Sunday Sex Reads: Best of the Week

“Michael Weinstein, president of the AIDS Healthcare Foundation, is many things—professional provocateur; contrarian pariah; enfant terrible of the AIDS activism world. But here’s one thing he is not: a reliable source on any matters relating to HIV/AIDS. Still, that hasn’t stopped myriad news outlets from reporting on Weinstein and the AHF’s pathetic, mendacious campaign against PrEP.”
* Michael Weinstein Shows How Not to Do AIDS Activism (Slate)

“Under the pretense of protecting the vulnerable, public officials are destroying what little safety and security sex workers have in determining their own autonomy over their body. Yet again, criminalization and intimidation are being used to perpetuate stigma against sex workers that will only serve to increase the violence against them. Yet again, when sex workers demand their rights, they are told they actually need to be rescued.”
* The Backpage Raid: Misguided at Best, Dangerous at Worst (Medium)

“Since then, Dane does what he can to ensure that his clients are honest about their intentions. He previously used Rentboy.com, but federal regulators seized the site over a year ago, and its legal status today remains unclear. Once the most visible site for male escorts, Rentboy allowed them to check client reputations and block minors, providing a peek at what a regulated escorting marketplace might look like. Because their work is illegal, escorts face a near-total lack of access to the protections and professional services that other entrepreneurs take for granted, from marketing to legal advice to insurance and beyond. ”
* Sex Workers Explain the Struggles of Running an Illegal Business (Vice)

“When I arrive at the 5S shop in Changsha, the capital city of China’s south central Hunan province, store owner Mr. Xiao is struggling to prevent a nearly-nude “female” humanoid doll from toppling off a chair. As Xiao finally manages to place the doll in a stable sitting position then cover its rather large, jiggling silicone breasts with a slinky pink shirt, he explains that “her” name, or rather that of her model, is Magic Beauty.”
* I Went to a Chinese Robot Shop to Witness the Coming of the Sex Dolls (Motherboard/Vice)

“I was disappointed to discover that my dream job as a sex-sound re-creator does not exist, but that’s not to say that everything you hear in a porno is 100 percent au naturel. ”
* What Do Porn Directors Do When Somebody Farts on Set? (We Are Mel)

“Every time a major hack becomes public—Target, Yahoo, take your pick—Mike Stabile is grateful it’s not an adult site. As the director of communications for the Free Speech Coalition, an adult entertainment industry trade group, he knows what the fallout could be, and that it’s potentially a lot worse than another password dump.”
* Porn Sites Aren’t Secure, But That May Be About to Change (Wired)

“At what point does a robot become more than just a vessel for satisfying a human’s needs? That’s one of the many questions posed by the new HBO series Westworld, based on that other Michael Crichton story about a theme park in which the android attractions—who are designed to be fucked and killed—rise up against their creators.”
* What Would It Take for a Sex Robot to Pass a Turing Test? (Jezebel)

“How did 007 currently identify herself on the spectrum of sexual identities? The woman answered that she didn’t know. She told Diamond that she had been heterosexual all her life until just that last week, when she suddenly found herself falling in love with her best friend—a woman. They had had sex a couple of times, something she described as very satisfying. Part of Diamond’s work was to categorize her subjects based on how they self-identified, but 007 wasn’t sure—so Diamond put her into the “unlabeled” category.”
* Beyond Sexual Orientation (Nautilus)

“Over the next decade, the two have shared pages on several comic projects—the latest being a forthcoming 40-page woman-led adventure called Cyborg Sex Surrogate. “She was created by a weird nerdy guy to be his ultimate girlfriend,” Frank says of the lead character. “She’s finding her own identity, but with a lot of sex.””
* Meet the Feminist Comic Artists Who Draw Porn in Public (Vice)

“For the first time, thanks to a bill President Barack Obama signed on Friday, victims of sexual assault now have a specific set of rights under federal law when it comes to the evidence collected from their own bodies. “Beginning today, our nation’s laws stand firmly on the side of survivors of sexual assault,” said Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), who sponsored the Sexual Assault Survivors’ Rights Act. The bill passed unanimously in both the House and the Senate last month before heading to Obama’s desk.”
* President Obama just signed a “bill of rights” for survivors of sexual assault (Vox)

“It started when CBC learned about a stealth marketing campaign involving a drug company, a well-known Canadian comedian, a doctor and a public relations firm. … But nowhere did it say this “mission” was initiated and sponsored by Novo Nordisk Canada Inc., which makes a vaginal hormone pill. Nor did GCI’s release specify that [comedian Cathy] Jones was paid to give media interviews about vaginal atrophy.”
* Ads disguised as news: A drug company’s stealth marketing campaign exposed (CBC)

“So: media both reflects a certain worldview and also helps to reinforce or shape it. That much is pretty obvious. If you search for the word ‘sexy’ on Google images, what comes up is a page full of mostly slim, white, semi-naked women. That’s not, of course, what ‘sexy’ means, it’s just that when you take a consensus view on a subjective question, you’ll get a homogenous, simplistic, not-even-wrong answer. What happens, then, when we ask content aggregators to show us ‘porn’?”
* What is ‘porn’, according to MindGeek (Girl on the Net)

““If we want to look for a room to bang in, we fail,” she said, according to the local English-language paper the Standard, using a Cantonese slang term that literally means “to strike something.” She added: “This is a matter of fact.””
* Young Hong Kong Lawmaker Wants More Space for Sex (TIME)

Main post image via MIND-BOGGLING IMAGES FROM THE ‘WORLD BODYPAINTING FESTIVAL’ IN AUSTRIA (Dangerous Minds)