. Marty Klein | Sexual Intelligence – I’ve been a Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist and Certified Sex Therapist for 30 years. That’s some 30,000 sessions with men, women, and couples—a ringside seat at the human circus. The guy was yet another supposed “sex addict.” I listened to his story carefully, and told him I sympathized with how he had damaged his life and hurt people with bad sexual decisions. “But I don’t treat ‘sex addiction,’” I said. I think it’s a bogus concept.

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  • Getting Down About Hooking Up | Shira Tarrant | Ms Magazine Blog – What is new on the sexual landscape are debates about whether casual sex is all about fun and free will, or if hooking up is linked to sexual assault and women’s objectification.
  • Vegas’ Mystery Sex Blog | The Daily Beast – A Sin City prostitute is posting her sexploits on Twitter and her blog. Richard Abowitz talks to the anonymous woman who’s inspired a city-wide guessing game.
  • It’s Called a Scene Name for a Reason | Lee Harrington – It’s called a scene name for a reason.<br />
    Because its the name they want used in the scene.
  • Hidden World of Girls – THE KITCHEN SISTERS are launching a new NPR multimedia series exploring the hidden world of girls. Stories of coming of age, rituals and rites of passage, secet identities—of women who crossed a line, blazed a trail, changed the tide.
  • Dating A Porn Star | Lucy Vonne | The Neave Online Publication – But the minute you mention that sex is part of your profession guys only see one thing and presume things about you. ..Yes, I am constantly consumed with and thinking about sex, which was hard for men to see past. They never saw me as the girl to have a relationship with; I was just the hook up. Or if I did start dating someone, they couldn’t deal with my job and would freak out. You have to put on a certain persona and guys couldn’t separate that from the real me. It makes complete sense that I end up in this type of relationship because not only do I understand him but he gets me.
  • A tale of intriguing timing. — Desk Full of Dildos – The death knell has been sounded, dear readers, for Chilldils. A great idea, which still prevailed even when faced with numerous bumps in the road, a concept that I loved not only because it was my ‘baby’, but also because it was people like YOU who gave it life, has been barred from moving any further. (More drama about a sex toy company giving personal info on former workers)

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  • Man on Man: The New Gay Romance (LA WeeklyO – In many ways the growing popularity of gay romance represents nothing less than a tectonic shift in a culture that says women don’t (and shouldn’t) consume porn. Hot and steamy gay-romance literature is to women what Internet porn is to men: They get off on it, mostly in secret, and keep coming back for more.
  • Canadian Minister Calls for Regulation of Adult Sex Toys | Cory Silverberg – The letter (which you can download here) calls out phthalates and BPA in particular, pointing to what little research has been done on sex toys, and suggesting that there is an "urgent need for responsible regulation in the adult toy industry." The minister wants products to be safety tested before they can be sold, and the chemical composition of all sex toys to be made publicly available.
  • Fantasy On Trial (Again) | Dr. Marty Klein – I’m on my home from Denver, where I testified as an expert witness at a deeply troubling trial—a trial that’s become way too common in America.
  • Porn For Women Retrospective 2009 | Ms. Naughty – The year is drawing to a close and thus it’s time again to take a look back at all the newsy and interesting things that have occurred in porn for women in 2009. Overall it’s been a big year with plenty of media attention and what appears to be a growing recognition within the adult industry itself that yes, women do enjoy porn.
  • Reality and Faux Ho Bloggers | Monica Shores | Carnal Nation – Sex worker web journals generally fall into two camps: marketing tools used in conjunction with a work name and website, or anonymous confessionals in which the writer discloses details about her personal life and clients. (For the purpose of this article, only female bloggers are examined.) These blogs are uniquely positioned to complicate the discourse around sex work in both negative and positive ways. They're capable of revealing rifts and commonalities in sex worker communities while also influencing the public's perceptions of and reaction to those who sell sex.
  • Netflix Spilled Your Brokeback Mountain Secret, Lawsuit Claims | Threat Level | Wired.com – An in-the-closet lesbian mother is suing Netflix for privacy invasion, alleging the movie rental company made it possible for her to be outed when it disclosed insufficiently anonymous information about nearly half-a-million customers as part of its $1 million contest to improve its recommendation system.

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celebrator vibrator lg 300x201 My Celebrator Vibrator

Okay… Have you ever awoken with the sleepy morning hornies, and you’re standing there brushing your teeth with your vibrating toothbrush and think, “This would make a great sex toy!”  Well, obviously, someone did.  Because that is exactly what the My Celebrator® personal vibrator looks and works like, except, instead of a bunch of bristles on the end it features a little bitty tongue-like clitoral stimulator that flicks you to orgasm.

Warning.  This thing is uber powerful.  If you are the type of person who doesn’t like intense stimulation, then the Celebrator is not for you.  I had to work up to the intensity, working it around my clitoris first, before putting this vibe directly upon it.  If you want a powerful C-gasm in less than a minute, then you will love the Celebrator.  This vibe is absolutely Clitterific!  Next to the Hitachi [my review] and the Fairy Wand [my review], this is the most powerful vibrator I have ever tried.  In fact, it is more intense than the Hitachi, because of the tiny little flickering tip that pin-points the vibrations right to you clit at 4600/9600 Oscillations per minute.

If you find vibrators too weak, this would be an ideal vibe for you and is sure to make you orgasm uncontrollably.  It is also waterproof, so if you were inclined to use it as a toothbrush… Seriously, get this vibe and blow your mind.  Don’t forget the lube with this baby as it is intense.  Also, if you happen to wear out your tip, you can purchase new tips, rather than the whole vibe itself.  Pretty clever.

The My Celebrator Vibrator is available at NippleCharms.com.  It is one of the most effective clitoral vibes I have ever used and has got my Clitterific Seal of Approval!

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  • High Schools Struggle When Gender Bends the Dress Code – NYTimes.com – Dress is always code, particularly for teenagers eager to telegraph evolving identities. Each year, schools hope to quell disruption by prohibiting the latest styles that signify a gang affiliation, a sexual act or drug use…But when officials want to discipline a student whose wardrobe expresses sexual orientation or gender variance, they must consider antidiscrimination policies, mental health factors, community standards and classroom distractions.
  • Sex-All ages Dr. Dick on Demand: Virginity, Part 2 – Teenagers face enormous peer pressure when it comes down to sex, yet there’s precious little education afforded them in terms of the fundamentals of human sexuality. This dearth of clear, unambiguous information on how our bodies work is just the first way we let our children down. There’s almost nothing available to teens to emotionally prepare them for partnered sex.
  • Why The Stupak Amendment Is A Monumental Setback | RHRealityCheck.org – If you thought that just because abortion is a constitutional right and part of basic reproductive health care it would be available in the reformed health insurance market known as the Exchange, think again. The Stupak Amendment, passed Saturday night by the House of Representatives after a compromise deal fell apart, potentially goes farther than any other federal law to restrict women’s access to abortion.
  • 2010 Sex Blogger Calendar Release Party | Photos By: Nick McGlynn | Random Night Out
  • Pleasurists – Round-up of Adult Product and Sex Toy Reviews – Pleasurists is a round-up of the adult product and sex toy reviews that came out in the last seven days from bloggers all around the sex blogosphere.

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