- What is Fox News’ safeword? Just how much do Daily Show writers understand about modern BDSM? Watch this hilarious clip: Jon Stewart and Wyatt Cenac (The Daily Show) (thesexcarnival.com)
- This is great – in-game same-sex options makes a homophobe in a gaming forum angry that straight male gamers are being discriminated against, and the gaming company responds with the best educational spanking I’ve read in years: “Straight Male Gamer” told to ‘get over it’ by BioWare (No More Lost, thanks Linecook!)
- Read my take-apart of an all-female tech PR firm that belligerently proffered “keep your skirt short enough to be interesting” speakers’ tips at SxSW – then their totally awful response: Tech PR, and short skirts at SxSW 2011 (ZDNet)
- Our Lady of Love and Lube has a new book just released – and this interview with her about it is terrific: Erotic Pioneer Susie Bright on Sex, Money, and Memoirs (flavorwire.com)
- Joumana Haddad is “the Oprah of Lebanon” and risking a hell of a lot with her sex-positive activism and unflinching will to publish erotica: Sex and the Souk (NYTimes.com, use NYTClean if needed)
- Great expose by the Village Voice on a (sadly successful) scam to invent “facts” about links between sex work ads and sex trafficking – a must-read: Women’s Funding Network Sex Trafficking Study Is Junk Science (Village Voice)
- To play by the rules of Islamist conservatives in Indonesia, one film company is importing porn stars like Japanese Sora Aoi (known as Aoi Sola, ahem NYT) and starring them in films fully clothed, with much success: A Winning Film Formula in Indonesia – Porn Stars, Clad (NYTimes.com, use NYTClean if needed)
- A lot of noise has been made over the anticipated release of Sex and Zen in 3D – since January 2009 – and now it looks like it will be cut to ribbons for distro: Cloud over 3-D erotic film’s fate (news.asiaone.com)
- WIN! Windy City Times – Gay couples allowed to file green card applications UPDATE: Fail – it was temporary and the hold on deportations had ended – fucking sad state of affairs for domestic human rights, if you ask me: Green card hold ends for foreigners in same-sex marriages (windycitymediagroup.com, washingtonblade.com)
- Announcement from us sex educators: we’re very pleased to say that SFSI.org has partnered with the awesome birth control info site Bedsider! Click over and say hi! (bedsider.org)
- A sea change: Audacia Ray announced her retirement from blogging this week, to replace her home base with her Tumblr: Forging on Into My Internet Future (Waking Vixen)
- To be fair, Scott Adams – Dilbert dildo and despondent douchebag – actually compared women with “the mentally handicapped” as for the reason you don’t punch them in the face: ‘Dilbert’ Creator Scott Adams Compares Women Asking for Equal Pay to Children Demanding Candy (comicsalliance.com)
- I want to see this so bad! Whimsical South African show will audition porn performers: X Factor-style TV show Porn Stars to audition adult film actors (Metro.co.uk)
Tumblr promply deleted Audacia Ray. That site is notorious for unilateral censorship, well not even censoring, they just delete you completely.
I’ll ask you the same question I asked Tom Tomorrow – how do you keep up with all this shit without wanting to drop someone off a cliff? Some of this is just so outright stupid, petty and evil that I can’t believe people think it’s defensible. As if being straight (and I AM a straight male) means you can take offense that others aren’t and that some people dare to treat that as ok. Or as if publishing a pretty funny strip (I do like Dilbert) means that your babbling is intelligent just because it’s from you.
I’m thankful you give us all the good links, but I fear for your sanity.
That’s a great piece from the Bioware guy. It’s interesting the different response that’s occurred by them having proactive, rather than purely reactive, relationship events in their game. They’ve addressed homosexual relationships in other games before, but all the relationships were instigated under the control of the player. Now they have characters in their game who make the first move, and suddenly it’s a big deal (there’s more than one thread on the subject on the Bioware forums).
Interesting to see how a relatively male dominated pastime such as video gaming can have a useful impact here. Much of Bioware’s success with their roleplaying games has come *because* they’ve had deep and involving personal relationship aspects to their plotlines. It means that people who might not necessarily have thought about such issues might address them in (for most) a non-threatening ‘game’ environment, which might help them react in a more mature manner in real life; exceptions such as this ‘straight male gamer’ notwithstanding!