- L.A.’s porn Mistake | Lorelei Lee (Salon.com) – What performers like Hartley and I are equally opposed to is being condescended to by hypocritical zealots like Weinstein and Lubben who are obviously motivated by a concern for something other than our health and safety. Who have, in fact, shown a “blatant disregard” for the health and safety of industry workers by making it more difficult for us to use the protections we already have in place when their actions led to the closure of AIM.
- Making a Fist of It: The Law and Obscenity | Freedom in a Puritan age – On Friday 6 January 2012, a historic case came to a conclusion in Courtroom 7 of Southwark Crown Court. Michael Peacock was unanimously acquitted, after a four-day trial that saw the outdated obscenity law of England and Wales in the dock…Peacock had been charged under the Obscene Publications Act 1959 for allegedly distributing ‘obscene’ ‘gay’ DVDs, which featured fisting, urolagnia (‘watersports’) and BDSM.
- Ask Tristan: Sex Toys and the Law • Pucker Up – [Ed. note: For this question, I turned it over to my legal expert, Davis from Sexquire.] So what does all of this litigation mean to sex shop clerks? First, unless you are in Alabama, you have no reason to fear being arrested on obscenity charges for providing sex education about or selling these products as other than novelties.
- Porn Star Activist Jiz Lee Talks About When and How Sex Workers Can Give Consent – San Francisco Art – The Exhibitionist – The ethics of consent is becoming a hot, vital topic of discussion in alternative sexuality communities. While talking about consent is something that never quite goes away, especially in BDSM communities, a lot of the dialogue doesn’t stray much beyond making sure that everyone is over 18 and knows his or her safeword. A few months ago, local activist bad-asses Maggie Mayhem and Kitty Stryker talked to us about their attempts to speak openly about abuse in BDSM and build “consent culture.” As they prepare to take those ideas on a cross-country tour, plenty of other people are continuing the conversation here in the Bay Area.
- Kate Bornstein reading excerpt from her new book, “A Queer and Pleasant Danger”
- The Case of Loving v. Bigotry – Slide Show – NYTimes.com – “In 1958, Richard & Mildred Loving were arrested in a nighttime raid in their bedroom by the sheriff of Caroline County, Va. Their crime: being married to each other. The Lovings…were ordered by a judge to leave Virginia for 25 years. The International Center of Photography is mounting a show of Grey Villet’s photographs of the couple in 1965 (January 20-May 6, 2012).
- Eric Holder Expands FBI’s Narrow, Outdated Definition Of Rape- MANCHESTER, N.H. — U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has revised the way the FBI defines rape, the first update to the federal definition in nearly a century.The FBI’s Uniform Crime Report has defined rape as the “carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.” This definition was narrower than the one used by many police departments around the country, and women’s rights advocates said it led to the under-counting of thousands of sexual assaults each year.
- Rape definition broadened to include men | CNN – The crime of rape will now be defined as “penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim,” the Justice Department said.
legislation
- My Family Found out I Blog About Sex | BlogHer – “Have you considered changing your name?” the message from my aunt read. “Our name is too obscure and boring, don’t you think? The famous do better with something catchy and bright.”…This wasn’t a compliment. It was a very polite way of saying that what I was doing with my life — writing about sex — was not in keeping with the image my father’s family desires for itself.
- Dissent Magazine – Arguing The World – What Gail Dines Doesn’t Get About SlutWalk – Dines shares more common ground with SlutWalk than she realizes. The organizers are not celebrating the word “slut” or “promoting sluttishness in general.” The SlutWalkers are marching in solidarity with all women who have been dismissed, degraded, or hurt by the label. They are marching against sexual violence and the ugly stereotypes that help to perpetuate it.
- Botox and Better Butts? What Messages Are We Sending to Young Girls? | RH Reality Check -
- Uganda’s LGBT Activists Get a Temporary Victory | violet blue ® :: open source sex – The reprehensible “anti-gay” bill in Uganda has been dealt a blow by that country’s brave LGBT activists and the world human rights community. In a nation where homosexuality was already illegal, and punishable by 14 years in prison, this law would have made things even worse, establishing the death penalty, among other things, for having gay sex while HIV positive.
- Bill Sienkiewicz And Frank Miller’s Wonder Woman: Bondage (Bleeding Cool) – DC Comics never saw this image. Neither Bill Sienkiewicz nor Frank Miller intended it to go public. But when it was sold, despite assurances that it wouldn’t go online, somewghere alon the line, it got sold to someone who didn’t know about that requirement.
- NCSF Wallet Card – A pocket reference for dealing with law enforcement
- ‘Paying For It’ Without Regret: An Intriguing Graphic Memoir Of Prostitution : Monkey See : NPR – It’s not that getting dumped by his girlfriend soured Canadian cartoonist Chester Brown on the notion of romantic love, exactly. Because to sour on something, one would have to, at some point, feel strongly about it. And given the facts on evidence in Brown’s latest autobiographical comic, the guy’s not much for strong emotion. No, the Chester Brown we glimpse through the tiny black and white panels the artist arranges with such exacting precision is a creature of intellect. His approach to sex, in the wake of his girlfriend’s rejection, is one of cool logic, dispassionate conclusions — and some very literal cost-to-benefit ratios.
- BBC News – Argentine Senate backs bill legalising gay marriage – Argentina's capital is widely considered to be among the most gay-friendly cities in Latin America. It was the first Latin American city to legalise same-sex unions.
- Sexual Revolution Slowly Progressing in Russia – NYTimes.com – Two decades after government-imposed prudishness ended with the Soviet collapse, Russians still shy away from embracing European-style sexual mores. Despite a burst of licentiousness in the early 1990s, when pornography and prostitution surged through the country, the sexual revolution has never really taken hold here.
- Porn Star Lorelei Lee to Testify in Buttman Trial – The Sexist – Washington City Paper – “Ms. Lee, who is scheduled to be a witness for the defense in the instant trial, seeks for reasons of safety to be allowed to testify under her professional stage name without disclosing her true identity and address in open court,”
- Naked Confusion: So You Wanna Follow Me? | Silverdreams – If you’re going to tweet to kinky girls (or to any girl for that matter), there’s some basics that you should know…On Twitter, the unwritten rule is to be a human being.
- Facebook Users Like Sex | Mashable – As the chart below depicts, Facebook users are extremely fascinated with sex, as sex links are 90% more likely to be shared than other types of content. Links that are positive in nature and/or related to learning rank second and third in terms of shares, respectively.
- Amy Jo Goddard | CarnalNation – Abby Ehmann's profile of Amy Jo Goddard and her Women's Sexuality Empowerment Apprenticeship workshop.
- ya ya | Youth Activists – Youth Allies – The Ya-Ya Network is a citywide anti-racist, anti-sexist organization and allies with the LGBTQ community. Ya-Ya is staffed by young activists ages 15-19. We work with other youth, adult allies, youth programs & activist organizations. We help groups & individuals connect. We share information & resources & we support the work that other groups are doing. All to build a stronger voice for young people in the movement for social & economic justice.
- Mississippi school purges top student from yearbook for being lesbian – Boing Boing – Ceara Sturgis, a top student at Wesson Attendance Center in Mississipi, has been purged from the yearbook. She attended the school for 12 years, but she's also a lesbian, and so they made her an un-person.
- Transgender Controversy at Tribeca Film Fest – WNYC Culture – The Tribeca Film Festival lists the film Ticked Off Trannies With Knives as a "revenge fantasy flick that brews up a concoction of camp, slasher horror, and power-chick flick to create a radical new genre: Transploitation!"<br />
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The film's director Israel Luna stated he intended the film to be empowering, members of New York's transgender community, along with GLAAD, certainly don't think so. They asked the film festival to pull the film from its lineup. - Illinois’ teen sexting bill aims to educate, not criminalize | Ars Technica – Illinois is moving forward with legislation that would educate (and punish) teenagers who forward around nude images of their peers, but not treat them as sex offenders. The bill, which has moved to Governor Pat Quinn's desk for signature, aims to take a more modern and realistic approach to teens making stupid decisions, though the door is still open for harsher punishments if needed.
- Keep Your Passwords Private–and Handy–With LastPass – PC World – To guard against password thieves, I use LastPass. The tool offers a free password-managing add-on for Firefox on Windows, Linux, or Mac OS X; Internet Explorer on Windows; and Safari on Mac OS X.
- How to Use Twitter Lists To Create Reputation Management Problems – So why did I do it? To show you, twitter, and Google how allowing user-generated pages on authority sites that are page rank black holes is an incredibly bad idea.
- YouTube – Violet Blue on Oprah *finally* – Violet Blue and Oprah discuss pornography and women.
- Uganda considers death sentence for gay sex in bill before parliament | World news | The Guardian – But within Uganda deeply-rooted homophobia, aided by a US-linked evangelical campaign alleging that gay men are trying to "recruit" schoolchildren, and that homosexuality is a habit that can be "cured", has ensured widespread public support for the bill.
- 20+ Brand New and Incredibly Useful WordPress Plugins – Nettuts+ –
- 10 Things You Must Do Before A New Site Or Blog Launch | Spyre Studios –
BOSTON (Reuters) – Vermont lawmakers on Tuesday overrode a veto from the governor in passing a bill that would allow same-sex marriage, clearing the way for the state to become the fourth in the nation where gay marriage is legal.
The Vermont House of Representatives passed the bill by a 100-49 vote after it cleared the state Senate 23-5 earlier in the day. In Vermont, a bill needs two-thirds support in each chamber to override a veto.
Vermont’s vote comes just four days after Iowa’s Supreme Court struck down a decade-old law that barred gays from marrying to make that state the first in the U.S. heartland to allow same-sex marriages.
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by Daniel Pellegrom
President Obama signed an executive order late Friday afternoon ending the Global Gag Rule.
President Obama’s decision to lift the Global Gag Rule gives me extraordinary reason to rejoice. I became Pathfinder International’s president in 1985, shortly after President Reagan imposed the original version of the Global Gag Rule (also known as the Mexico City Policy). I have openly opposed the gag rule, working for its repeal ever since.
At Pathfinder, we challenged this harmful policy in federal court in the late 1980s. Although we did not obtain an outright victory in the courts, the lawsuit forced the U.S. government to clarify what activities were legally permissible under the rule, paving the way for resumption of life-saving post-abortion medical services. Indeed, that legal challenge revealed to the court that among the repercussions of the U.S. gag rule were the preventable deaths of women in the globe’s poorest countries.
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OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — An advocacy group is suing over an Oklahoma law that prohibits a woman from having an abortion unless she first has an ultrasound and the doctor describes to her what the fetus looks like.
In the lawsuit filed Thursday in Oklahoma County District Court, the Center for Reproductive Rights says that the requirement intrudes on privacy, endangers health and assaults dignity.
The law, set to go into effect on Nov. 1, would make Oklahoma the fourth state to require that ultrasounds be performed before a woman can have an abortion and that the ultrasounds be made available to the patient for viewing, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a health research organization based in Washington. The other states are Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi.
Backers of the lawsuit say Oklahoma is the only state to require that the ultrasound screen be turned toward the woman during the procedure and that the doctor describe what is on the screen, including various dimensions of the fetus.
Elizabeth Nash, public policy associate with the Guttmacher Institute, said the Oklahoma law appeared unique in that its intent was that the woman seeking an abortion view the ultrasound images.
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By HILLARY RODHAM CLINTON and CECILE RICHARDS
LAST month, the Bush administration launched the latest salvo in its eight-year campaign to undermine women’s rights and women’s health by placing ideology ahead of science: a proposed rule from the Department of Health and Human Services that would govern family planning. It would require that any health care entity that receives federal financing — whether it’s a physician in private practice, a hospital or a state government — certify in writing that none of its employees are required to assist in any way with medical services they find objectionable.
Laws that have been on the books for some 30 years already allow doctors to refuse to perform abortions. The new rule would go further, ensuring that all employees and volunteers for health care entities can refuse to aid in providing any treatment they object to, which could include not only abortion and sterilization but also contraception.
Health and Human Services estimates that the rule, which would affect nearly 600,000 hospitals, clinics and other health care providers, would cost $44.5 million a year to administer. Astonishingly, the department does not even address the real cost to patients who might be refused access to these critical services. Women patients, who look to their health care providers as an unbiased source of medical information, might not even know they were being deprived of advice about their options or denied access to care.
The definition of abortion in the proposed rule is left open to interpretation. An earlier draft included a medically inaccurate definition that included commonly prescribed forms of contraception like birth control pills, IUD’s and emergency contraception. That language has been removed, but because the current version includes no definition at all, individual health care providers could decide on their own that birth control is the same as abortion.
The rule would also allow providers to refuse to participate in unspecified “other medical procedures†that contradict their religious beliefs or moral convictions. This, too, could be interpreted as a free pass to deny access to contraception.
Many circumstances unrelated to reproductive health could also fall under the umbrella of “other medical procedures.†Could physicians object to helping patients whose sexual orientation they find objectionable? Could a receptionist refuse to book an appointment for an H.I.V. test? What about an emergency room doctor who wishes to deny emergency contraception to a rape victim? Or a pharmacist who prefers not to refill a birth control prescription?
The Bush administration argues that the rule is designed to protect a provider’s conscience. But where are the protections for patients?
The 30-day comment period on the proposed rule runs until Sept. 25. Everyone who believes that women should have full access to medical care should make their voices heard. Basic, quality care for millions of women is at stake.
Hillary Rodham Clinton is a Democratic senator from New York. Cecile Richards is the president of the Planned Parenthood Federation of America.
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