This is a very big sex news roundup; I’m still fighting this awful summer flu (still congested and my brain is annoyingly slow), and at the same time there has been a lot going on in the world of sex news and culture lately.
You may have noticed that I’ve been evolving the format of these posts, and this new post reflects more steps in that evolution into something that is hopefully a useful tool for both of us. For the purposes of clearer headlines and the sharing economy, I’m re-branding the Nibbles posts as “Sex News” because I’ve noticed that ‘sex news’ is always the parenthetical I add when I share the post in other places. Why not call it what it is?
- Last week, attackers hacked the Microsoft Safety and Security Center search engine to return adult-oriented results, studded with malware links. “The Microsoft Safety and Security Center has become a hot bed of porn redirects, and sleazy porn sites invariably lead to malware,” said Alex Eckelberry, the vice president and general manager of GFI’s security division.Microsoft Security Center Delivered Adult Content Links (Information Week)
- BioSante Pharmaceuticals Inc. is in talks to partner on its sex gel to raise female libido or sell the company, according to Chief Executive Officer Stephen Simes. The shares rose to their highest value since 2008. BioSante’s Drug for Women’s Sex Drive Spurs Deal-Making Talks, CEO Says (Bloomberg)
- A Michigan murder trial over the killing of a man who was castrated has revealed an apparent torture chamber in the basement of a suburban Detroit house where men were castrated for sexual purposes. Michigan murder trial reveals sex torture chamber at house (International Business Times)
- (…) It goes on: if you post any nudity or sexually explicit content on Google+, or even set your profile picture to a “close-up of a person’s buttocks”, your Google account can be suspended. Google+: Too many eggs in the Google basket (ExtremeTech)
- Prepare for software that will get you hot n’ bothered, tips on how to tell if your robot crush is queer, wonderings about whether one can actually identify the gender of a drive belt, and a whole handful of delightfully bizarre clips from science fiction, advertising and actual sexual robotics projects. July 20: Hey, Where’s My (Queer!) Robot Girlfriend?! Queering Sexual Technology (The Queer Commons)
- Mann, founder of the Exotic Erotic Ball, says he wants to revive the San Francisco Bay Area show, which was cancelled at the 11th hour last year. Mann said he is hoping that a white knight will infuse the event with cash. Perry Mann’s Exotic Erotic Ball Looking for Investors (XBIZ Newswire)
- Male masturbators can’t seem to catch a break. From Orthodox Judaism to traditional Buddhism, the religious strictures against men masturbating are ancient and enduring. (Because the spiritual authorities were so often ignorant about female masturbation, women caught a rare break. You can’t condemn something if you don’t believe it exists.) Hugo Schwyzer on male masturbation (The Good Men Project)
- Republican Michele Bachmann‘s husband has a business on “praying away the gay” and got his “Dr.” from a diploma mill. In His Own Words: How I Went Undercover at Bachmann’s Clinic + What Kind of “Doctor” is Marcus Bachmann? (The Gist)
- “I figure there are other models out there who feel similarly and a significant number of people who are simply puzzled as to how one reconciles the principles of feminism with something so anti-feminist on its surface as nude and erotic modeling.” Lori’s Guide to Feminist Modeling (Tales of A Kinky RadFem, via Dr. Charlie Glickman)
- A new strain of the gonorrhea bacteria can resist all available antibiotics, doctors say. Gonorrhea is one of the world’s most common sexually transmitted diseases, so this could portend a major threat to public health. Newly Found Gonorrhea Superbug Resists All Existing Antibiotics (PopSci)
- “Child pornography is great,” the man said enthusiastically. “Politicians do not understand file sharing, but they understand child pornography, and they want to filter that to score points with the public. Once we get them to filter child pornography, we can get them to extend the block to file sharing.” The Copyright Lobby Absolutely Loves Child Pornography (TorrentFreak)
- Rachel Kramer Bussel thinks this Craigslist post was inspired by her story in my Best Women’s Erotica 2010 collection, and I think she’s right. (Where do I sign up?) A most unusual dinner party (newyork.craigslist.org)
- Indian doctors have been accused of conducting sex change operations on young girls whose parents want sons to improve the family’s income prospects. Indians pay surgeons to turn girls into boys (Telegraph)
- Now you can watch the epic Cambridge porn debate between Anna Span, Jessi Fischer, Gail Dines, Shelly Lubben and more. Video: This House believes pornography does a good public service (The Cambridge Union Society)
- That old chestnut about women always wanting to cuddle? Myth, according to a Kinsey Institute study*, which finds that kissing and hugging were more important to the happiness of men than of women. Kinsey Institute Survey Finds Men Need to Cuddle, Women Value Sexual Satisfaction (TIME Healthland)
* TIME got it incorrect: it was a survey, not a study. Bad sex reporting, no biscuit.
Main post image of French model Nikita Belluci from this explicit gallery.
Great selection of articles, as usual – you are less impaired by your flu than you think :) I found the Google+ article particularly good; despite me sounding a bit hypocritical as I use Gmail and Blogger, I do think he makes some great points – the idea that you could lose x years’ of mail, blogs etc just because you didn’t read the TOS and put a picture of your arse (ideally somebody else’s in my case) on your + profile is quite worrying.
The kind of all-encompassing service that Google offers worries me on a lot of levels; although I find it interesting how many of the commenters leapt to Google’s defence, citing how poor Facebook’s reputation WRT privacy is. I suspect that most of them use FB; and sinister though they may or may not be, I find it hard to take complaints about it seriously, given that so many folk willingly upload their entire lives onto it. What do you expect them to do with all that info?