Image by elaisted.
It’s been quite a busy week in sex news, and today was no exception: our new president is getting busy restoring rights, including sex-relates ones, asap. Nibble this:
* Obama lifted the gag rule! It was a “global” funding thing, where health care service providers would not get US funding if they even mentioned that abortion existed; Obama said that in the US, this would be “unconstitutional.” He also closed Guantanamo and banned torture, while closing the CIA’s secret worldwide “black prisons.” (AP: google.com/hostednews)
* Gwyneth Paltrow’s boob. It was totally news in the blogosphere this week.
* COPA is dead. Ten wasted fucking years, and who knows how much money, and not a child protected from actual predators (statistically, most are within the child’s family). Ugh! We sex-positive, free speech pundits dance on its fresh grave. (informationweek.com)
* Tyra Banks contacted me a while back actually asking me back on the show as a pundit for her “gay for pay” episode. Uh, riiiight. Fleshbot has video of the trainwreck I avoided… (gay.fleshbot.com)
* A while back I blogged about Britain’s crazy new porn law — From 26th January 2009 it will be illegal for anyone in England and Wales to possess an “extreme” image. The definition and implementation of this is s-c-a-r-y. Now the backlash is organizing. (backlash-uk.org.uk)
* Remember when I blogged about that incredible, super-awesome Map of Human Sexuality? Some of you made it into your desktops; now you can get a poster of it, but the artist needs to get a number of pre-orders to get them printed. Order yours now ($12)! (humansexmap.com, obsidianfields.com, via The Sex Carnival)
* Poor Playboy. They’re merging all their channels (finally) in hopes of shoring up the business. Maybe becoming relevant and showing real hot girls would help, too. Then again, we are talking about a media outlet that listed Monica Lewinsky as one of the 55 most important sex personalities of the past 55 years. Le sigh. (arstechnica.com)
* Current TV went to the adult expo in Vegas (current.com, autoplay warning) and reported on what they could find in sex and technology. Here’s their report:
I saw a few brief moments of Tyra’s show on bi sexuality. I thought it was horrible. I was rather disgusted. She had twins on where one was bi and one was straight. Most of the guests were men. She also mentioned a previous show where she had a guy on who did studies where he could use physical attributes to determine if someone was gay. Things like, if the index finger was longer than the ring finger, or the amount of webbing in the hands, or the direction someone’s hair grows in. I don’t know what I found worse, the fact that someone took the time to research this and called it science…..or Tyra for legitimizing it.
The British porn law makes me very, very upset. I skipped my MP and wrote to the House of Lords, which was pretty much all you could do. An unhappy bunny here. I totally resent the implications. Boo.
Sex map is awesome! Thanks :)