Sunday Sex Reads: Best of the Week

“At the time our Constitution was adopted, there were no laws in the United States against obscenity. Sexually explicit expression was widely available. It was only in the nineteenth century that religious moralists, such as Anthony Comstock, instituted laws prohibiting the distribution of “obscene” materials.”
* The Constitution’s Complex Relationship With Sex & Obscenity (TIME)

“Sergi Santos is a man with a mission: He wants to make sure robotic sex dolls that enjoy the sex as much as the humans ― or at least act like they do. The Barcelona-based engineer has just created a sex doll named “Samantha,” who is equipped with the latest advancements in artificial intelligence.”
* Engineer Creates Sex Robot That Needs To Be Romanced First (Huffington Post)

“On the Internet, she goes by the name Vanessa Luna, starring in porn videos that highlight her ample rear end. Police believe she used her real name, Ruth Planas, to help women enlarge their own butts by operating an unlicensed clinic in a West Miami-Dade strip mall.”
* A porn actress, a bogus doc and a butt implant gone bad — it’s a Miami crime story (Miami Herald)

“Our intervention strategies to understand and address the problems from these issues must be nuanced and complex. Simplistic answers such as “because of misogyny” will be unsuccessful, as they do not reflect the complexity of the motivations behind nonconsensual nude photo sharing.”
* Why Men Post Revenge Porn Pictures (Psychology Today)

This is fantastic. “In a new survey from LGBTQ advocacy organization GLAAD, conducted by Harris Poll, those open minds are reflected in the numbers: 20% of millennials say they are something other that strictly straight and cisgender, compared to 7% of boomers. The people in that group may be be a little sexually curious about people of their own gender or may reject the notion that they have a gender in the first place.”
* Behind the TIME Cover Story: Beyond ‘He’ or ‘She’ (TIME)
See also: Get to Know the New Pronouns: They, Theirs, and Them (Advocate)

“Other smokers report much the same — that the link between marijuana and arousal is so strong as to be problematic. But the internet is equally rife with stories of weed-related erectile dysfunction, suggesting a dual meaning for “stoner boner”: Either it’s an automatic, insistent hard-on, or it’s a frustratingly flaccid member. What could account for this contradiction?”
* What dudes won’t tell you about pot and sex (Mic)

“The museum’s website boasts that it is “probably the only museum in the world to contain a collection of phallic specimens belonging to all the various types of mammal found in a single country.” That’s a very specific niche to fill.”
* The Icelandic Phallological Museum Is a Unique Monument to the Glory of the Penis (Unicorn Booty)

GREAT article. “In Pornocracy: The New Sex Multinationals, a new documentary playing at SXSW, French filmmaker Ovidie argues that the rise of free porn online has ruined the industry, forcing performers into rough and degrading acts in order to stand out and corrupting the sexual expectations of our youth. … But Ovidie—a self-professed “proud femporn director for 17 years, now mainly documentarist”—seems confused about porn’s past and way too pessimistic about its future. Yes, the industry has changed, but it was way less rosy to start with than Ovidie portrays it and things are way less dire than she says they are now.”
* Yes, Porn Is Kinkier Than It Used to Be. It’s Also More Feminist, Varied, and Inclusive (Reason)

“Until the early 1900s, it was common for American towns and cities to have a red-light district filled with saloons, dance halls, brothels, and other venues that offered a continuum of indulgences in intoxication and sex. San Francisco had three—the Barbary Coast was the most famous—but, starting in the 1890s and ending in the 1910s, across the country cities large and small segregated their “sporting class” into neighborhoods designated for scandalous behavior. ”
* Most American Cities Once Had Red-Light Districts (Atlas Obscura)

Note: Article defines sex as reproduction and suggests pleasure is for perverts. “Experts say that whether and how reproduction works is just one of a number of medical and biological questions related to long-duration space travel to which we need better answers and more, more-diverse data.”
* Space Sex Is Serious Business (FiveThirtyEight)

“Concerned from the beginning about labelling a stranger a sex offender, I wouldn’t publicly acknowledge the insinuation until more than a month later. I would avoid the question when asked, and fight off the temptation to acknowledge the hundreds of messages that would tie him inexorably to my case.”
* How I Hunted My Sex-Assault Suspect Online and on Mexico Streets (Daily Beast)

Main post image via: Painted Ladies and Broken Figurines: The dark feminist art of Jessica Harrison (Dangerous Minds; Jessica Harrison)