* It doesn’t matter how you felt about the idea of .xxx domains for porn sites — tomorrow ICANN is making their decision, and all signs point to yes. They’re saying it won’t be made “mandatory” for websites. Not sure how they’d enforce that one, anyway. With all the hysteria and hyperbole prior to this about porn sites getting “rounded up” you’d think someone with a big porn business would start creating a set of best practices to allay fears and make guidelines that decision-makers could refer to. You’d think. (reuters.com)
* I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough female friends tell me they’ve been sexually assaulted at some point in their lives that my response to “solving rape” is typically along the lines of “make it legal for all women to carry any weapon they want.” This isn’t totally for-serious, but the idea is to take away the perception that women are predictably easy targets and not dangerous. So it’s with great interest that I’m seeing the female rape-prevention condom Rape-axe debut at the World Cup. I really want to see one in person, and talk to someone who has tried it. Rape is so out of control in South Africa, it’s a good place to introduce something like this. I think the counterpoint to this discussion will be the “what about the Lorena Bobbitt’s of the world” inasmuch that a psycho woman might use it to purposely harm a man; though I’ll argue back that this might be an effective strategy until rape rates are on even par with female attacks on male genitals. Think about it. (nydailynews.com)
* This Dirty Magazines webcomic about a girl’s first (and ongoing) experiences with porn is both funny and oh-so-familiar… (sexetc.org)
* As a friend of mine (in tech) finishes up his book on HTML5, it’s interesting to read the GigOM article about why porn and the iPad are important for HTML5. But I’ll wait to show him the article until he meets his deadline… (gigaom.com)
* The Butch Clothing Company — so fucking awesome. Now women who identify as butch have a high-end option for suits, rather than having to navigate men’s departments. In London, at least. And I love the “House Of Butch” name. Blessings! (thebutchclothingcompany.co.uk)
* Over at Feminisnt, this great post by Furry Girl takes to task the red herring of violent porn. (feminisnt.com)
* American high school yearbook publishes students’ anonymous quotes about secrets that include coping with pain, bullying, abortion, being queer and many realities of being a teen. “Instead of having the popular kids and jocks dominate the entire thing (…) We represented everyone: the druggies, cutters, gays, lesbians- anyone who had a story to tell. We turned down no one. Our yearbook, for once, was the complete truth of Massaponax.” Edition is called “Truth Be Told.” School principal orders all copies to be returned, quotes removed and edition reprinted. Truth told? Only if you’re teaching kids about adults in denial. (myfoxdc.com, via HiOhMegan)
* Call for participants: cunnilingus survey! (charlieglickman.com)
* This one almost got its own post, at the very least because I read it so incredibly closely. Not just because Cory is a close and longtime friend (and ally), but because I had to wonder if he was talking about me — while he echoed so many sentiments that continually make me so very angry about people who represent sex knowledge in the spotlight. Read The Price of Sexual Fame. (sexuality.about.com)
* Audacia Ray made this video of her presentation on sex workers and human rights — and it’s a hell of a powerful piece of video. (youtube.com)
Photo by Exey Panteleev.
I know some people say that the sentence for rape should be longer/harsher than the sentence for murder, becaues you have destroyed a person’s life but not ended it, forcing them to live with the pain and trauma forever after, and I can see some truth in that.
But is the solution to sexual violence against women to increase the rate of sexual violence against men? Young men often do stupid, horrible or unconscionable acts because of a lack of guidance, positive authority figures, or consequences. There must always be punishment for crimes, but at the same time we should build up and make examples of strong, caring, thinking men (while acknowleding everyone makes mistakes), and use their example to teach young men how to be intimate with women without requiring violence and intimidation. And we must break any cycles of parents punishing children for acts done to them as a children.
Hopefully one day we’ll have the time and energy for such an important, powerful, almost sisyphean task
I remember when there was talk about a mandatory .xxx domain. In fact, there was even a very slick, well-funded group called CP80.org that’s still up that even made an entire documentary (“Traffic Control: The People’s War On Internet Porn”) that was pushing for it.
This was always billed as a non-censorship option for porn that would make filtering software function easier. The problem is that it would also make the kind of China-style internet blocks for sexual content, such as Australia has been considering, more easy to implement as well.
There’s also the matter of where do you put sites that are sexual, maybe even pretty explicit, but aren’t porn sites per se. A lot of sex blogging and sex-positive activism falls into that category. Does that get kicked off the regular internet too? Would domains like Blogspot and WordPress, which are .com and .net sites, no longer be able to host sex blogs?
Those are the kind of issues that come up when demands are made that explicit content be neatly segregated to one corner of the internet. Particularly when old-school “decency” groups are the ones making the judgment.
To say I’m skeptical of the Rape-Axe would be an understatement. How does it fit in such a way that the rapist slides right into it on the first try? It seems like if such a design were possible, female condoms would be a lot more elegant. What prevents it from getting sideways and bunched up inside a woman during the attack? Wouldn’t this make things worse?
I’ve seen too in other articles about this where the creator claims that there’s no danger of fluid exchange, since the Rape-Axe doesn’t break the skin of the penis. If that’s the case, I strongly doubt that it will disable an attacker to the point where he can’t pee or walk with it on (as is claimed). And if the attacker isn’t crippled, I’d fear things could get much, much worse.
I’m sorry, this strikes me as one of those solutions that appeals to our animal nature for revenge, or inflicting pain on bad people, but does nothing to address the root cause of a problem. If a man is predisposed to rape, as so many in South Africa are, then even if this product “makes men rethink before they assault a woman,” it won’t stop them from raping her; it’ll simply mean they’ll use a finger (or worse… I’ve read some accounts of rapes in Africa that have literally caused me to vomit) to “check” for such a contraption before proceeding. Along those lines, I’ve read that gang-rapes are very common among incidents there; how will this product improve a woman’s chances of survival in such a situation? I’m not concerned about women going all Lorena Bobbitt with these things;; I’m concerned it’s going to turn a bad situation into a much worse one for women who use them.
With that said… I have no better ideas. I’m going to have to second your notion of letting women carry whatever weapons they want: bear mace, spiked mace, .45 caliber pistol… whatever. Lady’s choice.