Translation work has taken me away from this series, and I have been missing it. A conversation I had today with a friend reminded me, though, of the conclusion to an essay about pornography called “Inside The Men Inside ‘Inside Christy …
My Mother’s Cross
Fragments of Evolving Manhood: Thinking About Pornography 2
A white woman’s mouth in the act of swallowing a white man’s penis fills the screen of my TV. Almost directly in the center of the picture, the shape of his organ glides back and forth against the inside of her left cheek. Panning back, …
FRAMING THE VULVA conference in Las Vegas next month
From Leonore Tiefer, via the NYU Gender Studies listserv:THE NEW VIEW CAMPAIGN announces its THIRD Conference, to be held at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, on Sunday, September 26, 2010.FRAMING THE VULVA: GENITAL COSMETIC SURGERY AND GENITA…
Genderplayful Marketplace – an exciting new project by Sara Dopp
Sara Dopp, founder of Genderfork and longtime brilliant blogger and social media mobilizer extraordinaire has a very important new project and I want you to know about it. The idea is this: creating an online marketplace where people can sell clothing …
Gina Ogden on The Return of Desire at The Open Center NYC on Nov. 12!
Gina is a friend of mine and I am huge fan of her work. She is a master at creatively pushing past the present in life, sexuality and spirit, and opening up new paths that didn’t seem there before. I’ve attended her workshops and always com…
Hartford Zoning Board to Family: Enter Servitude Or Move Out
How Do I Love Thee, Scarleteen
When I was coming of age sexually there was no Scarleteen. And I was fortunate enough not to need it. If there is such a thing as a charmed introduction into one’s own sexuality, I had it. I had an open-minded mother who, without batting an eye, answ…
How is it that I would need protection to seek medical care or advice?
Last Friday I happened to drive past a counseling center and saw the wonderful, brave people outside the clinic doors wearing their bright orange jacket/vests that proclaimed they are pro-choice escorts. It isn’t something I haven’t seen before so I…
If You See Something, Check Yourself Before You Say Something
It might not be any of your business, and you might be misinterpreting what you are seeing. You may have seen the PetaPixel story about Wyatt Neumann’s photo exhibit and book, I FEEL SORRY FOR YOUR CHILDREN: The Sexualization of…
Tagged with: art • media • sexuality • sexualization • youthInjustice In Iowa: Pleasure, Danger, and Dementia
You know that I’m working on a book about sexuality, aging, illness, and dying, and that it’s a mother-daughter memoir, and so you know that issues about parents’ sexuality and the care that hospitals and nursing homes afford them are…
Tagged with: aging • consent • dementia • Health Care • Henry Rayhons • Law • new york times • sexInstant Censorship, Google Style
Google just launched a new search technology that speeds up the already mindbogglingly fast process by which you can find information online. I read about it in the New York Times this morning. It launched yesterday and it’s called Google Instant. It w…
Insulted and Confused
Let’s pretend. Let’s imagine that Mary hears that John is gay, and is having same-sex relationships while dating Susie. Mary tells Jane in hopes of getting the message to Susie. (Jane is a close friend of Susie’s mom.) Mary believes…
Iron Cage of Irrationality in Laws Surrounding Life and Death
I’m pretty sure that when Max Weber wrote about the march toward increasing rationalization and disenchantment in modern societies that he didn’t anticipate the kinds of irrational and mysterious situations that advanced bureaucracies would produce. While he certainly understood that…
Tagged with: Elizabeth Wood • Family Matters • Law • reproductive justiceIt’s all about sex, and that’s the shame
What would happen to your career if your erotic desires were made public? Depending on where you work and what you do for a living, you may well risk losing your job. This reality has nothing to do with your…
Last Call for Participants in Adult Industry Truth survey
There is much talk about trafficking in adult entertainment industries, but much of the data used in those discussions is terribly flawed. Last week, at Woodhull’s Sexual Freedom Summit, I learned about a research project that aims to fill some of…
Tagged with: advocacy • research • sex work • traffickingLet Labor Unite Us
I’ve been looking back over past labor day posts and the one I wrote five years ago really struck me as touching on many of the themes I’ve been thinking about lately. I’m reposting it here in its entirety. Much…
Tagged with: labor • Labor Day • sex work • social change • social justiceLow-Income Children Need Public Support No Matter Who Their Parents Are
Two republican state legislators in Illinois co-sponsored a bill that lit up my social media feeds this week and sparked an outpouring of fury about regressive ideas about family and cold-hearted attitudes about public assistance. The good news is that,…
Tagged with: Family Matters • Illinois HB 6064 • poverty • welfareMay Day for Sexuality Non-profits: No More Free Riders!
May Day is both a distress call and also a celebration of labor. In this post, I’m using it in both ways at once. (Imagine that. I’m bi-connotational.) Heather Corinna, Executive Director of Scarleteen, announced earlier this week that the…
Tagged with: labor • Sexuality education • social justiceNever an adult moment?
When Will and I are on road trips, we will every now and then see interesting juxtapositions on billboards and road signs. One that I notice every year on our annual trip to Georgia is a billboard for “Adult Entertainment”…
Tagged with: aging • consent • erotic entertainment • sexNo More “Safe” Guys
Over the last few weeks, I’ve had a number of conversations with my male friends about them being called “safe,” or in one case, a “safety blanket.” Don’t know what I’m talking about? Celebrate.This is the phenomenon in which a (gen…
No More Of The Master’s Tools
For the second time in two weeks a grand jury voted not to indict a police officer for killing an unarmed black man. Last week it was Darren Wilson who got a pass in the killing of Mike Brown in…
Tagged with: Eric Garner • justice • Mike Brown • police brutality • RaceNo One Expects the Polk County Inquisition!
I just recently learned the story of EllenBeth Wachs, who is suing Sheriff Grady Judd of Polk County, Florida, for harassment. Wachs has been arrested three times recently, each time for a trumped up charge. It seems that Sheriff Grady…
Tagged with: atheism • free speech • religionNothing About Youth Without Youth
“Nothing about us without us!” That’s an organizing principle that I first learned when I started doing sex worker rights advocacy years ago. Then, last week, at the Detroit Youth Passages Youth Sexuality Media Forum, I was invited think about…
Tagged with: Alternatives for Girls • community organizing • Detroit Hispanic Development Corporation • Detroit Youth Passages • Health • media • Ruth Ellis Center • youthOn My Birthday, a Gift For Freedom
As a kid, I would have preferred to hide in my room rather than go out and knock on doors asking neighbors to buy hoagies or candy bars or magazines or whatever else the school had dredged up for us…
Oppression Is Not In the Interests Of The Children
Yet the state, and many citizens, use them as proxies in the fight to protect systems of privilege and oppression. Walter Scott may have been running from Officer Michael Slager, who shot and killed him on April 4, because he was afraid of…
Tagged with: carceral state • Children • economy • free range parenting • gender • incarceration • kim brooks • lenore skenazy • Politics • shanesha taylor • tanya mcdowell • walter scott