This is so good I keep re-reading it. “Mary Harron’s American Psycho (2000) is a lot of things. A satire about the glittering rot of 1980s America. An excellent showcase for Christian Bale’s skills as an actor. An adaptation that bests the novel it’s based on. But more than anything else the film is a stunning example of the power of the female gaze when it turns its attention to male vanity and violence.”
* The Female Gaze of ‘American Psycho’: How Mary Harron Made Fantasy Into Timeless Satire (Village Voice)
Warning for survivors. Some were as young as 16, he passed them around to his cronies, and he recorded them. “In recent days, more than a dozen women have contacted Gretchen Carlson’s New Jersey-based attorney, Nancy Erika Smith, and made detailed allegations of sexual harassment by Roger Ailes over a 25-year period dating back to the 1960s when he was a producer on The Mike Douglas Show. “These are women who have never told these stories until now,” Smith told me. “Some are in lot of pain.””
* Six More Women Allege That Roger Ailes Sexually Harassed Them (NY Mag)
“This last day has been a handful for Paul. A couple was caught half-naked in an elevator. An elderly gambler soiled himself while playing slots and flung feces at a group of bachelorettes. A guest wouldn’t believe snorting cocaine in the reception area was illegal. A little-person prostitute was taken out by the police after performing oral sex on a client in a public bathroom.”
* 48 Hours on the Dark Side of Las Vegas (Narratively)
“If you think celesbian gossip these days is crazy, you should’ve been alive like 100 years ago because DAMN these ladies were BUSY. ”
* Top 10 Most Sexually Prolific Lesbians and Bisexuals Of Old Hollywood (Autostraddle)
“Sex advice is one of the tried and true tropes of men’s- and women’s-interest magazines: 69 Tips for Better Oral Sex, The One Move That Will Blow His/Her/Their Mind, Here’s a Sex Thing You Don’t Even Know About are, given the twin drives of sexuality and curiosity, the most evergreen of content. But Nicole Prause, principal investigator at the Sexual Psychophysiology and Affective Neuroscience Lab at the University of California, Los Angeles, doesn’t buy it.”
* The One Real Way to Get Better at Sex, According to a Sex Researcher (NY Mag)
— overwatch personals (@owpersonals) July 4, 2016
“This may be a cuddle-for-hire website, but it’s not extolling the restorative power of platonic touch. Unlike The Snuggery, which has the soothing color scheme of a therapist’s personal blog and says it aims to “make the world a gentler place, one cuddle at a time,” Cuddle Time Agency is all about the women, with photos of cuddle babes lying in bikinis on yachts and scrunching their boobs together in grainy webcam shots.”
* Whither Professional Cuddling? (MEL Magazine)
“As the debate over whether the United States should decriminalize sex work intensifies, prostitution has quietly gone mainstream among many young people, seen as a viable option in an impossible economy and legitimized by a wave of feminism that interprets sexualization as empowering. “People don’t call it ‘prostitution’ anymore,” says Caitlin, 20, a college student in Montreal. “That sounds like slut-shaming. Some girls get very rigid about it, like ‘This is a woman’s choice.’ ””
* Daddies, “Dates,” and the Girlfriend Experience: Welcome to the New Prostitution Economy (Vanity Fair)
“Unbeknownst to me at the time, heteronormativity played a heavy part in our relationship despite us both being the same gender. This was during a period where I still identified as a cisgender boy and here I was sexually experimenting with another cisgender boy, yet I was always designated “the girl” during our playtimes. It was a role explicitly established very early on, and one that I felt surprisingly comfortable in.”
* How Learning About Queer Sex Taught Me Self-Love (Crash Pad Series)
“We seem to be in the golden age of hustlers. From tech bros to politicians, everyone’s a hustler these days. The infamous hustle is sprinkled across social media bios, WIRED headlines, and marketing campaigns. … One could say “hustler” bears some semblance to the feminized “whore,” another word loaded with connotations around money, fornication and unsavory business practices. Except, while we’ve been socially conditioned to want to be hustlers, we’re wildly uncomfortable being whores.”
* Every day we’re hustling: Why we love “hustlers” — but not “whores” (Salon)
“[Telegraph columnist Rebecca Reid] said: “I think we’re having sex differently rather than less, and the lines of what sex actually is can be a little blurry. Millennials are certainly more likely to experiment, and particularly to have sexual contact with people they find attractive rather than a specific gender … I think the easy availability of sex toys and porn is also a factor: if you’re feeling sexually frustrated you’ve got a much better outlet to address the issue yourself, rather than going out and looking for sex.””
* The real reason why millennials stopped having sex (Independent UK)
Main post image via: ANATOMICAL STUDIES OF SPIDER-MAN, MERMAIDS, AND MORE (Dangerous Minds)
