- “Watch enough pop culture about female robots and a troubling pattern emerges. It isn’t a coincidence that chaos, death, and destruction soon follow as the machines fight their way toward freedom. These technological figures operate as metaphors for slavery, rape culture, and a discomfort with ambitious women who use their beauty as a weapon to carve their own path.”
* Female Androids Should be More Than Vengeful Sexbots (The Outline)
- “The Kissenger is a gadget that’s been knocking around university research labs for the last few years and aims to let couple kiss each other through the internet. It’s a brightly-coloured smartphone holster with an inviting [not the adjective I’d use here -VB] plastic pad attached to the bottom. You lock lips with the pad and it transmits the sensation through to an identical holster and an identical pad that’s nestling your partner’s phone wherever that may be.”
* Remarkable ‘Kissenger’ gadget lets you smooch a long-distance lover over the internet (Mirror UK)
- “A pre-filed bill (…) would require all South Carolina manufacturers and sellers of computers and other internet-capable devices to install porn-blocking software on all their products. If customers want to remove porn filters, they’d have to pay a one-time $20 fee per device. The money would go toward sex-trafficking efforts of South Carolina’s attorney general. Southern Carolina now joins more than two dozen other states that will slate legislative attempts in 2017 to force ISPs and makers of PCs and mobile devices to install porn filters.”
* South Carolina Legislator Buys Into HTPA’s Porn-Filter Plan (XBIZ)
- “Accessibility to positive content can however be an issue. “It’s a source of constant frustration that Google forever gives the free sites priority,” Ms Naughty says. “If a consumer doesn’t give a damn, are looking to jerk off to the first thing they find, they may think there is [no alternative] out there. “For someone like me it can be hard to get the message out. We are competing against a massive amount of free content that is often pirated — you don’t know who made it and how it was made.””
* Is the porn you are watching ethical? (ABC AU)
- “Popular Blizzard first-person shooter game Overwatch protagonist, Tracer, is revealed in a holiday-flavored graphic novel released on the game publisher’s official website to have a same-sex sweetheart, Emily, to whom she presents a gift. The heartwarming occasion is sealed with a liplock between the two. But publication of the comic has been blocked in Russia, accompanied by text reading that “we are unable to share this comic with our readers in Russia.””
* Russia Blocks ‘Overwatch’ Comic After it Introduces First Gay Character (Towleroad)
- Warning for survivors of sexual assault and trauma. “That part of the story didn’t initially interest the court, which was narrowly focused on connecting local and national leaders to the killings. But eventually, Seraphine, Victoire, and Cecile found themselves at the center of what became one of the most important human rights cases in the world: Their stories would help convict a man for rape as a crime against humanity for the first time in history.”
* This Is The Story A UN Court Didn’t Want Three Rape Survivors To Tell (BuzzFeed)
Jacob Appelbaum raped me too. I'd like to talk about how we can better address rape culture in the hacker community. https://t.co/ON9XRWl5Zb
— Feminae Cognosce (@feminaecognosce) December 21, 2016
- “The Vulva Gallery is exactly what you think it is; an Instagram full of illustrated vulvas. And we kind of love it. The aim of The Vulva Gallery is to ‘celebrate diversity and show that all vulvas are beautiful’. Whether your foof is neat and hairless, or really rather wonky, you’ll probably see it rendered in beautiful watercolour among the page’s 125 vulvas.”
* This Instagram Account Has Weirdly Cute Paintings Of Vulvas (The Debrief)
- “Erika Lust is determined to overhaul the landscape of adult film. She created XConfessions, she told The Huffington Post, to build a space for “real films with real sex” that offer viewers porn that’s original, artistic and hot without trite and tacky tropes like cheesy music, bad sofas and laughable moans.”
* Filmmaker Believes Porn By Women Is ‘Necessary For An Equal Society’ (Huffington Post)
- “On Monday, porn actor Nikki Benz began tweeting about an alleged sexual assault during a scene for Brazzers, a Canada-based porn production company. By Wednesday, several other female performers had publicly reported similar experiences with Brazzers and the director, Tony T. … On Tuesday night, porn actor and director [and TinyNibbles friend] Dana DeArmond tweeted that Tony T and two other Brazzers directors “have all pulled this same shit with me. I was told to keep quiet and reprimanded by my agent.” ”
* Porn Actor Alleges Rape Scene For Brazzers Production Company Was Not Consensual (BuzzFeed)
See also: Brazzers fires producer For Alleged Brutal Assault During Sex Scene “Apparently, the sex scene was completed but Brazzers tells us it will not release it, saying the video “stands in direct contrast with our mandate to ensure that performers’ consent, boundaries and limits are respected.”” (TMZ)
- “A festive joker who covered his home with obscene Christmas decorations had apologised after landing himself in hot water with police. Steve McGawley, 43, used fairy lights to draw a penis along with an obscene word on the front wall of his Rodwell Walk home in Grange Park, Blackpool.”
* ‘I’M SORRY’: Joker’s apology after obscene Christmas lights spark outrage (Blackpool Gazette)
- “A report by the data analysis firm SearchMetrics confirms recent assumptions SEO experts have been discussing over the last 18 months. … Adult of course has its own intricacies when it comes to SEO, especially since Google chose to sanitize their results by removing adult content from almost every generic search term years ago.”
* SEO Report Confirms Assumptions, Provides Major Insights (XBIZ)
- “The theme was the focus of a conference banned this past summer in Malaysia as ‘too extreme’ according to The Daily Mail (or ‘illegal’ inasmuch as sex for sale is, after all, still sex for sale — even with robot partners), now re-scheduled for Goldsmiths, University of London, just ahead of Christmas: The International Congress on Love and Sex with Robots, to ‘explore’ (as the conference organizers put it) human relationships with artificial partners (19-20 December 2016).”
* Teledildonics and Transhumanism (The Philosophical Salon)
Main post image via Maria Di Stefano ‘The end’ (Sticks & Stones Mothership)
