NewFest is dedicated to bringing together filmmakers and audiences in the building of a community that passionately supports giving greater visibility and voice to a wide range of expressions and representations of the LGBT experience. Their 25th anniversary festival starts next month, and I’ve got a
Two kink related films, either created or produced by James Franco, caught my eye.
Interior.Leather Bar.
In order to avoid an X rating, 40 minutes of gay S&M footage was rumored to be cut and destroyed from the 1980 film, “Cruising.” Inspired by the mythology of this controversial film, filmmakers James Franco and Travis Mathews collaborate to imagine their own lost footage.
‘kink’

Kink takes us into the painful but oh-so-pleasurable world of five San Francisco–based BDSM workers as they choke, spank, and scream their way through just another day at the kink.com studios. Produced by James Franco and directed by Christina Voros, Kink not only humanizes the bondage and sadomasochism industry, it also uncovers a professional world in ways the uninitiated would never expect. Click here to read an interview with director Christina Voros and James Franco about making this film.
NewFest 2013 schedule info is here:
http://newfest.org/wordpress/
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- Glen Weldon On LGBT Characters In Graphic Novels : NPR – But it doesn’t change the fact that today’s mainstream superhero comics contain more LGBT characters than ever. Surely this is a good (if, let’s agree, weirdly specific) thing. After all, superheroes remain the comics medium’s dominant genre, and having the characters who populate that genre more closely resemble those of us who populate the world at large must count as progress.
- Why do gay porn stars kill themselves? « Conner Habib – All of this is to say that not even death can trump many people’s confused and hostile attitudes towards porn and porn performers. That is how deeply injured we are as a society when it comes to sex, sexuality, and love.
- Transforming Pornography: Black Porn for Black Women by Sinnamon Love – Guernica / A Magazine of Art & Politics – For me it is about agency. My black feminism is about helping women like me to be able to claim their sexuality in the face of decades of mis-education of African American women who were made to believe that they must choose between education, marriage, and family, or sexual freedom. I have come to realize in this phase of my life and career, that I have unknowingly dedicated my experience in social media to showing men and women of color that these are false choices, and that they can be sexual beings, wives, husbands, mothers, and fathers.
- Why does he need porn if he has ME? | Amy Jo Goddard – If you are threatened because your partner or lover watches porn, you need to ask yourself why. When women profess that their partners shouldn’t watch porn because they should just be enough, or because it makes them feel insecure, or because they are now questioning their partner’s integrity or even their attraction, big red flags go up for me because I know that the issue isn’t the porn. The issue is insecurity, an unstable relationship, or unrealistic expectations.
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- New York Allows Same-Sex Marriage, Becoming Largest State to Pass Law – NYTimes.com – “Lawmakers voted late Friday to legalize same-sex marriage, making New York the largest state where gay and lesbian couples will be able to wed and giving the national gay-rights movement new momentum from the state where it was born. “
- Thousands Cheer Same-Sex Marriage Law in Euphoric Pride Parade – NYTimes.com – “They came to shout, dance, cheer, strut, hug and shed tears of joy, knowing that on July 24, when the law takes effect, the season for tears will begin in earnest…The focus of much of the cheering was Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat, who made legalization of same-sex marriage part of his election campaign and visibly led the fight for its approval in the Republican-led State Senate. Mr. Cuomo marched with several local politicians, including Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and the New York City Council speaker, Christine C. Quinn, who is openly gay. But there was little question that the governor was the parade’s rock star, eliciting shrieks as he made his way down Fifth Avenue. “
- Gail Dines, SlutWalk, Saudi Arabia and The Place of Porn in a “Just Society” | violet blue ® :: open source sex – A professor of sociology and women’s studies, Dines shows a shocking disregard for women’s experience. She infantilizes “sluts” and women who consume porn (about whom I’ve never seen her make more than a passing reference) as women making not their own choices, but choices dictated exclusively by the pressures of men. Meanwhile, men make choices based exclusively on the pressures of porn. Which are driven by the desires of men. It’s a classic circular argument that places the responsibility for men who behave reprehensibly on the shoulders of women who self-identify as sluts, and of men who don’t always feel like making eye contact with their girlfriends during sex…But Dines is far more dangerous than that, because after decades teaching women’s studies, she doesn’t seem to have learned the explosive danger of the term “normal.”
- Sexual Orientation and the Law: A Research Bibliography – A research bibliography of legal literature discussing gay, lesbian, transgender and bisexual persons, their rights and their families. Edited by law librarians from the American Association of Law Libraries Standing Committee on Lesbian and Gay Issues.
- Thanks, but no thanks! | Fearless Press – Keep in mind that you do not need to have a reason to say no – you are entitled to say no for any reason (or even no reason) at all. It’s YOUR decision whether to play or engage in sex. You also do not need to give them a “rain check” or tell them maybe another time unless you want to – in fact, in my experience it’s been worse for me to tell them “maybe” instead of just saying no and leaving it alone.
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Dan Savage and Terry Miller spoke to Googlers in Mountain View in May, 2011 about their book It Gets Better: Coming Out, Overcoming Bullying, and Creating a Life Worth Living and http://www.itgetsbetter.org/.
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- 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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