Sex News: Rentboy raid, a real bionic penis, Ashley Madison’s fake female profiles

Worlds to get lost in: Wetware: Cyberpunk Erotica ($3.89)

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  • You only have until July 1, 2016 to watch pay-per-view porn in a Hilton Hotel; after that, it will disappear from the worldwide chain’s television screens, a decision that’s being hailed as a major victory by conservative group National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE). You may remember them as [Morality in Media], the same group that recently launched a successful campaign to get Cosmopolitan magazine covered up in stores like Rite Aid because it, too, was tagged with the dreaded “porn” title by the group.
    No more porn in Hilton hotels: The conservative sex-shaming lobby claims a major victory (Salon)
  • Despite the Australia’s rabid porn censorship and eagerness to censor the internet, it’s a world leader in sex-positive, feminist porn. “As a porn ‘industry’ we’re even smaller, thanks to many a Draconian law and the fact you must shoot in the ACT to avoid most illegalities. But here’s the thing: in recent years several of our filmmakers have won coveted awards at porn and erotica festivals the world over.”
    Aussie Porn Invasion (Simply Sxy)
  • Federal agents raided the Manhattan headquarters of Rentboy.com as part of a money laundering and state prostitution investigation Tuesday, authorities said. Seven people, including CEO Jeffrey Hurant, were arrested as part of the raid at the Rentboy.com offices on 14th Street and Fifth Avenue. Department of Homeland Security agents and members of the NYPD, which assisted in the raid, were seen removing boxes from the offices Tuesday.
    Feds Raid ‘World’s Largest Male Escort Site’ in Manhattan (NBC New York)

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  • On the afternoon of August 25, the feds stormed RentBoy.com’s Union Square offices, shut down the site and arrested its executives. RentBoy is a New York-based global escort enterprise with over 10,500 workers, reportedly receiving 500,000 visitors per day around the world. The site has operated within public view for many years. This is not a secretive, dark web enterprise hidden from the public eye. It’s a popular online destination that allows escorts to set their own rules and rates.
    The Feds’ RentBoy Raid Is an Attack on LGBTs and Sex Workers (Huffington Post)
  • Leaked files from last week’s Ashley Madison dump reveal plans by Avid Life Media (ALM), the site’s parent company, to launch an app that allows men to rate each other’s wives, the Daily Dot has discovered. The app, which was going to be called “What’s Your Wife Worth,” also appears to attach a dollar amount to the women based on a their rating.
    Ashley Madison was working on an app called What’s Your Wife Worth (Daily Dot)

Thank you to our sponsor, Nubile Films.

  • Treasure Island Media announced this week that their six-year investigation by Cal/OSHA over the use of condoms had concluded with a mere $685 fine for the company. This is great news, because the AIDS Healthcare Foundation has been lobbying against and harassing the porn industry, and had hoped that Cal/OSHA would consider the lack of condoms on an adult set to be a serious fine, and had pushed for fines in the tens of thousands of dollars. Instead, Cal/OSHA rebuked them.
    The Landmark Cal/OSHA Ruling on Condoms + Treasure Island’s Cal/OSHA Violations ‘Not Shown to Be Serious’ (Free Speech Coalition, XBIZ)
  • The AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF) caused a panic in the adult entertainment community by issuing subpoenas for porn performer health records dating back to 2007 from several testing and health care facilities, including Cutting Edge Testing, Talent Testing Service, and a clinic that provides health care to performers in the industry.
    AIDS Panic Over Subpoenas in Porn World (Daily Beast)
  • Meika Hollender has already co-authored a book on non-toxic cleaning, picked up an MBA from NYU Stern School of Business, and, with the help of her dad, launched her own sustainable brand of sexual health products for women called Sustain. The brand started with condoms in 2013, but has recently expanded to lubricant, and is launching “post-play” wipes in September.
    Meet the Girl Who’s Changing the Condom Industry (Teen Vogue)
  • The University of London team has spent more than three years crafting a new, 8-inch ‘bionic’ penis out of skin grafts culled from Abad’s forearm and becomes erect by mechanically pumping fluid into it. This pump is activated by a button located near his remaining testicle. This marks the first time that such a device has been successfully implanted.
    Pioneering surgery gives man world’s first ‘bionic’ penis (Engadget)

Thank you to our sponsor in Holland, Abby Winters.

  • “Over a few glasses of wine, Mom told me about all the sound effects she’d worked out to make the whole thing more realistic for her callers. Silly putty is good for general squelching, and wet flannels dropped into the toilet apparently sound exactly like massive shits. You can blow a raspberry at guys who are big into farting, but you have to be careful not to laugh.”
    When Your Mom Works a Phone Sex Chat Line (Broadly/Vice)
  • Byron Myers, a crust punk welder living in Philadelphia, decided with his friends that it would be fun to make a sexy calendar devoted to the same thing, and to raise money to start an independent porn website featuring porn they’d want to watch. They enlisted the help of an old New York punk named Slug (who famously gave G.G. Allin his last dose of heroin before he died).
    Crust Punk Porn Is as Grimy as You Think It Is (Vice)
  • Joanna Angel believes she has robust security on her website, but worries it may not be enough to ward off ever-more sophisticated hackers. She hired outside experts to run her online security after hackers shut her site down for five days, costing her money and, temporarily, customers. Angel said the Ashley Madison affair and release of people’s names might curb customers’ willingness to disclose personal information, although she had not seen any evidence of this.
    Ashley Madison hack sends shivers through hook-up, porn sites (Reuters)
  • Looking into the history of “adultery” laws, it’s clear that they were not just used to punish married adults for sleeping together. Instead, they were used to enforce more specific social norms around sex and, sometimes, race—how much sex society could tolerate at different points in American history and who, exactly, was allowed to sleep with whom.
    The Racist, Slut-Shaming History of Adultery Laws (Atlas Obscura)

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