- Soon after the announcement of David Bowie’s death, a story from November resurfaced in which Lori Mattix recalls her youth as a teenage groupie. Mattix, who partially inspired Kate Hudson’s character in “Almost Famous,” recalls meeting Bowie on the Sunset Strip and losing her virginity to him. She never regretted it. She was fifteen at the time, and that fact has sparked controversy.
David Bowie, rock star groupies and the sexually adventurous ’70s: “Labeling us as victims in retrospect is not a very conscious thing to do” (Salon)
See also, from 2014: New biography details David Bowie’s versatile sex life and wild orgies with first wife Angie and Rolling Stones frontman Mick Jagger (NY Daily News)
- Oregon Militia leaders have called on supporters to send them supplies, including blankets, underwear, and cigarettes. The full list of requested supplies did not include a request for sex toys or other phallus-shaped goods.
The Oregon Militia Wants You To Stop Sending Them Dildos, Thank You Very Much (Buzzfeed)
- “Adult film studios and their stars face more and more scrutiny from social networks, even when the content they post is not explicit. Conversely, social networks like Instagram and Facebook have increasingly targeted users for sharing nonsexual nudity. … Like their big banking counterparts, social media’s big boys are prudes in the truest sense, and their enforcement of nudity and decency policies doesn’t seem to follow any sort of logic.”
Sex censorship breeds a fetish-focused social network (Engadget)
- “The Split Dildo creator; he’s been fun. He cared so much about his design being copied that he started harassing bloggers who had reviewed the G-Vibe. He would email them and try commenting on their reviews with (empty) legal threats, telling the bloggers they had to remove their review of the G-Vibe because it was a patent violation.”
Sex Toy Copycats – Is it improvement or shitty business ethics? (Dangerous Lilly)
It's painfully obvious we're shamelessly pandering to the foot fetishists in our fan base. We always aim to please. https://t.co/2YQugrODcn
— Mark Hamill (@HamillHimself) January 14, 2016
- Gerhard Strasser: “We also have — and this I found surprising — a mention, and a rather serious one, in the Kama Sutra, in India, from about the 4th century. We actually have a reference in the 44th and 45th chapters that men and women should practice cryptography. …
How Encryption Technology Can Be Traced Back to the Kama Sutra (The Atlantic)
- U.K. academic Kate Lister has been curating Whores of Yore since October. In that short time, it has gathered 6,000 followers, and has developed into a goldmine of fascinating historical nuggets about sex work. Featuring vintage erotica, historical records (the 14th century arrest record of a “strumpet,” for example), and the stories of female and male sex workers across the world. Lister wrote of her sex worker following, “I am learning from them all the time. They really humble me, and I love reading their comments and feedback.”
Victorian rent boys and sheep gut condoms: Twitter’s hub for historic sex work (Daily Dot)
- “When I launched Diablo III, I didn’t expect the pornography I had been looking at hours previously to be splashed on the screen. But that’s exactly what replaced the black loading screen. Like a scene from hollywood, the game temporarily froze as it launched, preventing any attempt to clear the screen. …”
How Nvidia breaks Chrome Incognito (charliehorse55.wordpress.com)
- “According to a new study published in the Journal of Sex Research, ‘porn’ apparently means very different things to different people. In this study, more than 2,000 adults were recruited online to complete a survey about how they define porn. … Specifically, those who were more religious and those who were married rated almost everything as more likely to be porn.”
What Science Gets Wrong about Porn (Playboy)
Sex worker friendly? Want to put your business ad in our conference program?
https://t.co/y0leGI4sYJ pic.twitter.com/Yl1SSYY5Xx
— Desiree Alliance (@DesireeAlliance) January 13, 2016
- “When Sloan announced the [vulva beauty] competition he expected a flood of picture submissions from porn starlets … But when the competitors came from Kazakhstan and Hungary and the UK and other countries … Sloan was forced to divert the competition to Berlin.”
Vagina beauty contests are a thing (GQ UK)
- Online-dating behemoth OkCupid is adding a feature tailor-made for polyamorous people. The new setting, which became available for some beta users in December, allows users who are listed as “seeing someone,” “married,” or “in an open relationship” on the platform to link their profiles and search for other people to join their relationship.
OkCupid Is Opening Up to Polyamorous Relationships (The Atlantic)
- Playboy Enterprises will put the Playboy Mansion on the market for $200 million within the next month, reports TMZ. There’s just one catch: The buyer will have to give magazine publisher Hugh Hefner a life estate, which entitles the octogenarian to live in the mansion until his death.
Playboy Mansion to go on sale for $200 million (Huffington Post)
The possibility of pleasure; the freedom from fear of coercion, discrimination, and violence. This guides us. pic.twitter.com/mtruw4Ttzt
— The CSPH (@TheCSPH) January 15, 2016
- Police say 25-year-old William Cornelius Jr. proposed marriage to 20-year-old Sheri Moore at a Bay City Walmart store in front of employees and other shoppers who congratulated them on Dec. 30. But later that same night, the couple was accused of shoplifting at a nearby store — taking items including an edible thong and sex toy — and were taken into police custody.
Walmart engagement ends in sex-toy arraignment for Bay City, Michigan couple (CBS)
- “The millionaire futurist Martine Rothblatt is often described as transgender even though she self-identifies as transhumanist. This may seem a minor distinction, but when you’re rich enough to commission an artificially intelligent robot version of your wife and loose yourself from the constrictions of biology, it’s not a minor distinction at all. Rothblatt contextualizes her sexuality with technology rather than historical gender roles because that makes more sense to her.”
It’s Time to Make Sex Education Robotic (Inverse)
- “… some 70% of women who answered the poll reported that they’d considered having sex with their personal trainers. Sixty-six percent of people overall cited the very possibility of sex at the gym as factoring into their decision to work out and one in 10 people brought condoms in their gym bags just in case.”
One in Four People Admit to Hooking Up and Having Sex at the Gym (Fusion)
- Go Deeper: “What was the first sexy story you ever wrote? How did you feel when it was published?” Rachel Kramer Bussel: “Monica and Me, starring a character so much like me that she shares my name and some of my favorite clothes, and Monica Lewinsky.” (VB note – I remember that story, and I still love it!)
Nothing That Can’t be Eroticized: An Interview with Rachel Kramer Bussel (Go Deeper Press)
