That this is only available in XS.

I have been struggling with these words for a while. In my head, I know there’s a phraseology that should be simple, wrap it all up like a neat little package, festooned with chastisement and guilt and semen and blind thrusts. It is an obsession, mine, to name their obsession.

Last week Massachusetts joined six other states and decided to decline the yearly allotment of the US government’s $700,000 per-state grant for abstinence education in public schools (which discourages the use of birth control, such as condoms). This was just after a 20-page Columbia University study exposed that abstinence curriculum statements about condom use are medically inaccurate — and the ACLU, tired of the Department of Health and Human Services ignoring repeated warnings about their incorrect data, sent them a letter threatening legal action. Last friday, Randall Tobias, Bush’s notoriously abstinence-promoting, condom-discouraging “AIDS Czar” and Deputy Secretary of State, resigned after admitting he was a customer of the Washington DC escort service about to surrender their records, and also a customer of a service that “specialized in Central American women”.

The devil is in the data.

While looking over the news item about Massachusetts, this snip caught my eye:

The grant program that funds abstinence education was created by Congress in 1996 as part of welfare law changes, with the aim of discouraging teenagers from having sex outside marriage. Most states took the money and at first were allowed wide flexibility in how they used the funds. Until 2003, Massachusetts used the money for public service announcements encouraging teenagers to wait for marriage before having sex. The state then began spending the money on supplementary educational materials promoting abstinence.

In late 2005, Romney — then a potential presidential candidate who was trying to establish credentials as a social conservative — announced that he would channel the money directly into expanding abstinence education programs in schools. During the remainder of his administration, Massachusetts funneled more than $800,000 to Healthy Futures, a group that had been running abstinence education programs in more than three dozen middle schools.

Wow, $800K is a lot of money. On the article’s second page, they say that “Healthy Futures is a subsidiary of a Christian, anti abortion group called A Woman’s Concern, but [Rebecca] Ray said the curriculum is not religious and does not tell students what to think about abortion.” I also unearthed that Healthy Futures got a $1.5M grant in 2004 from the US Department of Health and Human Services. So I thought, okay, I have a lot of negative fantasies about what the actual curricula of these organizations are teaching, so I decided to look at Healthy Futures’ .pdfs — and didn’t find much at all about what they’re actually telling the kids. But I did learn a lot on their Research Reports and Studies page — mostly that they have a lot of broken links to studies that support abstinence and discourage condom use. What really caught my eye was one of the unbroken links, to a .pdf where they state, “According to a recent report, sexually-active teens are more likely to be depressed and attempt suicide.”

I downloaded the 10-page study on teen sex and suicide, and read it. I didn’t need to read far to get more answers than I anticipated: on page two, it’s proudly authored by right-wing, “conservative think tank” The Heritage Foundation. On page three, it states that the data is based on a Heritage study from 1995-1996. Skewed, *and* out of date.

Much like the medically inaccurate data the ACLU is trying to get the US Department of Health and Human Services to stop using — because doing so violates federal law. The Washington Post examines the government reaction to the charges, and we get this juicy snip:

HHS spokeswoman Christina Pearson said agency officials had not reviewed the letter and other materials yet. “As a general statement,” she said, “I do want to note that our abstinence programs have been, and will continue to be, medically accurate, teaching young people about the healthier choices they can make in life.”

The department’s Administration for Children and Families (ACF) provides technical assistance to grantees and monitors the accuracy of their educational materials, Pearson said. The government spends $176 million a year on abstinence programs.

The materials have been the subject of political and legal battles for years, with critics, including Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.), contending that the Bush administration has ignored inaccuracies in the service of conservative ideology.

Wow, now we’re up to $176 million a year. Is that anywhere near what Randall Tobias made as the head of Eli Lilly?

Tobias was an outcall John — who spent the last several years enacting global and domestic policies about abstinence and anti-condom propaganda to people whose lives depend on accurate information about protection and staying alive. Do you think he used condoms, or did he pay extra to go bare? I’m thinking he had a little extra cash to go bareback, especially considering his statements in 2004,

(…) promoting abstinence and monogamy are “far more effective” than distributing condoms for preventing the spread of HIV, according to Agence France-Presse. “Statistics show that condoms really have not been very effective,” Tobias said, adding, “It’s been the principal prevention device for the last 20 years, and I think one needs only to look at what’s happening with the infection rates in the world to recognize that has not been working.”

In all this tangled web of inaccurate (and possibly falsified) data, hypocrisy and piles of money moving around (oh, and skyrocketing HIV rates in Africa and ever-increasing volumes of sex hotline questions at SFSI from teens) — is one very loud sound. Never has it been more clear that church and state are now one and the same.

The thing I’m trying to name is Tobias’ brand of “sex addiction” — not that he used sex workers and is a hypocrite (he is), or the notion that him starting some kind of 12-step program would alleviate his guilt for something “out of his control” (a likely out). No. It’s his obsession with enforcing his sexual hypocrisy on the world that needs a name. It’s a pathological drive that fuels Gonzales’ war on porn, too. And the freaks obsessed with putting a stop to gay marriage (Heritage Foundation). Don’t you think that the people who spend all their time creating giant signs with bloody aborted fetuses and making their children hold them in front of abortion clinics are kind of fucked up? These are *all the same people*. These people are more obsessed, worried and fetishized-possessed about sex than those of us who spend our lives studying it. It’s just unhealthy. And they act on their desires, unchecked, from policy to practice.

There’s got to be a name for their disorder. Email me if you made it through this long and overly-serious post and you have suggestions. But I do know one thing — their problem *does* have a name now — mine.

I got the check in the mail for the Oprah piece. It’s all set. A pro-porn piece (and a profile) in one of the widest-read magazines in the nation. My anti-porn opponents would kill for the same. They know where to find me.

Image via Stockroom’s eloquent Goedde galleries.

Updates 5.1: Reader Dan emails me to say, “Hey, something in your recent missive caught my eye:

Wow, $800K is a lot of money. On the article’s second page, they say
that
“Healthy Futures is a subsidiary of a Christian, anti abortion group
called A Woman’s Concern, but [Rebecca] Ray said the curriculum is not
religious and does not tell students what to think about abortion.”

“A Woman’s Concern” is Erik Keroack’s clinic. You may remember Keroack as
the anti-contraception wacko who was leading up the Health and Human
Services Office of Population Affairs, who was forced to resign when his
practice was being investigated for Medicaid fraud.

Wow. Talk about blatant graft. This one might even make a good SFGate
article.”

* Sweet London reader Adam writes, “There is of course this report, $1bn ‘don’t have sex’ campaign a flop as research shows teenagers ignore lessons, which fully debunks Bush’s War on Pleasure.

* Vamp tells me, “Not that this is too creative, but I would call these people
Erotophobic and Paraphobic. I love the webpage for Paraphobia here.

where it states that “Paraphobia is an intense fear of something that
poses no actual danger [to oneself].” I think this describes these
people in many other realms in their life.

It goes on to say:

“There is a Way Out. Imagine what your life will be like when you
know that you are not ‘defective’.” This is something that I would
love to tell fundamental Christian conservatives! Alas, I know none.

Keep up the great blogging.”

* Reader Jessi emails me a very interesting conversation from this morning, “My friend and I discussed how to categorize sex negative zealots this morning and came up with two interesting descriptors: “Obsessive Erotiphobes” for the actual people and “Reaction Formation” to describe the underlying psychological mechanisms. Here is a snip our conversation for further clarification:

Jessi: What do you think about the term: “Obsessive Erotiphobe” ?
As a psychologist, what does it make you think of?

hypnautika: erm, breaking it down it looks like fear or eroticism but the obsessive throws me off
persistent thoughts of eroticism that are feared and avoided?
with an accompanying compulsion?

(more…)

I was interviewed last week about the dating scene in San Francisco for a Men’s Health feature — puzzlingly, the feature in this men’s magazine is a literal guide for the ladies built on gender stereotypes circa Cosmo 1985: “Women, Here’s the Best Place to Find a Man“. It’s bizarrely specific, stating at the bottom “the complete list of the 101 best cities for women 35 and older to find a man…” It is kind of interesting to see which cities they picked as the top five; they even have methodology. I’ll save you the saccharine headache of not becoming a dried-out spinster (of any gender) in Salt Lake City or Arlington, and jump you right to San Francisco — where I didn’t know I was going to be commenting on “the gay question”. Still, I could see how this “question” could have wound up with a lame answer if they’d asked someone less, er, sex-positive.

The writer was actually really nice and smart; I’m sure all the “ladies, get your man” copy is standard-issue packaging for these quaintly retro MSM mags. But –it is true that I know way too many hot single straight boys right now. So terrible.

* I have a Victorian / Colonial Fetish - (bottom boi here) - m4m - 24 (Dallas, TX)

* Capture ROBIN the BOY WONDER… M4F - m4ww - 32 ) (New York, NY)

* chloroform ether rush and no2 - mw4mw (Midtown West, NY, NY)

* Food fetish - m4w - 32 (san jose south, CA)

* Areola Fetish - m4w (SF, CA)

* spandex and pantyhose fetish - m4m - 40 (mill valley, CA)

A break from our regularly scheduled porn, internet fights, news, panties and cupcakes for — 29 ducklings! Sweet reader Patrick sent me this saturday morning story to ease the hangover, and it’s totally working! Thanks, Patrick!

A sex educator gave me an intoxicant. A Sister gave me an inebriant. I danced, a lot. My shirt is still wet. Tomorrow I have to lecture at UCSF about sex to budding sex educators — aka, the “newly-minted superfreaks” as we lecturing sex dorks might sometimes call them. After the jump, see how my evening started. Unless, you’re too lazy/bizzy/crazy to look at the whole album. Yes, it was a Marching Band - Barbary Coast night. There will be video after the weekend determines itself. I am happy.

(more…)

My column, this week, such a pleasure: Margaret Cho’s New Role, snip:

Margaret Cho is not a big woman. But when I walk into the Rincon Center room where she’s being attended to by nearly a dozen Good Vibrations (goodvibes.com) staff, it’s clear that she’s the girl in the room with a huge set of super powers. While on camera, I watch the San Francisco native turned Hollywood comedian (and blogger) calmly and thoughtfully answer every question about sex and gender posed by her interviewers, as well as record PSAs for Good Vibrations. During her breaks, she is low-key and sweet, posing and smiling for every fan photo requested of her. I keep expecting her to bust out a utility belt. Or stand up and spin around for a costume change.

This is light years from the Margaret Cho who brassily proclaimed in her “Assassin” tour, “Republicans sure hate the idea of gays getting married. But they sure lo-o-o-ve those gay prostitutes.” But, really, the Cho I spent a few hours with on Saturday is not so different from the one who gets up on stage and makes a bull’s-eye out of LGBT issues and cultural hypocrisy. She was in San Francisco last weekend to make her points not onstage but from an office chair — a Good Vibrations office chair, to be exact (not made of silicone). Cho is now a member of the Good Vibrations board of directors and a participant in decisions that steer company direction and policy. I was deeply curious how and why this all came about, so a couple of Good Vibes pals invited me to come ask her my questions.

I was quickly introduced to Cho before she went back in front of the camera. At the next break, I was sending out a text message when startled by a hand gently touching my sleeve; Cho peeked around my shoulder and warmly said, “I love your jacket.” Next, she was complimenting me on my tattoos and began giving me a skin-tastic tour of hers, comparing inked body parts until she had to return to GV’s on-camera gender politics Q&A.

Link.

* Haha — I linked to Good Vibes in my column when I turned it in, but it looks like SFGate won’t even directly link to our local, 25+-year-old-local-institution from their website — I see now that they spelled the link out instead of a URL. Which, by the way, is my request when they won’t link to a NSFW site — I ask that they spell it out when they won’t link. It’s just hilarious that our local *pride* — which is like embarrassingly safe — is too scary for a link. Hah.

Image via +.

The tickets have been purchased, so it’s official. Forbes names me a “web disruptor” and has invited me to their Internet Leadership Forum (conference) in Mexico the first weekend in May. I’m a Forbes guest (w00t!) and will be speaking on their panel, “The Web Disrupters” with three others, including Robert Scoble. My .pdf agenda describes it as, “The Web has provided a platform for citizen journalists and Web personalities to emerge, disrupting established distribution patterns for entertainment, media and commentary. A panel of top Web Disrupters discusses what’s new and what’s next for Web 2.0.”

They are taking very good care of me, and to say that I’m surprised to be in this is an understatement. Looking over the agenda, it’s all Editor-in-Chief of this, CEO of that, and lotsa guys. I am, indeed, thrilled. The underlying thought for me right now is, if you’d asked me what my future looked like at 15, sleeping under overpasses and being pissed off that I had to pray in soup kitchens to get food, I would have told you with the most belligerent gutter punk sneer that I didn’t *have* a future. I am in a bit of a state of disbelief that this is even happening, that yes, this is reality, and it becomes more wonderful and extreme at every turn. Though in these contexts, all the wonderful hold the extreme.

Anyway, talk about ‘fish out of water’. I’ll definitely be blogging and vlogging the whole thing, by the grace of Mexican wifi.

It’s not terribly timely, but I think it’s a smart wrap on the so-called “code of conduct” and the Sierra debacle: in the Bohemian, Richard Koman’s You’ve Got (Hate) Mail. Interestingly, they give me the last word. And it’s fierce. I really thought when I did this interview that because I was contrary to everyone involved (O-Reilly, Sierra, Hunt) my comments would be unused — when you get to the end of the article (read: further than the excerpt I put in this post), you’ll see it’s quite the opposite. Snips:

Out of this idea–that problem behavior could be solved by the assertion of a group morality–a group of E-Tech attendees discussed what could be done. “The idea that came out was that we have the ability to set standards,” O’Reilly said. Among the precepts: Own your own words and the words you allow on your site. Don’t feed the trolls. And most contentiously, discourage anonymity.

Troubling to many was the fact that O’Reilly created a cute little “Civility Enforced” badge that sites in agreement with the code could post. O’Reilly’s badges, which even look like Western sheriff’s badges, rankled many as Uncle Tim riding into Dodge to bring some law and order to this town and make it safe for honest women. Even A-list blogger Robert Scoble, whose own wife was viciously attacked by trolls, worried that O’Reilly’s status in the industry would exert a subtle pressure to get on board. “Will I still be invited to his conferences if I don’t sign on?” he wondered.

Women being harassed online is no news at all to those who have been there all along. Erotica writer and online personality Violet Blue said in a phone interview, “It definitely happens to lots of women. It’s pedestrian and ordinary at this point. When you provide an opportunity to comment anonymously, it will bring out the worst in anyone. People are saying, ‘Kill the women and fuck them after they’re dead.’ It’s a way of emasculating women.”

Link.

Image by Mallorie Narsallah, via. See also: my blogger code of conduct.

So basically, ScanSafe’s Monthly “Global Threat Report” for March 2007 means that 20 percent of you *are not doing your jobs*. Don’t make me get out the ruler. You know, the one that has “blogger” studded in reverse on one side. Snip from Ars Technica:

Blogs are known to be a free-for-all for “expressive” content, but according to a new report by ScanSafe, a vast majority of blogs host content that is considered “offensive” and potentially “unwanted.” ScanSafe’s Monthly “Global Threat Report” for March 2007 says that up to 80 percent of blogs host offensive content, ranging from “adult language” to pornographic images. The company suggests that businesses should be aggressive about preventing users from accessing some or all of this material. And of course, they’d hope that you’d use their products to do so.

ScanSafe says that it discovered the “offensive” nature of blogs by analyzing more than 7 billion web requests coming from their corporate customers. In doing so, they apparently learned that the so-called blogosphere is a lot like a George Carlin performance: diverse, sometimes entertaining, and loaded with “bad words.”

In addition to so-called offensive content, about six percent of blogs analyzed in March also hosted some sort of malware. “Blogs are a great vehicle for self-expression and the exchange of ideas,” said ScanSafe’s VP of Product Strategy Dan Nadir in a statement. “Employees visiting these sites can unknowingly expose corporate networks to legal liability, viruses, and loss of proprietary information.”

But what’s really considered “offensive” content? A blog merely has to contain a single instance of profanity to be considered offensive, according to ScanSafe. “There were as many blogs with the ‘F-word’ as the word ‘China’,” Nadir told Techworld.

Link.

Seems to me this is a case for OSHA. But it’s actually no laughing matter. Porn star Kira Kener was fired by Vivid “the same day she told management she was concerned about having to work with previously used marital aids, the lawsuits stated.” She sued, and they now have settled.

Used. Marital. Aids. Ew. She believes she caught her STD off a dirty sex toy. What kind of conditions are going on that women are even exposed to this possibility? The kind with no accurate sex information about safer sex and sex toys.

Update!: Print your very own Universal Response Form for Internet Content Filtering Suggestions (jricher.jricher.com)!

Or rather, Utah lawmakers want to ban free wifi and penalize those with open networks to “protect children form porn”. They’re also proposing to punish and out Utah ISP’s who don’t voluntarily police (read: don’t publish, take down) “obscene material”. They’re just doing it for the kids, of course. Which, as with every other free speech attack cloaked in “saving” kids from porn, whenever someone says they’re doing something to protect the children, you should immediately consider their reasoning suspect and examine their other motivations. In this piece, they are pretty blatantly mixing child porn with adult porn (that might be seen by minors), as usual. And it’s frighteningly clear that the people making the decisions don’t even vaguely understand the technology. Grit your teeth and read this pro-restriction piece, snip (thanks Jonathan):

Utah lawmakers have tried various methods of controlling questionable Internet content, especially the availability of pornography to children.

Little has been successful.

But a legislative committee studying the issue this spring and summer heard Wednesday about some real-world alternatives that Utah lawmakers can adopt.

Local Internet providers, like locally based XMission, have raised concerns about state legislators trying to control a medium that answers to Congress and is protected by constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech and interstate commerce.

But those advocating controls told lawmakers there are ways to restrict access to child pornography - already illegal in the United States - and keep minors from accessing adult-only-legal sexually explicit Web sites.

Among the proposals were penalizing those who leave their wireless networks open and rewarding Internet providers that self-police access to pornography.

The discussion in the Public Utilities and Technology Interim Study Committee was often technical, with committee members having to be brought up to speed on various terms and applications.

“My brain is on the edge of frying, trying to understand” the technology involved, said committee co-chairman Sen. Scott Jenkins, R-Plain City.

Link.

Update: Reader Mike Place from XMission emails me with chilling details and more background on this story. It looks like the scope of these people’s agenda is not limited to Utah — it’s basically another flavor of COPA (and there are sane people there trying to raise awareness about it). Mike emails,

Hi Violet,

I enjoy your blog and I just caught your post on the wi-fi story
brewing here in Salt Lake City. As one who’s been chasing this story
down for a while now (I was the one who posted it to Slashdot last
week), here are a few items worth pointing out to your readers:

* The issue was just discussed on the local NPR affiliate earlier
today here in Salt Lake City.

* Here’s a link to the Slashdot story that I submitted a few days
ago. The story itself contains a link to the audio from the actual
Senate meeting where the idea was proposed.

* Here is the organization responsible for all this idiocy.

* The owner of XMission (and my boss) who is fighting to preserve
open wifi here in Utah is Pete Ashdown. He ran for Senate against
Orrin Hatch last year.

The important thing to realize here is that this isn’t just limited
to wireless. These guys at CP80 are pushing for anti-porn regulation
across the board — state, federal, you name it. They want to sue
pornographers in order to keep them off of their proposed “clean”
Internet and they actively propose suing/jailing people who provide
“circumvention” measures that run counter to their proposal — think
anon proxies, Tor, etc. These guys aren’t just local to Utah. They’re
actively working behind the scenes to craft federal legislation. You
can bet that lawmakers are looking for another attempt at COPA and
this might just be it.

They even produced a film about their quest (I’m really not making
this up).

At any rate, I thought I’d pass along all that info to you. There are
plenty of us working hard over here to keep Utah’s reputation out of
the gutter. :]

Thanks Violet. Keep up the good work.

Update (4.25.07): Jacques Richer writes me with the most brilliant response to all of this — a Universal Response Form for Internet Content Filtering:

Fortunately or unfortunately I’ve been on the Internet long enough to
have seen just about every stupid harebrained content restriction scheme
discussed at one point or another. It’s gotten to the point where my
responses to them have become mostly automatic. In honor of this :-)
I’ve decided to put together a version of the “spam-solutions” response
form for content filtering solutions (attached).

In a way, using these types of forms makes it clear - in a way few other
ways can match, that the vast majority of these approaches are just
rehashes of already discussed/rejected old ideas. Hopefully, this will
help to discredit the approach.

Keep up the good work.

– Universal Response form for –
– Internet Content Filtering Suggestions –

Your

( ) post
( ) group
( ) legislative proposal

advocates a

( ) technical ( ) legislative ( ) market-based ( ) vigilante

approach to restricting access to objectionable content. Your idea will not work. Here is why it won’t work.
(One or more of the following may apply to your particular idea, and it may have other flaws which used to vary from state to state before a bad federal law was passed.)

( ) Website operators can easily use it to harvest email addresses
( ) Sex education and other legitimate web uses would be affected
( ) No one will be able to find the guy or collect the money
( ) It is defenseless against brute force attacks
( ) It slows down/eliminates/damages deployment of infrastructure widely desired/supported by users
( ) It will slow down access to some content slightly for two weeks and then we’ll be stuck with it
( ) Users of the web will not put up with it
( ) Microsoft will not put up with it
( ) The police will not put up with it
( ) Requires too much cooperation from content providers
( ) Requires immediate total cooperation from everybody at once
( ) Many website operators cannot afford to lose business or alienate potential employers/clients
( ) Your plan penalizes compliant websites without any countervailing reward
( ) It’s effectively impossible to differentiate between allowed and disallowed content
( ) Anyone could anonymously destroy anyone else’s career, business or website
( ) The existance of legitimate differences of taste and opinion with respect to the broad range of content you would restrict
( ) Failure to account for religious differences among internet users
( ) Fundamental differences of opinion as to what subjects are harmful to minors
( ) Lack of consensus as to the harmfulness of content in general and/or this content in particular
( ) Lack of research/scientific rigor with respect to: ______________________________________

Specifically, your plan fails to account for

( ) Laws expressly prohibiting it
( ) Lack of centrally controlling authority for the internet
( ) Open relays in foreign countries
( ) Wide availability of VPS services
( ) The existence of wide reaching anonymity services like TOR
( ) The ability of anyone with $20 in their pocket to put up a website with proxy capability
( ) Asshats
( ) Jurisdictional problems
( ) The international nature of the Internet
( ) Unpopularity of weird new taxes
( ) Public reluctance to accept weird new forms of money
( ) Huge existing software investment in HTTP
( ) Susceptibility of protocols other than HTTP to attack
( ) Ability of content providers to move to protocols other than HTTP
( ) Armies of worm riddled broadband-connected Windows boxes
( ) Eternal arms race involved in all filtering approaches
( ) Extreme profitability of the content you would restrict
( ) Joe jobs and/or identity theft
( ) Technically illiterate politicians
( ) Extreme stupidity on the part of people who do business with content providers
( ) Dishonesty on the part of content providers themselves
( ) The objections raised in RFC 3675 (”.sex Considered Harmful”)
( ) People with strong philisophical/religious/ethical/moral objections to filtering information, who would be more than willing to create/maintain circumvention tools
( ) The effect of this approach on people in other jurisdictions
( ) Other: ______________________________________________

and the following philosophical objections may also apply:

( ) Ideas similar to yours are easy to come up with, yet none have ever been shown practical
( ) People under the age of 18 may have a legitimate need for information their parents do not approve of
( ) The internet should not be reduced to a child’s level merely to protect children
( ) Port use should not be the subject of legislation
( ) Blacklists suck
( ) Whitelists suck
( ) We should be able to talk about any subject without being censored
( ) Countermeasures should not involve wire fraud or credit card fraud
( ) Countermeasures should not involve sabotage of public networks
( ) Countermeasures must work if phased in gradually
( ) Why should we have to trust you and your servers?
( ) Incompatiblity with open source or open source licenses
( ) Feel-good measures do nothing to solve the problem
( ) In order to be even minimally effective, it would require licensing web servers
( ) This approach is incompatible with first amendment and constitutional tests/limits
( ) Other: ______________________________________________

Furthermore, this is what I think about you:

( ) Sorry dude, but I don’t think it would work.
( ) This approach raises the bar for technical and sociopolitical naivite
( ) This is a stupid idea, and you’re a stupid person for suggesting it.
( ) I have added you and/or your organization to my personal bogon filter
( ) Other: ______________________________________________

I see that Wired just posted their Rave Awards gallery, so I cruised their picks for mavericks. There’s a phrase that means a lot to me — it’s “feed the poor, starve the rich”. Wired couldn’t have it more backwards. Especially when their crowning pick is Arnold Schwarzenegger. Yes, *that* Arnold Schwarzenegger.

“To find the 22 innovators, instigators, and inventors to honor with a Rave Award this year, we started by looking for the most intriguing breakthroughs in the world today — then tracked down the individuals who made them happen.”

Talk about the disgustingly out of touch fantasies of MSM.

I’ve long adored local Netflix-style (and VOD, w00t!) movie service GreenCine for a million reasons; local, small business, incredible selection of movies, tons of indy films, oodles of hard-to-find sexploitation films, and the best cult and horror selection I’ve ever seen in a service like this. I often recommend them to people looking for great vintage softcore and those ever-lickable lesbian vampire films… Today they published their Sex In The Movies guide, and it’s fantastic; it’s not so much a guide to movies with sex in them, but rather a huge, well-researched and reference-ready article about the history of sex in film. Period. It covers the first known adult film, to grindhouse and sexploitation, to the beginning of modern porn and stops at the present. Here’s a great snip:

By the 1950s, these films were being referred to more often as “stags” since they were shown at men-only “stag parties.” Luke Ford, in his book A History of X: 100 Years of Sex in Film - an extraordinarily frustrating piece of work; poorly written, misogynist through and through, and yet weirdly useful - quotes William Rostler’s outline from his 1973 book, Contemporary Erotic Cinema, tracing the common plotlines in these early flicks that would be played out again and again for decades:

1. A woman alone becomes aroused after handling a phallic-shaped object. Masturbation follows. A man arrives, is invited inside, sexual play begins.
2. A farm girl gets excited watching animals copulate. She runs into a farmhand, or a traveling salesman, and sexual play begins.
3. A doctor begins examining a woman and sexual play begins.
4. A burglar finds a girl in bed or rapes her or vice versa.
5. A sunbather or skinny dipper gets caught and seduced.

Recently, there’s been an interest in rediscovering these vintage films and collections have appeared with names such as Olde Time Erotica, Antique Erotica, Authentic Antique Erotica, Vintage Erotica - Anno 1930 and Vintage Erotica - Anno 1940. What surprises many expecting to see something rather tame and sepia-toned is the revelation that our grandparents and great-grandparents did just about everything we thought we come up with on our own. But after all, sex is sex.

Sexploitation and the Grindhouse

In the early and mid-20th century, there existed a fascinating limbo between mainstream movies, most of them coming out of Hollywood, of course, and no-holds-barred porn. The “sexploitation” phenomenon in the US has its roots in the 1910s, with the big stand-out year being 1913. That was the year of Traffic in Souls and The Inside of the White Slave Traffic, both promising to reveal the lurid underbelly of the world of prostitution (and here, it’s interesting to note that the original, literal definition of “pornography” is “writing about prostitutes”). (…)

Link.

Also — they’re good peeps; check out their Blue Cine porn VoD, with lotsa new hardcore Hentai. Mmmm, tentacles. Image: Cult Epics’ Vintage Erotica Anno 1930 — trailer.

Um… Margaret Cho rocks harder than Judas Priest! We had a great time today, and I interviewed her for my column; aaaand we chatted about porn, anal sex, makeup, sock garters and tattoos (we have lots of cherry blossom tats between us). We did an episode of bloggers undressed — yay! Embedded after the jump.

(more…)

It’s time to let this genie out of the bottle: I’m helping to organize an international conference and festival all about sex and tech, with experts from the fields of science, economics, art and technology — Arse Electronica. It will take place here in San Francisco on October 5-7, 2007 at the Porn Palace of Kink.com. The premise isn’t the question of whether or not sex affects tech and culture, but *how* it does.

We’re looking for speakers and presenters, and researchers. If you have an interest in speaking or sponsoring, please email: arseelektronika AT monochrom.at

I’m helping Monochrom to organize this — a serious conference with a fun attitude about sex and tech. There are a number of speakers I’d love to invite and have fly in from various parts of the globe — this could be amazing, and could change many cultural conversations about sex and tech, and my hope is to try and smash the stereotypes that impede the organic evolution of sex and tech. This is not a corporate con; this is by and for the people who are active in sex, sex culture, and technology, and all those interested — not companies hawking products or startups trying to launch another gimmick. We’re looking at talks, presentations, demonstrations, and panels. We’re ready to evolve sex and tech: the conversation starts here.

*We need funding and sponsors*. We’ve secured the location, now we need to not worry about money while we set everything else up — and I’ll post here the minute tickets are available. Please consider funding or sponsoring our very ambitious, exciting conference. (And yes, I’ll be speaking. I can’t wait!)

…because leaving the house is overrated. That’s the topic of this week’s Chron/Gate column, Web 2.0 Dating Games, where I talk about what sites people are using (and a bit about how they’re using them) to cruise. Image: the screencap the Gate was too nervous to run with the piece, which is also my favoritest Craigslist ad ever, and is tempting a response even as I write this. Snip:

And so it goes around the bay: The gays think it’s easy for lesbians, the lesbians think it’s easier if you’re gay … and the straight people think it’s easier if you’re gay. Granted, these common assumptions leave out a couple of other important letters in our alphabet soup of sexual diversity. Dating in the Bay Area may not be a happy hunting expedition for all, yet one thing’s for certain: The communities have community (from the Lexington to Manhunt.net), and the nerds have — the Internet. And our Web 2.0 conferences. Happy hunting, and don’t get stuck at home Twittering yourself on Friday night. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. There isn’t. End of discussion. OK?

But wait, you say, don’t you frustrated tech geeks have SOMA and South Park and the Marina — I mean, the Mission — on weekends? Or how about those deliciously retro launch mixers, where you congregate and slip each other Moo cards and quaff too much dot-com startup-sponsored booze, mewling belligerently about how sunlight burns your pale skin?

Sure, if your idea of a hookup involves tracking the cosmo-spilled trail of many a girl who thinks “dress over pants” doesn’t make her look like a Bed Bath & Beyond’s Bed-in-a-Bag-wearing Barbie Facebook Edition. And put down my iBook to sniff out the day-old cigar and single-malt scent of startup jocks rocking the pleated Dockers? Sorry — they may or may not have the new Helio Heat, but their home page is MySpace, and I’ll bet their approach is one long, unwanted page load. No, there exists a Second Life because most of us ran scared from the first one long ago, thanks. We live on the Internet for a reason. And isn’t the purpose of technology to push us farther apart so we can get closer together, online?*

Link.

* I credit qDot for this last line.

Hey — is everyone so caught up in obsessing about the shootings that they aren’t noticing what happened with the Supreme Court and abortion today? And that, like, the four dissenting voices were the few “liberals” in the court, including the only *female* left on the Supreme Court? This is even if a doctor deems it necessary to protect the mother’s life! Help. Help! Snip:

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who called the decision alarming, took the rare step of reading parts of her dissent.

“In candour, the Partial Birth Abortion Act and the court’s defence of it cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away at a right declared again and again by this court - and with increasing comprehension of its centrality to women’s lives,” she said.

Observers say the decision reflects the recent addition to the court of two conservative justices appointed by President Bush.

Link.

Also, while you were looking at MSM’s morbid over-coverage of the guy who stalked women then went on a killing spree, and not seeing the 2ndary headlines: read my post, Possibly Fatal Blow Dealt to Web Radio.

Sean Bonner asks the question, who let PayPerPost into 2.0? We’re having the O’Reilly Web 2.0 conference in SF right now — the same O’Reilly who wrote the so-called civility standards enforcing ‘code of conduct’ many of us made fun of because it made little sense to actual bloggers. Well, now it’s starting to make sense — as Sean points out,

Someone who knows nothing about blogs coming across this booth might assume PayPerPost has the O’Reilly seal of approval. Of course there is no mention that much of the blogosphere has actually taken a strong stance against PayPerPost, bloggers found to be involved with PayPerPost are often shunned by their peers, or that search engines like Google actually devalue blogs found to be associated with them.

Link.

PayPerPost makes bloggers into spammers, period. It’s interesting to see these gated community 2.0 “a-listers” feel free to set forth blogger ethics in Blogistan (and MSM) and then let sleazebags like PPP set up their shell-game within the holy confines of their conference. And if you pay the $100-$1500 to attend (I couldn’t afford it and was too sick to figure out how to sneak in), you would think PPP has O’Reilly’s endorsement. Seems to me this sort of unspoken endorsement thing requires… some kind of code of conduct.

* Side note: speaking of spammers, I got an email this morning from a huge spam company offering me a couple hundred K for techyum (likely more if I stayed on to provide my original content). A real email, from a real person that I know (but didn’t know worked for this spam behemoth). This is all very weird.

Seen on Our Lady Fleshbot a while back, still yummy any time of the day or night for girls like me: Londoner Luke Stephenson’s Morning Glory series. Take two and call me in the morning? Okay!

Okay, well, sort of on the ‘celebrity’ part. Paul Barresi emails me from a quaint AOL address, saying,

Dear Violet

Let me get this “straight”. You were approached by an idiot at the
GayVN’s with no class and pointed to him as the best representation of
a straight man in gay porn? Your story is a million miles off the mark.
Before you endeavor to report on such a complex subject, I suggest you
first do hundreds of interviews and extensive research.

Yours truly
Paul Barresi

Woke up this *afternoon* in a coughing fit, felt down. I watched a video my sweet friend Addy sent me, the original version of What’s It’s Like For A Girl. It made me want to make a video; I think you’ll find the results surprising. A crime yes, but victimless, I assure you.

Embed after the jump; show page with details here.

(more…)

This week I squared off with Sheriff Irina Slutsky of the Vloggies Show in a sexed-up face-off of the so-called ‘blogger code of conduct’. I’m especially excited to see Irina introduce our confrontation by giving her opinion of the O’Rielly proposed blogging guidelines — and then, of course, I’m the rep for “anything goes” in a badge-wielding debate. I play myself, because we all know that “anything goes” usually means “sex”.

Here’s the show post; embed is after the jump.

Other ‘code of conduct’ links of note:

* Airbag Department of Security’s Blog Advisory System (blogadvisorysystem.com)
* Let me see your papers! (slashdong.org)
* More on the Blogger Code Of Conduct (seanbonner.com)
* My personal code of conduct graphic (techyum.com)

(more…)

I’m all sick-in-bed girl and utterly nonplussed about a long day of watching people being jerks on blogs, and missing a party I really wanted to go to. But I’m really glad I just watched Beyonce’s video Green Light (at Vivane’s)– not a noteworthy pop song, but every single costume in the video is skin-tight latex fetishwear, the dancers are of all sizes, there’s some nice corset couture and a whole dance sequence in ballet hobble boots — and Beyonce winds up crawling on her hands and knees in them, very hot.

Update: it’s YouTube, girl-powered cheesy video night here at the Blogger Bungalow, party of one. What I’m watching here in bed after the jump.

Midnight update: just made a hot toddy for myself, as part of my videoblogging week 2007 day 8. yes, I explain the 8-day week in the video. Embedded at the tail end of this post.

(more…)

In this episode, I ask Sean Bonner what makes a sexy geek… sexy? Watch it on the show page or embedded after the jump. His answers are very revealing.

(more…)

I think this pretty much depicts how MSM feels about bloggers, citizen media and online indy journalism — this quote from Brian Williams, anchor of NBC Nightly News, speaking to NYU journalism students:

You’re going to be up against people who have an opinion, a modem, and a bathrobe. All of my life, developing credentials to cover my field of work, and now I’m up against a guy named Vinny in an efficiency apartment in the Bronx who hasn’t left the efficiency apartment in two years.

Link (via + via).

Yes, those links are a strange set of bedfellows, I’ll admit. But it’s an interesting perception to add to the growing discussion about how bloggers, journalists, MSM and indymedia are intersecting. We’re not qualified nor credentialed enough to tow the party lines, I suppose. Nice to see him casually dismiss the most important thing to happen to journalism in about fifty years (besides the 1987 repeal of the Fairness Doctrine), so hopefully it’ll be the thing that turns his job upside down and makes him relevant for a change.

But what’s revealing about what Williams said is that it indicates a pervasive attitude that writers outside the current MSM system are seen as unqualified, unwashed masses. And that only “they” can validate what we do on blogs and vlogs. Meantime, MSM clamors for the traffic of the Boing Boings, the DailyKos‘, the Crooks and Liars‘ the citizen coverage of worldwide volunteer blog network Metblogs (and even to an extent, Flickr users), and the sheer numbers of eyes not on their newscasts but instead on the YouTubes and Blips, which are damning them to come play in our world, like it or not.

And apparently, they don’t like it enough to even try and understand it — evident with Williams’ comments (NBC), Congdon’s journalistic clowning for ABC, and CBS’ recent Katie Couric’s blog plagiarism. To me, this revealed what we bloggers had been guessing all along, that MSM takes us bloggers (and us readers/viewers/consumers of new media) as seriously as we do their distinctions between content, opinion and advertising. Couric’s blog, chock full of personal “memories” cribbed from other writers (to make her look human?), was written by her producer. I’m guessing that’s standard practice for journalists with “credentials”. We just call it lame.

I think that MSM (like Brian Williams) show dislike and disrespect toward bloggers and vloggers for a number of reasons. And we see all the three-letter (and papery) mainstream media outlets as a constant conflict of interest that blur the line between fact/opinion/advertising (and there’s quite a bit of looking down our noses right back at them for not being able to grasp our tools). So I think they’re mostly feeling like sore losers because they’re stuck in the paleolithic era of reporting, and as one emailer put it in regards to my Congdon piece,

My theory is that because of the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine and the corporate consolidation of the media, the self-correcting mechanism of blogs, along with a respect for disclosure and transparency, no longer exist in broad sections of the Fourth Estate. Fox and ABC News are perfect examples.

That would have me feeling as cranky as Williams, too. Awwww. It must suck when you can’t evolve. Also: this post gets to some good points: An Open Letter to Amanda Congdon (dustinlacina.vox.com, in reference to this Chron column).

Update, reader comment: Liberty Guys write me saying,

hi violet,

The only way that a massive corporate media outlet can lose at this is by beating itself - by compromising so much with government, business, and foundation interests that their point-of-view becomes transparently co-opted and worthless.

“Vinny” is kicking Williams’ blowdried, made-up ass precisely because he does not rub elbows with corporate, foundation, or congressional fatcats at cocktail parties or anywhere else, and could not give a crap about their interests, only about his own, and those of his friends and family as he sees them.

By itself, “Vinny’s” point of view is incomplete, but millions of people like him are floating enough substantial ideas out there that the average person can pull enough of these bits of truth out of the aether and integrate them into an opinion different from the one Williams and his corporate masters want to force on him.

And it scares the bejeesus out of the elitist scumbags that populate corporate media, and their wannabees in J-schools.

We have them on the run. Enough said!

The Liberty Guys
Promoting Liberty, Peace, and Free Enterprise

Two fun ones from me today, Stockroom And Stormy Leather: Together Again For The First Time and Elevator Girl Kyoko: Going Down!

Since I’m a sick kitten and bed-bound, I’ve been teaching myself to edit and compress video on my laptop. I made a little project out of the first videos I shot with my new video camera (an older 2006 Sony DSC-M2 I ordered out of backstock) at SXSW this year. The (admittedly low quality) video is of me walking around the Intel building they were tearing down; now that I’ve successfully played with compression settings (to keep my file sizes low) I’ll be shooting at higher quality. Episode page is here; embedded video and description is after the jump. ::koff::

Oh — and I took a sexy fever pic last night with the “medicine” Hacker Boy delivered to my doorstep on his way home.

(more…)

I’m late to blogging this, as I’m really quite ill with the flu (no insurance, ack), but it’s a popular one this week: my datamining of sex acts on Bay Area Craigslist Casual Encounters, results and spreadsheet. Thanks to my friend Kevin Burton for the real-time tracking link, and Jonathan Moore for stat math. Technical issue: I wish Google Spreadsheets retained the “freeze panes” function in the published documents — it would be easier for you to see the categories if it did. Got tons of great mail on this, like: “Finally someone has done the math.” Snip:

Crazy sex ads on Craigslist isn’t news or a secret, and the Casual Encounters ads are commonly regarded as a reliable source of entertainment and titillation for parties and long days at the cube farm alike. Even more interesting — for scientific purposes, of course — is looking at how people are using the ads for sex and what they’re up to. Or not up to, as the case may be.

Using a very unscientific method of stat gathering, while relying on a tried-and-true knowledge of colloquial sex terminology and search-fu skills that cut like a knife, I set about data mining Craigslist Casual Encounters over a seven-day period — and compiled an Excel spreadsheet that would make a Microsoft development team squirm, beg for mercy and then pass out. (NSFW Google document online here.) I mean, what girl doesn’t want to know in which San Francisco neighborhood men think they’re the best hung? Or which Bay Area city has the most golden-shower enthusiasts?

With filthy spreadsheet in hand, I developed a set of specific categories based on majority results of what people were looking for (and who was seeking the activity) and added categories as I went along. For instance, the numbers told me that in any given “anal” search, the numbers revealed that Men Seeking Women was the majority default for results, and Men Seeking Men was the lesser variable. So either the gay-anal assumptions for “Sodom by the Bay” were wrong (likely), or the gays prefer to use other online hookup services and local community resources for anonymous anal sex.

However, for fellatio action, the default was Men Seeking Men in all neighborhoods and cities, with the exception of Berkeley, Palo Alto and Mountain View. My final categories were (seeking to get and give) blow jobs, cunnilingus, anal sex, immediate hookups, married, well-hung, use of the word “normal,” people who were “bored,” a biohazard category (for those seeking activity including bodily fluids) and fetish interests (like the nice fellow in Cole Valley who enjoys vinyl inflatables, as evidenced with the lovely 5-foot-tall Godzilla in his photos).

Link. Link to spreadsheet. Link to my crazed videoblog post I filmed while writing my column. Image via.

Fell asleep with a fever; woke up with it. Still, I dragged Sean off the couch and Jonathan to my vlogshow shoot (hopped up on theraflu) with Irina (much fun); now, a few hours later I’m sweating and on deadline for two manuscript edits, due tomorrow. Thoughts:

* No more Justin.tv please. Ever.
* Boy, some people really will do anything for their World of Warcraft habit — including trade sex for Warcraft loot on Craigslist (thanks, Sean! oh, wait, you’re on the couch next to me…)
* Last night after a glass of Madiera and before the theraflu, I read the ‘blogger code of conduct’ in bed with a friend for my videoblogging week day 5 video.
* Speaking of the, um, code, *do not miss* the Airbag Department of Security’s Blog Advisory System. “(…) prevent people from becoming victims of your freedom hating content.”
* Douchebaggery of the week award: The San Francisco Bay Guardian. In this week’s issue, there is a terrific article by Justin Juul about writing erotica — engaging, smart, funny, informative, sex-positive. However, in the print version of the article the Guardian (and not Juul) made the centerpiece photo of me, and captioned it saying sex sells, and identified me as a “smut peddler”. Cheap shot, Guardian. Nice way to devalue my work with a negative antiquated stereotype usually reserved as an insult for dirty bad sleazy pornographers. Why not call me an author or editor? Guardian: the rest of sex culture has grown up in this one-paper town — why can’t you?
* OMG: cupcakes! (thanks Chriso!)