"sasha grey"

• The Pope will have immunity from prosecution regarding the mishandling of child sex crimes by staying within the walls of the Vatican, according to an anonymous Vatican source. Reuters reported Friday, Feb. 15, that church sources have explained that the retiring Pope Benedict would be “defenseless” if he leaves the Vatican.
  The Pope seeks immunity from child sex crime conspiracy investigation (Examiner; also Reuters has what looks to me like Vatican-issued PR on the topic)

• This is a total puff piece about 3D printing and sex toys (there is not currently a home-printing sex toy phenomenon). But don’t miss where Thingiverse’s lawyer said that Thingiverse has disallowed CAD files of sex toy blueprints on its website because, “We want to be open-source but we have to draw the line. You can’t post that stuff here.” Which shows us all how they really feel about open source. As in, Thingiverse will allow the red-headed stepchild of innovation (known as open source) into their house, but they ‘have to draw the line’ at family photos…
  Cheap 3D printers fuel home-printed sex toy “phenomenon” (Dezeen)

• Great news! The number one sex-ed website for young adults – our beloved Scarleteen – now has live IM sex advice!
  Scarleteen Live! (Scarleteen)

• Rock’n'roll pioneer Chubby Checker is suing two computer companies for allowing his name to be used as the title of an app that guesses the size of a man’s penis.
  Chubby Checker sues Hewlett-Packard over app to measure penis size (Guardian UK)

• Sasha Grey did an interview with The Daily Beast about her new film “Would You Rather,” transitioning from porn to Hollywood, her penchant for “extreme” sexuality, and much more.
  Hollywood’s Favorite Ex-Porn Star: A Chat With Sasha Grey (The Daily Beast)

• New York porn performers (female) do “the porn Harlem Shake” and it’s as exactly as unimaginative as mainstream porn can be :(
  Woodrocket: The Harlem Shake Naked (Porn Edition) (Wood Rocket)

• Behind the scenes filming “The Harlem Shake Naked (Porn Edition).” Porn Harlem Shake, Behind the Scenes (ANIMAL)

• A billboard making oral sex jokes and featuring porn star and Charlie Sheen “goddess” Bree Olson is currently up on a busy street corner in Chicago.
  Porn Ads Reaching New Mainstream Levels (Buzzfeed)

• File under: censorship is at its most unchecked and frightening extremes when under the banner of fear: Iceland could become the first Western democracy to attempt censorship of the internet under radical proposals to block online pornography.
  Iceland considers pornography ban (Telegraph)

• Good news. The sex ed reform bill we wanted has made it closer to the finish line: Rep. Barbara Lee (D-CA), Sen. Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ), and 32 other Democratic politicians re-introduced the “Real Education for Healthy Youth Act” on Thursday, legislation that would “expand comprehensive sex education programs in schools and ensure that federal funds are spent on effective, age-appropriate, medically accurate programs.”
  Lawmakers Introduce Sweeping Sex Ed Bill To Expand LGBT Inclusive, Gender Balanced Health Classes (Think Progress)

• Maggie Mayhem has written a lengthy rage-post about her troubling personal experiences working at Kink.com, and levies a number of strong accusations at founder and CEO Peter Acworth (and others) who she says have shaped and participated in what she describes as a dark behind-the-scenes culture.
  Tales Of Kink.Com (Maggie Mayhem Speaks)

• Mayhem’s post followed news of Acworth’s arrest for possession of cocaine after a video was posted online of guns being shot in the Armory (there is a decommissioned shooting range in the Armory’s basement).
  Fetish Porn Mogul Arrested for Cocaine Possession By Cops Investigating Indoor Shooting Range In His Dungeon (Gawker)

• Singapore is seeing an increasing number of cases involving males tricked and blackmailed by foreign females on social networking sites over Webcam-recorded sexual acts.
  More Singapore males blackmailed over Webcam acts (ZDNet)

• Meet Crave’s Duet, a dual-headed vibrator that charges via USB and can store up to 16GB of digital stuff. Half of it is the rechargeable battery with the Flash memory—convenient to store all your porn—and the other half is the dual-headed vibe.
  Duet Vibrator Comes With Up to 16GB of Storage—Wait, What? (Gizmodo)

• Adult-film actress Aurora Snow on why some women love her work.
  Porn Isn’t Just For Men! Why Women Love Watching (The Daily Beast)

• Google is trying to figure out the cause of a mysterious search bug that returns pages and pages of almost exclusively pornographic and adult results when users enter certain equations or search strings.
  Google Search Glitch Serves Up Porn Results, Links (Sydney Morning Herald)

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• No pants subway ride 2013: Thousands of straphangers caught without pants (NY Daily News, image above via)

• Porn giant Vivid Entertainment filed a lawsuit to try and overturn a new California law that forces X-rated film actors to wear condoms. A lawyer for the company says that thanks to the new law, the adult film industry is ‘leaving L.A. county in droves.’
  Porn industry exec files suit claiming Los Angeles condom law impinges on free speech (NY Daily News)

• George Clooney trolls The Sun, proves they will print anything as fact.
  By George! Clooney has ‘ball ironing’ to get rid of wrinkles on his testicles (The Sun)

• The fears of major health organizations have come true: Gonorrhea that is immune to the last remaining effective oral antibiotic has been detected in at least nine North American patients, meaning the era of “incurable” gonorrhea could be close.
  First Antibiotic-Resistant Gonorrhea Cases Detected in North America (US News and World Report)

• Anderson Cooper has always been as gay as an Easter basket, as told in animated gifs.
  Anderson Cooper Opens Up About His Experience With Women (Buzzfeed)

• Just… wow. CNBC should be embarrassed for running a wholly inaccurate piece with no research or fact checking whatsoever. I don’t link to false reporting on sex, but I want to expose CNBC for this one.
  Porn’s New Market: Women (CNBC)

• CNBC’s utter failure to do research on female porn viewers turned into a great rant by Ms. Naughty in which we learn more than we’ve ever read on CNBC.
  Porn’s “New” Market Is Women Says CNBC, 40 Years Too Late (Ms. Naughty)

• When I worked at Good Vibrations, the company had long been repackaging adult manufacturer’s toys into tasteful wrappers because the ugly, garish, sexist, sometimes racist and often gender-insulting adult industry packaging harmed sales and damaged our customer relationships. I hope the industry attitude about branding decisions has evolved.
  AVN session on promoting brand features porn stars, sex-toy manufacturer (Las Vegas Review Journal)

• An interesting post that includes La Grand Bouffe, The Cook, the Thief, his wife and her Lover, Tampopo and more. It explores “a couple of films combining two of the best things in life. Sometimes in distorted, vulgar and troublesome ways.”
  Sex and Food (S Magazine)

• This is really kind of fucked up and I don’t get how this ruling can stand. Adult pay-TV company Playboy did not have ‘acceptable web controls’ to check users were aged 18 or over, Ofcom concludes.
  Playboy fined £100,000 for offering porn on websites accessible to children (Guardian UK)

• Los Angeles-based creator of porn fetish films Ira Isaacs (L.A. Media) was sentenced to four years in federal prison Wednesday for producing and selling obscene material (his videos depict bestiality and sexual situations involving human excrement).
  Maker of porn films gets 4 years in prison in federal obscenity case (LA Times)

• This is just wrong and awful: An eighth-grade science teacher, fired after her porn past was exposed, may see her pay and benefits revoked at a board of trustees meeting today, according to officials from the Oxnard School District.
  California Science Teacher Fired for Porn Past May Lose Pay (ABC News; asshole video autoplay warning)

• I’m delighted to see Dan Savage finally cover the Lift/Carry fetish.
  SL Letter of the Day: Lifted Program (Slog)

• Congrats! Pink Visual President Allison Viva’s new book, “Making Peace with Porn: Adult Entertainment and Your Guy” is now available for pre-order. Among the issues that Vivas addresses is the stereotypical presentation of the adult entertainment business as “an industry filled with powerful men and victimized women.” To counter that notion, Vivas cites the stories and careers of noteworthy and empowered performers, ex-performers, producers and businesswomen such as Nina Hartley, Stormy Daniels, Lexi Belle, Alexis Texas, Shy Love, T.J. Hart, Sasha Grey, Tristan Taormino and more.
  Pink Visual’s Allison Viva’s New Book Now Available for Pre-Order (XBIZ)

• Zahara Stardust says her sport empowers women. Gallery Casula Powerhouse sees it differently, and has banned a photograph of the pole dancer from a coming exhibition on women in sport.
  Gallery and dancer poles apart on provocative nude sport (Sydney Morning Herald)

• Because Robin Leech wrote this piece about the porn convention it’s impossible for me to *not* have his voice reading his bombastic writing in my head. He’s really into those porn chicks. But, it’s important to note that this is the first year the expo isn’t at the same time as CES, so we’ll see how this goes.
  2013 AVN/AEE: Porn stars plan 96-hour marathon of L.V. events (Las Vegas Sun News)

• OKCupid’s new blind date app came out, to some fanfare and probably a little more mockery. But it’s hit a snag: Apparently, it was coughing up users’ emails and birth dates for anyone who bothered to dig for them.
  OkCupid App Bug Exposed Email Addresses and Birth Dates (Gizmodo)

• This is a hell of an article. A long piece by the journo who spent a month experience the filming of upcoming mainstream release The Canyons, starring Lindsay Lohan, James Deen and written by Bret Easton Ellis. Quelle mess.
  Here Is What Happens When You Cast Lindsay Lohan in Your Movie (NYTimes)

• A rambly but fun post that puts zombie sex and The IT Crowd in one column.
  On the Nature of Evil (Also, Zombie Sex) (io9)

• For 20 years, Becky Adams was one of Britain’s top madams, running an escort agency. Now she plans to open a sex work house catering to people with disabilities.
  UK Ex-Madam Plans Brothel for People With Disabilities (ABC News; video autoplay warning)

• Jade Blue (no relation) writes, “The adult industry is the last acceptable arena for racism.”
  Racism In Porn (InfoBarrel)

• Many teenagers live half their lives on social media sites, and they’re writing the rules as they go. One online trend 16-year-old Radio Rookie Temitayo Fagbenle finds disturbing is something she calls “slut-shaming,” or using photos and videos to turn a girl’s private life inside out.
  Radio Rookies: Sexual Cyberbullying: The Modern Day Letter A (WNYC)

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• Once a week, Daily Intel takes a peek behind doors left slightly ajar. This week, the Brooklyn Woman Hooking Up During Hurricane Sandy: Female, 29, management consultant, Carroll Gardens, straight-ish, in an open marriage.
  Hurricane Sandy Sex Diary (Daily Intel)

• Our favorite young adult sex ed website Scarleteen has put together an excellent and fascinating, sex-positive U.S. Presidental Election 2012 Voting Guide.
  The 2012 Scarleteen U.S. Presidental Election Voting Guide (Scarleteen)

• Great article, NYT: “Before they take off all their clothes, the actors who perform as James Deen and Stoya go through a ritual unique to the heterosexual adult film industry. First, they show each other their cellphones: Each has an e-mail from a laboratory saying he or she just tested negative for H.I.V., syphilis, chlamydia and gonorrhea. Then they sit beside the film’s producer, Shylar Cobi, as he checks an industry database with their real names to confirm that those negative tests are less than 15 days old. (…)”
  Unlikely Model for H.I.V. Prevention – Adult Film Industry (NYTimes)

• Ex-porn star Sasha Grey has been cast in acclaimed Spanish filmmaker Nacho Vigalondo’s new high-concept thriller “Open Windows.” The film, now shooting in Madrid, costars Elijah Wood and is being shot in real time and utilize footage from webcams, tablets, mobile phones, satellite and security cams to tell its story.
  Ex-Porn Star Sasha Grey Cast in Elijah Wood Horror Film (XBIZ)

• In recent sex and tech news, Verizon staff were arrested in Florida for stealing (nude) customer photos, and the largest pirating lawsuit damages ever were handed out over some really bad porn.
  Sex Tech: Historic BitTorrent porn damages, Verizon arrest over nude pics (ZDNet: Pulp Tech)

• I work with doctors and nurses who have done this exact work, and it is chilling to read this: A doctor who’s treated tens of thousands of women raped in the Democratic Republic of Congo was fiercely attacked last week. Dr. Denis Mukwege is the world’s best-known doctor treating women who have been raped in that country’s 16 years of conflict; he has treated more than 40,000 women and has operated on more than 15,000 women whose bodies have been ripped apart by sexualized violence.
  The Misogyny Behind an Attempted Assassination of a Man in Congo (The Atlantic)

• A graphic designer visualizes James Bond’s sex life: 50 years, 22 films, 53 women, and 75 implied sexual encounters.
  James Bond’s Sexual Exploits By The Numbers (Buzzfeed)

• Does watching porn change the way we have sex? One new study says that it does, but only if we want it to. According to the study, behaviors seen in porn only jump from screen to bed if they satisfy a host of visual, physical, emotional, and safety needs.
  Porn and your sex life: Watching pornography does not always change how we do it (Slate)

• Fueled by the Fifty Shades trilogy, sales of adult trade books rose 18.2 percent in July, according to AAP’s just released StatShot figures. In the month, e-book sales increased 47.4 percent while trade paperback sales rose 49.7 percent, the two formats that have benefited the most from Shades.
  Adult Trade Up in July (Publishers Weekly)

Main post photo: Henriett Barabas by Boris Ovini, Dahse Magazine A/W 2012

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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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