“This is a major challenge for sex educators as it makes it difficult to identify their audience and target their online messages by search words, especially when you add in to the mix censorship and algorithms used online to ban content deemed explicit. … Social media giants Google and Facebook exercise another form of censorship. Through algorithms, they are deciding what can be shared and what cannot, and our research has found that what is deemed explicit is often surprising.”
* Online censors are a barrier to sex education (SciDev)
“Whatever the case, Lilly stands out in a community dominated by men. “Women who love robots are more rare than men generally,” she said. In fact, Lilly calls herself the female robosexual pioneer, and for the past year has been in a relationship with a robot named InMoovator.”
* Lilly and InMoovator: Engaged Human-Robot Couple Want Right to Marry (Future of Sex)
“…most sex writing sucks because their authors love their metaphors and adverbs, and fail to grasp the concept of less is more. My approach was to show, don’t tell. Again, that’s both Going to the Body, and another technique called Recording Angel… You show the reader details without judgement (no labeling anything as good, bad, sexy, whatever), and let her unpack the details and reassemble them in her mind as she reads. Trust the reader to come to her own conclusion… To take ownership in the creation of the scene and story as she reads it. Far more powerful that way.”
* Tyler Knight, Exxx-Black Porn God, on Writing Memoir, Sex, and Dangerous Writing (Huffington Post, via Jiz Lee)
“The Syrian crisis, after five years, is considered the biggest emergency in human terms since the World War II. It has left almost five million women of reproductive age, without adequate proper sexual and reproductive health education, vulnerable and in need of assistance.”
* Early marriage and pregnancy among Syrian adolescent girls in Jordan; do they have a choice? (Taylor & Francis Online)
“Although Red States consume porn at higher rates than Blue, the Republican Party has declared porn a “public health crisis.” … On the heels of [this], then Presidential nominee Trump took a pledge to crack down on pornography if elected President. ”
* Are the Republicans Coming For Your Porn? (Paste Magazine)
“APAC currently offers educational resources for new performers on its website, but now the group is working on a more formal support network, according to Mickey Mod, the group’s vice president: “The mentoring program-to-be is going to pair new performers with veteran performers to give guidance, address certain needs, and point them towards resources. It will be more personal and more connected than performers going to a website.””
* Who’s Teaching the Next Generation of Pornographers? (Mel Magazine)
Incredible article. “HIV didn’t just kill bodies. It killed a type of sex as well, a type of pleasure. It erased the possibility of my body and another meeting, one moment, without my mortality there too, watching. Sex is this: another body, my body, my mortality, all naked for me to see. I knew about HIV and death before I knew I was gay. I knew about death then, and that being gay might be deadly, and now I sleep with men.”
* AIDS Taught Me Sex Was Deadly. A Pill Changed That. (Village Voice)
“This time last year chemsex, the scene of gay men who use disinhibiting drugs during sex, was a buzzword in the news and a cause of moral panic. The British Medical Journal released a warning that chemsex parties were causing a spike in HIV rates, Viceland released a documentary following some of those in the scene, and think pieces poured over what the parties suggested about society and the LGBT community.”
* Meet the man at the centre of the fight to help those addicted to chemsex (Independent)
Removing contraception and abortion access on this scale will affect the ability of women to have careers, especially ones that require education, like tech. “Under a Donald Trump presidency, sex is about to get a lot less fun. That’s because Trump has tapped Tom Price, an anti-abortion and anti-contraception congressman from Georgia, as his director of Health and Human Services. Price is an opponent of the Affordable Care Act and a proponent of defunding Planned Parenthood, an organization that serves more than 2.5 million patients, many of them low-income, every year.”
* Why sex is about to get a lot less fun (CNN)
“Nevertheless, directors like Houston believe porn can be feminist and ethical both in how it’s made and how it engages an audience. “The only way that we’re going to change porn is by getting in the game, not being anti-porn.” … But even as the movement gathers steam, it faces setbacks. “You say feminist, and then you get into what’s feminist and everybody fights,” says Houston. … Moreover, feminist porn faces the same struggle as mainstream porn and other media: how to make a profitable product when consumers expect content for free. Its creators worry feminist porn could fizzle out just as it comes into its own.”
* Fresh Flowers, Plenty of Lube: Inside the World of Feminist Porn (Rolling Stone)
“… For example, nearly half of asexual women and three quarters of asexual men reported both experiencing sexual fantasy and masturbating, despite reporting a lack of sexual attraction to other people and identifying as asexual. Further, there was significant overlap in the sexual fantasies experienced by participants, regardless of their asexual or sexual status.”
* What Asexual People Sexually Fantasize About (NY Mag)
“If you write, make art, shoot film, or create anything about human sexuality, on most platforms you simply can’t be found. You are silenced, or not allowed. Or you get banned. … Erotic art, writing, and film is a declaration of humanity, and it is the backbone of free speech. It is who they come for first when they start censoring, taking away rights (just ask sex workers), taking away your access to business and distribution tools, and it is where we see the most hypocrisy and double standards in enforcement and rule-making.”
* Fight censorship: Support erotic art and writing for #GivingTuesday (TinyNibbles)
Main post image via Lesbian Pulp Bot.
