- Las Vegas-based Erotic Beverages is now selling two new products: “Big Cock” and “Little Pussie” energy drinks – and the link not included in this assy article about the stereotype-trading speed-drinks should be to Erotic Beverages. Not to be confused with the only slightly classier UK Pussy Natural Energy Drink, pictured above… Erotic Beverages offer a little Cock and Pussie (Las Vegas Weekly)
- Apple has won its dispute with a domain name squatter and now is in control of iphonesex4s.com and six other names that contain the term “iPhone.” Apple wins control over ‘iPhone’ porn domain names (CNET News)
- The main reason I stopped watching The Walking Dead after the season premiere was because of the disgustingly weak, submissive and wholly ineffective female characters (there is nothing to relate to here, thx). This new episode just validates my decision to drop TWD after the first epi (IMO, their writers now seem like assholes): “The Walking Dead” characters mistakenly think the morning after pill causes abortion. Do the writers? (Slate)
- In a move predicted to become the gold standard for LGBT health, Google has significantly increased coverage of transgender health care for its U.S. employees, and other `companies are expected to follow suit. At Google, a Transgender “Gold Standard” (The Advocate, via my auntie Flaming Diva)
- Are you in the San Francisco Bay Area, slightly (or primarily) heterosexual, and want a sexy way to burn calories after Thanksgiving? Well… Club Kiss is having a very thankful members-only sexy party for sassy couples and kinky single women on this Saturday the 26th. It’s the hip young kids trying threesomes and more on for fun… Club Kiss, Saturday November 26 (Club Kiss)
- Supporters of Chinese dissident Ai Weiwei donated an estimated 9 million yuan to help him pay the fines and now they’re lending their bodies by posting photos online. More than 100 online supporters from around the world have posted images of themselves in nude poses – a nod to a photo of Ai titled “One Tiger, Eight Breasts” taken last year with four women – all of them nude. As a result, Ai says he is under investigation on porn charges. Ai Weiwei supporters post nude photos to protest porn allegations (CNN)
- Forty Israeli women have taken a nude group photo to express solidarity with Aliaa Magda Elmahdy, a feminist Egyptian blogger who angered religious authorities by posting a nude photo. Her artistic protest against sexual repression led to numerous death threats. Naked Israeli women express solidarity with Egyptian blogger Aliaa Magda Elmahdy (Nerve, image via)
- Dating service OkCupid has ventured from New York to San Francisco to create a freshly staffed outpost of start-up folks, in order to brainstorm the site’s next act. They call it OkCupid Labs, and they’re hiring. OkCupid Sets Up San Francisco Labs to Try to Reinvent Online Dating (AllThingsD)
- This is the hottest, sexiest interview I’ve read this year – with Michael Fassbinder about the sexual actualization of the very conflicted characters he plays in his latest films. I think A Dangerous Method will be a HOT date movie… For someone… “With Jung and Sabina, there’s an element there that he’s really fulfilling her desires by spanking her. I think that he sort of gets off on it because she’s getting off on it. He’s turned on by her getting turned on.” Michael Fassbender on Simulating Sex in Shame and A Dangerous Method (NY Mag)
- “It’s clear that more and more local school officials realize ignorance won’t protect our kids,” TFNEF president Kathy Miller said about the new report, ‘Sex Education in Texas Public Schools: Progress in the Lone Star State.’ “So now we’re seeing the adoption of common-sense sex education policies that deal with a real public health crisis and that polling shows most parents support.” Report: Sex education shifts in Texas (KXAN)
- Cher’s superstar son Chaz Bono has been criticized from an FTM transfelow – Warren Beatty and Annette Bening’s 19-year-old transgender son has blasted Chaz as a misogynist. Stephen Ira, Warren Beatty’s transgender son, brands Chaz Bono a misogynist (Mail Online)
All the information about the comic is illuminating – I haven’t read it yet, but it sounds like if I had my expectations would be slightly – but not hugely – different. Yet I’d still feel alienated by the female characters and the choices the writers are making, and I’m guessing that their pacing (drawing out the character development) has made the female dependency more of a characterization issue that it should be otherwise.
And Mindvalve – thanks for reading, and best wishes to you as well. It’s regretful there’s no room in your world for conflicting viewpoints, though I’m having a hard time believing that if you’ve been reading for two years that my point of view about strength and/or complexity in female characters in fiction came as an unexpected surprise to you. I’ve been editing fiction anthologies for women and heterosexual couples for over ten years now, and I do know how to pick a story with submissive females that don’t insult my readers.
I agree this season has pacing issues… and unless I’m remembering the last season through rose colored glasses, the dialog seems to be getting worse – interactions between people are becoming a little frustrated because of it. But so far, I’ve still enjoyed the season.
As for the Christian, red-state moral play… well, we’ll see where they go with it, but it seems like the clash of values between the family on the farm and the main group is going to escalate, and could play out in interesting ways – and not in a way that really flatters some Christian values. I mean… dude is keeping zombies in the barn b/c he thinks they are still people, and lamented the fact that they killed the zombie in the well… that combined with Maggie’s reaction to the morning after pill thing.. the stage is being set for a major clash here, over these things.
And of course, remember – they are in the deep, traditional south. The stereotypes tend to hold down there (and where I live, to an extent – NC).
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Wow…
I used to think you were different. I used to think you were reasonable and open minded. Now, with your response, it’s clear to me that you’re neither, except when it comes to the points you defend. If you told me that you just didn’t like it, that would be fine with me, but your reasons speak volumes to me on the kind of person you are – an extremist. You’re just an extremist from the sexual positive side.
I know one person is insignificant, but I’ve been reading your blog for two years now and you just lost me forever.
Good luck with your life.
I think the series suffers from some pacing issues for sure. However, you are missing out on Andrea becoming all sorts of bad-ass. You haven’t met Maggie yet either, stopping where you did. And if they follow the comics (which don’t really suffer from the same pacing issues as the show) then eventually you’ll meet Michonne, who is majorly awesome. I just feel like (with especially Andrea), they are addressing the very things you’re talking about head on. It’s just taking them a long time to do it at the pacing they’ve chosen.
I could make a very long post about how fucked up the women in TWD are portrayed – especially in this second season. But I’ll make it brief.
The female characters are relegated to the same social and agency status as children. Worse, the male children have more agency than the grown women. The female characters exist in their relationships to men, and the relationships have dated and stereotypical threads about what validates them as women.
I was so insulted that I barely finished the season two premiere, and I haven’t looked back. Add to that all the christian religious trappings (I’m not anti-christian or anti-religion, either) and I felt completely like I was watching a red state morality play.
Don’t get me started about Silence of the Lambs. It’s a great movie and I’ve enjoyed it many times, but it reinforced harmful and flat-out wrong stereotypes about cross-dressers, people with kinky leanings and piercings, and cartoonized serial killers in a ridiculous way. It would have been scarier if the killer was more like real serial killers, who are typically *not* kinky crossdressers. It purposely played on people’s fear about sexual outsiderism, and created a raft of new misinformation about sexual outsiders.
I’m all for characters that are true to their own fucked up, flawed and offensive natures. But it’s not a singular issue on TWD, it’s a saturated theme. I will watch *anything* with zombies, but I won’t watch TWD again.
There are lots of good reasons to stop watching TWD. It’s really just godawful. Short scenes of zombie mayhem tacked together by what seems like hours of overwrought, nonsensical, badly-written, hyper-emotional, dialog between characters you just can’t care about no matter how hard you try. I’m willing to watch most anything with zombies in it, sad to say…and I can’t yet bring myself to stop watching TWD…but I end up fast-forwarding through much of it, and expect I’ll just stop soon enough. The very first episode of the series was, I thought, very good. Since then…ugh…lucky for TWD that Terra Nova is so unutterably awful…takes some of the critical heat off of them….(/cranky)
I quit watching The Walking Dead in the third episode because it was *so boring* watching a bunch of people do nothing but stare disapprovingly at each other. Does that make me closed-minded for not appreciating how masterfully the writers managed to show that day-to-day life after the apocalypse is really dull?
Second what Mindvalve said. The issue of the bad science regarding taking morning after pills to induce a miscarriage is even addressed in the scene, when the guy who went and got the pills for her asks, “Will that even work?” It’s a desperate decision that I felt highlighted just how important and under appreciated such things are in our modern society; that when civilization breaks down women become slaves to their reproductive systems once again, with no viable options to ensure their safety.
They got the science wrong, yes, you have to take two contraceptive pills quite quickly if you want to use that method to try and prevent implantation, it’s also not a good idea compared to getting an actual morning after pill.
You formed your opinion about the walking dead too soon. The female characters are not weak. Everyone is. It’s the basis of the show. To show how flawed our humanity is when facing a zombie apocalypse. The walking dead are the humans not the zombies.
Secondly, she is only doing what many people think is right. That does not mean it’s right or that it’swhat the writers think is right. When a writer creates a character he gives her her own thoughts, opinions, feelings and intelligence. Or do you also think that the guy who wrote silence of the lambs is a cannibal?
You’re being as close minded on this issue as the people you complain about when it comes to porn.