Sex News: Facebook Censorship Rules, Fleshbot Sold, Role Play Arrests, HIV Resistant Women

This is a big Sex News post, with a lot of links worth looking at. We had to do a little server maintenance this week, and I apologize for the backlog (but now we’re sleeker than ever on the, er, back end).

• In case you were wondering, the photos from a Chinese sex doll factory Reuters released as a slideshow for Valentine’s Day are different than the Reuters photos from a Chinese sex doll factory in 2007.
  Sex doll factory (Reuters, above image via)

• Facebook censorship policies leaked, Reddit is backed into a corner over sexualized images of children; an Iranian developer is about to be executed over suspected porn website work, Pinterest gets porn clones, Sears goes NSFW, YouPorn goes Redis, we see data from a year in adult apps and more.
  Sex Tech: Facebook Guidelines Leaked, YouPorn Redis, Sears, Reddit, Pinterest Porn (ZDNet)

• Fleshbot has been “sold” to its current editor. FWIW, I was its second employee and ran the site off and on with the original editor until we both left in 2008. Needless to say, it was the opposite of what Reuters calls an “industry mouthpiece” when we ran it. In my opinion, interpreting the site’s fate as indicative of the profitability of porn blogs is genuinely misinformed.
  Gawker Media jettisons its porn blog (Felix Salmon, Reuters)

• Rick Santorum thinks that your sex life should be a matter of public policy. His version of what he thinks is right for your sex life, that is.
  Rick Santorum Wants Your Sex Life to Be ‘Special’ (The Atlantic)

• Public abduction role-playing fantasies gone terribly wrong: A couple in Portland, Ore., was arrested on Tuesday and charged with disorderly conduct after police responded to a report of a car with a naked woman bound in the back and duct tape covering her mouth.
  Valentine’s Sex Role-playing In Subaru Ends In Arrests (Fox News)

• Newsweek made several versions of their cover for “The Politics of Sex” issue; the rejected ones are entertaining, though somewhat uncomfortably caucasian. However, here’s hoping Newsweek learns to title their Tumblr posts better in the future.
  Rejected Newsweek Contraception Covers (Newsweek Tumblr, image via)

• Claire Sinclair says she won’t press charges against 21-year-old son of Playboy legend Hugh Hefner, who was arrested for domestic abuse Sunday night, as long as he tells everyone he’s sorry.
  Hugh Hefner’s son slapped with restraining order from Playmate of the Year girlfriend he allegedly attacked (NY Daily News)

• An entrepreneur in South East England is fighting New Forest District Council’s bid to shut down his swingers club after the authority said the hotspot was attracting too much traffic and blighting rural Hampshire. The JCT2 club in a private house has two well stocked dungeons, which can be rented, with items including a grope box and spanking benches.
  Sex club ban for the king of the swingers (Get Reading: Reading Post)

• A research team has found that HIV-resistant sex workers in Africa have a weak inflammatory response in their vaginas – a surprise for the researchers, who were expecting the contrary considering the women’s high exposure to the virus.
  Some African Sex Workers Are Naturally HIV Resistant (Newswise)

• To help people avoid fucking up on Valentine’s Day, San Francisco-based magazine The Bold Italic made this graphic comic.
  Love Is(n’t) (Buzzfeed)

• Internet dating sites claim to have brought science to the age-old question of how to pair off successfully. But have they?
  Sex and love: The modern matchmakers (The Economist)

• Welcoming Eros Blog into the sex blog decade club this year is a joyful thing. (Tinynibbles is now 11 years old!) Herewith: Anil Dash, the Spice Girl who enjoyed a good sex spanking, carrots and candy where it doesn’t belong…
  10 Years Of Sex Blogging: Best Of ErosBlog 2002 (Eros Blog)