• A decade of corporations like Facebook censoring sex-positivity got us here: “Michael Kosta sits down with clinical psychologist Dr. David Ley, who traces the origins of the alt-right movement’s anger to its anti-masturbation stance.”
  * Why Is the Alt-Right So Angry? (Daily Show | Comedy Central)

• Kanye West, who wrote a song last year about how bad he wants to fuck his wife’s sisters… “Kanye West is a NoFap guy … It’s helpful to their scolding campaign to erase or demonize legitimate sex workers this way, and indeed, the atmosphere of NoFap may cast the consenting female porn star as a seductive Jezebel, out to soil and ruin promising young men.”
  * Kanye West Is a NoFap Hero (MEL Magazine)

• Did Australia’s lawmakers just get unfrozen after 50 years in a time capsule? “Peter Dutton’s Department of Home Affairs has suggested that in an attempt to protect children from seeing sexually explicit material online, we should force adult web sites to introduce facial recognition technology for their users as a form of age verification.”
  * Big Brother is watching… porn? (The Spectator Australia)

• I answer the BBC’s question here. “Ms Evans’ group has collected a list of more than 1,300 performers who claim that their accounts have been deleted by Instagram’s content moderators for violations of the site’s community standards, despite not showing any nudity or sex.”
  * Why is Instagram deleting the accounts of hundreds of porn stars? (BBC)

• This is part of the science-based approach to understanding porn consumption. I wish CBS and other outlets would do more with it. “Porn scholar Madita Oeming teaches a class on porn studies in Berlin. She explains why she feels that the mass availability of pornography has offered an outlet for sex positivity and body positivity that didn’t necessarily exist before.”
  * Does modern porn lead to more sex positivity? (CBS News)

• For the record, I stand in solidarity with people who like big fake penises. And this article is coming from a good place. “Our anatomy hasn’t changed much since ancient times, but our ideas have. The assumed marriage of gender identity and genitals has weakened … In an attempt to embrace sexual accessories that are for the people and by the people, erotic toy company LoveHoney has, for the past few years, been crowdsourcing the sex-loving public to design their own fantasy toys.”
  * How sex toys finally evolved beyond the big fake penis (Mic)
  See also: ‘Dildo Sculptor’ Lets You Design Your Ideal Sex Toy (Future of Sex)

• What’s cool about this is that now I’m thinking about the “stone butch” [sexual] identity differently. “The Asexuality Visibility and Education Network (AVEN), for example, describes some asexual people as ‘sex-favourable’, which is an ‘openness to finding ways to enjoy sexual activity in a physical or emotional way, happy to give sexual pleasure rather than receive’.”
  * What being asexual or aromantic tells us about sex and romance (Aeon Essays)

• Speculative piece, but worth a look. “Today, the results are mostly crude. Unlike the most sophisticated deepfake videos traded online, no one is going to mistake any of the 3D models Motherboard has seen during our reporting for actual images of a real person. ”
  * People Are Having Sex With 3D Avatars of Their Exes and Celebrities (Vice)

• A ray of hope for a rights-based-sexual and science-based-reproductive health agenda. “Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) proposed legislation to decriminalize sex work as part of a sweeping resolution she introduced Thursday morning aimed at revolutionizing the criminal justice system.”
  * Rep. Ayanna Pressley Calls To Decriminalize Sex Work In Criminal Justice Resolution (Huffington Post)

• There is a new edition of the Porn Studies Journal (Vol. 6, Number 3, 2019). It includes articles like “DeepFakes: uncovering hardcore open source on GitHub.”
  * Porn Studies (Taylor & Francis Online)
  See also: Sexual Health Research Network November 2019

• Content warning for personal shares, which I’m not a huge fan of generally. “When I began trying to hack my own sex life for this series, I learned that — like most purported “life hacks” — the idea of a one-size-fits-all magic bullet for better sex doesn’t exist.”
  * Sex, hacked (Mashable)

Main post image via: Tatyana Kombarova by Viktor Korneev (Portraits of Girls)

• “Plans to introduce a nationwide age verification system for online pornography have been abandoned by the government after years of technical troubles and concerns from privacy campaigners. The climbdown follows countless difficulties with implementing the policy, which would have required all pornography websites to ensure users were over 18. Methods would have included checking credit cards or allowing people to buy a “porn pass” age verification document from a newsagent.”
  * UK drops plans for online pornography age verification system (Guardian)
  See also: UK porn block: Tory MPs line up to attack Government decision to scrap online age verification measures (iNews)

• “That’s right: the PornWikileaks — the infamous website started by the even more infamous adult industry pariah, Donny Long, and which hosted a doxxing and extortion fodder forum against adult models called “Whore Hunting” — according to the Jane Does’ filing, was owned by none other than the GirlsDoPorn owner.”
  * Here’s What You Need to Know About the GirlsDoPorn Case (XBIZ)

• “Last week, the owners and key employees of adult film production company Girls Do Porn were charged with federal counts of sex trafficking by force, fraud, and coercion.”
  * ‘Girls Do Porn’ Was a Crime Ring, Not a Porn Site, Industry Experts Say (Vice)

• “Fox has written more than 10,000 reviews for businesses across America in the last five years, all at the behest of a mysterious dominatrix who introduced him to bubble tea and baby oil.”
  * Yelp’s Horniest (and Best) Reviewer Is a Jacked Foot Worshipper Named Fox E (Vice)

• “According to court documents, US investigators simply right-clicked on Welcome To Video’s homepage, selected “View Page Source,” and instantly had what they needed.”
  * How the world’s largest child porn marketplace was undone by a right-click (Quartz)

• ““Porn is a discourse that informs gender, sexual roles and relations but only men are having this discourse,” [Erika Lust] says. The only way for this to truly change, she adds, is for women to take leadership roles in the porn industry.”
  * Meet the filmmaker taking on the misogynistic world of porn (London Evening Standard)

• “…in spite of the damage to her reputation, Guo was finally granted her license to practice law in 2019. She’s since used her platform to create a new story for herself, writing about navigating sex worker stigma in the legal world… and officially starting her own legal practice.”
  * Nadia Guo: The criminal lawyer who was outed as a sex worker (Huckmag)

• “Aphrodite Inc. was created to spread the concept that human hearts will always be better than robotic ones. The film begins with sexbots appearing inside a family home on what looks just like a regular Friday night.”
  * Award-Winning and ‘Family-friendly’ Film about Sexbots Set to Compete for Spot at Cannes (Future of Sex)

• “Health officials are raising alarm about a rise in STDs across the United States. For the fifth consecutive year, combined cases of gonorrhea, chlamydia and syphilis have risen in the United States, according to a Sexually Transmitted Disease Surveillance Report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published on Tuesday.”
  * Three STDs reach all-time highs in the US, new CDC report says (CNN)

• “Katie Couric recently kicked off her new podcast with an episode entitled, “Is Violent Porn Changing Us?” … Couric also asserts that 88 percent of top rented or downloaded porn “contains scenes depicting violence against women.” She borrows this statistic from one of her guests on the show, Dr. Gail Dines.”
  * Op-Ed: Katie Couric’s Porn Bashing is Scarier Than You Think (XBIZ)

• “Teaching a teenager the benefits of condoms or letting them know it’s okay to be gay might soon land you behind bars in Poland. In their first move since winning a second term in Sunday’s election, lawmakers from the nationalist Law & Justice party backed the draft law to establish jail terms for promoting “sexual activity” to minors. ”
  * Teaching Teens About Sex Might Soon Land You in Jail in Poland (Bloomberg)

• “A Russian man suing Apple for more than $15,000, claiming that an app he downloaded to his iPhone “manipulatively” drove him to homosexuality, causing him “moral suffering and harm to mental health,” has dropped his lawsuit.”
  * Man Drops Lawsuit Claiming iPhone Made Him Gay (Towleroad)

Main post photo via Edwin García ‘Vendetta (NSFW)’ (Sticks and Stones Mothership).

• I don’t know about you, but I’ve been really wondering what sex workers think of the new film, Hustlers. “Sex workers rarely see any of our experiences reflected on TV or movies. We are usually severely dehumanized, the character that gets “rescued,” the but of a tired joke, or getting murdered in the first five minutes. Hustlers has had very polarizing reactions from the sex worker community.”
  * What Actual Sex Workers Think About the New Movie ‘Hustlers’ (Broke-Ass Stuart)
  See also: Life After the Hustle: A Former Stripper’s Thoughts on Hustlers (Vulture)
  More: Hustlers (2019) (TitsandSass)

• If you read anything about sex work while the world burns, make it this. I would love to hand this to Elizabeth Warren and ask what her plan is to fix this. Mild warning for survivors of sexual assault. “One member of the California State Assembly listened to everything I had to say and then replied, “You seem smart, but they aren’t all like you.” Let me be clear: Every sex worker I have ever met is as smart as I am; many are smarter. I have learned more, collectively, from my coworkers than from any of the formal education I’ve bought with my hard-earned sex-work dollars.”
  * Cash/Consent (N+1)

• “It’s a relent­less flesh-show, except for one incon­gru­ous win­dow. There, a man lounges casu­al­ly in a blue open-neck shirt in front of a sun­ny back­drop. Click on him and you enter a chat with Dr David Ley, a psy­cho­sex­u­al ther­a­pist hired by Stripchat to offer free group ther­a­py ses­sions for site users.”
  * Sex­cam therapy (The Face)

• “Cute Little Fuckers, a gender-inclusive sex toy company, just launched a $13,500 campaign on Kickstarter. “This is the first one that has been approved for a while,” Kickstarter Senior Outreach Lead of Design & Technology Beau Ambur told TechCrunch.”
  * Cute Little Fuckers gets Kickstarter’s seal of approval for sex toy project (TechCrunch)

• “What Noori’s team found was that image type — whether it was a picture or a video — was the strongest predictor of differences in which parts of the brain became engaged. Unexpectedly, the weakest predictor was the subjects’ biological sex. In other words, when men and women viewed pornographic imagery, the way their brains responded, in the aggregate, was largely the same.”
  * What Can Brain Scans Tell Us About Sex? (NYT)

• Even in this writeup, Guardian seems like it can barely contain its hatred of porn. But it’s going to be a great show, and deserves attention. ““There’s an incredible history of queer and trans sex workers, who were at the forefront of the gay rights movement, also having a tremendous impact on art,” Heller said. “I wanted to explore the empowered history of the community, I wanted their stories to be told in an authentic way.””
  * Sexual revolution: the underseen art and activism of queer sex work (Guardian)

• “…in 2018 the U.S. passed rights violating restrictions via the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) and Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA). This legislation limits the sharing of vital safety information for sex workers online and causes economic harm and social marginalization.”
  * Key Facts About Human Rights Violations & Sex Work ~ For the 2020 UPR of the U.S.A (bestpracticespolicy.org)
  See also: Rep. Ro Khanna To Introduce Bill To Study Impact Of FOSTA On Sex Workers (TechDirt)

• Fairporn is “creating a certification authority to help ensure the rights and safety of everyone in the porn industry and helping people make better choices about the porn they watch.” Their new standards have just been published.
  * Fairporn Standards v0.1 (Fairporn.org)

• “In this technical report, we focus on definitions of pornography, paying particular attention to the question of whether it is possible to reach consensus on a definition across disciplines.”
  * An Interdisciplinary Definition of Pornography: Results from a Global Delphi Panel (Springer)

• I love this film so much! Terrific review. “It’s that rare film which makes you believe the actors were throughly in love with the material. There are f-stop jokes, for fuck’s sake. And there is a joyous sexual fluidity that emerges from the authentic emotional tinderbox in a way that manages to punish no one and reward everyone.”
  * Erotica for Filmmakers: a Porn Club review of SCORE (Pink Label TV)

• “…the Women of Sex Tech panel featured a collection of female founders and heads of companies from some of the most innovative brands in the sextech game, moderated by Erica Braverman.”
  * Women of Sex Tech Panel Kicks Off Sex Expo NY (XBIZ)

• “Gun Gun Pixies for the Nintendo Switch and PC is a third-person shooter-platformer about a pair of miniature aliens learning about human behavior by infiltrating a women’s dorm. It’s silly. It’s racy. There are panty shots galore and lots of censored anime nudity. I expected as much from the latest PQube release. What I did not expect was that the game would kick off with a cautionary tale about excessive dieting.”
  * Gun Gun Pixies Is A Silly Erotic Game With A Serious Message About Your Health (Kotaku)
  See also: Getting Down on the Farm: A Review of Nutaku’s CockVille (Future of Sex)

Main post image: Image: Angelo Madsen Minax, Live Nude Genitals, 2012, Neon, Plexiglas, featured in ON OUR BACKS: The Revolutionary Art of Queer Sex Work.

• We are not in the 1950s and this should not be happening. “Dr. Jennifer Gunter, a Canadian gynecologist who also contributes to the New York Times, wrote on Twitter Tuesday that her publishers had been blocked from using the word “vagina” in promotional tweets for her new book, The Vagina Bible.”
  * Twitter under fire for removing the word ‘vagina’ from ads for gynecology book (CNN)

• I can’t agree more: the attacks and misinformation of anti-porn wingnuts is pure anti-woman, anti-LGBTQ Trumpism. “It might actually be the anti-porn activists who hate women.”
  * Misogyny in Porn: It’s Not What You Think (Psychology Today)

• I love this angle of reporting on PornHub, and all outlets covering them should take note. “To me, the fact that a morally dubious pornography empire, associated with exploiting porn performers and facilitating piracy as well as developing the technology used as part of the UK’s questionable porn block law, is prepared to acknowledge the current state of the environment indicates that it has more gall than many of the world’s governments.”
  * Opinion: Pornhub wants to save the world from plastics. But all is not what it seems (Independent)

• I saw a lot of people cheering for this (alleged) move by Bang Bros., but I urge you to read performer Sinnamon Love’s Twitter thread about it below. Wikipedia is just as culpable, and I experience this personally. “Adult film production company Bang Bros announced on Thursday that it bought PornWikiLeaks.com—a website devoted to doxing and harassing porn performers—with the intent to shut it down forever … and included a link to a video of someone pouring flammable fluid onto a pile of hard drives and lighting it on fire.”
  * Bang Bros Bought a Huge Porn Doxing Forum and Set Fire to It (Vice)

• Incredible resource by and for the adult industry that should be duplicated in many industries. “Pineapple Support is sponsoring a free, eight-week course in dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) to help adult industry workers develop coping skills for anxiety, stress and depression. The online course begins October 1, with a new two-hour group session happening each week.”
  * Pineapple Support Sponsors Free 8-Week Therapy Course (XBIZ)

• Been seeing this in my timeline and replies, too. Glad it has been identified as the attack it is, rather than lumped into a reason to increase sex censorship. “Disinformation networks linked to the Chinese government have weaponized porn-related bots, aka ‘pornbots,’ in their campaign against the current protests in Hong Kong, according to an analysis of Twitter data by the International Cyber Police Centre (ICPC) of the Australian Strategic Policy Insititute (ASPI).”
  * Report: China Weaponizes ‘Pornbots’ to Spread Disinformation in Hong Kong (XBIZ)
  See also: Porn bots are now storming Twitter’s trending topics (Engadget)

• Terrific essay, bookmark it for reference when the Sheryl Sandbergs of the world say they’re feminists while pushing anti-sex work legislation. “This attack on women’s bodily freedoms is deeply worrying – particularly when women themselves are participating as opposed to resisting. Women’s freedom is central to making our societies more prosperous, more equal and more environmentally sustainable. Any attempt to undermine that freedom, no matter how well-intentioned, will make for a poorer and more unequal world.”
  * The real sexism problem in the discipline of economics (Aeon Magazine)

• What is it called when the cops kill their best informant? “… the government knew all along that Backpage was one of its best partners in stopping sex trafficking. Some new documents have come out as part of the ongoing lawsuit against Backpage and its founders by the feds that kind of undermine the entire narrative about Backpage.”
  * New Government Documents Reveal That Backpage Was Actively Helping Law Enforcement Track Down Traffickers (Techdirt)

• This YA author was invited then ejected for the crime of merely having authored lesbian erotica. “Watts was surprised to learn that she had suddenly been uninvited from the festival, and her name removed from its website. The reason? Allegedly, one of the adult festival coordinators was fearful that her adult lesbian erotica fiction was not suitable for teens. Of course, she was not planning–at all–to address or read from any of her adult books at a teen literary festival.”
  * 3RP author Julia Watts banned from Knoxville Teen Lit Festival – Three Rooms Press (Three Rooms Press)

• Banking’s war on sex is getting worse. “If this continues, it will disproportionately impact small sex-focused businesses, which lack the cashflow to withstand such financial setbacks, further marginalize sex workers, and decrease access to positive information about sexual health … these incidents have ramped up dramatically since March 21, 2018, when the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) and the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) passed in the Senate.”
  * Banks Are Waging A Secret War Against The Adult Industry (Vice)

• A new one by me, in which I wouldn’t let Apple talk off the record. “I started to hear warnings from adult-industry professionals that Apple Card’s privacy assurances were not to be trusted. It’s a good question: With Apple’s aggressively conservative stance on sex in the past, will it behave like banking’s war on sex and close out entire classes of “edgy” businesses, like the adult industry, marijuana-related companies and cryptocurrency?”
  * That Apple Card may not be as private as you think (Engadget)

• We’re putting up a big “send help” sign over here in the US. “We as a society can agree that the most effective policies are based on reliable data and rational debate. Moral panic on the right and purity politics on the left interfere with our right to sexual safety, pleasure and free expression by encouraging political in-fighting and self-censorship. Both threaten to replace the exchange of facts and civil examination of controversial ideas.”
  * America Is In a Sex Panic (Playboy)

Main post image: painting by Louis Braquet, showing now at Galerie Vinsantos/Funeral Gallery (New Orleans).

• In 2012 Louis Theroux took his cameras to Porn Valley and created one of the most misogynistic, warped, and utterly misleading video editorials I’d ever seen. Turns out, this was completely on-brand for Theroux, who describes himself as “puritanical” and went on-record supporting Britain’s disastrous internet porn restrictions. Looks like this time he’s gone after young sex workers, outing them and playing fast and loose with their consent, and the BBC is backing him up. (In this op-ed for Guardian, he depicts female porn performers as disease vectors for engaging in sex work.) “The BBC has issued a response after Louis Theroux’s forthcoming documentary Selling Sex came under fire from two of the people who took part in it.”
  * BBC responds to allegations against Louis Theroux’s new documentary (DigitalSpy)

• “Nars is making headlines for a “sexually-explicit” marketing video, which depicts a lipstick melting into a penis shape. The marketing video, shared yesterday on Nars’ Instagram channel, features the caption: “When the nudes keep you up all night”.”
  * Why beauty brands like Nars and Charlotte Tilbury are going X-rated (UK Style Yahoo)

• Marriott’s attacks on single female travelers and sex workers makes so much sense when this article reveals Marriott partnered with Polaris Project (Polaris got busted for making things up) to formulate this ICE-like program. “When the hotel behemoth Marriott International announced it was doing its part in the fight against sex trafficking by training more than 700,000 employees to spot the signs of potential trafficking in their guests earlier this year, the reaction wasn’t what the company expected.”
  * Marriott Trained Over 600,000 Employees To Combat Sex Trafficking, Which Sex Workers Say Is Harmful (Refinery29)

• “Experts have warned New Zealanders not to consume “sexy pavement lichen” because it could be contaminated with toxins. The University of Otago lichenologist Dr Allison Knight dubbed a common species of local lichen “sexy pavement lichen” after discovering it was being promoted as a natural alternative to Viagra in online marketplaces, especially in China.”
  * New Zealanders warned about the consumption of ‘sexy pavement lichen’ (Guardian)

• “Bella Thorne, who first rose to prominence as a Disney Channel star, has directed an adult film for Pornhub. “Her and Him” is described as an ethereal “Romeo and Juliet”-themed tale of two lovers wrestling between dominance and submission.”
  * Bella Thorne to Make Directorial Debut for Pornhub With BDSM-Themed ‘Her and Him’ (Indiewire)

• “Yesterday, ex-porn star Mia Khalifa left millions of her followers speechless when she revealed in an interview with life coach Megan Abbott that during the entirety of her short-lived but incredibly high-profile career, she only made a paltry $12,000.”
  * Mia Khalifa Saying She Made Only $12K Doing Porn Is Entirely Unsurprising (MEL Magazine)

• “A recent ruling by the California Supreme Court is causing a stir among adult business owners, including performers who have been discriminated against by the global banking system, raising hopes of relief — but misunderstandings may motivate merchants down a legal dead-end.”
  * Calif. Supreme Court Ruling Causes Confusion for Adult Merchants (XBIZ)

• “Today’s round of judicial nominations by the Trump administration include a Missouri district court seat for Sarah Pitlyk, counsel for religious group the Thomas More Society, a non-profit law firm formed to protect the right of protesters to harass people outside abortion clinics. The Thomas More Society now offers legal support to zealots waging the “War on Porn.””
  * Trump Picks Anti-Porn Activist for Missouri District Court (XBIZ)

• “Who is Maitland Ward? She’s one of the show’s season six stars, and what she’s doing now is so far from the wholesome qualities of Boy Meets World that we can feel Mr. Feeney blushing from here.”
  * ‘Boy Meets World’ Actress Maitland Ward Finds New Career In Porn (YourTango)

• “Pornography producers and sellers account for the lion’s share of copyright-infringement lawsuits in the U.S. — and judges may have seen enough. The courts are cracking down on porn vendors that file thousands of lawsuits against people for downloading and trading racy films on home computers, using tactics a judge called a “high tech shakedown.” In one case, two men were jailed in a scheme that netted $6 million in settlements.”
  * Judges May Be Reaching Limit with Copyright Profiteering by Pornography Sellers (Insurance Journal)

• “Berlin’s former Tempelhof airport has witnessed some major events in its time — it was a Nazi airfield during World War II, the site of the Berlin airlift during the Cold War, and most recently an emergency shelter for refugees fleeing Syria … The mayor of Berlin’s central Mitte district has proposed installing “Verichtungsboxen” — booths where prostitutes can meet clients — in the airport site, a bid to improve the safety of the city’s sex workers.”
  * Drive-in sex booths proposed at historic airport (Mercury News)

• If anyone is wondering I LOVE HER. “… the difference between a vulva and a vagina … why women should not put garlic in their vaginas. A challenge on Instagram from a woman who shoots ping pong balls from her vagina. A peer-reviewed scientific article looking at over 5,000 pieces of Chinese art and archaeological collections for vaginal jade eggs…that found none. Besides the word “vagina,” what do all of these viral moments of the past year have in common? Dr. Jen Gunter, MD.”
  * This New Book Answers Every Vagina Question You’re Scared to Google (InStyle)

• I think this is what’s been going on with me. “I asked Dr. Justin Lehmiller, a Research Fellow at the Kinsey Institute, why some people might be more likely to give themselves over to temporary celibacy during times of high anxiety … But anxiousexuality is different than a dry spell. It’s more existential.”
  * Are You Anxiousexual? (GQ)

• “She explained that costume departments know all about the items in her kit, but she doesn’t like to leave anything to chance. If she’s new on a set, she will bring Shibues in a full range of human skin tones and some silicone guards, too. She waved a lavender package containing one (brand name: Silicone Valley), then continued riffling through her supplies. “Knee pads or elbow pads in case someone’s on a hard floor. Sticky tape, moleskin. Wet Ones, tissues, breath mints. Baby oil so they can take anything that’s adhesive off…”
  * The Endangered Sex Scene (The Atlantic)

• “The L3 software requires a TSA agent to select the “type” of body being scanned, and there are only two options: male or female. Every time a passenger steps into the machine, a TSA agent must press either a pink button that activates an algorithm designed to analyze female bodies for potential safety threats, or a blue button for male bodies. If an agent isn’t sure, it’s official TSA policy for the agent to make a quick judgment based on the traveler’s gender presentation, and press a button accordingly.”
  * The TSA’s Technology Is Discriminating Against Trans People (PS Mag)

• “French web searchers who intend to find news and information when they type “lesbienne” into Google’s search engine will now receive informative results instead of adult content, thanks to critical tweaks to the company’s search algorithm … Numerama also found that Google’s Pride Month banner, intended to celebrate all LGBTQ people, would appear when users typed in such terms as “gay,” “homosexual,” “bisexual,” “transgender” and “queer.” But “lesbian” would display the banner alongside links to pornographic content.”
  * Google Tweaks Search Algorithm for ‘Lesbian’ to Display Less Porn (XBIZ)

• I’ve been saying this, with evidence, for well over a decade, but okay. “Women and men are equally aroused when presented with sexual images, a new study has found. It is widely viewed that men are more likely than women to become aroused by pornographic images.”
  * Women find porn just as arousing as men, study finds (Independent)

• “The idea came after the founders realized more and more doll owners were creating amateur videos with their gynoids. The content on the site is unlike anything else you’ll see in traditional adult content: a male actor talks with sex dolls as if they were real humans, kisses, and cuddles them.”
  * Adult Streaming Site ‘Dollbanger’ Shoots Exclusively with Sex Dolls (Future of Sex)

• “More than 800 men have joined a movement called “Abused in Scouting,” started by a group of lawyers who worried that the Boy Scouts of America were planning to file for bankruptcy, cutting short the timeline for victims to bring sex abuse claims against the organization in court.”
  * A Man Says He Was Abused ‘Hundreds’ of Times in Boy Scouts (TIME)

• “GOOP has promoted vaginal steaming, the origins of which include the false belief that that a uterus is full of toxins. If the myth weren’t so harmful, it would be laughable. If menstrual blood were filled with deadly toxins, how exactly does an embryo implant and thrive? This lie has been used to exclude menstruating women from school, work, and religious services. Vaginal steaming is a literal tool of the patriarchy. A literal tool of the patriarchy. I wrote that twice on purpose, because it’s a double tool of the patriarchy. You know the origins?”
  * No GOOP, we are most definitely not on the same side (Dr. Jen Gunter)

• “It is common for PayPal to place such permanent bans on content creators who deal, even tangentially, with the topic of sex—and these restrictions have become even more extensive following FOSTA. These bans have affected sex educators, writers, artists, and YouTubers—especially women and sexual minorities. But this is the first time that these opaque policies have been applied against a child sexual abuse prevention organization.”
  * PayPal fails to shut down Prostasia (Prostasia Foundation)

• “Many people, particularly from a younger generation, are coming to the issue from a different perspective than earlier generations. It’s no longer a moral judgment about sex; it’s a justice issue based on intersectional identities. Those who now support it “inherently understand that the decrim conversation is about economic justice, it is about racial justice, it is about gender justice, it is about trans justice,” Tasaki said.”
  * The Fight for Decriminalizing Sex Work Is About Justice (Rewire News)

• “A head sewn onto a mismatched body, a bucket of limbs and a cooler filled with penises are among items found by FBI agents during a raid on a Phoenix body-donation business.”
  * ‘Cooler filled with male genitalia’ found in raid of Phoenix body-donation company (AZ Central)

• “In this way, pedophile conspiracies act as a sort of propaganda of the counterrevolution, a fun-house reflection of the real threats to the social order. This is what connects QAnon and Pizzagate to McMartin to the witch hunts of the Middle Ages to the dawn of major religions. The demons may take different forms, but the conspiracy is basically the same: Our house is under attack.”
  * Epstein is a real pedophile. Why are QAnon and Pizzagate so focused on fake ones? (Mother Jones)

• “The Consumer Electronics Show will allow sex toys to win awards and be presented on the show floor next year, a year after the convention was mired in controversy when an award was revoked from a largely woman-run and woman-focused sex toy company.”
  * CES will allow sex toys at next year’s show (Verge)

Main post image by the amazing 2020Photography.

• The sex work vs. trafficking issue is a clear signifier of understanding around pro-choice. If they can’t demonstrate they understand the difference between adult women having consensual sex and girls being raped on the “Lolita Express” (Epstein) then they can’t be trusted with lawmaking around female bodily autonomy. Our bodies, our choices. We do not become children when we have sex on our own terms, nor is it vice-versa. The upside of this news item? Regular people get it now, and are asking lawmakers real questions. “In two separate exchanges during a town hall in Las Vegas on Saturday, Sen. Bernie Sanders was asked how he would distinguish between sex work and sex trafficking, an issue of particular relevance to people here. But the Vermont senator could not give a clear answer.”
  * Bernie Sanders didn’t give a definitive answer on sex work vs. sex trafficking (CNN)

• Oh god. Oh no. No no no no [DENIAL INTENSIFIES]… “Louise Linton, Instagram-disgraced wife of Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, is filming a “sex thriller” with Ed Westwick (better known as Chuck Bass) … Linton wrote, directed, and stars in the film, Me, You, Madness, which is about a thief who robs a Malibu mansion, only to discover that it belongs to a serial killer, played by Linton [who] plays a “bisexual psychopath killer” who is “uninhibited” and “very carnal and confident in her sexuality.””
  * Did You Know Louise Linton Is Filming a ‘Sex Thriller’ With Chuck Bass? (The Cut)

• “[RealDoll/Realbotix] upped their game with RealDoll X, a new Android app that allows users to create their own digital girlfriend. Similar to the beta version of the app released in 2017, the upgraded app enables users to design her personality, and then upload it into one of those sophisticated sexbot heads for an added boost of realism.”
  * RealDollX App Gets X-Rated Upgrade with Foreplay and Sex Modes (Future of Sex)

• The upside is that now we have big outlets like Out asking these questions. “In the wake of Tumblr banning porn and the increasing censorship of pornography as well as suggestive material online, many began to flock to Twitter as an outlet to share and consume pornographic content. But this week, a report from XBIZ pointed out that the service’s newly updated Terms of Service could put an end to communities that include porn stars, other sex workers and “alt accounts.” The social media platform, however, has no plans to restrict such content.”
  * Your Alt Account (and Favorite Porn Star) Have a Home on Twitter (Out)

• “Driven by a need to find community and speak freely about our lives, trans folks were able to find each other online. The trans internet grew out of the activism of the previous decades, when trans women like Anne Ogborn fought and put themselves in harm’s way to make sure that later chat forums and meet-ups could exist, online and IRL.”
  * An Oral History of the Early Trans Internet (Gizmodo)

• When life gives you lemons? “Harris matched with over 600 men. She started all of her conversations with a simple blunt request: “Dick pic?” In addition, her Tinder bio notified users that she was on a dick-pic hunt for a project … She says the flood of photos was almost too much for her phone to handle. “I had to turn [off] my notifications as it kept crashing my phone,” she said.”
  * 140 Dicks From Tinder (2019), Oil on Canvas (The Cut)

• It’s the least that should’ve been done. “Federal judge Joan Ericksen has sentenced Prenda Law’s John Steele today to 60 months in prison for fraud.”
  * Prenda Law’s John Steele Sentenced to 60 Months for Fraud (XBIZ)

• “According to former Badoo employees, Bumble has a misogyny problem within its own parent company, and her founding partner, with whom she says she speaks between two and five times every day, is right in the middle of it.”
  * Exclusive Investigation: Sex, Drugs, Misogyny And Sleaze At The HQ Of Bumble’s Owner (Forbes)

• “French, who had never dabbled in sex work—and didn’t even watch porn—was aghast at the idea … Two weeks later, with her financial situation stretched to the breaking point, she created a profile on a cam site. To her surprise, she loved it. “I realized that I was so wrong to think all the things I thought about camgirls before I became one, because it was not at all the reality of what it is to become a camgirl or a sex worker.””
  * The Former Cam Girl Shaking Up the Porn World (Daily Beast)

• Some people like to play with different senses withheld. Other people live there 24-7. “When I bring my hearing loss explicitly and intentionally into sex by turning it into play, it makes me feel understood and appreciated in a way that very little else does … I like to play with my partners’ sense of hearing (those who have normal hearing, that is) because it evens the playing field a little and gives them a brief glimpse into what sex is like for me.”
  * Having Great Sex With Hearing Loss Takes Practice (Vice)

• “Talent agencies in the adult industry have begun complying with new California Labor Commission requirements requiring them to “provide educational materials on sexual harassment prevention and eating disorders to performers who work with them.” This requirement, also known as California Assembly Bill AB-2338, applies to all talent agencies operating in California, both mainstream and adult.”
  * Adult Agencies Begin Complying With New Sexual Harassment, Eating Disorders Rule (XBIZ)

• “On Saturday, billionaire financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was arrested for the alleged sex trafficking of dozens of minors in New York and Florida between 2002 and 2005.”
  * Everything We Know About the Sex Crimes Case Against Jeffrey Epstein (New York Magazine)

  See also:

  * Alex Acosta strongly defends handling of Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficking case (Telegraph)
  * Everything We Know About Jeffrey Epstein’s Private ‘Pedophile Island’ (Intelligencer)
  * Inside Jeffrey Epstein’s New York mansion: ‘Vast trove’ of lewd photos, a life-size doll and other oddities (USA Today)
  * Southern District of New York memo Re: United States v. Jeffrey Epstein (Scribd)

July 4th post photo by Roseography, who can be supported on Patreon and seen on Twitter (he just got banned by Instagram and his Tumblr was restricted). I featured him previously in 2016.

• ““Deepfake” porn perpetrators are being given a free hand to “shatter lives” because the law is unfit for purpose, a study has found. Clare McGlynn, professor of law at Durham University and one of the report’s authors, said: “Due to the serious legal and policy failings identified in this report, we are effectively gambling with people’s lives.”
  * ‘Deepfake’ porn perpetrators are being given a free hand because the law is unfit for purpose, study finds (Telegraph)

• “Without context, [viewers of Midsommar] only see a girl becoming smitten, bright red hearts in her eyes. They don’t know they’ll soon be privy to a deliciously fucked-up courtship—or that it’ll climax in one of the most transcendently insane sex scenes in recent memory, as hypnotic and unsettling as it is just straight-up funny.”
  * Inside the Craziest Movie Sex Scene of the Year (Daily Beast)

• “Hawaii is the first state in the U.S. to remove a requirement that a person be a victim of sex trafficking to have a prostitution conviction erased.”
  * New Hawaii prostitution law is 1st in the nation (AP)

• “The creator of DeepNude, an app that used a machine learning algorithm to “undress” images of clothed women announced Thursday that he’s killing the software, after viral backlash for the way it objectifies women.”
  * Creator of DeepNude, App That Undresses Photos of Women, Takes It Offline (Vice)

• “MindGeek’s Nutaku.net is celebrating Pride Month with a multi-million dollar initiative for developing queer adult games, signaling demand for a more inclusive adult games industry.”
  * Adult games storefront Nutaku launches $5 million investment fund for erotic LGBTQ games (Game Daily)

• “Perhaps nowhere is this mismatch between experience and physiology more in the news than reports of erectile dysfunction attributed to pornography. Seven independent labs have been unable to find an association between time spent viewing sex films and experiencing more erectile difficulties with a partner.”
  * Porn Didn’t Break Your Penis (Daily Beast)

• “Miley Cyrus has debuted the video for the latest single from her recent EP She Is Coming. And it’s a doozy: a latex-heavy deconstruction of sex and gender and the human body, and one that acts as a stirring distillation of Cyrus’s rebellious artistry and increasingly political output.”
  * Miley Cyrus is a sex-positive Joan of Arc in new video for Mother’s Daughter (Independent)

• “A newly unsealed complaint shows how Google paid Android creator Andy Rubin $90 million in severance after he left the company amid allegations of sexual misconduct.”
  * This Former Google Executive Was Accused Of Running A “Sex Ring” (Buzzfeed)

• “Twenty-two women are suing the adult video production company Girls Do Porn for fraud, coercion, and misrepresentation, after the company spread and sold the videos online—even after it promised the films would likely never reach a wide audience … Not only did Girls Do Porn post the videos to its website, the videos were ripped off and spread on free clip sites like Pornhub and YouPorn, where friends and family apparently noticed them in some cases. Girls Do Porn also has an official channel on Pornhub, where it posts clips from the videos. Those videos have gained 672 million views …”
  * ‘Girls Do Porn’ Goes to Trial Over Allegations Women Were Tricked Into Videos (Vice)

• “So I fired up The Sims 4 and opened up a Cum Café. Listen, I can’t explain it to you any better than that—it’s a café that exclusively serves semen and semen-related products. I’m sorry. I thought it would make a good Kotaku feature, but instead I’m just deeply ashamed of myself and my actions.”
  * Life Got You Down? Load Up The Sims 4 And Open A Semen Café (Kotaku)

• “New age restrictions on pornography that are set to come into effect in the UK next month are a “privacy timebomb”, a new report has warned. “Due to the sensitive nature of age verification data, there needs to be a higher standard of protection than the baseline which is offered by data protection legislation,” said Open Rights Group executive director Jim Killock.”
  * UK porn block is ‘privacy timebomb’ (Independent)

• “Adult performer Violet Monroe was watching the new HBO Teen Drama “Euphoria” when she heard a familiar voice on the screen say “Oh, thank you. Aaaaaaahhhhh.” … We contacted Kink.com’s Mike Stabile, who was as surprised as Monroe about HBO’s use of audio from their content. “Kink had no idea this was happening,” Stabile told us.”
  * Violet Monroe Surprised by Kink.com Audio Cameo in HBO’s ‘Euphoria’ (XBIZ)

• “If you glance around a New York City subway car on any given day, you might spot a few advertisements for erectile dysfunction, male libido, and condoms. What you won’t see are ads for Dame, a sex toy company for women and non-binary people—because the Metropolitan Transit Authority banned it last year.”
  * A Sex Toy Company Is Suing the NYC Subway for Censorship (Vice)

• “On Sunday, Teen Vogue tweeted an article titled, “Why Sex Work Is Real Work,” and many clutched their pearls at the audacity of talking to teens about sex work. Conservative talking heads quickly posted their disdain: “Why is a teen magazine promoting prostitution to their 13-year-old readers?” Others falsely equated sex work with sex trafficking, such as Lila Rose, the founder of the pro-life organization Live Action.”
  * Teen Vogue Defends Sex Work Because Teenage Girls Can Handle Politics (Popdust)

• “Federal judge Joan Ericksen has sentenced Paul Hansmeier today to 14 years in prison for fraud … “Paul Hansmeier was the driving force behind this massive scheme,” the government stated with repetitive, harsh rhetoric. “It was Hansmeier who came up with the idea to construct a copyright settlement mill focused on pornographic films. It was Hansmeier who directed his brother to upload clients’ movies onto file-sharing websites to lure downloaders. It was Hansmeier who drafted nearly all of the legal pleadings used to deceive judges. It was Hansmeier who invented phantom hacking allegations…””
  * Prenda Law’s Paul Hansmeier Sentenced to 14 Years for Fraud (XBIZ)

• “For a while, Lacey and Larkin’s strategy had worked: They’d won case after case, with the support of Big Tech and civil libertarians alike. But by the time the Feds descended on Paradise Valley that morning in the spring of 2018, the tide had turned. Many of their friends and allies had fled, spooked in part by too much bad press. The tech industry, which faced withering scrutiny over its role in the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, had thrown them under the bus.”
  * Inside Backpage.com’s Vicious Battle With the Feds (Wired)

• “A robot sex expert and former far-right candidate who was awarded a Queen’s Birthday honour for “significant service to international education” says he is setting up a graduate school with Fraser Anning which will teach classes on “Trumpism” and “Bannonism”.”
  * Robot sex expert on honours list plans college with Fraser Anning to teach ‘Trumpism’ (Guardian)

• “This year, one thing stood out at the various parties and meetups: none of the people in attendance, from well-known porn stars to newly minted cam girls, could find each other on social media platforms. So we—your very much alive and visible authors—decided to search for one another. Sure enough, even typing our exact handles into Twitter’s search bar yielded “no results.””
  * Shadowbans: Secret Policies Depriving Sex Workers of Income and Community (Titsandsass)

• “A nurse assumed every health problem related to being part of the sex trade — including my sexual assault, which in reality had no connection. She failed to consider how part of my mental health issues were related to events from my adolescence, like my suicide attempts, car crash, and abusive relationship. This nurse put together a false narrative, which made me simultaneously angry, frustrated, and hopeless.”
  * No, Nurse, My Health Issues Aren’t All Rooted In My Sex Work (Bright Magazine)

• “In conversation with Vulture this month, the filmmakers and showrunners behind these projects expressed in no small terms that the process of getting queer sex onscreen hasn’t gotten any easier. But as more and more queer creators are being empowered to tell their own stories, onscreen depictions of LGBTQ intimacy have grown richer. Below, we ask Akhavan, Vida’s Tanya Saracho, Special’s Ryan O’Connell, Pose’s Steven Canals, Port Authority’s Danielle Lessovitz, and Wild Nights with Emily’s Madeleine Olnek to break down their best sex scenes and explain what makes each work.”
  * How Do You Choreograph a Good Queer Sex Scene? 6 TV and Film Creators Explain. (Vulture)

Main post image of Cenit Nadir via In the blue sparkling water (C-Heads Magazine).

• This is an interesting article, but even I am amazed how NYT managed to omit the key role misogyny and white-right campaigns against sex workers (like censoring ‘brigades’) has in this issue. “Amid the recent surge in hate crimes and shootings, some of the suspects in racist attacks and their supporters have invoked the societal ills caused by pornography in manifestos or online forums. White nationalists, misogynistic clubs and online forums have also drawn a connection between pornography and anti-Semitism. Many of the adherents appear to be young men who blame the prevalence of pornography online for their own struggles and what they perceive as society’s decline.”
  * Among Some Hate Groups, Porn Is Viewed as a Conspiracy (NYT)

• This link is straightforward coverage, but the context is important. Ms. Bergdorf is an out trans woman who is handling this situation with an outstanding amount of grace and sex-positivity. And the issue is now wrenching open a long-needed public discussion about the negative sexualization of LGBTQ people. “Childline has cut ties with Munroe Bergdorf three days after the transgender activist announced she had been appointed as the charity’s first LGBT+ campaigner. A representative for Bergdorf has accused the organisation of “bowing down to pressure from a transphobic lobby running a hate campaign”, pointing to Twitter users who described the appointment as “inappropriate” and referred to her as a “porn model”.”
  * Trans activist Munroe Bergdorf says NSPCC bowed to hate campaign in dropping her (Independent)

• Spoiler: the harassment epidemic (being ignored by platforms) is coming from anti-porn incel-style right wingers. “Porn performers have long been harassed on the web, but recently this targeting has spiraled into an industry crisis. In May, the Adult Performers Actors Guild—the adult industry’s union—sent a letter to Facebook, Instagram’s parent company, alleging that nearly 200 performers have had their accounts “terminated without explanation,” over the course of several months. The accounts didn’t bear any particularly scandalous content: In many instances, the letter alleges, there “was no nudity shown” on the shuttered accounts and “it appears that [individuals’ accounts] were terminated merely because of their status as an adult performer.””
  * Instagram’s ‘Solicitation’ Policies Are Exposing Porn Performers to Harassment (Daily Beast)

• I have very mixed feelings about Booker capitalizing on gender sex-exploration and the ‘porn ruins you for real life’ myths. “… the first of its three episodes, titled “Striking Vipers,” boldly goes where no Black Mirror episode has gone before: the world of porn … Rather than Gamergate or the homoeroticism of fighting games, Black Mirror co-creator Annabel Jones maintains that “Striking Vipers” was more about porn and how the brave new world of VR porn could affect people’s offline relationships.”
  * Inside ‘Black Mirror’s’ First Porn Episode: ‘It’s a Sexual Playground’ (Daily Beast)

• “Silicon Valley’s biggest companies have partnered with a single organization to fight sex trafficking — one that maintains a data collection pipeline, is partnered with Palantir, and helps law enforcement profile and track sex workers without their consent. Major websites like Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and others are working with a nonprofit called Thorn (“digital defenders of children”) and, perhaps predictably, its methods are dubious.”
  * Sex, lies, and surveillance: Something’s wrong with the war on sex trafficking (Engadget)
  See also: Behind the writing: Sex trafficking orgs, lies, and profit (Patreon | Violet Blue)

• “For the past six weeks, XBIZ has been conducting an extensive investigation into the deletion of an unusually large number of Instagram accounts of adult performers since the beginning of this year … Infantilism and secrecy, coupled with tech-bro culture, makes Silicon Valley the second element of this Perfect Storm against sex workers”
  * Instagram and the ‘War on Porn’: An XBIZ Explainer (XBIZ)

• “… while OhMiBod’s vibrators have enhanced the level of interaction between cam models and their viewers, these devices are not directly activated by tips. Rather the sex toys respond to the sound alerts models receive each time they get new tips. For this reason, I feel they are missing that exciting edge that that rival company Lovense has. Albeit with the slightly questionable and heteronormative tagline, ‘”Let him control you,” Lovense’s line of remote sex toys have revolutionized the sex technology industry. In particular, the Lush vibrator is especially popular among cam models.”
  * Cam Models Are Using Tip-controlled Sex Toys to Boost Income (and Intimacy) (Future of Sex)

• “Jennifer Tilly: This scene where I take her finger — I just thought, “Oh, [I’ll] put it in my mouth!” I improvised that. She’s like, “Oh, where’s this finger going? Oh, it’s not going south, it’s going north. Ok, now it’s going south.””
  * Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon revisit their lesbian neo-noir ‘Bound’ (Entertainment Weekly)

• “Riley Reyes, through her work with the Adult Performers Advocacy Committee (APAC) — like Lain and the FSC, Alana Evans through her advocacy with Adult Performers Actors Guild (APAG), and others — has seen the effects of untreated, unacknowledged suffering … “The biggest threat sex workers face to our mental health is stigma. Most problems performers face lead back to that. Working in a stigmatized profession can lead to loss of housing, banking and even the support of our own families,” she said. “The judgment and shame heaped on us by society can be an incredibly isolating force. It’s easy to forget that, while many fans idolize us, many other people demonize us. And neither is accurate.””
  * “Listen to Us!” Performers, Advocates Speak Out on Mental Health, Self-Care (XBIZ)

• “About 100 people stripped naked in front of Facebook’s New York headquarters on Sunday, as part of a protest against what they view as censorship regarding Facebook and Instagram’s policies around artistic nudity. As dawn rose over the city, the demonstrators lay naked on the road, each with large images of male nipples covering their genitalia.”
  * Demonstrators bare nipples outside Facebook HQ in censorship protest (CNN)

• “Mexico City lawmakers have given the green light to decriminalize sex work in the capital, hoping it will be a first step to a crackdown on sex trafficking that traps thousands of Mexican women and children.”
  * Mexico City will decriminalize sex work in move against trafficking (Guardian)

Main post image via Lotus Lain on Twitter.

• Since Trump seized power in the US, the war on sex and women’s bodies has gone nuclear. “These right-wing ghouls — who fulminate idiotically about how women could still be allowed to get abortions before they know they are pregnant (Alabama’s Clyde Chambliss) or try to legislate the medically impossible removal of ectopic pregnancy and reimplantation into the uterus (Ohio’s John Becker) — are the stuff of unimaginably gothic horror. Ever since Roe was decided in 1973, conservatives have been laboring to roll back abortion access, with absolutely zero knowlege of or interest in how reproduction works. And all the while, those who have been trying to sound the alarm have been shooed off as silly hysterics.”
  * Our Fury Over Abortion Was Dismissed for Decades As Hysterical (The Cut)

• “Both Armslist and Grindr presented tough facts and came amid an undercurrent of hostility toward Section 230 immunity. Fortunately, both courts affirmed the vitality of the immunity and embraced the prevailing view of an overwhelming majority of courts that so long as a website is merely permitting content to be posted, plaintiffs may not plead around Section 230 by framing their claims as targeting a site’s alleged defects, failure to take safety precautions, or the like.”
  * Grindr and Armslist Cases Reaffirm Core Protections for User-Generated Content (JD Supra)

• “Crimes against women are notoriously underreported in the United Kingdom and around the world—particularly when they’re of a sexual nature. Now, one police unit in England is trying to address this problem, and it’s a surprisingly bureaucratic response to a very violent problem: The unit is changing how the complaints are classified as they come in, and early research indicates it may be having effective results.”
  * Britain Is Making Sexual Harassment a Hate Crime (Foreign Policy)

• “One of the most exciting selections in this year’s Cannes Directors’ Fortnight is Finnish filmmaker Jukka-Pekka Valkeapää’s tale of catharsis and bondage, Dogs Don’t Wear Pants. [It] tells the story of a man who loses his wife in a tragic accident and finds a strange kind of solace when he accidentally stumbles across a local dominatrix and strikes up an unusual relationship.”
  * Cannes 2019: DOGS DON’T WEAR PANTS First Poster & NSFW Clips For This S&M Drama (Screen Anarchy)

• “Recalling one particularly harrowing example in Soho, which was justified as an anti-sex trafficking operation, Niki tells me: “250 police officers, armed with dogs and riot gear, broke down sex workers’ doors and handcuffed them on the floor.” Women were paraded in front of press cameras wearing only their underwear; others were cruelly “outed” as sex workers to their families.”
  * Sex Workers Are Having Their Earnings Confiscated in Trafficking Stings (Vice)

• “A Danish MP has admitted he placed an advert for his re-election on one of the biggest porn websites in the world. Joachim B Olsen admitted that he had indeed placed the ad on Pornhub in an attempt to reach new voters.”
  * ‘You have to be where your voters are’: Danish MP places advert for reelection on Pornhub (Yahoo News UK)

• “There are shot glasses commemorating the event and it birthed memes ahead of the annual Army-Navy game. But the inside story of how an EA-18G Growler jet crew drew a penis across the clear blue skies of Washington state in 2017 has never been told. Until now.”
  * The Navy’s probe into sky penis (Navy Times)

• “Berlin is a rare, welcoming place for radical perspectives in porn, which is often dominated by a starchy, commercial aesthetic. Films here often come from queer and/or feminist perspectives, and political discussions about labor, capitalism, and privilege are important to its participants. Over the years, this community has built a scene that values a radical, punk ethos, one that frequently has more in common with experimental film than with the more straightforward goals of mainstream porn films.”
  * Berlin’s Porn Scene Is Open, Experimental, and Endlessly Fun (Vice)

• “A Miami federal judge ruled last week that IP addresses alone cannot be considered as concrete evidence that a particular individual infringed on a plaintiff’s copyright, as attorneys representing Strike 3 Holdings [Vixen, Tushy, Blacked, Blacked Raw and Tushy Raw] claimed.”
  * Florida Judge: IP Address Not Enough for Porn Copyright Cases (XBIZ)

• “The law is designed to prevent children from accessing adult content … Yet ignoring the fact that teenagers will pretty easily circumnavigate said restrictions, there’s more at stake here. For self-employed workers in the sex industry, the measures could pose a tangible threat to their income and safety. And the magnitude of this threat won’t be fully realised until the law comes into force.”
  * How The New UK Porn Block Could Put Independent Sex Workers At Risk (Elle)

• Note: research paper perspective believes all porn is harmful. “This paper purposes an image amino acid-based method to identify a pornographic image. The proposed method works by converting an image into biological amino acid form and then extracting a signature from the image (which is represented in amino acid form) using biological tools. Using this method, a number of signatures are obtained from a set of few known pornographic images.”
  * Using Amino Acids to Identify Pornographic Images (Improbable Research)

• “Facebook does not know how many under-13s or sex offenders in the UK use its platforms, a senior executive has said at the independent inquiry into child sexual abuse. Answering a question about safety checks carried out on new accounts, Julie de Bailliencourt said the company had no way of verifying the age or criminal history of people signing up.”
  * No way to screen out under-13s or sex offenders on Facebook, inquiry told (Guardian)

• “FOSTA has created tremendous real world damage … Lura Chaberlian has now published a deep dive into how FOSTA is a “hostile law” with “a human cost” for Fordham Law School. The quick summary of the paper is that FOSTA hasn’t done anything to help sex trafficking victims, but has created real harms for many women, especially those engaged in consensual sex work … This is a huge collection of evidence around the very real harms of FOSTA. As the paper notes, rather than saving lies FOSTA is “a law with a body count” attached to it:”
  * The Human Cost Of FOSTA (TechDirt)
  See also: Suicide, violence, and going underground: FOSTA’s body count (Engadget)

• Remember this story about a high school paper set to profile a student who worked in adult entertainment, and the school’s leadership tried to screen/spike the story, and possibly fire the journalism teacher? Great news: the students published the piece! It’s terrific. Here it is: “Throughout their high school years, students are often told to follow their dreams and pursue what they love. Despite encountering obstacles — such as a difficult freshman year and leaving her house — Caitlin Fink, an 18-year-old senior at Bear Creek who recently started a career in adult entertainment, is doing just that.”
  * Risky business: starting a career in the adult entertainment industry (The Bruin Voice)
  See also: The Voice shall not be silenced! (The Bruin Voice)

• “A group of sex workers is starting to organize against Facebook and Instagram for removing their accounts without explanation. Around 200 performers and models have included their usernames in a letter to Facebook asking the network to address this issue … The APAG is encouraging members of the adult industry to fill out an online form detailing how platforms have blocked or banned them.”
  * A Sex Workers Union Is Organizing Against Instagram Discrimination (Vice)
  See also: A Student at an Oregon Community College Says Instructors Flunked Her for Being a Porn Actress. She’s Suing. (Willamette Week)

• “When clips are inevitably stolen and reuploaded on Pornhub, Cyboid says there’s “no realistic way for [performers] to fight it unless [they] sign up with a MindGeek site” as a verified model. And because MindGeek has cornered a huge chunk of the adult content industry, it inevitably forces performers to use its services. This isn’t necessarily to their benefit, either. Pornhub’s Model Payment Program pays verified models based on views, which ends up hurting performers with niche adult communities, like indie queer and trans creators.”
  * Don’t expect Pornhub to save Tumblr or sex workers (Daily Dot)

• “Much of what appears on popular porn sites is stolen content or films that were produced in unhygienic, unethical, and unsafe circumstances. [But] Feminist and ethical adult-film production houses want to provide porn that’s professional, empowering, political, and consensual, and disrupts the usual representation of heteronormative sex in adult films. Ethical porn means fair wages, fair labor practices, no sex trafficking, no pressure, and safe sex for everyone.”
  * Meet the new pornographers who want to make adult entertainment better for everyone (Chicago Reader)

• PHEW. There were right-wing protestors at the capitol today claiming acceptance of trans students meant teaching “obscenity” and anal sex to children… The wignuts lost. “California education officials have approved a framework for teaching sexual health courses that cover sexual orientation and gender identity. The California State Board of Education has approved LGBT-inclusive sexual education guidelines for public and charter schools to use in all grades from kindergarten through high school.”
  * CA board approves LGBT-inclusive sex ed guidelines (EBAR)

• “Whereas 1.1% of Americans identified as bisexual in 2008, 3.3% did so in 2018. In other words, the rate of bisexual identification tripled in just 10 years. And not only that, but gay and lesbian individuals used to outnumber bisexuals—but now there are about twice as many self-identified bisexuals as there are self-identified gays and lesbians. Those are pretty striking changes in a short period of time.”
  * The Number of Americans Identifying as Bisexual has Tripled in the Last Decade (Sex & Psychology)

• “The constitutional challenge to FOSTA chugs on. A few weeks ago the DOJ filed its opposition brief to defend FOSTA, and then last week several amicus briefs were filed intending to support the government’s side. But in reading the one filed by twenty-one state attorneys general, it seems that’s not what it did.”
  * Twenty-one States Inadvertently Tell The DC Circuit That The Plaintiffs Challenging FOSTA Have A Case (TechDirt)

• “A sex toy that was banned from this year’s CES tech show after winning an innovation award has been given the prize again, four months later. The Ose robotic vibrator by Lora DiCarlo was originally given the prize by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA) in January. However, the CTA quickly changed its mind and ousted the device, causing outrage. The organisation has now offered a “sincere apology” to Lora DiCarlo.”
  * CES sex toy reawarded robotics prize (BBC)

• I wish I was rich, part one million: “In Eden, Vernon meets with clients for bespoke fittings and displays her jewelry and objets. Erotic paintings and sleek cabinets line forest-like walls, and a Fornasetti leopard keeps watch from the commode beside us. The atmosphere is hushed and relaxed, the color scheme of green chosen for its unisex nature … Reclining in a Gio Ponti chair amid her spotlit handiwork—pastel feather ticklers, necklaces that double as harnesses, bracelets that fasten you to another—Vernon twists her double-sphere massage rings around a manicured finger.”
  * A sexual anthropologist makes a case for BDSM wellness (Playboy)

• Warning for survivors of sexual assault, abuse, and trauma. “…the jury would hear testimony from a Mexican family with four children, three girls and a boy. After Raniere offered to tutor the children, the family moved to upstate New York, where NXIVM was headquartered. “Instead, he had sex with all three daughters and, in order to do it, he turned family against family, sister against sister,” Hajjar said.”
  * NXIVM: Sex, Lies, Porn, Consent at Center of Keith Raniere Trial (Rolling Stone)

• “Georgia Governor Brian Kemp signed a bill into law that would ban abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, which is before most people know they’re pregnant … But this is not merely a six-week ban on abortion—it’s even more insidious than that. Georgia’s bill is actually a personhood law in disguise, effectively criminalizing not just abortion providers, but also pregnant people for having abortions or even miscarrying. It’s a near-total ban on abortion.”
  * The Cruel Genius of Georgia’s Abortion Ban (Vice)

Main post image via Chicago Reader — From left: Mistress Velvet, Chelsea Ross, and Alejandra Guerrero.

• “Pornhub confirmed to BuzzFeed News that it is interested in acquiring Tumblr after news broke [today] that Verizon is looking to sell the blogging platform … Price said that restoring Tumblr’s NSFW edge would be central to their acquisition of it, were it to actually happen. Tumblr owner Verizon is reportedly currently seeking a buyer for the blogging platform, which according to the Wall Street Journal has struggled to meet revenue targets.”
  * Pornhub Is “Extremely Interested” In Acquiring Tumblr (BuzzFeed)

• “XBIZ has been investigating the general issue of corporate censorship of sex workers, the many stories about possible extortion attempts by rogue social media platform employees and anonymous associates … What is actually happening is that for the past several months an anonymous person (or persons) has been systematically and deliberately harassing members of a historically marginalized group (sex workers) through at least two interlinked Twitter accounts. The victims targeted by this campaign are almost exclusively women. The Twitter accounts have been set up exclusively for this purpose and post nothing but tweets targeting their victims on a daily basis.”
  * Twitter, Instagram Fail to Stop Shadowy Campaign Against Porn Stars (XBIZ)

• “The show purports to unpack the stereotypes of life as a dominatrix, but really just reinforces them at every turn. The main character is reduced to an archetype of an angry, traumatized woman who aggressively yells at men and is a control freak. Like most mainstream portrayal of BDSM, a nuanced understanding of power dynamics, consent and negotiation are utterly missing.”
  * A Dominatrix Reviews ‘Bonding,’ Netflix’s Show About a Dominatrix (Vice)

• “More than a hundred sex workers and supporters marched in Mexico City on Wednesday, asking the government to recognize their legal status and guarantee access to HIV medication after fears of shortages under President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador … In 2014, a Mexico City judge ruled that sex workers had the right to be recognized as non-salaried workers, making their work legal, but activists say the local law hasn’t been updated to reflect the decision.”
  * ‘Who owns the street corner?’: Mexico City sex workers march for rights (Reuters)

• “While the country outside Vibe’s walls continues to struggle with conversations about sex, the bar’s staff of self-educated vibe sommeliers is more than happy to answer questions, give recommendations and talk specs. There’s even a diagram of the female anatomy printed on the menu, alongside a list of cocktails including cassis oolong and Calpis-hai, a yogurt-based soft drink with a shot of shochu.”
  * Inside Vibe Bar, Japan’s Premier (and Underground) Dildo Bar (Playboy)

• “There are layout and structural similarities between PleazeMe and Facebook, but in all rational reality, that’s where any comparisons end. PleazeMe, while intended for anonymous, erotic conversation, already seems like a lighter, more positive destination for our online brains … Photo sharing is limited to holding a private photo vault that users can share with approved members, because indiscriminate photo sharing is something that can immediately ruin the experience on any social network. The focus of the network is to encourage and promote open discussion about sex and sexuality without any type of censorship or fear of the ban hammer due to certain keywords.”
  * PleazeMe Is A Delightfully Erotic Yet Somehow Way Less Creepy Facebook (Forbes)

• “In January, Slixa gave out $5,000 in awards for critical essays about the impacts of FOSTA/SESTA, in the US and globally. In addition to that prize money, we made $5,000 in donations to sex work-focused organizations to match the awards given for writing. Last month, Slixa pushed to highlight the work of two important organizations (The Black Sex Worker Collective, and the Desiree Alliance) doing on-the-ground work with providers and advocating for the rights of marginalized peoples whose lives are most threatened by these vague and puritanical new Federal laws … This month it is our goal to help the Woodhull Freedom Foundation make their 10th annual Sexual Freedom Summit more inclusive and more accessible by more people than ever before.”
  * Giving Back Matters More Now: A Letter From Slixa.com’s CEO (Slixa)

• “An ominous warning from Kentucky state Attorney General Andy Beshear suggests that the Derby is a prime target for sex traffickers … [yet] many sex worker advocacy groups and anti-trafficking organizations alike say that there isn’t much evidence to support the idea that events like the Super Bowl or the Kentucky Derby are correlated with a rise in sex trafficking rates.”
  * No, ‘Sex Trafficking’ Won’t Actually Increase During the Kentucky Derby (Rolling Stone)

• “This weekend, we successfully ran the third London Porn Film Festival. We were attacked by trans and sex worker exclusionary radical feminists, who reported us to Camden Council. Despite increased costs, an aggressive threat of prosecution, being forced to censor sections of our closing film, and a visit from the police, we had our best year yet. We received incredible community support and were steadfast in our determination to ensure the festival went ahead.”
  * Why we run London Porn Film Festival despite protests, censorship, and hate (Dazed)

• “I have been a medical doctor in South Africa for 10 years now and a sexuality and health communicator for eight. Whether the topic is condom use, sexually transmitted diseases, pregnancy, or contraception, messaging for young people tends to focus on the prevention of disease and pregnancy rather than consent or pleasure.”
  * I’m a Doctor and I Believe Sexual Pleasure Is a Human Right (Teen Vogue)

Main post image via Daphne Groeneveld by Zoey Grossman (Portraits of Girls).

• Right-wing feminists, which the Guardian have uncritically platformed for over a decade, have harassed a trans-positive erotic film fest. “Faced with the prospect of a picket, organisers of the London porn film festival, which describes itself as “celebrating queer, feminist, radical and experimental porn”, pulled screenings from the Horse Hospital, an arts venue in Bloomsbury. The three-day event will instead be held at a new location disclosed only to ticket holders. Janice Williams, chair of the activist group Object, said the films on show promoted “degradation and oppression”. Rude Jude, one of the festival’s organisers, disagreed. “This is the next step on from the moral panic and the rightwing conservative groups that protested this kind of thing before.””
  * London porn festival goes into hiding after feminist protests (Guardian)

• “The profile is almost complete, set to be published in the May 3 issue of the newspaper, which is led by an all-female editorial board. The piece charts the student’s path into the porn industry, including a fallout with her parents that led her to leave home last year. It humanizes her, said Bailey, a 17-year-old junior … Now, however, the story is encountering resistance from school administrators. The officials are threatening to dismiss the newspaper’s faculty adviser, who was recently named educator of the year by the Northern California Society of Professional Journalists, if she doesn’t submit the article to them for prior review.”
  * A story on a teen porn worker could cost a California high school journalism teacher her job (Mercury News)

• A lot of people have wanted to talk to me about Arya’s sex scene. It really surprised people, made some uncomfortable. Others saw something they felt was very important. I think this is the best article on the subject. “In the second episode of season eight of “Game of Thrones,” we are reminded that young Arya Stark isn’t just a killer of all those who have harmed her family. She’s also a young woman with a crush — on her friend Gendry — who has a chance to act on it before what she assumes will be her death. The show has been foreshadowing that relationship since an infamous scene in episode five of season two, when a then-underage Arya stole peeks at Gendry’s bare chest.”
  * What Arya’s sex scene in “Game of Thrones” got right about young women and sex (NBC News)

• “[Three] briefs were filed in support of the federal government’s pro-FOSTA position in the “Woodhull Freedom Foundation v. United States” case currently being heard at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. These groups argued that “any inadvertent ‘chilling’ effects on speech can be remedied through education regarding what the law does and does not do” … The government’s filing of their position last week did not focus on the constitutional issues arising from FOSTA’s deliberately overreaching, ambiguously worded provisions, but instead challenged the legal standing of the plaintiffs to bring forth the lawsuit.”
  * New Amicus Briefs in FOSTA Appeal Highlight Ideological Split (XBIZ)
  See also: Sex website shuts down in U.S., blaming ‘dumb’ trafficking laws (Mercury News)

• “You’ve probably heard of the idea of a queer “scene,” perhaps most often from people who don’t care for it. But what, exactly, is this scene? Who’s a part of it? Who isn’t? Who decides? Is there more than one? What happens when a scene evolves—or when it doesn’t? These are the questions we’ve gathered a group of writers to consider for an Outward special issue on “the Scene” in LGBTQ life today.”
  * “Leather” Usually Conjures Images of Butch Gay Men. But a Gender-Inclusive Scene in L.A. Is Creating Its Own Kinky Magic. (Slate)

• “Many have suspected that Sony was implementing strict rules on sexual content in PS4 games, and those hunches have just been validated. The company confirmed to the Wall Street Journal that it created its own guidelines for sexual material in games, overriding rating systems like the ESRB’s and PEGI’s. The move will help developers “offer well-balanced content” that doesn’t “inhibit the sound growth and development” of young people, according to a spokeswoman. She didn’t outline the rules or say when they took effect.”
  * Sony clamps down on sexual content in PS4 games (Engadget)

• It is my belief that Instagram permits this harassment of women on its service because they are essentially doing Instagram’s own work. “Omid has claimed responsibility for shutting down several dozen performers’ [Instagram] accounts—providing evidence in the form of screenshots of the messages he’s allegedly received from Instagram. “Thanks for reporting this account,” reads one such screenshot. “We’ve removed it from Instagram because it violated our Community Guidelines.” Often, he accompanies these tweet with hashtags like “#no_porn,” “#no_porn_on_IG,” and “#no_pornstar_on_IG.””
  * A Troll’s Alleged Attempt to Purge Porn Performers from Instagram (Jezebel)

• “Reddit announced that it has ‘updated’ its NSFW advertising policy. In news that will frankly surprise no one by now, ‘updating’ means ‘getting rid of adult content.’ Adult ads will no longer be allowed on Reddit – porn ads, sex toys, you name it – and NSFW subreddits will no longer display advertising at all. Interestingly, though, Viagra ads will still be permitted – Reddit appears to be telling us that Viagra is good, but sex toys are shameful.”
  * Reddit NSFW ads: Viagra is good, sex toys are shameful (Girl on the Net)
  See also: Reddit Bans ‘Adult-Oriented’ Ads (XBIZ)

• “So, what exactly is sex work? Not all sex workers engage in penetrative sex, though, undeniably, that is a big part of sex work. Sex-worker services between consenting adults may include companionship, intimacy, nonsexual role playing, dancing, escorting, and stripping. These roles are often pre-determined, and all parties should be comfortable with them. Many workers take on multiple roles with their clients, and some may get more physical while other interactions that may have started off as sexual could evolve into emotional and psychological bonding.”
  * Why Sex Work Is Real Work (Teen Vogue)

• “In 1996 — when I was in third grade and hitting puberty like a brick wall — President Clinton signed the Welfare Reform Act and ushered in the beginning of the abstinence-only sex education era. President Bush doubled down on abstinence-only policies; in 2006 — when I was, thankfully, already a high school graduate — he explicitly forbade educators who received federal funding from talking about condoms and other contraceptives.”
  * What Sex Education Looked Like In The ‘90s Versus Today (Bustle)

Main post image via: The Incredible Art Of Maciej Kuciara, Who’s Worked On The Last Of Us, Ghost In The Shell & Crysis (Design You Trust)

• “[Instagram is] stepping onto the slippery slope to censorship, worrying artists, people with disabilities, consensual sex workers, and those who are in various ways body- and sex-positive … the company said this week that its algorithm would demote content that does not violate Instagram’s community standards, but is considered “inappropriate” or “borderline.”” XBIZ calls it “a massive step backwards for freedom of expression in the online world.”
  * Instagram will demote “inappropriate content”—and self-expression along the way (Quartz)

• “VR Bangers’ Head Rig 2.0: which, when worn by adult entertainers, would record a full range of vision while not getting in the way of the erotic action. With seven, and not just two, cameras plus microphones, the helmet can be comfortably worn in just about every sexual position.”
  * Take a Peak at the VRBangers ‘Sex Helmet’ Worn by Adult Stars (Future of Sex)

• “[despite objection from the country’s sex workers] a social media campaign called “I Am Priceless” pushed a petition that passed the 40,000 signatures needed to launch a debate by lawmakers in the Dutch Parliament … “The mood has changed. Buying sex is just wrong,” said Natasja Bos, one of two co-founders of the Christian and feminist-inspired protest group Exxpose, which put forward the petition.”
  * Prostitution coming under scrutiny in Amsterdam, red-light capital of the world (ABC News)

• “A man now living in Indiana is suing his parents after he says they destroyed his valuable porn collection … Charlie says his parents told him that they destroyed the entire collection. A collection that consisted of over 12 moving boxes full of movies. Charlie filed a police report estimating the value of his collection to be $28,940.72.”
  * Man sues parents over trashed porn collection (Fox 17)

• “Artist Joey Holder has spent the last four years working on The Evolution of the Spermaledge, a project that focuses on the reproductive organs of insects. Using detailed 3D scans and microtechnology, she makes useable, human-scale dildos out of tiny insect penis templates. There are numerous featured invertebrate penises, including those of bed mites, weevils, houseflies and spiders. Specially cast in silvery, skin-safe silicone, the dildos are something to behold. ”
  * I Make Dildos Out of Insect Penises (Vice)

• “We’re told that censorship is good and porn is bad, but what about the porn performers caught in the crossfire of this hugely oversimplified narrative? … “I was coming out as queer and non-monogamous too; some of my family saw this trifecta as a callous rebellion or a temporary phase. My mother wept and insisted I was putting myself in danger, but she could never articulate the ‘danger’.” —Andre Shakti”
  * Five Adult Film Performers Share Their ‘Coming Out’ Stories (Vice)

• “However, when I spoke with a clerk at the Cambridge County Courthouse, he pointed out that Aras’ court records showed an alternative spelling of Aras’ first name—not Vido but Vito. This slight alteration pushed my research into a different—almost unbelievably different—realm. Not only did a Vito Aras exist, but in the early ’70s he had pursued a short-lived—but quite noteworthy—career as a porn star under the stage name “Dr. Infinity.” Could this be the same guy who tried to steal the Gutenberg Bible?”
  * He Stole the Gutenberg Bible, Then Became Porn’s Weirdest Star (Daily Beast)

• “An intriguing element in the research on porn’s effect involves examining whether the viewers see the depictions of sex in adult videos as realistic or not. When people view porn as more realistic, they are more likely to view porn as having positive effects. In men, this belief in porn’s positive effects correlates with higher sexual self-esteem. In women, higher levels of genital self-esteem correlate with higher levels of sexual self-esteem, and with higher levels of sexual satisfaction.”
  * Loving Oneself by Watching Porn? (Psychology Today)

• ““What’s important now is social media engagement—a lot of girls get hired or don’t get hired by how many followers they have,” says porn super-agent Mark Spiegler. “Instagram is really big. That’s one of the pitfalls because Instagram has it out for adult performers.””
  * How Much Money Do Porn Stars Actually Get Paid for Sex Scenes? (Yahoo News)

• “There was the lawmaker in Idaho who asked at a legislative hearing whether a woman could get a gynecological exam by swallowing a tiny camera. (No more than a dentist can do her job by looking at your feet.) … And, of course, this infamous observation from Todd Akin, then a Missouri congressman: “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down.” (Where even to begin?)”
  * America’s Leaders Need Sex Ed (NYT)

Main post image: real-life couple in Ride or Die (Sticks and Stones Agency)

Quick note: I recently had a run-in with Amazon Associates over my 16-year-old account, which was thankfully resolved, and you can read what I discovered about their policies (including nudity and sexual content) here.

• “A new Idaho state law [requiring filters on] public internet access in libraries and an Iowa court case restricting access to media in prisons are the latest examples of an ongoing campaign by some local politicians to eliminate free speech protections of depictions of nudity and sex in order to fight what they are calling “the public health crisis of pornography.””
  * Idaho, Iowa Politicians Ramp Up ‘War on Porn’ (XBIZ)

• “Sex workers in the UK are being illegally targeted for deportations and subjected to harassment and attacks because of a Brexit-inspired culture of discrimination against foreigners… A dossier compiled by the campaign group English Collective of Prostitutes (ECP) includes examples of women being targeted by police for arrest and deportation despite having the right to remain in Britain, and police dismissing reports of violence against women.”
  * Sex workers harassed, assaulted and illegally targeted for deportations amid culture of xenophobia after Brexit, campaigners say (Independent)

• “Most of the people we interviewed learned that selling panties isn’t as simple as popping them in the mail and sending them off. “When I first started I wore the panties and sealed them up. I didn’t know you had to dry them out first before you packaged them, otherwise they would get mildew-y,” Berpl said. She went on to explain that they have to be dry, “otherwise all of the bacteria that is on your body gets trapped in the packaging.””
  * Selling Used Panties Online Is Harder Than You Think (Motherboard)

• “I’d like to give a shout-out to some people in the industry who’ve undertaken positive actions … Lotus Lane of the Free Speech Coalition launched the Inspire Program… Katy Jayne started an Independent Female Talent bulletin board. Inspired by Katy Jayne, new forums for independent performers were added on TheAdultDVDTalk …”
  * Dear industry friends and family (Medium | Fivestar)

• “For some, it’s personal. For others, it’s political. But the one motivation that drives nearly every sextech VC is the exploding market in sexual wellness… But given the funding issues faced by sextech companies, a more important issue might be the motivation of the investors themselves. Because whether its vibrator design or contraceptive delivery or educational platforms, no sextech company can change the world without funding.”
  * 12 Leading Investors Explain Why They’re Funding Sextech (Forbes)

• “Amsterdam has moved to end one of the city’s most popular tourist activities. The city government has announced that it will end tours of the Red Light District in the Netherlands’ capital, citing concerns about people — in this case sex workers — being treated as a tourist attraction. “We do not consider it appropriate for tourists to leer at sex workers,” city alderman Udo Kock, who proposed the bill, said in a statement.”
  * Amsterdam ends popular tours, says leering at sex workers is inappropriate (Mercury News)

• “Three Democratic contenders for the 2020 presidential nomination — Sens. Kamala Harris and Bernie Sanders and Rep. Tulsi Gabbard — have weighed in on the rights of sex workers. Harris and Gabbard have said they support the decriminalization of sex work, while Sanders was noncommittal in his response… The Intercept reached out to the other congressional Democrats running for president — Sens. Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren, and former Rep. Beto O’Rourke — and got no response.”
  * The Decriminalization of Sex Work Is Edging Into the 2020 Campaign (The Intercept)

• “Tulipán, a leading Argentine condom brand, has launched a limited edition of condoms called “Pack Consentimiento” (“Consent Pack”), in custom-made packaging which can only be opened by two people. Tulipán’s goal in launching the product is to raise consciousness about “promoting respect and consent in sexual relationships and to avoid sexual violence” … Pack Consentimiento will be distributed for free at selected Buenos Aires bars and events.”
  * Argentine Condom “Consent Pack” Can Only Be Opened by Two People (XBIZ)

• “Some booksellers continued to shelve black romances separately from white romances, on special African American shelves. Accepted industry wisdom told black authors that putting black couples on their covers could hurt sales, and that they should replace them with images of jewellery, or lawn chairs, or flowers. Other authors of colour had struggled to get representation within the genre at all.”
  * Fifty shades of white: the long fight against racism in romance novels (Guardian)

• “Pink & White Productions recently completed a successful crowdfunding campaign for Shine Louise Houston’s next film, Chemistry Eases the Pain. In the process, we’ve received a lot of interest from fellow producers who might be interested in exploring crowdfunding for their next adult film. We hope this guide will help share our experiences and prepare new campaigns for success.”
  * Porn Patrons: An Introductory Guide to Crowdfunding for Adult Filmmakers (PinkLabel.TV)

• “Scarleteen just celebrated its 20th year in publication, and Corinna argues that it has endured not in spite of being queer-founded, queer-run, and independently funded by a group of about 500 donors, but because of those things.”
  * “Scarleteen’s” 20 Anniversary Proves We Still Need Inclusive Sex Ed (Bitch Media)

• “The final episode of Channel 4’s show Mums Make Porn aired on 3 April. In the three-part series, a group of five mothers set out to make their own porn film after being horrified at the graphic and often abusive content their children are being exposed to online. During the series, the mums were helped by Swedish erotic filmmaker Erika Lust, who has helped pioneer the feminist pornography movement.”
  * Mums Make Porn: Adult film director Erika Lust on her experience with the Channel 4 show and thoughts on the UK ‘porn ban (Independent)

Main post image: Marisa Papen by Thomas Agatz HQ Photo Shoot (itr2010.org)

Just so there’s a public record of my recent experience with Amazon Associates, I’m putting it all on one place below. The short version: Amazon terminated my Associates account with vague language about unsuitable content on one of my websites (this one). After reaching out to tell me it was a mistake, but asking me to change a few images, and then going unresponsive, Amazon eventually reinstated my account just over a week later. I discovered that Amazon is doing random, somewhat automated reviews on Associates accounts, but they are fine with nudity on partner website — as long as it is “tasteful.”

Now, the long and more detailed version.

On Tuesday, March 26th, I got an email from Amazon saying my Associates account was terminated “because the content [on this website, tinynibbles.com] promotes unsuitable activity.” The email also said the company would not pay the outstanding fees owed to me. My account was reinstated eight days later on Wednesday, April 3rd. What happened in the middle of that, in today’s environment of unprecedented sex-negativity by internet companies, is worth an examination. Especially because Amazon was mature, accountable, and sex-positive about the situation.

I’ve been an Associate since 2003, linking from many websites, and have a lot of author-related business with the company in general. My first feelings were confusion (what changed?), panic (this is writer income), and hopelessness (we’re in a dark time for sexual freedom and expression). Amazon Associates is a huge part of my author income; it makes the time and effort put into my book review posts worth it. Associates is also how I make up for the many titles I got swindled out of royalty income for when a major erotic publisher sold its catalog of books without telling any of us authors. Plus, after 17 years my Associates links are everywhere, like other sites I run such as Digita Publications.

I tweeted about the account termination and seizure of my funds. I listed a number of very common, very necessary online business tools that everyone takes for granted, and noted that I was not allowed to use them because of their regressive, discriminatory sex rules (some new under FOSTA, some not).

On Twitter I found lots of sympathy and support; I also got attacked by right-wingers who thought I deserved it for articles I’ve written saying that Facebook should stop defending and disseminating the provably dangerous speech of neo-fascist conservatives. I’m well aware that the war on sex is nothing more than malfeasant security theater, and refuse to be silent about it. The right-wingers’ assumptions that this might be my first experience with sex censorship proved to me just how ‘amateur hour’ the whole conservative-censorship charade really is.

My tweet (and thread) was widely-shared. On April 1st I was surprised by an email and phone message from Amazon Executive Customer Relations. I initially suspected that I was going to get what I call “a PR massage” — when tech companies dislike factual but negative coverage in reporting, they often try to talk journalists like me into changing words in an article to be more favorable to the company (or the company’s lawyers). I’ve had a number of company reps try this over the years. Facebook is the worst; in my experience they’ve tried to get me to change my reporting to something less problematic for them, but also less true. It never works (on me, anyway). I just figured Amazon wanted to tell me bad news in a different way and I anticipated a waste of everyone’s time. Still, I wanted to try and get some answers about their sex content policy.

The rep called me again. She chatted me up for a few buttery minutes then said that Amazon has millions of Associates accounts, which get randomly flagged for review. In this instance, their review system had failed, and they were sorry. They also said they wanted to acknowledge that Amazon does sell “sexual wellness products and smut,” and were fine with nudity, like what was on my website.

I wasn’t expecting to hear that. But then the rep told me that there were a few specific images that had caused their review team to mark my account as violating the operating agreement. Images that were what the team thought were over the edge, not as “tasteful” as everything else, which they said was not a problem. The rep said that before the call, she had tried to find a technical solution — she didn’t know how to code, she said, but had tried to find a way I could just blur a few of the images. I said this was very thoughtful, but that hey, this is an easy fix. I speak code. “If you’re comfortable with looking at my site,” I said, “if it’s within your comfort zone, can you tell me which images to change?” I said I could do it in the next twenty minutes. She said that was great; after the call she’d send me a wrap-up email, and I could respond when the changes were made, and my account could be reinstated that evening.

(I told her I was writing down what she was saying on the call. She told me the call was being recorded. I said, “Oh in that case, please tell Amazon I said thank you for saving The Expanse.”)

There were only three specific images I was asked to change. Two were 300×300 sidebar link images, and one was a lead image for an Eye Candy post. The first was for Abby Winters: this image (not very explicit). Next was for Nubile Films: this image (not graphic). The other image was in a post about indie and “fair trade” porn, this photo (okay, fairly explicit but not in-your-face — certainly not like anything you’d see on the front page of a porn tube site).

As you might expect, I’ve been through situations like this before. It has unfortunately been my experience that what is “tasteful” with one team is not “tasteful” with another company’s team a year later. After Flickr sold to Yahoo, my account got hit in 2007 with the banhammer for having nudes in it; when I got public support, the Flickr’s founder Stewart Butterfield contacted me and I was reinstated with his okay on tasteful nudes. A year later I was banned again by a different team, and was lucky I had the founder’s emails to prove that I wasn’t afoul of the rules. It happened *a third time* in 2013, and again I referenced Stewart’s email to get out of user jail.

That said, I went ahead and changed more images than Amazon requested. I know that “tasteful” is subjective, but there are guidelines I’ve sussed out based on my experiences — it helps to use sex-positivity as a rule, to employ the female gaze, and to avoid anything you’d see as thumbnails on PornHub. My assessment of “tasteful” in this case, based on the three specific images, was that (apart from the obvious, no penetration, close-ups, or graphic nudity) it seemed like clear depiction of sex positions was generally off Amazon’s menu. Not difficult changes.

I got Amazon’s as-promised email confirming our conversation (screencap above). I emailed back within the hour saying changes were made, then … nothing. I emailed again that night to check in, and got an “out of office” response from a different rep. In the morning I emailed again — only to get another ‘she’s not in the office and I can’t help you’ response from yet a different rep. It appeared I was either being flaked on, or lied to.

I was despondent and didn’t know what to do. Imagine being an author, and Amazon doesn’t like you, won’t do business with you, or has put a mark on your record somewhere.

You can’t imagine it because it’s not really possible if you want to survive as an author, let alone be successful.

That same morning I was simultaneously sent a link to Techdirt’s superlative writeup on the whole mess. I was glad I waited to say anything publicly about Amazon telling me it would get fixed; maybe I did get that PR massage after all. I wrote a twitter update, at a total loss as to what I was going to do about anything.

The next day, Amazon Executive Customer Relations appeared in my inbox (and voicemail) again — a new representative. They reinstated my account — and apologized for the delay, and thanked me for “escalating the situation.” I was genuinely surprised, and … happy? Yes, happy. To get my account back, but also to know that Amazon isn’t following companies like Facebook, YouTube, or Apple in goose-stepping off the cliff of humanity, diversity, and sex-positivity by demonizing human sexual expression. Amazon wasn’t being added to the list of major service providers and business channels that are discriminating sexuality writers, artists, workers, and business people into a terrifying oblivion.

Right after my account was reinstated, Open Culture tweeted that they’d just had their Associates account suddenly terminated. Trust me: I looked EVERYWHERE on their website for porn, but I found nary a boob. So I’m inclined to believe the automated review screwup story that first rep told me. And I sure hope Open Culture gets it worked out.

If I were to tell you that photographer Steve Diet Goedde shaped the way you see fetish, I would not be exaggerating. When I first met Steve back in the late 1990s, I was kind of freaked out to meet someone so famous in the world of sex and fetish. (He was dating my roommate, and it made her seem that much more celebrity and otherworldly to me.) At that time, sex and fetish photographers were already copying his style and subject; high-end, museum-quality art photos of women in latex that evoked risk-taking, sexy fashion photography.

We became friends over the years and I have since watched him quietly, humbly influence the aesthetics of a generation (or two). I still get a little star-struck that I know him, even while he has very generously helped me with the art and design of a couple book covers. In fact, the first cover for Smart Girl’s Guide to Privacy was all him — and the book became a success, I believe, in no small part due to his help for this indie writer.

All this is to tell you why I want you to check out, and hopefully support, the Kickstarter for his (hopefully) next book, EXTEMPORE. There are just a few days left — time is running out! If you don’t have the scratch to support it, please share a link to it on social media, or privately to someone you think might enjoy it.

What’s cool and different about EXTEMPORE? It’s all candid outtakes! Models in bespoke latex at incredible locations giggling, adjusting their outfits, being dorky, having a smoke, or getting gritty with the camera. The fun, and in my mind, often sexier moments of erudite erotic fashion photography. It’s very personal, a collection of stolen moments like no other.

We need art and books like this more than ever. I hope you’ll consider supporting this Kickstarter (a company that needs to be shown how much we want to see this kind of content on its website). And thank you Steve, for sending me these photos from the book to share with you. Details on the book: EXTEMPORE will be produced in a large hardcover format:

– Size – 30 x 26cm (11¾ x 10¼ in)
– 160 pages
– First edition of 1,000 copies, plus special numbered clamshell editions of 10, 20 and 30
– Pre-order an exclusive signed copy for just £39.00
– Books will ship in July from centers in the UK and US

• “Tumblr’s traffic has dropped nearly 30 percent since December [the month it banned adult content] … Tumblr’s global traffic in December clocked in at 521 million, but it had dropped to 370 million by February, web analytics firm SimilarWeb tells The Verge. Statista reports a similar trend in the number of unique visitors. By January 2019, only over 437 million visited Tumblr, compared to a high of 642 million visitors in July 2018.”
  * After the porn ban, Tumblr users have ditched the platform as promised (Verge)

• “The UK government’s plan to impose a ‘porn block’ by requiring stringent age verification requirements is ploughing ahead, despite no consultation on the way in which peoples’ personal data will be handled … with just a few weeks before the systems are supposed to be put into place, the BBFC is still now at this stage trying to create a privacy standard for AV providers to adhere to, and is doing so entirely without external input from privacy groups and without a public consultation period.”
  * UK ‘porn ban’ to start in just a few weeks, and there’s still no plan to protect personal data (SexTechGuide)

• “Ela Darling might be the only pornstar with a Ted Talk. She was a real librarian — with a master’s degree — when she went into porn and co-created virtual reality sex camming. She also has the Dewey Decimal number for Harry Potter on her back.”
  * Ela Darling: The Origin Story of a Librarian Pornstar (Sex Dork | Medium)

• “One of the porn industry’s top agents [Derek Hay, the owner of LA Direct Models in Los Angeles] has been accused by women whom he represents of fraud, sexual abuse and links to an illegal escort business — accusations including coercing performers to pay off “unconscionable” fees and penalties either in cash or by performing sexual acts on him.”
  * Porn Actresses Take On Powerful Industry Agent (NBC)

• “The rally had been called by a new coalition, Decrim NY, formed by current and former sex workers and local organizations that want to get the police and the courts out of their communities. In addition to Senators Ramos and Salazar, it featured a line-up of public defenders, sex workers, and local politicians. Even Manhattan Borough President Linda Rosenthal sent a letter of support.”
  * ‘Whores But Organized’: Sex Workers Rally for Reform (NY Review of Books)

• “The custom nude business is on the rise, and despite critics and payment platforms discriminating against sex workers, show no signs of slowing down. Like many things done in 2019, all you really need to get started is your phone and an audience. If you can grow a self made business, pay your rent, cover tuition, and gain self confidence, more power to you. At the end of the day, a job is a job. Many people take racy photos – some people just get paid for it.”
  * Inside the world of selling nudes online (Dazed)

• “Love hotels are surprisingly folksy in Japan – there’s about 37,000 of them across the country and they’re visited by an estimated 2.5 million people a day … London (and other major Western cities) has more of a cloak-and-dagger approach to the fact that some people rent hotel rooms for the purpose of sex, but the love hotel phenomenon can be found here too. ”
  * Under the covers: inside London’s secret ’love hotels’ (Huck Mag)

• “An open database in China contains the personal information of more than 1.8 million women, including their phone numbers, addresses, and something called “BreedReady” status, according to a researcher.”
  * China database lists ‘breedready’ status of 1.8 million women (Guardian)

• “Sealed documents from a lawsuit against a woman accused of running a sex trafficking ring with billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein may be released to the public in the very near future. The documents could shed light on allegations against Epstein and his former partner, Ghislaine Maxwell, according to the Miami Herald.”
  * Court Moves Towards Unsealing Docs That Could Expose Details of Alleged Epstein Sex Ring (Law and Crime)

• “Refusing to provide children with medically accurate sex education isn’t ideological — it’s negligent … Only about half of all school districts in the United States require any sex ed at all. Of those that do, most mandate or stress abstinence-only instruction. No birth control. No sexually transmitted infection prevention. No consent.”
  * How to Make Sex More Dangerous (NYT)

Main post image: selected in hope you’ll support Steve Diet Goedde’s Kickstarter for EXTEMPORE.

• “2020 presidential candidate Kamala Harris told The Root that she supports decriminalizing sex work … Progressive groups have criticized Harris’ prosecutorial record since she announced her candidacy on Jan. 21, and part of that criticism has included her treatment of the sex worker community.”
  * The Real Significance Of Kamala Harris’ Shift On Sex Work (Huffington Post)
  See also: Sex Workers’ Advocates Respond To Kamala Harris Backing Decriminalization (Bustle)

• “If you look up Dr. Damian Jacob Markiewicz Sendler online, you might think he has a MD and a PhD from Harvard Medical School … Based on the information available online, Sendler could be one of the most accomplished 28-year-olds in medicine. But he’s not. Those are all lies … [he] has appeared in numerous media outlets—Vice, Playboy, Savage Lovecast, Huffington Post, Insider, Bustle, Thrive Global, Women’s Health, and Forbes, among others. Many of these platforms have published Sendler’s lies and publicized his bizarre and irresponsible studies on necrophilia, zoophilia, lethal erotic asphyxiation, and sexual assault. And until recently, he was soliciting patients through his website where he offered online psychotherapy and sex therapy.”
  * The Fake Sex Doctor Who Conned the Media Into Publicizing His Bizarre Research on Suicide, Butt-Fisting, and Bestiality (Gizmodo)

• “State Sens. Julia Salazar, D-Brooklyn and Jessica Ramos, D-Queens, along with Assemblyman Richard Gottfried, D-Manhattan, announced their intention to introduce a comprehensive sex work decriminalization legislation on Monday. The bill has already received support from State Sen. Brad Hoylman, D-Manhattan, and assembly members Dan Quart, D-Manhattan and Linda Rosenthal, D-Manhattan.”
  * New York Democrats announce plans to decriminalize sex work (Salon)

• “Sex workers across 33 countries who face repressive policing — identified as arrest, imprisonment, confiscation of needles, syringes, condoms, displacement to new area or physical or sexual violence by officers — have a three times higher chance of experiencing physical or sexual violence, according to a new study.”
  * More violence, sexual infections when sex work is criminalized, study finds (CNN)

• “Fox Rothschild partner Lincoln Bandlow, who has led a nationwide copyright infringement litigation campaign on behalf of a pornography producer, was sanctioned $750 by a federal magistrate judge in California … Bandlow … has filed more than 2,500 copyright infringement claims on behalf of Strike 3, helping to make last year hit a record for the most copyright claims brought across U.S. federal courts in at least a decade. The company’s cases accuse Internet IP addresses of stealing the pornography Strike 3 produces under brands such as “Vixen,” “Blacked” and “Tushy.” The cases typically settle before the defendants are named in court.”
  * Judge Sanctions Fox Rothschild Partner in Porn Copyright Cases (Law.com)

• “In Osaka, Japan, in early 1971, a hotel accidentally began transmitting its closed-circuit TV signal to adjacent buildings, thanks to the signal being carried by the steel railing on the hotel’s roof. Thanks to this incident, a few things happened …”
  * A Cultural History of Porn in the Hotel Room (MEL)

• “Comparing augmented reality with virtual reality, it’s unfortunate the latter has received the lion’s share of attention over the last few years, especially since AR has the potential to completely change the adult entertainment landscape … After reviewing the site’s recommendations, we decided to share what it deems the best X-rated AR apps out there.”
  * The Best Adult Augmented Reality Apps of 2019 (Future of Sex)

• “I came to Las Vegas to find out what it’s like to be a male porn star today. A lot of the coverage of the industry concerns male viewers of pornography, especially boys—whether they’re addicted, if porn is ruining their intimate lives, teaching them the wrong things about sex, or giving them erectile dysfunction. But I was curious about male performers: what their lives are like, whether they find their work fulfilling, how they structure their personal relationships and families, how making porn impacts their mental health. ”
  * What It’s Like to Be a Male Porn Star in 2019 (GQ)

• “Gia Isabella is a self-identified love witch, who brings elements of sex magic into her sessions. “I’m a surreal-ator, and I work in surreal-estate,” she says with a playful wink and a smile. I have been providing professional sexual services for the past decade, but this was my first time seeing a fellow sex worker.”
  * There’s a Sex Worker Mixing Witchcraft into Her Bag of Tricks (Broke-Ass Stuart)

• “Consensual adult sex work and sex trafficking will likely always operate in overlapping spaces—whether online or offline. And just as the crackdown on Backpage has changed the landscape for sex workers, it’s also pushed more sex trafficking onto the streets, where there’s no telling who a client is before getting into a car. The internet certainly made it easier for everyone to sell sex, but it made it safer for a lot of people, too.”
  * Sex Workers Say They Feel Less Safe Without Backpage. Nothing Online Has Replaced It. (Slate)

• Warning for survivors of sexual assault and trauma. “In 2016 or early 2017, Paul Manafort’s 32-year-old daughter Andrea’s cell phone was hacked … Yet one cluster of texts never entered public discourse in the same way … [they describe] a decade of coercive and manipulative sexual behavior, in which Manafort allegedly forced his wife, vulnerable from having sustained brain damage after a near-death horseback riding accident years before, to engage in “gang bangs” with black men while he watched.”
  * Kompromat: Or, Revelations from the Unpublished Portions of Andrea Manafort’s Hacked Texts (Los Angeles Review of Books)

• Warning for survivors of sexual assault and trauma. “He was big on sex. Inside and outside the church, George Pell built his career preaching the sex rules of his faith. Intransigence made Pell a celebrity. Standing up to the zeitgeist, demanding obedience, listing sins and condemning sinners kept him in the news.”
  * Brutal and dogmatic, George Pell waged war on sex – even as he abused children (Guardian)

Main post image via Sisterhood (C-Heads).

• “Ugly Mugs, a commonly used safety app for sex workers in Ireland and the UK, is facing removal from the Android Play Store following changes to Google’s permissions policy. Ugly Mugs allows sex workers to screen incoming calls and text messages from clients, using an alert system to flag potentially dangerous clients based on reports from other sex workers.”
  * Sex worker safety app ‘Ugly Mugs’ may be removed from Android Play Store under new permissions policy (NSWP)

• “The Manatomy Awards themselves really do span the gamut. Not only are tried-and-true categories like “Best Butt,” “Best Full-Frontal” and “Best Gay Scene” represented, but Mr. Man also got … creative, and not in a safe-for-work way. From “Best Celebrity Taint” and “Cleanest Butthole” to “Best Ass in the Grass,” some of these awards for on-screen nudity are downright shocking!”
  * The Naked Celebrity Experts at Mr. Man Have Awards for All Their Favorite On-Screen Nudity (Hornet)

• “Bangladeshi authorities have blocked almost 20,000 websites as part of “war against pornography”. Popular social media apps such as TikTok and Bigo – which authorities believe are misused – have also been blocked in the South Asian nation, Jabbar said. Apps including Instagram and Facebook are also being monitored as part of the crackdown. Most of the blocked sites are foreign, but a few local websites and social media platforms have also faced action under the crackdown, he added.”
  * Country bans internet pornography as part of ‘war’ on indecency (Yahoo News UK)

• “Writing for The Topeka Capital-Journal, Tim Carpenter reported on a pair of bills introduced in the Kansas House last week that ostensibly seek to fund human trafficking initiatives by mandating default content blocking features on all new internet-capable devices sold in the state; and by imposing a sin tax on customers visiting adult-oriented businesses.”
  * Kansas Lawmakers Want Porn Money (Again) (XBIZ)

• “Singapore’s parliament may make the practice of “stealthing” – the act of non-consensually removing a condom during sex – illegal, in a landmark bill that also addresses revenge porn and upskirting … People convicted of stealthing could be imprisoned for up to 10 years, according to the bill’s current text. Those found guilty could also be caned.”
  * ‘Stealthing’: Singapore set to jail or cane men who remove condom during sex without consent (Independent)

• “It’s not uncommon for women to let their straight partners play in a “monogamy gray zone,” to give guys access to tensional outlets that allow them to cheat without really cheating. “Happy ending” massages, oral sex at bachelor parties, lap dances, escorts at conferences … influenced by ubiquitous pop-cultural cues, many people believe that men need these opportunities for recreational “sorta sex” because “it’s how men are.” It’s how women are, too, it seems.”
  * The Bored Sex (The Atlantic)

• “In rejecting a San Francisco resident’s request for a vanity license plate that would have been shorthand for “leather daddy,” the DMV noted the phrase’s “sexual connotation” and how it can be read “as a term of lust or depravity” in the letter it sent to Robert Haynes in January explaining its decision.”
  * CA DMV rejects leather vanity plate (Bay Area Reporter)

• “A recent example of porn’s robotic trend was highlighted in a recent article in the U.K.’s “Mirror,” which looked at web sci-fi series “Future Darkly,” an Adult Time production featuring the Aura Doll in a product placement deal alongside human co-stars Whitney Wright and Tommy Pistol. The series will run in six episodes between February and July 2019.”
  * Sex Robots: Porn’s Next Frontier? (XBIZ)

• “A team of medieval historians working in the archives at the University of York has found evidence that a nun in the 14th century faked her own death and crafted a dummy “in the likeness of her body” in order to escape her convent and pursue – in the words of the archbishop of the time – “the way of carnal lust”.”
  * Archive shows medieval nun faked her own death to escape convent (Guardian)

• “Costing about $10,000, the RealDoll X robotic system makes lifelike facial movements and connects onto the bodies of the RealDoll silicone love doll line. However, the RealDoll X app can also be used on its own if you aren’t ready to fork out thousands for the animatronic head.”
  * RealDoll Upgrades AI App, Considers Expanding Sexbot Factory Due to High Demand (Future of Sex)

Main post photo via: #NotYourValentine: Controversial Brand Honey Birdette Lingerie Flashmob Takes To Sydney (Design You Trust)

We’re back on track after a WordPress update snafu — the new editor and all the update conflicts are so bad I don’t even want to use WP anymore. What a mess!

One of the worst articles I’ve read about porn was published in the NYT this weekend: “They Fixed Pornography” is so poorly researched, sex-work negative, and its headline is so arrogant, it’s got a lot of people deeply annoyed — including me. There’s no excuse for this kind of “just arrived” journalism on porn issues anymore. Anyway, here is a way, way better article on the topic NYT attempted to cover — and I believe it’s what the NYT’s article tried and failed to accomplish:

• “2018 was a year of massive change and growth for ManyVids, a premier adult video clip site with a fast-growing community focused on success through sex-positivity and fair treatment for adult performers … The company tackled numerous topics of concern to performers, ranging from bullying to consent to mental health, on-set abuse and more, issuing public statements in support of performers including Honey Gold, Nikki Benz and all adult entertainers who speak out against harassment, hate speech, abusive conduct and more. In addition to protecting the interests of performers, ManyVids also takes the protection of children online seriously …”
  * Bella French: Masterful CEO and Champion of Sex Workers (XBIZ)

• “As the CEO of feminist porn company Pink & White Productions, Houston has pushed the boundaries of this overwhelmingly straight male arena by creating porn with casts diverse in terms of sexual orientation, gender expression, and ethnic background … Now, exploring new ways of funding is a part of any independent filmmaker’s toolbox (including independent porn makers), and Shine Louise Houston is ahead of the curve.”
  * How A Feminist Porn Company is Reshaping the Rules of Crowdfunding (Mediashift)

• In which National Enquirer are sextortionists: “In the AMI letters I’m making public, you will see the precise details of their extortionate proposal: They will publish the personal photos unless Gavin de Becker and I make the specific false public statement to the press that we “have no knowledge or basis for suggesting that AMI’s coverage was politically motivated or influenced by political forces.” If we do not agree to affirmatively publicize that specific lie, they say they’ll publish the photos …”
  * No thank you, Mr. Pecker (Jeff Bezos – Medium)
  See also: Mistress’ Brother Leaked Bezos’ Racy Texts to Enquirer, Sources Say (Daily Beast)
  More: Actor Terry Crews says National Enquirer publisher tried to ‘silence’ him (Business Insider)

• “Adult publisher Badoink has started to sell Oculus Go VR headsets pre-loaded with adult content with a program it calls Porn in a Box … The X-rated Oculus Go headsets sell for $300, which is $100 more than what the base Oculus Go model costs at retail. For that surcharge, buyers get access to dozens of clips from the company’s BadoinkVR, BabeVR, VRCosplayX, and 18VR franchises.”
  * You Can Now Buy an Oculus Go VR Headset Pre-Loaded With Porn (Variety)

• “… It’s this shame that photographer Laura Dodsworth is aiming to overcome with her latest project, Womanhood. In a book and accompanying film for Channel 4, she tells the stories of 100 women and gender non-conforming people through portraits of their vulvas. ”
  * Me and my vulva: 100 women reveal all (Guardian)

• “As the Internet of Things expands, the most intimate devices are coming online. Sex toys and beds now connect to the internet. These devices collect, store, and often share our personal data … So today, Mozilla is releasing a Valentine’s Day supplement to *Privacy Not Included, our annual holiday shopping guide.”
  * Does Your Sex Toy Use Encryption? (The Mozilla Blog)

• “Full finished walk-out basement w/bilco doors, includes a gym or 5th bedroom and also is a private adult sexual oasis. It can be converted back to a typical suburban basement. Home currently is being offered as an Air B & B rental … $750 a night on weekdays & $2000 a night on the weekends for private parties or entertainment.”
  * ’50 Shades Of Maple Glen’: Pennsylvania Home For Sale Comes Complete With ‘Private Adult Sexual Oasis’ (Geekologie)

• Here we go again with the people who deny climate change claiming that evangelical propaganda is science. “Politicians in Arizona are calling for pornography to be declared a public health crisis – saying porn “perpetuates a sexually toxic environment” … Democrat Pamela Powers Hannley, who is sponsoring a different bill which focuses on medically accurate sex education, said: “If we really want to look at this, we should start with education.””
  * Arizona considering declaring porn a ‘public health crisis’ (Independent)

• “… the University of Chicago’s 2005 National Health and Social Life Survey found that 10 percent of women reported orgasming too quickly. Another 2016 study in the Journal of Adolescent Health reported that 3.9 percent of women ages 16–21 had struggled with premature orgasm over the past year.”
  * Not So Fast: Women Who Have Premature Orgasms Explain How They Deal (Vice)

• “Continuing to work through a pregnancy doesn’t usually need to be defended, but Holloway is a sex worker. She understood that the very fact of doing her job while gestating a human would expose her to criticism, judgment, and condemnation … I visited Holloway at her home in Oakland, California to talk about pregnancy fetishes, mommy role-play, and the stigma of doing sex work while pregnant.”
  * The Stigma of Doing Sex Work While Pregnant (Jezebel)

• “…This is the landscape that discussions on why sex work is, in fact, work are set in. They are clouded by people’s own experiences of sex and how it should be had. It is dominated by women, whose labour is often overlooked and undervalued. And considering sex workers’ rights means examining the intersection of various stigmas that shine a bright light on many nasty biases and injustices present in modern society.”
  * The Work in Sex Work (Kit Bauer – Medium)

• “As someone who has covered sexuality and sexual health quite a bit down the years, the news this week regarding the new emoji list struck a chord …”
  * ‘Men like me with small penises suffer from low self-esteem – so why is there now an emoji to bully us?’ (Telegraph)

Main post photo via Nereyda Bird by Wilson Philippe & Vanessa Hollander HQ Photo Shoot.

• “Pornography produced by consenting adults engaging in legal acts will no longer be prosecuted under Britain’s historic obscenity laws, the Crown Prosecution Service has said … A CPS spokesperson confirmed the change, which followed a public consultation: “It is not for the CPS to decide what is considered good taste or objectionable. We do not propose to bring charges based on material that depicts consensual and legal activity between adults, where no serious harm is caused and the likely audience is over the age of 18.”
  * Pornography of adult consensual sex no longer taboo, says CPS (Guardian)

• “In a landmark victory for adult entertainment, the Crown Prosecution Service today revised its obscenity laws in the U.K. Fisting, watersports, BDSM and squirting porn are now effectively legal to distribute in the country. The move by the CPS comes after years of work by campaigners, such as “Obscenity Lawyer” Myles Jackman, who fought for the draconian rules to be abolished. Jackman told XBIZ today that the concept of “freely exercised consent” is now embedded in English criminal law.”
  * U.K. Revises Obscenity Laws to Allow Fisting, Squirting (XBIZ)

• “The ignorance behind the war on sex raged by the Facebooks, the Apples, the Googles, the advertisers, the algorithms, is not only dated, but dangerous. As women fight for control of our reproductive organs, as trans people fight for the right to use a bathroom, the trolls have convinced the gatekeepers that sex must be silent, and 4chan — acting on the urges of right-wing populists — deserves a voice.”
  * How sex censorship killed the internet we love (Engadget)

• “[Andy] King shot to fame for his interview in the Netflix documentary Fyre: The Greatest Party that Never Happened. In the film, which recounts the disastrous Fyre Festival, King reveals that at one point Fyre CEO Billy McFarland ordered him to perform oral sex on the Bahamian Minister of Customs in exchange for shipments of Evian water. The more shocking confession: King was actually willing to do it.”
  * Fyre Fest organizer doesn’t want to be known as “The Blowjob King” (Queerty)

• “Over the weekend, a tweet describing a new policy being implemented by Marriott hotels went viral due to its discriminatory undertones that targeted single women staying at their properties … And according to an official press release, about half-a-million employees thus far have undergone training … This only seems to be the tip of the iceberg in terms of restaurants, hotels, and other businesses recently shutting out single, female patrons for fear that they are potential sex workers.”
  * When Anti-Sex Trafficking Policies Like the Marriott’s Do More Harm Than Good (Paper)

• “On the final day during which citizens could share comments with the Department of Education about its proposed changes to Title IX protections for sexual assault victims, the government website went down. Starting at 10 am ET, comment submissions sections on regulations.gov and federalregister.gov were inoperable for “a few hours” Wednesday morning, and have been “finicky” since, according to organizers.”
  * Government website outages prevent comments on sexual assault Title IX rule changes (Mashable)

• “All four panels touched on diversity and representation, the shared responsibility of adult entertainment producers for the welfare of their performers, and how to operate a successful business, one that grows and evolves, under the rubric of producing “porn with a purpose.””
  * XBIZ 2019: The LGBT Adult Biz and ‘Porn With a Purpose’ (XBIZ)

• “To protect the community, Fetlife decided to remove any content that the credit card companies could deem obscene. “We’ve been one of the most liberal, if not the most liberal, adult site on the web which makes us the perfect target,” Baku wrote, especially in the increasingly hostile political climate. The site’s newly updated guidelines weren’t intended “to be a negative comment against your kink or your fantasies,” Baku wrote. But Fetlife’s decisions could no longer revolve around the needs of just its members—it was about protecting the survival of the site itself. Fetlife was funded by ad sales (which weren’t enough to cover the cost of the site’s servers) and paid memberships. Without card payments for the latter, the site’s revenue dropped overnight. When Baku first got the news, he said, “I felt like my world just fell apart.””
  * The Internet’s Largest Kink Community Isn’t Going To Moderate Itself (Digg)

• “The historic nonprofit that served as a central meeting space for the sex-positive community in San Francisco no longer has a physical home, as rising rents have forced the center to shutter, according to its co-founder … Throughout the last 20 years, the Center for Sex and Culture took many forms. It was, at once, a gallery, an archive, a library, and an event space … The center was paying almost $10,000 per month. In two years, it was projected to jump to $14,000, [Dr. Carol] Queen said.”
  * SF kink community grieves loss of Center for Sex and Culture: ‘We’ve lost something enormous’ (SF Gate)

• “Sleeping With Strangers wisely does not claim to offer an exhaustive or chronological survey of sex in film … [it includes] the existence of a thriving gay subculture within the Hollywood social scene as early as the 1930s; the complicity of gossip columnists and talent agents, many of them also gay, in concocting offscreen heterosexual romances for less-than-straight movie stars. Devoting himself to the proposition that “if our culture is to survive, or deserve survival, then ‘straight’ people need to accommodate and learn from gay experience,” Thomson attempts to tease out an alternative history of sexual identity—a freer, fuller understanding of the varieties of desire—embedded in the film industry’s officially straight story.”
  * Hollywood’s Secret History of Sexuality (Atlantic)

• “A Texas woman unencumbered by pants was arrested yesterday for indecent exposure after she was spotted, vibrator in hand, masturbating in public … A hotel manager recounted seeing Nickels with “her legs straight up in the air, spread open” while she repeatedly penetrated her vagina with a “silver object.” … The Marriott manager–who estimated that Nickels masturbated for seven or eight minutes–added that she “yelled at him to stay back” when he attempted to approach her.”
  * Texas Woman’s Public Pleasure Sessions (The Smoking Gun)

• “When I saw that duct-taped bar, I was like, damn, there are some survivors in here.”
  * Seedy strip club meets boutique hotel (CNN)

Main post image via Golden Paris (C-Heads).

• “In This One’s for the Ladies, Gene Graham’s documentary on African-American male strippers—specifically, members of Newark, New Jersey’s Nasty Boyz troupe … Magic Mike’s stripteases are downright chaste when compared to the wild action on display throughout this portrait of uninhibited men who undress for money, and the enthusiastic women who adore them.”
  * Meet the Black Male Strippers Putting ‘Magic Mike’ to Shame (Daily Beast)

• “Three British teens—two 14-year-olds and one 13-year-old—have proposed an idea for a new type of condom that could detect sexually transmitted diseases amongst intimate partners … The proposal won the trio the top prize in the U.K.’s TeenTech Awards, and they have already reportedly been approached by condom companies.”
  * Condoms That Change Color In Contact with STD Win Tech Award (TIME)

• Warning for survivors of sexual abuse and trauma (both links contain clear and terrible descriptions). “It only takes about two minutes into the four-hour documentary Leaving Neverland to realise that Michael Jackson’s legacy is never going to be the same again … Their accounts contain many similarities: they were both younger than 10 when they got to know Jackson, they both possessed a keen interest in performing and they were both allegedly groomed then abused for an extended period of time.”
  * ‘Secrets will eat you up’ – inside the shocking Michael Jackson documentary (Guardian)
  See also: Michael Jackson and Harvey Weinstein Were the Perfect Monsters (MEL Magazine)

• “Tumblr was revolutionary for so many women like me and others who felt disconnected to mainstream porn and found self discovery, affirmation, and connection within its platform. It’s an end of an era, but it’s also a clarion call to those who value freedom of speech and expression to speak up and fight for that right. So, where can women like me go from here?”
  * If You Loved Tumblr, Here Are 13 Other Places You Can Go to Explore Your Sexuality (Cosmopolitan)

• “A Belarusian model who claimed to have information on Moscow’s attempts to interfere in US elections told CNN she had been ordered by Russian security agents to keep silent about her dealings with a Russian billionaire linked to the former chairman of Donald Trump’s campaign.”
  * Belarusian ‘sex coach’ says she was warned to keep quiet about oligarch (CNN)

• “He was a go-go boy at the Gaiety on 46th Street. I was a peep show girl at Peepland on 42nd. Those were dangerous days. Between crack, AIDS, heroin, and that old stand-by, booze, if you weren’t leveled, you were blessed, watched over by some dark angel. We believed we were among the lucky ones.”
  * Elegy in Times Square (Longreads)

• “Almost one in five parents (17%) oppose plans to introduce an age limit on porn. The government plans to use age-verification in order to prevent under 18s accessing pornography sites online, but only 83% of parents support the initiative, according to research by Internet Matters. Out of those who oppose the government scheme, 30% said it is because they would not trust age-verification companies with their data.”
  * A shocking amount of parents think porn sites should have no age limit (Yahoo UK)

• “SESTA/FOSTA changed this, and last year, prominent sex-work marketplaces either shut down voluntarily, like Craigslist’s Casual Encounters section, or, like Backpage, were seized and shut down by the Feds. This is exactly what [Kamala] Harris intended.”
  * The Women Running for President Have Made Life Harder for Women (The Stranger)

• “A while ago I wrote about Twitter shadowbans. While it’s no laughing matter, I did make a joke about how no one knows exactly how it works, how many levels there are… This became abundantly apparent to me recently when I discovered something new. New — and hideous.”
  * Twitter Shadowbanning AKA The Circles Of Hell (Phone Sex Secrets)

• “On the red carpet Saturday night, the alt-Hillary argued for many positions the real Hillary would take umbrage with. She’s brazenly pro-union. She supports Medicare for All. She’s also a vocal skeptic of Kamala Harris and the presidential hopeful’s prosecutorial past. “I’m not for Kamala Harris, because she’s very anti-sex work,” Hartley said. “She’s a prosecutor. She supported SESTA/FOSTA, the anti-sex-trafficking bill.””
  * The Hillary Clinton of Porn Is a Hardcore Socialist (Daily Beast)

• “As the daughter of immigrants, with a record of upholding rights for marginalized communities on several occasions, Kamala Harris should be an ideal progressive candidate. Many sex workers and sex worker rights advocates, however, vehemently disagree … Last year, Harris, the former Attorney General of California, helped champion the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), a piece of legislation sex workers and advocacy groups warned would have a disastrous impact on sex workers’ lives — and they were right.”
  * Sex Workers Don’t Trust Kamala Harris (Motherboard)

• “Anastasia Vashukevich, the model who recorded a former employer of Paul Manafort allegedly discussing US relations with a Russian deputy prime minister during the 2016 election, has promised in a Moscow court not to release any further recordings … After her Instagram posts were discovered in February 2018, Ms Vashukevich was arrested while leading a sex training seminar in Thailand … After being led by bailiffs into a glass defendant’s cage on Saturday, Ms Vashukevich asked Mr Deripaska’s forgiveness and promised no more revelations.”
  * Model who alleged Russian meddling in US election tells Moscow court she will not publish Deripaska recordings (Telegraph)

• Warning for survivors of sexual assault and trauma. “Bryan Singer’s most recent project debuted in November [Bohemian Rhapsody — which chronicles the rise of the rock band Queen] … As one prominent actor told us, “After the Harvey Weinstein news came out, everyone thought Bryan Singer would be next.” We spent 12 months investigating various lawsuits and allegations against Singer. In total, we spoke with more than 50 sources, including four men who have never before told their stories to reporters.”
  * ‘Nobody Is Going to Believe You’ (The Atlantic)

• Warning for survivors of sexual assault and trauma. “The Justice Department’s Office on Violence Against Women quietly but significantly redefined what it considers “domestic violence” and “sexual assault” … The new definition says “the term ‘sexual assault’ means any nonconsensual sexual act proscribed by Federal, tribal, or State law, including when the victim lacks capacity to consent.” The previous definition was more expansive:”
  * Trump administration quietly changes definition of ‘domestic violence’ and ‘sexual assault’ (Raw Story)

• “One month ago, Tumblr made the wildly unpopular decision to ban pornography and adult content from its website … One group Tumblr apparently has no problem continuing to host, however, is far-right extremists, who seemingly survived much of last month’s purge unscathed. The website is currently littered with pages promoting Nazism, white supremacy, ethno-nationalism, and far-right terrorism. Despite their often flagrant violation of Tumblr’s Community Guidelines, these pages remain largely active and easy to find.”
  * One month after controversial adult-content purge, far-right pages are thriving on Tumblr (ThinkProgress)

• “Emily Morse, sexologist sister of Mike Morse, received special immunity from prosecution … Emily Morse is a reality-show star, host of satellite radio and actress in Los Angeles. She dishes reviews of sex toys and relationship advice on the podcast “Sex with Emily.” She became the target of a criminal investigation of federal prosecutors last year. National prosecutors inscribed that they possessed considerable evidence of her participation in money-laundering schemes. She colluded to defraud the IRS.”
  * Sexologist sister of Mike Morse Received Immunity before Grand Jury (SF Weekly)

• “French sex workers have lodged a constitutional challenge to a 2016 law making it illegal to pay for sex, reopening a debate on whether women should be free to sell their bodies. On Tuesday, around 30 sex workers backed by nine associations, including a medical NGO, went to the Constitutional Council to argue the law infringed their sexual and commercial freedom and made them more vulnerable to attack.”
  * French sex workers seek repeal of ban on paying for sex (France 24)

• “Republican state Rep. Gail Griffin, R-Hereford, recently introduced House Bill 2444, which would require electronics manufacturers to preinstall porn-blocking software on all electronic devices bought or sold in the state … To deactivate the blocking software, a person would have to prove they are at least 18 years old and pay a one-time fee of $20 to the Arizona Commerce Authority. Manufacturers or retailers could also charge a fee for disabling it, according to the bill. Anyone who deactivates the blocker themselves would face a misdemeanor charge.”
  * Arizona Lawmaker Wants Porn To Fund Trump’s Border Wall (Huffington Post)

• “Plans are underway for the first Las Vegas Stripper Parade. The three-day conference is being planned for Aug. 10-12, starting with Saturday night’s parade on Main Street and featuring “performers of all genders, ages and body types” atop decorated floats and art cars, with Mardi Gras-style gift interaction between participants and spectators. It is touted as “a proud celebration of the art and culture of strippers.””
  * Parade celebrating the ‘art and culture of strippers’ planned for Las Vegas (Las Vegas Sun)

• “Trying to navigate the world with a mind that renders almost everyone you see either naked or engaged in sexual congress is less fun than it may sound. It is exhausting, in fact, to spend a whole day in extreme cognitive dissonance about whether or not you want to be in flagrante delicto with a TV presenter, simply because she appeared on your screen that morning. Such is the mind of 24-year-old Marnie, the protagonist in Channel 4’s new primetime drama, Pure.”
  * Extreme sex OCD: Pure, the TV drama that’s set to smash taboos (Guardian)

Main post photo: Katy Perry by Mikael Jansson (Fashiontography).