- 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.
Tagged as:
black,
gay,
lgbt,
lgbtq,
media,
porn,
relationships,
women
- ‘A Queer and Pleasant Danger’ by Kate Bornstein | Lambda Literary – In A Queer and Pleasant Danger Bornstein offers a raw exploration of her gender journey, including candid explorations of her lifelong eating disorders and their relationship to her conception of self and gender. Bornstein gives us the opportunity to see behind the scenes and into the early gender outlaw days of one of the most brilliant gender theorists and performance artists of our time. We watch as she grapples with coming out as a lesbian, learning how to work cute as an embodiment of gender, and find power in the body she transforms. Bornstein brings us into her early activist days, including a trip to the trial of Brandon Tina’s murders, visiting the house where Tina died, as well as to the stage of her first queer performance work.
- When Children See Internet Pornography – NYTimes.com – There is no set script, and no predictable moment for the conversation. It can happen at as early an age as 6 or 7, when a child may not yet understand the basic mechanics of sex. It is typically set off by a child’s accidental wanderings online or the deliberate searches of a curious teenager on a smartphone, laptop, tablet or one of the other devices that have made it nearly impossible to grow up without encountering sexually explicit material. Even a quick Twitter or Facebook search reveals that older students report seeing pornography on others’ laptops or phones in class, usually with an “OMG” attached.
- Sexuality and Other Female (Film) Troubles – NYTimes.com – “I wanted to make a Merchant-Ivory movie with vibrators,” Ms. Wexler, 42, said sitting in an office in Midtown Manhattan, her long brown hair bouncing every time she let out a booming laugh. “And in doing that, strangely, we’ve shone a light. Can you believe we’re still arguing about these same topics 100 years later — women’s rights over their own body? If a woman is behind the camera, these issues can be explored more than they have in the past.”
- Sex Ed for Grown Folks — Indiegogo – Support The Garden, a DC based sexual education resource . The money raised here will help create space for people of all ages and walks of life to find the resources they need to ask the questions they might not know how to ask. Space for queer, trans, straight, gay, bi, poly, pomosexual, unsure, in between, on the edge, and in the closet people to come and figure it all out. Take a class. Buy that toy you’ve been eyeing online but needed to feel first. Seek the resources and find the therapists, coaches and body workers who won’t judge you for who are or how you live. Come to The Garden, ask the questions, get educated and find your pleasure.
- Facebook and poly privacy « Polyamory Weekly – Is it OK to list my relationship status as “open” on Facebook if my girlfriend isn’t out publicly?
- Library ban on best-seller sparks Florida censorship debate – USATODAY.com – Instead, the Brevard library chose recently to close the book on British author E.L. James’ “Fifty Shades of Grey.” Cathy Schweinsberg, library services director, decided after reading the novel to pull from circulation the system’s 19 copies of “Fifty Shades of Grey,” the first installment in a trilogy.
- For Ultra-Orthodox Jews in Abuse Cases, a Prosecutor Uses Different Rules – NYTimes.com – Mr. Hynes has won election six times as district attorney thanks in part to support from ultra-Orthodox rabbis, who lead growing communities in neighborhoods like Borough Park and Crown Heights. But in recent years, as allegations of child sexual abuse have shaken the ultra-Orthodox Jewish community in Brooklyn, victims’ rights groups have expressed concern that he is not vigorously pursuing these cases because of his deep ties to the rabbis.
Tagged as:
50ShadesofGrey,
abuse,
censorship,
children,
corruption,
facebook,
funding,
kate,
Kate+Bornstein,
libraries,
media,
movies,
online,
pornography,
relationships,
sex,
sex+education,
sexuality,
social+,
social+networks,
was,
washington,
women
- Sexual Obituaries 2011 (Cory Silverberg) – People who choose to work around sexuality and gender often don’t get the acknowledgment from the mainstream media or from society as a whole that they would if their work was in another field. Every year, I feel this absence when I read the lists of famous people who died. Since 2006, I’ve tried to change that by sharing some of the sex and gender activists, educators, artists, and outlaws we lost in the year that is ending. Here is a list of sexual losses in 2011.
- Director Dee Rees And Star Adepero Oduye Talk Coming Out & Coming Of Age In ‘Pariah’ | indieWIRE – Pariah is the story of Alike (Oduye), a black lesbian teenager living in Fort Greene and navigating between the aggressive gay nightclub scene preferred by her butch best friend Laura (Pernell Walker) and a closeted life at home, where her tightly wound mother Audrey (Kim Wayans) tries to dress her in pink cardigans and quizzes her about who she’s taking to the school dance.
- Bondage Sex And The Liberation Of Culture – ErosBlog: The Sex Blog – For anybody with an interest in cultural history — and especially, aspects of cultural history that have ever been covert or officially suppressed, like porn — it’s this “everything floats up to the surface and becomes visible, in time” aspect of the Internet that is most miraculous. It’s far from complete, mind you — we have many centuries of recorded culture that have yet to be digitized and brought up from their buried layers of stone and canvas and paper and cellulose and vinyl and magnetic tape.
- 2011 Top Ten Sex Questions (Cory Silverberg) – I don’t dig into my statistics all that often, but once a year I like to see which questions and answers were the most popular…These ten questions are from the 105 Sex Questions that I’ve answered on the About.com site.
- Navigating Love and Autism – NYTimes.com- Only since the mid-1990s have a group of socially impaired young people with otherwise normal intelligence and language development been recognized as the neurological cousins of nonverbal autistic children. Because they have a hard time grasping what another is feeling — a trait sometimes described as “mindblindness” — many assumed that those with such autism spectrum disorders were incapable of, or indifferent to, intimate relationships. Parents and teachers have focused instead on helping them with school, friendship and, more recently, the workplace.Yet as they reach adulthood, the overarching quest of many in this first generation to be identified with Asperger syndrome is the same as many of their nonautistic peers: to find someone to love who will love them back. [via Violet Blue]
- When Will a Gay Pro Athlete Finally Come Out? — New York Magazine – “Something has happened in the last year,” says Jim Buzinski, co-founder of OutSports, an advocate for and chronicler of gay sports issues for more than a decade. “It’s almost like homophobia is no longer considered cool in sports.”
- Australian Passport Gender Options: ‘Transgender’ Will Be Included | HuffPo – Australian passports will now have three gender options – male, female and indeterminate – under new guidelines to remove discrimination against transgender people, the government said Thursday.
Tagged as:
activism,
African-American,
culture,
harassment,
health,
history,
lesbian,
movies,
politics,
sex,
sexuality,
sports,
statistics,
transgender,
women
- Michele Bachmann’s HPV Vaccine Safety and ‘Retardation’ Comments Misleading, Doctors Say – ABC News – The medical community issued swift criticism Tuesday after Rep. Michele Bachmann dragged the safety of the vaccine against the human papillomavirus (HPV) into the political spotlight, reigniting the controversy over the risks and necessity of vaccinating children.
- When Sex Bloggers Get Slut Shamed | Charlie Glickman – It probably shouldn’t surprise to anyone that, in general, women in the blogosphere get a lot more harassment than men. After all, just walking down the street, women get a lot more harassment than men.
- Assistance Needed – A Call For Help « PassionAndSoul – As many of you may have heard by now, I have had severe health concerns since mid-July. These are connected to my long term health issues, but I am in the midst of a flare up. Between July and December, I have had to cancel 13 gigs related to my health. Folks have asked for some time how they can help. This post is the answer.
- Everyone Loses on Booberday Except Google+ – Technology – The Atlantic Wire – A breast cancer meme has broken out on Google+: Booberday. As the name suggests, it involves breasts, specifically, "posting photos of women's cleavage under the guise of fighting breast cancer," explains Jezebel's Margaret Hartmann. On the surface it's just boob shots, which some might call demeaning. But we're talking about breast cancer, so it's all good, right? Not really. Booberday is demeaning to women, makes men look bad, and doesn't help the cause. The only winner we see here: Google+.
- Contraceptive Comeback: The Maligned IUD Gets a Second Chance | Wired – When the Mirena first hit the US market, so few women were using IUDs that many doctors didn't even know how to insert them. Today, the devices are recognized as safe, and 2 million US women have a Mirena.
- Frank’s Story (Runner’s World) – Frank Shorter is the father of the modern running boom. An enduringly popular speaker, he spins a captivating narrative about winning the 1972 Olympic Marathon. The story he hasn't told is the dark truth about his own father.
Tagged as:
birth+control,
breast+cancer,
child+abuse,
contraception,
culture,
google,
harassment,
health,
leeharrington,
parenting,
socialmedia,
women
- 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.
Tagged as:
anais+flox,
arrest,
beauty,
Blogging,
bondage,
culture,
gay,
girls,
image,
law,
legislation,
logan+levkoff,
sex,
sexwork,
society,
women
