Journalist and author Violet Blue's site for sex and tech culture, accurate sex information, erotica and more.

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• If Yahoo! succeeds in its attempt to acquire Tumblr, it is most certainly doomed. Yahoo! will end up with one of the hottest Internet properties ($1 billion valuation), with access to the coveted youth market and a foothold in mobile – and a lot of porn. Tumblr’s terms of service are pretty clear: Sexual material is welcome. It just asks that such posts be tagged as NSFW, noting that its users include many people “from a variety of locations, cultures, and backgrounds with different points of view concerning adult-oriented content.”
  If Yahoo Buys Tumblr, What Will It Do With All That Porn? (Businessweek)

• Meanwhile, Tumblr appears to be lying to its thousands of NSFW blog users. “If you’ve got an adult blog on Tumblr, there’s a good chance Tumblr uses robots.txt to exclude the search engines from indexing it. If you’ve got an adult Tumblr, go look at your own settings. Do you see that first checkbox, the one that says “allow search engines to index your blog”? That checkbox is a lie. It’s nicely checked, it’s not greyed out, but if your blog is flagged “adult” it’s a lie.”
  Thou Shalt Not Seach Adult Tumblr Blogs (ErosBlog: The Sex Blog)

• Sex-positive porn star Jiz Lee discusses genderqueer identity and performance in Out! Jiz is the editor of upcoming anthology “How to Come Out Like a Porn Star: Essays from the Porn Industry on Family Matters.” Out Magazine features an excerpt from Jiz’s most recent essay in “The Feminist Porn Book.”
  Performer Jiz Lee in ‘The Feminist Porn Book’ (Out Magazine)

• “Gamers playing Nintendo’s Tomodachi Collection: New Life noticed that this latest iteration of the game, which is very much like The Sims, had the option for the first time to have their male characters marry other male characters and raise children together.” Nintendo responded by releasing a patch to fix the “bug”, which it says allows for “human relations that become strange.”
  ‘Bug’ Allows Same-Sex Marriage In Nintendo Game, Nintendo Releases Patch To ‘Fix’ It (Techdirt)

• If you’re a guy reading this, have you learned to pick and choose what aspects of masculinity work for you and which ones don’t? Yes or no, I promise you will find this post extremely interesting.
  The Performance of Masculinity (Charlie Glickman)

• In this puff piece, NY Daily tries to find an excuse to tie BDSM porn with recent psychopaths and serial killers in the news, first quoting an anti-porn buddy of Gail Dines – but finishes the article backpedaling and provide citations supporting the lack of connection between the two sensationalist topics. ::headdesk
  Kink.com CEO says fetish porn is not to blame for shocking sex cases (NY Daily News)

• Endlessly interesting, well-crafted essay: “A week after I arrived in San Francisco, I attended a Public Disgrace shoot. (…) The panda gangbang took place deep in the basement of the Kink armory, where rivulets of the long-suffocated Mission Creek still trace a path between moisture-eaten columns, and the air hangs heavy with a stony dampness. (…)
  What Do You Desire? (n+1)

• The above article was reacted to by The Atlantic. They ask, “Was the consent of all participants sufficient to make the porn shoot a morally defensible enterprise?”
  The Ethics of Extreme Porn: Is Some Sex Wrong Even Among Consenting Adults? (The Atlantic)

• Sucky, and kind of incredibly unfair: Linkedin updated its user agreement terms on Monday, adding to the section entitled “Don’t undertake the following,” LinkedIn now includes this statement:
  Upload, post, email, InMail, transmit or otherwise make available or initiate any content that: Even if it is legal where you are located, create profiles or provide content that promotes escort services or prostitution.
  LinkedIn Bans Users From Promoting Prostitution, Escort Services (Mashable)

• Not more than a week after launching a beta version of an app, LinkedIn is revoking its API access to social hook-up app “Bang With Professionals,” a site which aimed to connect potential bangers using LinkedIn’s professional network.
  LinkedIn Shuts Down “Bang With Professionals” Hook-Up App (AllThingsD)

• Bugs and Bang With Friends just doesn’t sound like something I’d want in association… “Not to spark about a thousand awkward conversations, but it turns out you can easily see which of your friends use the “discreet” hookup app Bang With Friends (BWF).”
  How to find out which of your Facebook pals Bang With Friends (Daily Dot)

• Recommended fundraising for an amazing indie, sexy-engineer run company: “Limon is the world’s strongest couples vibrator, with brilliantly simple squeezable control.”
  Minna Limon Couples Vibrator (Indiegogo)

• A prominent Japanese politician described as “necessary” the system by which women were forced to become prostitutes for World War II troops. It got worse when he invited U.S. Marines to use local sex workers, whose trafficking status is unclear.
  Japan WWII ‘comfort women’ were ‘necessary’ (BBC)
  Osaka mayor’s defense of sexual slavery angers Beijing (China Daily)
  Osaka mayor: ‘Wild Marines’ should consider using prostitutes – Bad behavior in the Pacific (Stripes)

• Reducing our collective sympathy for porn piracy to zero… Prenda law reincarnation “Anti-Piracy Law Group” has sent letters to people accused of pirating porn where the lawyers threaten to inform neighbors about what the defendants are accused of doing and watching, and threaten they will inspect defendants’ work computers.
  Copyright Trolls Threaten to Call Neighbors of Accused Porn Pirates (TorrentFreak)

• Under Chinese law, anyone found to be producing and distributing obscene material can get three years in jail. The country requires many pornography censors to find and censor content considered obscene: 70-year-old Liu Xiaozhen is one such porn censor, employed at Hunan province’s “eliminate pornography and illegal publications” office.
  Over the weekend Liu granted a rare interview to ND News, describing the stresses and perils of his job.
  The Lives Of China’s Porn Inspectors (Business Insider)

• Amazon review lulz crew strikes again… for semen cookbook Natural Harvest: A collection of semen-based recipes. Example from a reviewer’s helpful list of tips: “Seven: If you are on a low sodium diet, try english semen. They prefer EVERYTHING bland.” (Also – it appears there’s also a brand new Semen Bartender’s Handbook, already packed with equally hilarious reviews.)
  Natural Harvest: A collection of semen-based recipes (Paperback) (Amazon: Customer reviews; thank you to the person who Twitter @ replied me this item!)

• According to a 2010 estimate, 70% of sex toys produced in the world are made in China; 50% of those were imported to four U.S. companies — California Exotics Novelties, Pipedream, Doc Johnson, and to a lesser extent, Topco — that dominate American sex toy sales. While the others do the bulk of their manufacturing overseas, Doc Johnson is the only one manufacturing most of its products in the U.S. (They all sell predominantly unsafe sex toys and have misleading packaging.-VB) Deep Inside The Biggest Little Dildo Factory In America (Buzzfeed)

• I never ever ever want to go to Dubai. Australian Alicia Gali took a job in the UAE with hotel chain Starwood. Her drink was spiked and ahe awoke to a nightmare beyond belief: she had been savagely raped by three of her colleagues. Alone and frightened, she took herself to hospital. What Alicia didn’t know is that under the UAE’s strict sharia laws, if the perpetrator does not confess, a rape cannot be convicted without four adult Muslim male witnesses. She was charged with having illicit sex outside marriage, and thrown in a filthy jail cell for eight months.
  UAE rape victim jailed (Yahoo!7 TV)

• Based on the post below about clit hood variations and chart at right, I thought I’d show you the Foreskin Coverage Index – mind you, it’s only -pale-people- cocksock variations, but it’s a view into the spectrum.
  Foreskin Coverage Index (newforeskin.biz, link is not a site endorsement)

• A reader sent me this post with a clitoral hood variation chart, and I find the chart well worth sharing. It has its caveats, but I mos def found myself trying to size myself up…
  Have you seen your hood lately? (barreloforanges.com, link is not a site endorsement)

• Title misleads – this is not actually a how-to on fighting back against revenge porn. But it’s well worth reading: For those whose privately shared photos have made their way to the web, an argument of implied confidentiality may be a good bet.
  How to Fight Revenge Porn (The Atlantic)

• He’s been cyberstalked relentlessly for 2½ years, despite a court ruling ordering the material be removed and his ex-girlfriend jailed for contempt of court. Court documents show she retrieved nude photos of Clayworth that were in his computer — pictures she had taken — and posted them on several sites, and created profiles claiming he was a pedophile.
  Teacher ‘powerless’ to stop ex-girlfriend’s cyberstalking (CBC News)

• In the opening of new film about female porn stars “Aroused,” photographer Deborah Anderson promises great things: “This is not a movie about porn,” she says in her opening narration. “This is a story about women. Their dreams, their desires, and their lives.” While she does seem to genuinely respect the women that she’s interviewing, she doesn’t seem to have the same respect for their work.
  Aroused: New Female Porn Star Documentary Brings Up Same Old Stereotypes (SF Weekly: The Exhibitionist)

• The Feminist Porn Awards And Conference 2013 (YouTube)

• CNN Starting point calls “Domestic Affairs” by political consultant Bridget Siegel “The Fifty Shades of Grey of political novels,” which is definitely a stretch as it lacks any graphic sex scenes. Er, unless you think political-wonk journos are hot and being forced to read reporter sex gossip makes you feel like a bad, bad girl.
  Steamy Novel Mentions D.C. Journos (Fishbowl DC)

• The chief of the Sexual Assault Prevention and Response branch of the U.S. Air Force was arrested and charged with sexual battery in Arlington. The story continues to develop and a July trial date has been set.
  Air Force Officer Accused of Sexual Battery (ARLnow)

• To celebrate its 10-year anniversary with a sex-toy design and innovation contest, LELO invites next-generation innovators, designers and artists all around the world to come up with new products.
  LELO Design Award 2013 (Lelo)

• Soon to be a musical entitled Les Miserables Idiotes: In the U.K. pornography is to be banned from public wi-fi networks by the end of the year, David Cameron’s children’s czar (and personal pet nutter/nut petter) Claire Perry said. But one of the country’s largest internet providers has threatened to throw a spanner in the works by warning that ministers’ plans to block porn from public wi-fi could be against the law.
  Porn set to be banned from public wi-fi this year to protect children (Daily Mail Online)

• According to a United Nations Entity for Gender Equality study, 99.3% of Egyptian women have experienced some form of sexual harassment. The top two instances of sexual harassment included touching (96.5%) followed by verbal (95.5%).
  Nearly 100% of Women in Egypt Face Sexual Harassment (Care2 Causes, thanks Paul!)

-Sorry for the delay between updates. The tendons in my arms went on required rest on doctor’s orders, but as you can see, are getting better. More to come over the weekend, and look for VB action at my CBSi gigs this weekend… ~xoV

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