“For the 60 or so years since the Miracle decision, courts have retained the prerogative to define and prosecute obscenity as they see fit, even though no high-court judge in our nation’s history has been able to adequately define exactly what “obscenity” is … But if obscenity has been judged by state- and federal-level “community standards,” what happens to this judicial precedent when American community standards themselves become obscene?”
* The Absurdity of Obscenity (Los Angeles Review of Books)
“One might assume strategic marketing at play here at Showgirls as the baseline practically busts the speakers and the waves of Ronald McDonald orange-red hues erupt through the walls, making one drool on a cocktail napkin. But one would be mistaken. The mood here is advantageously rouge and accidentally hot: the ripe shadow of red eclipses day and allows erotic commerce to thrive between strangers while outside is a clear view of the San Jacinto Mountains — their sharp snow-kissed tips dancing against the eternal blue sky.”
* The Reds (Talk Tabú / Medium)
“There were pillows, mattresses, bottles, a couple of cuts of raw meat and even a vacuum. Yes, sometime not long after I discovered the wonders of masturbation, I attempted to have sex with a vacuum and it turned out about as well as you might imagine.”
* Robots, VR and the future of male masturbators (Engadget)
“When I talk about porn, I am speaking specifically about my personal experiences as a black female in her mid-20s in the world of Los Angeles heterosexual/”lesbian” pornography. Yes, I am pointing at you, Porn Valley. I am not qualified to speak about anything else. People may snidely remark I’m barely qualified to speak about this, but let me remind you: Fuck your opinion; this is my life.”
* Porn Reflections from a Sophomore Porn Smear (Rants by Perverta)
“Ava is, quite simply, an escort of the highest caliber, seeing only the most affluent and exclusive people. She’s so selective about new clients, she won’t even talk on the phone with one until after an assistant has conducted a thorough background check, which includes calling their references. ”
* The Extravagant World of Ava Hudson (MEL Magazine)
“The pornography industry isn’t creating new communication technologies, Coopersmith said, nor is it particularly prescient about what technology is likely to take off. It’s simply taken advantage of new developments before others, and has enough of a draw that people are willing to follow it.”
* How Porn Leads People to Upgrade Their Tech (The Atlantic)
“Since taking Dreams of Spanking offline last August, I’d been determined not to wallow in unhappiness. I didn’t want to feel like a victim. I’d filed my appeal; that was all I could reasonably do. In the meantime, I wanted to recover from all the stress and trauma of the ATVOD investigation. … Now I had my answer, and the whole world was about to hear the good news, I expected to feel happy. Relieved. But after sending out the press release to journalists on Friday, I crashed.”
* How does it feel to fight the law – and win? (Pandora Blake)
“Since birth, Lionel Wills suffered from phimosis, a foreskin so tight it can’t retract to expose the head of the penis. It affects only 1 percent of males 17 and older. In his early twenties, the problem became so pronounced he decided to undergo a circumcision.”
* ‘That’s When I Realized They Had Completely Frankensteined My Dick’ (MEL Magazine)
“Luckily, before my hair was long enough to shoot any scenes, I had the chance to take it for a real-life test drive. But the results were mixed. The first thing I noticed was the way the hair grew in. For some reason I was expecting both my armpit and pubic hair to be coarse and curly, but instead it grew in soft and straight. The second thing I noticed was the startling sensation of my armpit hair blowing in the wind. …”
* Here’s What Happened When I Grew Out My Armpit Hair for Porn (Cosmopolitan)
“But sex is not a passive act, so ignoring our own bodies requires intention and a sort of sexual self-determination most of the cisgender community doesn’t even consider. This assumption of corporeal consistency is fine for now and fine for most, but it won’t be a norm going forward as virtual reality facilitates experimentation with an increasing variety of avatars. In the future, we’ll have sex with and in different forms. Some of those forms will have adorable tails, like foxes.”
* What Furries Can Teach Us About Our Kinky, Virtual Reality Future (Inverse)
“On the Friday in 1990 when the collection of 175 photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe called “The Perfect Moment,” previewed at the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, 8,000 people showed up to see them. … On the Saturday morning that the exhibit opened to the public we heard that the Hamilton County prosecutor had empaneled a grand jury to get an indictment by noon, so we sent out scouts to determine when the police were going to arrest the CAC’s director, Dennis Barrie. But Cincinnati is a small town, and our scouts told us that the cops had stopped for lunch along the way.”
* Why I defended Mapplethorpe’s ‘obscene’ ‘Perfect Moment’ (Washington Post)
“Of course, this is not real life. This is the world of PropertySex, a porn series that “puts you behind the camera as you make dirty sex videos with the naughtiest of desperate tenants and with the most alluring real estate agents.” Currently, it’s the 7th most popular channel on PornHub, boasting over 54,000 subscribers and 369 million views in a little over a year.”
* There’s Now a Porn Genre About How Broke Millennials Are (VICE Canada)
Incredible artwork above by Casimir Lee.
