- Y&R South Africa was briefed by Playboy SA to develop a print campaign to help shift perceptions about the magazine, reaffirming its position as being more than just a nudie mag.
Playboy ads ironically say men do read it for the articles (Copyranter, above image via)
- The SXSW panel “Sex, Dating, and Privacy Online” described the myriad ways in which every step you take, every move you make, is online and searchable. Panel member Violet Blue, a sex educator and tech columnist, pointed to the loose security and privacy practices of dating websites recently exposed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
You are naked on the Internet (MSNBC)
- Ender’s Game, a sci-fi classic about a boy who saves the world by destroying space bugs, is creating a stir in Aiken, S.C., where the parent of a middle school student complained that the book is “pornographic.”
Ender’s Game: Good Sci-Fi, But Porn? (Law Blog – WSJ)
- We all know Facebook utilizes its users’ information for advertising. However, some of the advertising showing up on student profiles is starting to raise concerns – such as the “Cry Rape!” advertisement placed by “false accusation” organization Accusing U.
Has Facebook advertising gone too far? (USA TODAY College)
- Looks like Rihanna has a nipple piercing…
RiRi Brought Her Nipples Out Again Last Night (Dlisted, image at right)
- EBay Inc.’s PayPal unit moved Tuesday to soften a controversial policy that would have restricted the use of its payment-processing services by digital-book merchants that sell material that could be considered obscene. Looks like our efforts to raise awareness worked.
PayPal Eases Curb on ‘Obscene’ E-Books (WSJ.com)
- They’ve been announced! The nominated films for the 2012 Feminist Porn Awards show the true diversity of feminist porn.
FPA 2012 Nominees (Good For Her)
- Another high-profile article about James Deen…
The Boyfriend Experience: Can Bret Easton Ellis Mainstream Porn Star James Deen? (The New York Observer)
- If you’ve ever had a partner refuse to have sex with the lights on, you should read this.
Being Seen During Sex (ErosBlog: The Sex Blog)
- What is the Straight Agenda, anyway?
Meanwhile, On The Heterosexual Emancipation Front… (SFist)
- The GOP presidential hopefuls keep vilifying porn. Odd that the very people they’re trying to pander to consume massive amounts of it.
The Bible Belt’s Love Affair With (Gay and Straight) Porn (AlterNet)
- With a new campaign – Sluts Unite! – that unapologetically leverages the Rush Limbaugh situation, Sir Richard’s Condoms offers support for the “Sex-Positive movement” in the form of an online “Slut’s Oath” and 24 slutty, free-for-the-taking avatars.
Condom Brand Helps Sluts Unite Against Rush Limbaugh (Adrants)
- For at least the past few days, it seems that women and women’s health supporters have been flooding anti-choice Republicans’ Facebook pages with often hilarious criticisms of their efforts to roll back women’s rights.
Women’s Health Supporters Hilariously Flood Republicans’ Facebook Walls With Sarcasm (“Can You Help Me Choose a Tampon?”) (AlterNet)
- Tucked away in a small alley in the heart of Kathmandu’s main business district is a flourishing sex toy shop that is defining the recent changes to conservative Nepal.
Kathmandu sex shop flourishing in conservative Nepal (BBC News)
- The 44-year-old “X-Files” star Gillian Anderson recently told Out Magazine she’s had lesbian relationships…let’s celebrate with this photo gallery.
44 Reasons Gillian Anderson Is Awesome (Buzzfeed)
- How lawmakers keep our SFSI sex crisis hotline in business… Wisconsin lawmakers have approved controversial measures to block the state’s new health insurance exchange from covering abortions and require sex education classes to emphasize abstinence as the preferred method of birth control.
Wisconsin to ban some abortion coverage, re-focus sex education (Reuters)
- We’ve known about this since last year… But hey, Forbes just found it. “Santorum avers that “America is suffering a pandemic of harm from pornography.” He pledges to use the resources of the Department of Justice to fight that “pandemic,” by bringing obscenity prosecutions against pornographers.”
Santorum Promises Broad War on Porn (Forbes)
- Raquel Welch hates porn. “It’s just dehumanizing. And I have to honestly say, I think this era of porn is at least partially responsible for it… I just imagine [modern male porn consumers] sitting in front of their computers, completely annihilated. They haven’t done anything, they don’t have a job, they barely have ambition anymore.”
Interview with Raquel Welch (Men’s Health, thanks A!)
- Christine Borden delivers a firsthand porn set writeup from a recent Kink shoot for Public Disgrace, including James Deen and Princess Donna.
And Now I’m An Extra In A Porn Shoot (The Sexual Manifesto: SFAppeal)
- Yet another porn site owned by Manwin was hacked this week – Digital Playground – losing 73,000 e-mail addresses, user names, and passwords, and some 40,000 plain-text credit card numbers, including CCV numbers and expiration dates.
Porn site Digital Playground hacked, hackers say “too enticing to resist” (Ars Tecnica)
I was struck by the first part of this article – about reading Playboy for the articles.
Actually, I do.
When I first read Playboy in the 1970s, when I was a curious lad, I’ll agree, it was entirely for the pictures. The Internet wasn’t around to provide quick and easy access to pictures of naked women.
Now, though, after having picked up a couple of those old Playboy mags, and then purchasing a large box full from a yard sale – I find I enjoy the pictures, but I’m really reading the articles, to find out about things that I should have been paying attention to when I was a teen in addition to girls, women, and sex. Generally, the articles and the fiction are as well written as anything I’m able to find today. And some are still relevant.
“The idea that belly-dancers are trashy is one my organization… is trying to change. Then I was offended as a woman in general by the notion that I needed pole-dancing classes to be or feel sexy. Wrong again Facebook.”
Nice double standard! No one said you “needed pole-dancing classes to be or feel sexy”. My wife, like many women, takes pole-dance classes for exercise. She is not now, nor has she ever been, a stripper. (Not that there’s anything wrong with that.) She is, in fact, a university philosophy prof. But, hey, she’s obviously “trashy” in comparison to those who participate in belly dance, right?
I think it’s just down to perception, you don’t get offended by it but that doesn’t mean the site is not offensive or that other people do get upset over it. The article quotes a student who was “repulsed” by the advert. It also suggests the advert algorithms are not sufficiently intelligent or being tailored properly so that the right people see them.
I would think a woman is more likely to find an advert offensive when it is for a site that is touching on a very sensitive subject (no woman should ever worry about reporting a rape for fear some organisation is suggesting she might be lying.
I looked at the site and it refers to an “epidemic” of false accusations, yet provides no facts or statistics to support this – if there are really as many false claims of rape as an epidemic implies, then where are the facts to support this? The US National Organisation for Women reports 232,960 rape or sexual assaults on women (including those that were not reported to the police) in 2006. The ones reported to the police in 2008 was around 89,000 (government figures suggest only 38% of rapes are reported so a figure of ~234,000 seems reasonable).
I can’t find accurate figures on false accusations but 2-8% is suggested by some researchers but these figures are highly susceptible to debate as Bruce Gross of the Forensic Examiner’s stated:
“This statistic is almost meaningless, as many of the jurisdictions from which the FBI collects data on crime use different definitions of, or criteria for, “unfounded.” That is, a report of rape might be classified as unfounded (rather than as forcible rape) if the alleged victim did not try to fight off the suspect, if the alleged perpetrator did not use physical force or a weapon of some sort, if the alleged victim did not sustain any physical injuries, or if the alleged victim and the accused had a prior sexual relationship. Similarly, a report might be deemed unfounded if there is no physical evidence or too many inconsistencies between the accuser’s statement and what evidence does exist. As such, although some unfounded cases of rape may be false or fabricated, not all unfounded cases are false.”
I’m sure Accusing U have a sensible idea, to reduce the suffering of people falsely accused of rape but their adverts should clearly be put only on the right target market and not people who would be upset bu their presence.
I agree with everything you said especially with your last paragraph. It would be a big step forward if all parties in a pending rape case were kept strictly anonymous until a verdict was found.
I also agree that a woman who is raped but can’t prove it in court is not a false accuser. She’s a victim of the justice system.
You are right, in most jurisdictions false accusations of rape are treated as a crime, however a relatively minor one. I believe that it should be treated equally with the crime of rape, with the same penalties. If of course it was proven in a court that the accuser made a false accusation, (regret after the fact, both were drunk/high, revenge etc.)
Still there is absolutely nothing about the Accusingu.org advertisement that could be in any way construed as offensive, which was my original point.
I think the problem with the “false rapes” is that it is too easy to claim that someone who was found not guilty of rape was thus falsely accused. In a normal trial, where a jury can be convinced that the sex was consensual (be it by painting the victim as a “slut”, claiming her clothes were provocative, claiming she/he led the attacker on, saying she/he invited the victim home or any other ludicrous “excuse”) it is still too easy to get around the simple “no means no” argument.
False rape, where a (for example) woman has consenting sex with a man and then claims rape days later as she regrets it or a cheated upon spouse finds out is a crime (akin to perjury).
A woman who is raped but cannot get her case proven in court is not a false accuser and these 2 should not be blurred into one.
I think though that rape cases should have anonymity for both parties until afterwards – it is too easy for a man to be accused of rape and have permanent stains on his character even if he is found innocent, the belief that “mud sticks” or “no smoke without fire” and the tendency to gossip means a rape accusation can be hard to get away from.
I have to wonder if before getting offended by the Accusingu.org advertisements did any of the offended parties bother to go to the website and see what issues they are discussing?
I believe that false rape accusations are on an equal level with actual rape as a crime. Both can ruin a person’s life in ways that can never be fixed. Not to mention the enormous harm that false rape accusations can have on the way actual victims of rape end up being treated.
I could go on about several of the other topics covered on the website, but overall I can’t see any way this is an offensive advertisement.
The Raquel Welch bit was reference in the Independent’s “baby” paper i in a column bu Harriet Walker. I don’t read it that often (only when there’s a free copy at the gym) and by chance I had Thursday’s copy today.
http://www.independent.co.uk/hei-fi/views/harriet-walker-porn-is-not-liberating-it-is-quite-the-opposite-7573223.html?origin=internalSearch
I find it remarkable that the paper which claims to be unbiased (as much as all newspapers do I guess) can produce such a 1 sided article smack full of 60s era feminism and tired porn cliches. Yes some porn has silicone enhanced, waxed, bleached blonde models but it has thin brunettes with small breasts and pubic hair, it has plus size models with red hair it has something to everyone’s taste.
You only need to look at the sites with user generated content to see pretty much any “degrading” or “extreme” act is done voluntarily by people who are comfortable with it and enjoy being filmed doing it and want to share it with other like minded viewers. That such porn exists doesn’t make people want to take part any more than talking about gay people makes you gay.
it’s ridiculous that in 2012 we still have women writing about porn with the view that women involved in it must be forced, must be pressured and never for a second do these writers consider that the porn stars are doing it because they want to.