- The Health of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender People: Building a Foundation for Better Understanding – Institute of Medicine – To help assess the state of the science, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) asked the IOM to evaluate current knowledge of the health status of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender populations; to identify research gaps and opportunities; and to outline a research agenda to help NIH focus its research in this area. The IOM finds that to advance understanding of the health needs of all LGBT individuals, researchers need more data about the demographics of these populations, improved methods for collecting and analyzing data, and an increased participation of sexual and gender minorities in research. Building a more solid evidence base for LGBT health concerns will not only benefit LGBT individuals, but also add to the repository of health information we have that pertains to all people.
- Walk of Shame? Baby, I Strut | Sex and the 405 – In the past months I have spoken with people at Playboy and Fleshbot about properties like that of NakedCity, tossing around the incredible paradox posed by sex on the internet. The masses can’t resist sex. Any story about sex on any publication goes through the roof with views. Sex sells, goes the tired saying, and when you look at it this way, it does…But make a property devoted solely to sex and you find yourself in the precarious situation of being completely unable to show serious financial reward for your efforts. Sex, apparently, sells everything except advertising space and any hope of a decent search ranking.
- Bringing up the rear – Tracy Clark-Flory – Salon.com – For my generation, the back-door option is like what the blow job was to the generation that came before — just a fun new taboo waiting to be broken. The phenomenon of heterosexual guys participating in all sorts of arse play is something different, though. I’ve seen female-on-male strap-on sex go from the sort of thing tittered about in women’s magazines to hearing a male friend once drunkenly blurting out in a bar that he loved it.
- How a sex rebel was born – Sex News, Sex Talk – Salon.com – She may have traded in her punk rock leathers for one of the least erotic materials on the planet, but her fierce rhetoric about sexual freedom and pleasure has stayed the same.
- Anne Roiphe: Sex, Art and Booze Back When Writers Broke Taboos | The New York Observer –
- Why is this so hard? Google, Facebook and adult retailing | Econsultancy – My day-to-day marketing activities are somewhat different from yours. Instead of optimising campaigns and formulating strategy, with every day comes a new onslaught of ad disapproval, a rumour of a change in policy, a decline from an ad network or long email conversation with a boilerplate-spouting representative…In this article I’ll give you an insight into the surprisingly not-salacious world of Adult Retailing in relation to the internet’s biggest players: Google and Facebook.
- Glee – Sexy – Sex Education on TV – The TV show Glee is great fun, but I feel like it has consistently done a terrible job talking about sex. Not only has it played young people’s sexual ignorance for humor value – a main character thought he got his girlfriend pregnant by being in a hot tub with her for much of the first season- it has allowed these misconceptions to stand as truth for months at a time.
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- » wanna participate? The Visibility Project – The Visibility Project is a photographic portraiture series focused on the Queer Asian American identified community. All the participants have identified as female at one time and the project is inclusive to: trans, ftm, mtf, genderqueer, bisexuals, lesbian, gay, intersex, andro, two-spirit, or any other gender or sexual identifications…Seeking participants who are willing to be photographed at a studio in Brooklyn, NY during the last week of December. Date(s) have not been finalized yet, but please send an email or post a comment if you’d like to be a part of this amazing project. The shoot dates will be between Dec 28th and Jan 2. Looking for all ages, no modeling experience necessary, just be willing to be photographed and interviewed, plan to spend about 20-30 minutes at the location. When the dates are finalized, time-slots will be given to each participant.
- WGLB: Sex and Civilization: The Body as Battleground – But if liberated sexuality is world-destroying from the mythic, fundamentalist point of view, it is world-creating from a pluralistic one.
- Twelve Ways To Scare Away Twitter Followers | Fiction Groupie –
- When’s the Best Time to Publish Blog Posts? | Problogger – I found that among very popular blogs, publishing multiple times per day led to a huge increase in a blog’s success. This tells us that rather than focusing one perfect day or time, we should aim to publish at many times, and on many days.
- Trve West Coast Fiction: Ethics Part I (Danny Wylde) – So here is my self-assigned homework: Talk to those who produce what I believe to be “ethical porn,” interview performers on what they feel differentiates a safe work environment from one that is degrading or dis-empowering, and do my best to figure out if there is any discernible way for consumers to figure out what type of product will get him/her off and still provide a clean conscious.
- Legit or Unfit? Finding Safe, Sound Sex Educators & Support Online | Scarleteen – Not every good sex educator or person you can trust to talk with about sexuality online and get reliable information from has one kind or set of credentials, nor one kind of experience or background. There are formal and informal routes into doing sex ed as your gig, and a lot of different avenues into the field. But even with our diversity, there are some common threads and some typical ways you can figure whose information and help you can trust and whose you probably shouldn't.
- Sex Education Is A Political Act. | Arvan Reese | Scarleteen – In terms of group politics – there are large groups of people who are fighting to prevent you from learning any facts about sex. Facts that can effect your health, income, present, future, career, happiness, ability to have or enjoy sex, choice of sex partners and even the ability to have sex.
- Surviving Sexual Assault by Sarah Sloane – The CSPH Conference: Talking About the Taboo – All kinds of people experience sexual violence, and it is a sad fact that most people experience some form of sexual trauma at some point in their lives. “An 80 year old woman can be raped. An 8 year old boy can be raped,” Sarah Sloane, a rape survivor herself, reminds us in the opening to her workshop at The Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health’s 2nd Annual Conference. However, “sexual trauma does not necessarily mean rape,” she continues. “Sexual trauma can be sexual harassment [or] unwanted touching.”
- The future of sexology comes to San Francisco with the Arse Elektronika conference | io9 – . I love this array of crazy science fiction/science/sex presentations that straddle the line between academic credibility and outright perversion.
- Dr. Logan Levkoff: Sex Educators Unite to Support University Sex Weeks | Huffington Post – Though Brooks appeared to be concerned for students' and colleges' reputations, she offers no voice for the student organizers of these events or their faculty supporters (and hints at no discussion with them either). In an effort to present their voices, I reached out to sex educators, college student groups, and faculty members from various universities. Every educator and group contacted was frustrated by Brooks' mischaracterization of their events and their work. Many of them were outraged that the individual leading the charge against sex-themed programming was an economics professor with no experience in sexuality education. We decided to respond and together composed a Letter to the Editor of The Chronicle of Higher Education. It was sent it to the editors on September 16th.
- Assistant attorney general blogs against gay student body president – CNN.com – For nearly six months, Andrew Shirvell, an assistant attorney general for the state of Michigan, has waged an internet campaign against college student Chris Armstrong, the openly gay student assembly president at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
- Sexy Books: Celebrate your freedom to read during Banned Books Week | Examiner.com –
- Internet Pornographers Now Suing Pirates | Mashable – The producers have targeted users who downloaded titles that prominently feature transsexuals and “barely legal” 18-year old girls. Since the lawsuits are on public record, the defendants’ porn-viewing habits would be exposed.
- Why Folsom St. Fair is Fun, Sexy and Important | Charlie Glickman – One of the key pieces of sex-positivity can be summed up by the acronym YKINMKBYKIOK, which stands for “Your Kink Is Not My Kink But Your Kink Is OK”. Once you realize that your turn-ons and your squicks come from within you, once you realize that it has less to do with what someone else is doing or saying than you think, you can discover much more sexual freedom within yourself.
A few weeks ago, I noticed some Tweets of MayMay’s regarding personal attacks, and was shocked to read  that he had been singled out because of his leadership in KinkForAll and called a child molester and pedophile.
A group called “Citizens Against Trafficking” (which Maymay has been referring to “Citizens Against Sexuality Freedom and Discussion” (CASFD)), Â and which is co-founded by a University of Rhode Island professor named Donna M. Hughes and one of her students, Melanie Shapiro, issued a bulletin authored co-authored by Donna M. Hughes and Margaret Brooks (a professor of economics at Bridgewater State College, nee Margaret Landman) portraying KinkForAll as an event ‘for kinky sex and sadomasochists.'”
This couldn’t be further than from the truth.
Let’s remember that Donna M. Hughes is the same person who lobbied mightily in favor of the law that criminalized indoor prostitution in Rhode Island, and ridiculed sex workers when they testified against the legislation.  She also took an anti-education stance, opposing Megan Andelloux’s opening of the Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health.
Both MayMay and Sara Eileen, who came up with the concept of KFA, became adults at a time where information about sex and sexuality was much more freely available through the internet. I’m trying to remember my sources of sexual information, and it wasn’t my mother, a Western trained OB-GYN (see the irony?), who had enormous difficulty overcoming cultural conditioning and discussing sex with me.
KinkForAll’s core concept is of a serendipitous, ad-hoc unconference about the “intersection of sexuality with the rest of life.” It is most emphatically NOT  an event that includes any kind of sex or play. I have personally participated in two KinkForAll events in New York City. These are fast paced events, and the goal is to share, DISCUSS and TALK about aspects of sex and sexuality. I remember the tremendous energy and enthusiasm that came out of the first event. A number of individuals have taken it upon themselves to organize events around the country, including DC, San Francisco and Providence. Yes, there is taping, blogger and participants may Twitter, but this is explained in the rules for KinkForall:
KinkForAll will be talked about, blogged, recorded, photographed and logged in order to create, share, and distribute a repository of knowledge and experience. Participants always have the option to opt outof being photographed or otherwise recorded.
Because of MayMay’s openness about his sexuality, it’s easy for him to be singled out as the poster boy. It also minimize the involvement of Aida Manduley, the university student who should be applauded and given credit for her role as the principal organizer of KinkForAll Providence, held at Brown University. See Aida’s post where she clarifies many of the issues raised in the flyer. She also talks about how Margaret Brooks repeatedly emailed Brown Univ. officials, but never talked directly to her about the event,
It’s pretty terrifying to be the subject of an attack on the Internet. You can read MayMay’s account of what has happened thus far. And it’s pretty easy to “take out-of-context statements and blend them with factual inaccuracies to produce a piece of writing capable of creating (or sustaining) irrational moral panic on the part of those who read it.”
Professors Donna M. Hughes and Maragaret Brooks are mixing up human trafficking with the exchange of sexuality and intimacy between adults. It’s as if they don’t really understand what a pedophile really is.
MayMay is trying to find common points of interest with them, and addresses their concerns  in another post, and invites their dialog on how KFA could be made safer for all participants, including young people. Will they engage and actually participate in a dialogue? Not at all likely.  Donna M. Hughes is someone who is horrified by tattooed women. Professors Donna M. Hughes and Margaret Brooks are engaged in scare tactics, not civil discourse.
This has been a rather long and rambling post for me. Other people have articulated these issues much more clearly than me. The bottom line? Stand up, and speak out. Support MayMay. Support the KinkForAll concept, perhaps by attending and/or supporting a KinkForAll event. You’ll have to excuse me now, I’m helping plan a third KinkForAll in New York.
