- “In the popular imagination, the eternal trope is that the porn industry drives the adoption of new technology; that it accounts for some astronomically large portion of all Internet traffic; and, yes, that it generates equally enormous sums of money for all the faceless people who run its operations. We picture these people as sleazy Southern Californians wearing pinkie rings and polyester. … But it isn’t like that at all.”
The Porn Business Isn’t Anything Like You Think It Is (Wired)
- “… in a room of her own, another 13-year-old makes her own tentative sexual forays, but it’s not a familiar scene. She’s not “practice kissing” with her BFF or pushing off the roving hands of a too-old boyfriend or giggling about guys she’s totally crushing on. It’s just her, at her keyboard — oh, and she’s reading about the characters of her favorite book having acrobatic, highly noncanonical sex with each other.”
Welcome To The Sex-Positive Wonderland Of Erotic Fan Fiction (Huffington Post)
- What do DJ and New Museum darling Juliana Huxtable, a former member of industrial outfit Throbbing Gristle, and “drag mother” Flawless Sabrina have in common? They all have work featured in Bring Your Own Body, an exhibit that opened yesterday at Cooper Union “presenting the work of transgender artists and archives.”
Bring Your Own Body To This All-Trans Art Show (Bedford and Bowery)
- Neil Strauss is best known for The Game, his exploration into the world of pickup artists, and its follow-up, The Rules of the Game, which distilled that wisdom into a set of tactics for approaching and seducing women. But selling his fans on his new project, The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships, is not going to be straightforward. The new book chronicles his forays into sex communes, threesomes, and a modern-day harem.
The Author of “The Game” Now Says the Art of Seduction Is Nonsense (New Republic)
- “Several months ago, a female friend told me that, six months earlier, a close male friend of mine sexually assaulted a female friend of hers.”
How Do I Handle a Claim of Sexual Assault by a Close Friend? (NYT)
- “For those authors who have yet to discover it – Amazon is currently going through and classifying a great deal of romance books as erotica. … Amazon clearly painted us with one brush, without any regard to actual content. If your catalog is primarily erotic romance and/or erotica – they may have done that with yours as well. If I were you, I’d check.”
Pornocalypse 2015 is Upon Us! (Selena Kitt)
- “Once [Community actor] Dan Harmon returned home, we got his live tweeting of watching the Community porn parody from Hustler video. The DVD seemed to be in the collection of sweet parting gifts left by McGathy for Harmon, including the bits from above with the writer’s room. And from there, we were treated to a wonderful ride through Harmon’s experience with the film, and likely a bit too much about his knowledge of pornography.”
Dan Harmon Decided To Live Tweet The ‘Community’ Porn Parody With Magical Results (Uproxx)
- In June, a sheriff in Illinois called on Mastercard and Visa to stop processing payments for the classifieds ad site Backpage.com, which the law enforcer alleged was a hotbed of prostitution and sex trafficking. Within 48 hours, both companies had complied, leading Backpage to sue the sheriff for using the power of his office to circumvent legal avenues of addressing his allegations against the site, much as police had done to publishers deemed to be proliferating “impure” books in the 1960s.
The Porn-Peddler’s Guide to Operation Choke Point (MiKandi)
- “In Las Vegas, I was 21. We’d been there three days, and I was learning my new name. A stranger was teaching it to me in the ballroom. The women changed their clothes again and again; they passed in parades of Technicolor latex, in white dresses and nurse hats, in fishnet and lace. On a table nearby, a woman climaxed.”
How I Earned My Porn Star Name (Lorelei Lee, BuzzFeed)
- Playboy’s recent decision to stop publishing nude photos marks a watershed moment in media, as the porn pioneer buttons up and turns its back on what made it famous. But the company’s core has had little to do with pornography for a long time.
China—not online porn—is why Playboy is dumping nude photographs (Quartz)
- “In Fez, I had practiced dialogues that adhered to Morocco’s traditional gender roles: Fatima cooks in the kitchen, while Mohammed sits at the café. My tutor there, an unmarried and conservative woman, punctuated my classroom dialogues with instruction on what good Moroccan women did or did not do. To be seen as good was plainly imperative, which left me at a disadvantage. I wasn’t Muslim, I wasn’t married, I wasn’t a virgin, I lived alone. And I had desires. It seemed impossible for me to befriend good Moroccan women, but I also didn’t want to feel alone.”
[Letter from Morocco] | Lost Girls, by Sarah Dohrmann (Harper’s Magazine)
- A pair of recent studies found that one in three young adults in the United States identify on the bisexual spectrum, and one in two in the U.K. The lack of bisexual representation in the media leads to a dangerous lack of awareness of the problems facing this community. In the last year, over a dozen studies have pointed to a bisexual health crisis. Bisexuals face elevated risks of violence and discrimination, often at higher rates than gay and lesbian peers; biphobia in medical offices contributes to an environment where bisexual men have a higher risk of contracting HIV and STIs than either straight or gay men. Mental health issues, domestic violence and substance abuse are all higher in the bisexual community. (VB note – us bi people also have alarmingly high rates of suicide.)
Why Saying ‘Bisexual’ Is More Important Than Ever (Rolling Stone)
- Shine Louise Houston stands against a concrete wall with a smile while gazing directly at you, the viewer. In her early 40’s, she is a queer black, brown, and 3rd generation immigrant of average stature who is masculine or butch presenting and wears a natural afro and rimmed glasses. A lip-ring is centered in her bottom lip. She wears a flannel shirt and black zip-up hoodie. “As a voyeur, I use my film to explore gender and sexuality. I explore butch/femme sexual dynamics, trans and non-binary expressions of sexuality and desire, and exploring masculine beauty.”
Profile Interview: Shine Louise Houston (Queer of Gender)
- In 2011, several years after retiring from a long career of professional running, Suzy Favor Hamilton, a three-time Olympian, began moonlighting as a high-end escort in Las Vegas. She made hundreds and sometimes thousands of dollars per hour.
What Made Suzy Run (The New Yorker)
