"folsom street fair"

• Last month director Tristan Taormino announced she’s condom-only in her porn productions from now on – this week, award-winning director Axel Braun is adding a new stipulation for adult performers who wish to appear in sexually explicit roles in any of his movies: effective immediately the minimum age requirement will be 21. “If the law says you are not old enough to handle alcohol responsibly, then you are probably not ready to make a career decision that will have such strong repercussions on the rest of your life,” Braun said.
  Axel Braun Raises Performer Minimum Age to 21 (XBIZ; video above is Axel Braun’s Batman XXX trailer)

• In response to stories about unethical porn practices, writer, sex-educator and one-time professional dominatrix Nichi Hodgson has launched the Ethical Porn Partnership. Hodgson is concerned about the ethics of production in porn and is aiming to create a self-regulatory body to monitor abuses and bad practice within the industry.
  Worry About Porn Stars, Not What They Act Out On Screen (VICE Nordics)

• Posted as a warning: the numbing spray product described as a “new sex drug” in this article is harmful. It is also not a drug, and it is not new: for decades, “novelty” companies have been selling harmful numbing sprays and creams to make men’s erections last longer. Sex educators have been warning people about these products for years. It’s simple: If you can’t feel your cock, you can’t feel yourself damaging your cock. CNBC should be raked over the coals for this.
  Move over, Viagra. There’s a new sex drug in town (CNBC; video autoplay warning)

• The title of this great article is misleading; the article is on writing about sex, not reading it. “Writing about sex can be uniquely powerful – and perilous. A group of novelists, memoirists and poets tell us about working blue: what novels first inspired them, what nouns they strive to avoid and who they think writes sex best.”
  Let’s Read About Sex (NY Times)

• Des Lashimba, a probation officer based at Manchester Magistrates’ Court, took part in the UK Channel 4 show Sex Box with partner Lynette Ellis. He could now face disciplinary action as he did not ask bosses’ permission to take part – and promotional material made it clear he worked as a probation officer.
  Probation officer who took part in UK Sex Box TV show facing disciplinary action (Daily Mail)

• I posted here about this before it became law, and now it’s real. On Wednesday, Sept. 25, New York state’s highest-ranking judge announced a first-of-its-kind initiative: sex workers are now considered victims under the law, who are required to undergo abuse-related “treatments” when arrested – and the policy fails to distinguish between sex workers and sex slaves.
  New York’s Trafficking Court Turns Sex Workers Into Victims (Reason)

• Posting this link as a warning: TIME puts forth several harmful and false generalizations about female sexuality. Most of TIME’s “surprising sex facts” are not true, or are only party based in fact. When will sexual health articles be fact checked? If you want facts about female sexuality as it pertains to orgasms, read Mikaya Heart’s incredible book The Ultimate Guide to Orgasm for Women – not this fallacious TIME article.
  12 Sex Facts You Won’t Learn From ‘Masters of Sex’ (TIME)

• Gov. Jerry Brown has signed a bill outlawing so-called revenge porn. Senate Bill 255 was signed Tuesday and takes immediate effect. The ACLU thinks it’s a free speech trainwreck. Senate Bill 255 was signed Tuesday and takes immediate effect. It’s aimed at people who post nude pictures of their exes online.
  Brown signs anti-revenge porn bill (News 10)

• A New York State Senator who is seeking a statewide ban on revenge porn said this week that a similar law in California does not go far enough.
  State Senator: New York Law Against Revenge Porn Should Be Tougher Than Calif. Law (CBS New York)

• Janani Balasubramanian writes an incredible post that ends up also describing emotionally abusive – yet sadly common – polyamory tactics. It helps explain why I’m super allergic to gropey guys who think that saying “I’m poly” and me saying “That’s cool” means that I’m instantly sexually available for them. “Don’t police other people’s monogamy or other relationship structures. You can do your thing, but everyone else has their own circumstances too, often informed by class, ability, leisure time, and racialized ideas of sluthood–all of these might limit someone’s access to non-monogamy. Not everyone wants to or can fuck/date multiple people.”
  9 Strategies For Oppressive Polyamory (Black Girl Dangerous)

• Christie Sims, the next E.L. James (hell, I think she’s the next Mark Twain) who is the literary genius behind such dino-porn classics as Taken By The Pterodactyl and Ravished By The Triceratops.
  Christie Sims: Hot Slut Of The Day! (Dlisted)

• Don’t want your Web dating service matching you up with any fatties? OkCupid.com is now allowing users to filter their prospects by “body type.” The site is charging a filtering fee of $4.95 to $10 a month for its A-list members who can now hide people by body types. The site offers 10 body-type choices, beginning at thin, and ranging to average, “a little extra,” “full figured,” “overweight” and even “used up.”
  Now OkCupid lets you filter out plus-size dates (NY Post)

• Anti-porn pundit Gail Dines talks about the problem of racism in gay porn (and the problem of gay men siding with pro-porn women), saying she wrote a book about gay porn (which does not exist) – while Gay Porn Blog founders Mike Stabile and Jack Shamama talk sensibly about Asian tops and what gay porn’s racial makeup *actually* looks like.
  Is gay porn racist? (Gay Star News)

• The UK’s Culture Secretary delivered an anti-porn speech to a near-empty hall at the Conservative Party Conference yesterday, less than an hour before 2,000 people packed the room. Mrs Miller, who is in charge of internet policy, also used a fringe meeting at the conference to call on teachers, parents and internet companies to step in to prevent children from accidentally viewing pornographic images.
  Maria Miller fears boys could be harmed by porn (Telegraph)

• Discussion on Reddit about what appears to be the first transgender person to utilize euthanasia, with appropriate chastising of the Daily Mail’s treatment of it.
  A Belgian man has been killed by medical euthanasia after claiming that a botched sex change operation had turned him into “a monster” (Reddit)

• Fetish fans arrived en masse to the 30th Folsom Street Fair in SoMa for day full of fun, sun, whips, chains, and brazen nudity. (It was packed! I took sweet Eon McKai and we had a blast!) The event, which raised $325,000 for local and national charities in 2012 alone, was greeted by cloudy skies, perfect for festival goers wear next to nothing.
  NSFW: Scenes From Folsom Street Fair 2013 (SFist)

• Before he designed vibrators, Jimmyjane founder and chairman Ethan Imboden spent more than a decade designing cellphones, footwear and furniture for the likes of Motorola, Herman Miller and Nike. So, when he finally turned his attention to luxury sex toys, he had considerable consumer electronics acumen to apply to them.
  From Cellphones to Sex Toys: Jimmyjane Founder Ethan Imboden on the Reinvention of the Vibrator (AllThingsD)

• Swedish officials say there is no reason to circumcise young boys and the practice violates United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.
  Swedish officials express concern over circumcision (UPI)

• This isn’t news. But it’s great news for me! Night Own Reviews got their hands on my new book on sex toys for couples, and they really like it! “If you and your partner are considering introducing some sex toys or other sexual aids like specialized furniture into your love making, I think this would make the perfect book to use as a reference point. Ms. Violet Blue gives plenty of detailed information of what’s available on the market and explains how to use these products correctly so you can have the most fun using them with your partner.”
  Review: The Adventurous Couple’s Guide to Sex Toys (Night Owl Reviews)

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• Gawker was wrong: no, it is not legal to walk around Sweden masturbating in public. But Gawker likely got their info from the Daily Mail, which cited a mistranslation as evidence to prove that, from now on, it will be totally fine to wander the streets of Sweden masturbating. Great job, Daily Fail.
  You Can’t Just Walk Around Masturbating in Public, Swedish People (VICE)

• This post. A thousand times this post. Also neatly dismantles the harmful idea (attack tactic) that one person having a trigger is a legitimate reason to exclude someone else from an event.
  if trans women aren’t welcome, neither am I (sexgeek.wordpress.com)

• There are dos and don’ts to getting a security clearance. Lying is out. But being a stripper? Might not disqualify you. Seems the guy was interested in a job that requires one, but worried that his job history — which included stripping in college, as well as a gig he hopes to get shedding his clothes at Secrets DC nightclub — might be a problem…
  Stripping no obstacle to security clearance (WaPo, thanks Cyrus!)

• Bitcoin brothels are here. Birmingham, UK based escort agency Passion VIP now accepts payments in Bitcoin – making it the world’s first. Article includes sex work rates in bitcoin and a small history of bitcoin’s sloooow adoption into porn.
  The world’s first Bitcoin escort agency (ZDNet)

• “In the lab, by artificial stimulation, it is possible to trigger female orgasm in virtually any primate species.”
  FYI: Do Animals Have Orgasms? (Popular Science)

• New York is about to start treating legal cases about prostitution the same as sex trafficking, and this is not going to be a good thing. “The initiative comes at a time of growing consensus among criminal justice professionals across the country that in many cases it makes more sense to treat people charged with prostitution offenses as victims rather than defendants.” I’ve included a link to a great, thoughtful and information-filled post about the effects of anti-trafficking actions on legit sex work.
  New York Courts Aim to Steer Women From Sex Trade (NYT)
  Thai sex workers: Anti-trafficking Rescues are Our Biggest Problem (The Naked Anthropologist)

• In San Francisco this weekend and planning a visit to kinky Disneyland, aka Folsom Street Fair? Definitely read this guide from our most beloved local blog.
  Your SFist Guide To Folsom Street Fair Weekend (SFist)

• YAY! Alison Tyler, author of the BDSM erotic romance Dark Secret Love: A Story of Submission, shares her erotica writing process on USA Today …
  Alison Tyler: Behind the scenes on ‘Dark Secret Love’ (USA Today)

• An interesting reaction to the proposed ISP-level porn block in the UK by a mother who calls herself a “prude.” “I have an eleven-month-old son, and while some might say it’s premature, I’ve begun thinking about how my husband and I will handle the topic of porn with him.”
  I Won’t Be Banning Porn For My Son (TIME.com)

• The wonderful Jesse Bering writes, “It’s striking how such an emotionally loaded word, one that undergoes almost no change at all for the first 1,000 years of its use, can almost overnight come to mean something so very different, entirely eclipsing its original intent. Exactly how did this word ‘pervert’ go from being a perennial term for the ‘immoral religious heretic’ to referring to the ‘immoral sexual deviant’?”
  Is it time to get rid of the word pervert? (Aeon Magazine)

• Photo gallery (NSFW): “In Beyoglu, Turkey, behind the trendy Istiklal street, where few tourists go there are the transgender sex workers. They are still fearful of walking around the streets of Istanbul, though their customers are from all segments of male society.”
  Turkey’s transgender sex workers hoping for human rights (Demotix)

• Scared stiff? A new attraction at a Pennsylvania “scream” park aims to scare the pants off thrill-seekers before they even enter it. Shocktoberfest, a “haunted scream park” in Sinking Spring, Pa., has added an attraction called the “Naked and Scared Challenge.” For $20 per person participants can experience the haunted house while being completely naked.
  ‘Naked and scared’: Haunted house welcomes nude thrill-seekers (TODAY)

• The screencapped dirty limericks written by a pseudonym’d PornHub commenter throughout this post are via this Tumblr post which has collected many more.
  Limericks Found In PornHub Comments (Pick My Brain)

• To be fair – or something – notoriously porn-prudish Guardian UK had to put a really negative op-ed up along with its article about [UK] Channel 4′s new sex-themed TV show. An op-ed that cites an incorrect conclusion from an article that didn’t understand how website visits work. ARGH.
  Sex Box: the TV show that hopes to ‘reclaim sex from pornography’ (Guardian UK)
  ‘Normal sex’ is not having sex in a box in front of a studio audience (Guardian UK)

• Whatever a Farrah Abraham is, it’s not going away.
  Photos: Six Things Farrah Abraham Said While Getting Her Private Parts Molded (Buzzfeed)

• Unintentional eroticism in Apple’s new iOS 7, sex and wearable tech, EFF calls out Playboy, dangerous pro-labiaplasty PR editing on Wikipedia, Squarespace blocked in Russia.
  Sex Tech: iOS 7 porn effect, Squarespace blocked in Russia, Oracle’s stripper problems (Pulp Tech, ZDNet)

• Disproving last week’s headlines about “sexual jihad” is one thing – one very important, necessary thing that everyone should know about. But putting it behind a paywall is… shameful. Good thing I realized I could read the truth about what’s happening to Tunisian women and Syrian soldiers when I put the article into Instapaper or read it through Google News. “It’s the story that launched 1,000 headlines. And it’s not hard to see why: Tunisian Interior Minister Lotfi Ben Jeddou announced last week that Tunisian women were traveling to Syria to wage “sex jihad,” where they were having sex with “20, 30, [or] 100” militants, before returning pregnant to Tunisia. There’s only one problem: There’s no evidence it’s true.”
  Are Young Women Really Racing to Syria’s Front Lines to Wage Sex Jihad? (Foreign Policy)

Main post photo: Tiffa Bly in this gallery by Julien Vallon on Nowearland.

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• My dear friend Jack Shamama brings us the above iPhone pic – a classic Folsom Street Fair moment in time (San Francisco, Sunday September 23).
  Best Folsom 2012 moment … (Jack Shamama | Twitter)

• Turkish rescue workers retrieved an inflatable sex doll from the Black Sea after police were notified by panicked residents who mistook it for a woman’s body floating offshore, Milliyet newspaper reported on Sunday.
  Turkish divers ‘rescue’ blow-up sex doll from sea (Reuters)

• At The Rumpus, Zoe Ruiz writes a melodic essay about meeting her first and only porn star crush, Kink’s Princess Donna.
  Donna (The Rumpus)

• Em and Lo explore the widely held notion that open relationships or being poly might be a “cure” for jealously. Spoiler alert: no.
  Can Open Relationships Cure Jealousy? (Em & Lo)

• So many sex subcultures get to do the biggest ‘I told you so’ over this one: New research finds that comfort with sexual communication is directly linked to sexual satisfaction. According to the study, people who are more comfortable talking about sex are apparently happier with their erotic lives.
  Talking About Sex During Sex Is Good for Sex (LiveScience)

• The fact that Burning Man has not been doing rape kits before shipping sexual assault victims off the playa is so fucking inexcusable, I can’t even dig into the rest of this post, which is (IMO) one horrifying admission after another.
  Sexual Assault in Black Rock City (Burning [Man] Blog)

• One of the sex educators I respect above nearly all others is Dr. Cory Silverberg, and in this post he describes how he sees and defines gender in fascinating details. I think it’s the start of a roadmap for our present, and their future.
  What Do I Call Gender? (About: Sex)

• Texas police officers – well, Austin – rock ‘it gets better’ so hard in this new video.
  Gay Texas Police Officers Say “It Gets Better” (Buzzfeed)

• National Geographic’s “Taboo” series has mostly been poorly researched, sex-negative, sensationalistic crap. But this installment about female bodybuilders paying rent by doing fetish work is interesting.
  Muscle Worship (National Geographic Channel)

• There’s most certainly more to this story: an English subject worksheet for third-year students at an Islamic school in East Java contained the [clothed] image of the porn star Maria Ozawa, popularly known as Miyabi.
  Japanese porn star in workbook angers Indonesian parents (Times LIVE)

• Bosnia’s electoral commission has kicked out an independent candidate from the race for the mayor of the country’s fourth-largest city for using online porn to attract voters: Mirad Hadziahmetovic was banned from participating in the race for mayor of Zenica in the October elections for uploading pornographic video clips to his official campaign site.
  Bosnian candidate banned from elections over porn (Boston.com)

• Last week’s CatalystCon, a new conference on human sexuality, assembled a variety of perspectives around sex and porn, from sex educator Charlie Glickman’s take on modern masculinity to “professional naked woman” Jolene Parton’s views on fat women in porn.
  Porn and the media: How the pornography industry wants to be covered (Slate)

• File under: wait and see. Sasha Grey‘s fiction debut is an erotic novel titled The Juliette Society, has distribution deals and is being described as “Fight Club set in a highly sexualized world with an assertive female protagonist.”
  Sasha Grey Sells Erotic Novel — Ex-Porn Star Pens ‘Juliette Society’ (Deadline)

• We already knew Paris Hilton was a bigot, mostly towards Blacks and Asians, but now we get to add gays to that list. A taxi driver recorded a conversation between Paris and her gay model friend who was explaining the Grindr app. This eventually led to Paris Hilton shouting that most gays have AIDS.
  Paris Hilton Says Most Gays Who Have Sex Randomly Probably Have AIDS (The Blemish)

• I love this blog; I’m sure you can see why… News cat gifs vs. Twitter sexspambots.
  When your hashtag gets hijacked by sexspambots (News Cat Gifs!)

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