- Raging on the social internets since the incident broke Friday morning – warning, this is very painful to parse. Trans girl is beaten until she has a seizure in a McDonald’s restroom, its employees film and post to YouTube (with sickening commentary), media picks it up. Kudos to the Baltimore Sun for reaching out to show the vistim’s side of it and using accurate (happens also to be respectful) language: McDonald’s attack victim speaks out (baltimoresun.com)
- Two tastes that really seem to go together! They commented and so I looked at their fun site, Bondassage – where BDSM is logically combined with deep tissue massage: (bondassage.com)
- Anti-porn geeks will love this: sex-positive columnist at the Austin college paper interviews key-player male anti-porn feminist Robert Jensen and asks him the question we all want to ask them: what kind of pornography would be considered “good” and non-exploitative porn? Confronted: The Full Interview with Robert Jensen (uweeklyaustin.com)
- Russian space program denies sex in space (and talks shit about American space programs in regard to sex in space) – but why now? Earthlings: 50 years in space without sex (blogs.ajc.com)
- San Francisco locals: now is the time to enter your selections (it’s fill-in) and vote on SFBG’s Best Of The Bay – including your favorite strip club: SFBG Best Of Poll 2011 (polls.sfweekly.com)
- On the topic of San Francisco, our local BDSM cafe Wicked Grounds might not be closing after all! Pulling themselves up by their fetishy bootstraps, they’ve raised $50K to try and stay in business – yay! (Twitter, via Jiz Lee)
- Do you know the difference between a sock puppet and a jack puppet? Don’t miss this in-depth writeup of the sexual predator scandal that rocked the internet that no mainstream outlets reported on – and its analysis of certain types of trolls, including the dangerous ones: Sock Puppets, Jack Puppets, and Spotting Sexual Predators (Thomas Roche, Tiny Nibbles)
- Ew. I mean, I’m all for swallowing, but this guy is a real piece of yuckiness and I’m glad he got the max sentence. The girl is pretty messed up by it: Man sent to jail, forced to register as a sex offender after ejaculating in co-worker’s water bottle (nydailynews.com)
- Speaking of semen… I caught this item via Scientific American contib Jesse Bering’s Twitter when he titled the issue “”. Mary Roach tweeted that she’d run across this in Bonk, but you should read the new interview with the deposed doc – the whole thing is about controversial findings that semen contributes to positive moods in women. Read: Semen editorial costs Greenfield presidency of American College of Surgeons and Transcript of Dr. Lazar Greenfield interview (Retraction Watch, Detroit Free Press)
- A bunch of us watched the BBC (notably anti-porn, which is surprising) make headlines with their very own study about porn use – UK sex educator Dr. Petra unpacked it perfectly, making the BBC a dubious source on this topic, and then UK spoof site NewsThump shows that truth is very much revealed in jest: ¼ men worried about the amount of porn they watch online (drpetra.co.uk) and Majority of men perfectly happy with the amount of porn they watch (newsthump.com)
- On the topic pf porn, don’t forget to take the survey, courtesy of UK sex researchers: Porn Research (pornresearch.org)
- A fucking fantastic article about a gay man’s one-night venture into a straight sex club – making all other articles about San Francisco’s Power Exchange wilt in comparison. Not to mention that this explains in unvarnished terms why PE might go on your sexual tourist list when you visit SF: Power Coupling (link warning, use Readability – it’s on an atrocious and hard to read red background – The Bold Italic)
- With Comcast jockeying to upset TV, cable and streaming in a major way, this item about the FCC trying to bring massive censorship down on TV broadcasters almost certainly shows that old TV is doomed: Paper Chase: FCC petitions Supreme Court to reinstate indecency policy (jurist.org)
- It’s not Jay-Z with a hard-on. But they tried to make it look like Jay-Z with a hard-on. Thoughts? He looks happy to Jay-Z someone… (The Sun)
Image via Midori’s Twitter and Cheezburger.com: DANGIT. Midori made it look so EASY!
Violet, thank you for sharing that Baltimore Sun article, along with the victim’s response, about the McDonald’s attack. Lisa, it’s fantastic that you wrote to McDonald’s about this. Why can’t we simply let one another be ourselves? There is too much horror in this world.
When the McDonalds beating story broke, I actually took the time to contact them and expressed how I found this upsetting and unacceptable–that it happened at all and what happened during it and how everyone behaved.
This is the response I just got in my inbox a few minutes ago:
Thank you for sharing your comments with McDonald’s and for giving us an opportunity to share some information with you.
There’s no room for violence under the Golden Arches.
We strongly condemn the videotaped assault in one of our Baltimore franchised restaurants. Working with the authorities, we now have more facts, and we want to share our actions with you.
First and foremost, our thoughts are with the victim during this time.
Our franchisee is investigating the behavior and response of his employees. Action has been taken, and the crew member who made the video is no longer employed by his organization. Appropriate action regarding other employees will take place as warranted.
We want to reassure our customers that your neighborhood McDonald’s is a safe, welcoming place for everyone.
We share our customers’ concern, and we are doing everything possible to make sure the right thing is done.
Again, thank you for taking the time to contact McDonald’s.
Lisa
McDonald’s Customer Response Center
Thanks for the link to Dr Petra’s article, which, as you say, broke it down perfectly. The Sun’s assessment of it seems a little sensationalist (although not sure what else I expected), singling out guys spending more than 2 hours a week on porn – no mention of the ones spending 30 hours a week on World of Warcraft, which I’m sure is less healthy.
Of course, it’s particularly ironic from the Sun – in the days before internet porn, their daily topless page 3 model was one of the few glimpses of racy material that pre- and post-pubescent boys had access to, and they likely contributed to them enjoying porn in later life!
I was under the impression that Wicked Grounds didn’t ask for donations. Did they do this with their own money?
“Power Coupling” was not THAT bad to read, but the mere voyeuristic activities of the author/witness were disappointing. Or, he may have been too shy to admit the women were arousing he could have been a bit homoflexible.
Thank you again, and always, dear Violet, for your blogs and writings and excellent conversations and inspirations.
But, just now – I browsed all your links, and I just can’t keep my mouth shut … the interview with Robert Jensen (tetchy comment toward him – am I supposed to know his name? Or be impressed?) and I simply have to ask some (possibly rhetorical) questions – firstly, since I am a woman who likes to look at and see other women’s bodies, am I also ‘objectifying’ other women? And that’s bad, bad, bad?? If *I* enjoy watching a sex video, or if I enjoy watching a stripper dance – am I ‘objectifying’, and is this ‘bad’???
Secondly – he seems to be repeatedly insisting (dare I say to the point that *he* is *fetishising*!) that ‘most all acts he (apparently) has seen throughout ‘porn’ as ‘dominating’ (which he presumes to define as ‘bad’ – does he not understand the concept of consent? Let alone the concepts and experiences of erotica or sexual desire, obviously) and (he appears to equate as interchangeable words/descriptions) ‘patriarchal’, ‘violent’, ‘degrading’ to-all-women (again, I ask, does he understand the concept of consent/sexual desire??) … so, in summary, in his estimate and judgement, sex is only acceptable if it’s missionary position and vanilla?? Thus – this so-called version of (very sex-negative) feminism is sounding more and more like traditional ‘patriarchal’ conservatism, itself, isn’t it??
(I hope my points are well-made – I wish I could be more articulate, but right at this moment, I feel somewhat annoyed … and unfortunately not in any good way …)