Sex News: What sex workers think of Hustlers, Kickstarter approves a sex toy campaign, sex therapy on a cam site, what brain scans tell us about porn

• I don’t know about you, but I’ve been really wondering what sex workers think of the new film, Hustlers. “Sex workers rarely see any of our experiences reflected on TV or movies. We are usually severely dehumanized, the character that gets “rescued,” the but of a tired joke, or getting murdered in the first five minutes. Hustlers has had very polarizing reactions from the sex worker community.”
  * What Actual Sex Workers Think About the New Movie ‘Hustlers’ (Broke-Ass Stuart)
  See also: Life After the Hustle: A Former Stripper’s Thoughts on Hustlers (Vulture)
  More: Hustlers (2019) (TitsandSass)

• If you read anything about sex work while the world burns, make it this. I would love to hand this to Elizabeth Warren and ask what her plan is to fix this. Mild warning for survivors of sexual assault. “One member of the California State Assembly listened to everything I had to say and then replied, “You seem smart, but they aren’t all like you.” Let me be clear: Every sex worker I have ever met is as smart as I am; many are smarter. I have learned more, collectively, from my coworkers than from any of the formal education I’ve bought with my hard-earned sex-work dollars.”
  * Cash/Consent (N+1)

• “It’s a relent­less flesh-show, except for one incon­gru­ous win­dow. There, a man lounges casu­al­ly in a blue open-neck shirt in front of a sun­ny back­drop. Click on him and you enter a chat with Dr David Ley, a psy­cho­sex­u­al ther­a­pist hired by Stripchat to offer free group ther­a­py ses­sions for site users.”
  * Sex­cam therapy (The Face)

• “Cute Little Fuckers, a gender-inclusive sex toy company, just launched a $13,500 campaign on Kickstarter. “This is the first one that has been approved for a while,” Kickstarter Senior Outreach Lead of Design & Technology Beau Ambur told TechCrunch.”
  * Cute Little Fuckers gets Kickstarter’s seal of approval for sex toy project (TechCrunch)

• “What Noori’s team found was that image type — whether it was a picture or a video — was the strongest predictor of differences in which parts of the brain became engaged. Unexpectedly, the weakest predictor was the subjects’ biological sex. In other words, when men and women viewed pornographic imagery, the way their brains responded, in the aggregate, was largely the same.”
  * What Can Brain Scans Tell Us About Sex? (NYT)

• Even in this writeup, Guardian seems like it can barely contain its hatred of porn. But it’s going to be a great show, and deserves attention. ““There’s an incredible history of queer and trans sex workers, who were at the forefront of the gay rights movement, also having a tremendous impact on art,” Heller said. “I wanted to explore the empowered history of the community, I wanted their stories to be told in an authentic way.””
  * Sexual revolution: the underseen art and activism of queer sex work (Guardian)

• “…in 2018 the U.S. passed rights violating restrictions via the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) and Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA). This legislation limits the sharing of vital safety information for sex workers online and causes economic harm and social marginalization.”
  * Key Facts About Human Rights Violations & Sex Work ~ For the 2020 UPR of the U.S.A (bestpracticespolicy.org)
  See also: Rep. Ro Khanna To Introduce Bill To Study Impact Of FOSTA On Sex Workers (TechDirt)

• Fairporn is “creating a certification authority to help ensure the rights and safety of everyone in the porn industry and helping people make better choices about the porn they watch.” Their new standards have just been published.
  * Fairporn Standards v0.1 (Fairporn.org)

• “In this technical report, we focus on definitions of pornography, paying particular attention to the question of whether it is possible to reach consensus on a definition across disciplines.”
  * An Interdisciplinary Definition of Pornography: Results from a Global Delphi Panel (Springer)

• I love this film so much! Terrific review. “It’s that rare film which makes you believe the actors were throughly in love with the material. There are f-stop jokes, for fuck’s sake. And there is a joyous sexual fluidity that emerges from the authentic emotional tinderbox in a way that manages to punish no one and reward everyone.”
  * Erotica for Filmmakers: a Porn Club review of SCORE (Pink Label TV)

• “…the Women of Sex Tech panel featured a collection of female founders and heads of companies from some of the most innovative brands in the sextech game, moderated by Erica Braverman.”
  * Women of Sex Tech Panel Kicks Off Sex Expo NY (XBIZ)

• “Gun Gun Pixies for the Nintendo Switch and PC is a third-person shooter-platformer about a pair of miniature aliens learning about human behavior by infiltrating a women’s dorm. It’s silly. It’s racy. There are panty shots galore and lots of censored anime nudity. I expected as much from the latest PQube release. What I did not expect was that the game would kick off with a cautionary tale about excessive dieting.”
  * Gun Gun Pixies Is A Silly Erotic Game With A Serious Message About Your Health (Kotaku)
  See also: Getting Down on the Farm: A Review of Nutaku’s CockVille (Future of Sex)

Main post image: Image: Angelo Madsen Minax, Live Nude Genitals, 2012, Neon, Plexiglas, featured in ON OUR BACKS: The Revolutionary Art of Queer Sex Work.