From Andrea Zanin’s keynote for Carleton University’s Consent is Sexy Week:
But all right, for real this time, back to the perverts. Now, regardless of everything I’ve said so far about Fifty Shades, I think the series provides a very accurate picture of how the mainstream understands consent, and how that understanding tries, with mixed success, to incorporate the ethics of consent that’s often espoused by BDSM communities. I’ve asked around a fair bit to find out what it is that the perv contingent is most upset about. Once you get past the rants about writing quality, most of the complaints seem to hinge on the idea that Christian Grey is doing bad BDSM, and that it makes the rest of us look bad. People are especially about two areas: the contract he tries to get Ana to sign and the play they get up to. These complaints are going to form the foundation of the rest of this talk, because they’re both right on the money and also off base. And the ways in which they are both of those things are in keeping with the books’ understanding of sex and relationships in general. So let me lay out that understanding and talk about how it is emblematic of a broader social framework that’s very problematic.
. . .
But mostly I dislike Fifty Shades because it normalizes assault, stalking, the use of money as a form of coercion, jealousy, rage, “winning” arguments, men’s control of women’s reproductive choices, game-playing, manipulation, marriage as the end goal and as the great legitimizer of relationships, lack of honest communication, and the healing power of innocent virgins’ inherent goodness. None of this is the least bit kinky—it’s just plain old hetero-patriarchal power relationships, and sexing those up in a best-selling “edgy” romance trilogy does nothing more than perpetuate an entire culture where “consent” takes a backseat to “normal.” This isn’t kinky or sexy or cool. So no matter how well-researched the BDSM technique, the relationships and politics that forms the core of this story are deeply unhealthy, and I fervently hope that they’re not going to become erotic templates for a generation of people who think they’re being sexy and oh-so-wickedly perverted.
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- 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.
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- Follow That Story: Lara Jade Won Her Lawsuit | violet blue ® :: open source sex – Way back in May 2007, young female photographer (and aspiring fashion photog) Lara Jade Coton put a plea for help up on Flickr. One of her photos (that she had shared on DeviantART) was being used as an American porn boxcover — reprehensibly, it was not only used without permission but it was also a self-portrait she’d taken on a family vacation when she was only 14.
- Sexual ‘thesis’ deserves zero out of 10 | Zoe Margolis – Perhaps her lack of self-awareness and her inability to provide a social critique are what has led to so much criticism, and the fact that she named people publicly is an obvious violation of others’ privacy, which clearly highlights her naivety. What worries me, though, is the widespread “slut-shaming” the author is now receiving from the media: her sex life is being routinely condemned. Were a man to have written this, he’d be getting slaps on the back (or have a movie made based on his life) for being a “stud”. Women who talk about sex instead attract newspaper headlines chastising them for their actions and have moral judgments cast on their behaviour which men do not have to endure.
- Yale Fraternity’s Chant Reveals Depth of Our Culture’s Misogyny | Will Neville | RHRealityCheck.org – The problem isn’t that a group of young men at yelled something stupid, over and over agian. The problem is that I’m no longer sure we’re shocked by people who turn rape and sexual assault into some kind of a joke. It’s embarassing for those involved, sure. But the sentiment they expressed is shockingly — and terrifyingly — mainstream.
- Jeff Koons’s “Made in Heaven” Series: A Critical Compendium | ARTINFO.com – Works from Jeff Koons’s “Made in Heaven” series — paintings and sculptures that depict the artist with his then-lover, Italian porn star Cicciolina, in a variety of romantic situations — have returned to New York, where many were first displayed in 1991 at the Sonnabend Gallery in SoHo. (Some pieces — of the slightly less hardcore variety — were shown at the 1990 Venice Biennale.) New York critics, with perhaps only one exception, have lambasted the current “Made in Heaven” show at the Upper East Side townhouse of Luxembourg & Dayan, following in a rich lineage of writers that have panned work. Over the past two decades, the series has earned near-universal scorn from most art critics and inspired some of the all-time-great takedowns in recent criticism.
- My Mother And Her Vibrator | Pamela Madsen | Psychology Today – It lived in her closet for years. – until my mother turned 81. Every-time I brought it up. – mom would tell me that she was frightened of hurting herself. I would talk to her about this. “Come on mom – how are you going to hurt yourself?”.. She could never explain to me her fears, and in the end the vibrator remained unused…And then one afternoon my mother called me. I knew something was up at “Hello”. She had this cat who had caught the canary kind of voice….”Well, I used it!” She gushed.
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- Grab Your Dick and Double Click : Librarian Hot – It should come as no surprise that I really enjoyed the Blue and Lust books, while I wanted to throw the Jensen and Paul books across the room (or out the window, or off of a really big cliff). I do agree with them about a few things: for one, that pornography addiction is real, and it can cause serious damage to relationships (as can, of course, any addiction or compulsive behavior). I also agree that most mainstream porn is indeed extremely misogynistic. But do you know what I find even more demeaning to women? Anti-porn crusaders’ tired gender essentialism arguments.
- How the Media Should Treat the Sexual Assault Allegations Against Al Gore | The Nation – A handful of feminist blogs, including Feministing, precede me in decrying the media's haste to impugn the credibility of the accuser. As they rightly observe, almost all other media coverage of the story has given the rest of us permission to giggle, when what we really need is a sober dose of reality: that these are credible charges against a very powerful and influential man. It's in our shared interest to take them seriously, evaluate them based on whatever information comes to light and demand answers and accountability.
- The New Abortion Providers – NYTimes.com – This abortion-rights campaign, led by physicians themselves, is trying to recast doctors, changing them from a weak link of abortion to a strong one. Its leaders have built residency programs and fellowships at university hospitals, with the hope that, eventually, more and more doctors will use their training to bring abortion into their practices. The bold idea at the heart of this effort is to integrate abortion so that it’s a seamless part of health care for women — embraced rather than shunned.
- For Women, Social Media is More Than "Girl Talk" | Mashable – It turns out that sociolinguists have found women to be innovators when it comes to communication, especially with new forms of languages. … The practical benefits that social media affords, combined with its emotionally fulfilling features make it likely that women will not only continue to engage with social media, but with future related innovations, as well.
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- Paid Porn Is Backdooring Into the iPad, But It’s Not Going to Get Far | BNET Technology Blog – The only way larger porn companies can differentiate themselves is not by pushing Web content, but by creating original apps with features unique to that platform.
- Entry to clubs "on the basis of … testicles" |Yawning Bread – A group of transgender women (i.e. MTF transgenders) launched a campaign called Sisters in Solidarity (SIS) with a press conference on 5 May 2010. They felt the time had come to put an end to discrimination against their community. This move was triggered by the experience of Marla Bendini being thrown out of China One, not once, but twice. China One is a club in Clarke Quay, a nightlife district along the Singapore River.
- Chief Targets of Student Incivility Are Female and Young Professors – Chronicle of Higher Education – The study looked beyond the classroom, asking faculty members about their experiences with student incivility in the course of any class-related activities. The types of student incivility it covered included passive behavior, such as sleeping or texting in class; more actively disruptive behavior, such as coming to class late or talking on cellphones in the classroom; and behaviors that appeared directed at the instructor, such as open expressions of anger, impatience, or derision.
- "Queer Sex Doesn’t Count" And Nine Other Myths Uncovered- And Debunked- at the Harvard "Rethinking Virginity" Conference – Feministing – The conference was organized by Lena Chen, blogger extraordinaire and recent Feministing Five interviewee, and brought together an incredibly diverse and impressive group of feminists, who dropped some serious knowledge on all things virgin-themed. One of the most interesting parts of the panel was learning how much misinformation exists around issues of virginity, sex, and our bodies. This isn't exactly breaking news- in fact, our very own Jessica Valenti wrote an entire book about it. But the quest to educate and rethink harmful cultural norms and standards is never finished. So I've compiled ten myths we uncovered- and debunked- at yesterday's conference
- Rethinking Virginity—And Examining Our Assumptions About Sex | Lux Nightmare | Jezebel – I spent yesterday thinking through these questions, and many more, while at Harvard's Rethinking Virginity conference. Organized in response to statements made by True Love Revolution (Harvard's abstinence group), the conference featured a wide variety of speakers (including myself), all hashing through the thorny issues of sexuality, identity, and the notion of "purity."
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