• A decade of corporations like Facebook censoring sex-positivity got us here: “Michael Kosta sits down with clinical psychologist Dr. David Ley, who traces the origins of the alt-right movement’s anger to its anti-masturbation stance.”
  * Why Is the Alt-Right So Angry? (Daily Show | Comedy Central)

• Kanye West, who wrote a song last year about how bad he wants to fuck his wife’s sisters… “Kanye West is a NoFap guy … It’s helpful to their scolding campaign to erase or demonize legitimate sex workers this way, and indeed, the atmosphere of NoFap may cast the consenting female porn star as a seductive Jezebel, out to soil and ruin promising young men.”
  * Kanye West Is a NoFap Hero (MEL Magazine)

• Did Australia’s lawmakers just get unfrozen after 50 years in a time capsule? “Peter Dutton’s Department of Home Affairs has suggested that in an attempt to protect children from seeing sexually explicit material online, we should force adult web sites to introduce facial recognition technology for their users as a form of age verification.”
  * Big Brother is watching… porn? (The Spectator Australia)

• I answer the BBC’s question here. “Ms Evans’ group has collected a list of more than 1,300 performers who claim that their accounts have been deleted by Instagram’s content moderators for violations of the site’s community standards, despite not showing any nudity or sex.”
  * Why is Instagram deleting the accounts of hundreds of porn stars? (BBC)

• This is part of the science-based approach to understanding porn consumption. I wish CBS and other outlets would do more with it. “Porn scholar Madita Oeming teaches a class on porn studies in Berlin. She explains why she feels that the mass availability of pornography has offered an outlet for sex positivity and body positivity that didn’t necessarily exist before.”
  * Does modern porn lead to more sex positivity? (CBS News)

• For the record, I stand in solidarity with people who like big fake penises. And this article is coming from a good place. “Our anatomy hasn’t changed much since ancient times, but our ideas have. The assumed marriage of gender identity and genitals has weakened … In an attempt to embrace sexual accessories that are for the people and by the people, erotic toy company LoveHoney has, for the past few years, been crowdsourcing the sex-loving public to design their own fantasy toys.”
  * How sex toys finally evolved beyond the big fake penis (Mic)
  See also: ‘Dildo Sculptor’ Lets You Design Your Ideal Sex Toy (Future of Sex)

• What’s cool about this is that now I’m thinking about the “stone butch” [sexual] identity differently. “The Asexuality Visibility and Education Network (AVEN), for example, describes some asexual people as ‘sex-favourable’, which is an ‘openness to finding ways to enjoy sexual activity in a physical or emotional way, happy to give sexual pleasure rather than receive’.”
  * What being asexual or aromantic tells us about sex and romance (Aeon Essays)

• Speculative piece, but worth a look. “Today, the results are mostly crude. Unlike the most sophisticated deepfake videos traded online, no one is going to mistake any of the 3D models Motherboard has seen during our reporting for actual images of a real person. ”
  * People Are Having Sex With 3D Avatars of Their Exes and Celebrities (Vice)

• A ray of hope for a rights-based-sexual and science-based-reproductive health agenda. “Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) proposed legislation to decriminalize sex work as part of a sweeping resolution she introduced Thursday morning aimed at revolutionizing the criminal justice system.”
  * Rep. Ayanna Pressley Calls To Decriminalize Sex Work In Criminal Justice Resolution (Huffington Post)

• There is a new edition of the Porn Studies Journal (Vol. 6, Number 3, 2019). It includes articles like “DeepFakes: uncovering hardcore open source on GitHub.”
  * Porn Studies (Taylor & Francis Online)
  See also: Sexual Health Research Network November 2019

• Content warning for personal shares, which I’m not a huge fan of generally. “When I began trying to hack my own sex life for this series, I learned that — like most purported “life hacks” — the idea of a one-size-fits-all magic bullet for better sex doesn’t exist.”
  * Sex, hacked (Mashable)

Main post image via: Tatyana Kombarova by Viktor Korneev (Portraits of Girls)

• “Plans to introduce a nationwide age verification system for online pornography have been abandoned by the government after years of technical troubles and concerns from privacy campaigners. The climbdown follows countless difficulties with implementing the policy, which would have required all pornography websites to ensure users were over 18. Methods would have included checking credit cards or allowing people to buy a “porn pass” age verification document from a newsagent.”
  * UK drops plans for online pornography age verification system (Guardian)
  See also: UK porn block: Tory MPs line up to attack Government decision to scrap online age verification measures (iNews)

• “That’s right: the PornWikileaks — the infamous website started by the even more infamous adult industry pariah, Donny Long, and which hosted a doxxing and extortion fodder forum against adult models called “Whore Hunting” — according to the Jane Does’ filing, was owned by none other than the GirlsDoPorn owner.”
  * Here’s What You Need to Know About the GirlsDoPorn Case (XBIZ)

• “Last week, the owners and key employees of adult film production company Girls Do Porn were charged with federal counts of sex trafficking by force, fraud, and coercion.”
  * ‘Girls Do Porn’ Was a Crime Ring, Not a Porn Site, Industry Experts Say (Vice)

• “Fox has written more than 10,000 reviews for businesses across America in the last five years, all at the behest of a mysterious dominatrix who introduced him to bubble tea and baby oil.”
  * Yelp’s Horniest (and Best) Reviewer Is a Jacked Foot Worshipper Named Fox E (Vice)

• “According to court documents, US investigators simply right-clicked on Welcome To Video’s homepage, selected “View Page Source,” and instantly had what they needed.”
  * How the world’s largest child porn marketplace was undone by a right-click (Quartz)

• ““Porn is a discourse that informs gender, sexual roles and relations but only men are having this discourse,” [Erika Lust] says. The only way for this to truly change, she adds, is for women to take leadership roles in the porn industry.”
  * Meet the filmmaker taking on the misogynistic world of porn (London Evening Standard)

• “…in spite of the damage to her reputation, Guo was finally granted her license to practice law in 2019. She’s since used her platform to create a new story for herself, writing about navigating sex worker stigma in the legal world… and officially starting her own legal practice.”
  * Nadia Guo: The criminal lawyer who was outed as a sex worker (Huckmag)

• “Aphrodite Inc. was created to spread the concept that human hearts will always be better than robotic ones. The film begins with sexbots appearing inside a family home on what looks just like a regular Friday night.”
  * Award-Winning and ‘Family-friendly’ Film about Sexbots Set to Compete for Spot at Cannes (Future of Sex)

• “Health officials are raising alarm about a rise in STDs across the United States. For the fifth consecutive year, combined cases of gonorrhea, chlamydia and syphilis have risen in the United States, according to a Sexually Transmitted Disease Surveillance Report from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published on Tuesday.”
  * Three STDs reach all-time highs in the US, new CDC report says (CNN)

• “Katie Couric recently kicked off her new podcast with an episode entitled, “Is Violent Porn Changing Us?” … Couric also asserts that 88 percent of top rented or downloaded porn “contains scenes depicting violence against women.” She borrows this statistic from one of her guests on the show, Dr. Gail Dines.”
  * Op-Ed: Katie Couric’s Porn Bashing is Scarier Than You Think (XBIZ)

• “Teaching a teenager the benefits of condoms or letting them know it’s okay to be gay might soon land you behind bars in Poland. In their first move since winning a second term in Sunday’s election, lawmakers from the nationalist Law & Justice party backed the draft law to establish jail terms for promoting “sexual activity” to minors. ”
  * Teaching Teens About Sex Might Soon Land You in Jail in Poland (Bloomberg)

• “A Russian man suing Apple for more than $15,000, claiming that an app he downloaded to his iPhone “manipulatively” drove him to homosexuality, causing him “moral suffering and harm to mental health,” has dropped his lawsuit.”
  * Man Drops Lawsuit Claiming iPhone Made Him Gay (Towleroad)

Main post photo via Edwin García ‘Vendetta (NSFW)’ (Sticks and Stones Mothership).

• I don’t know about you, but I’ve been really wondering what sex workers think of the new film, Hustlers. “Sex workers rarely see any of our experiences reflected on TV or movies. We are usually severely dehumanized, the character that gets “rescued,” the but of a tired joke, or getting murdered in the first five minutes. Hustlers has had very polarizing reactions from the sex worker community.”
  * What Actual Sex Workers Think About the New Movie ‘Hustlers’ (Broke-Ass Stuart)
  See also: Life After the Hustle: A Former Stripper’s Thoughts on Hustlers (Vulture)
  More: Hustlers (2019) (TitsandSass)

• If you read anything about sex work while the world burns, make it this. I would love to hand this to Elizabeth Warren and ask what her plan is to fix this. Mild warning for survivors of sexual assault. “One member of the California State Assembly listened to everything I had to say and then replied, “You seem smart, but they aren’t all like you.” Let me be clear: Every sex worker I have ever met is as smart as I am; many are smarter. I have learned more, collectively, from my coworkers than from any of the formal education I’ve bought with my hard-earned sex-work dollars.”
  * Cash/Consent (N+1)

• “It’s a relent­less flesh-show, except for one incon­gru­ous win­dow. There, a man lounges casu­al­ly in a blue open-neck shirt in front of a sun­ny back­drop. Click on him and you enter a chat with Dr David Ley, a psy­cho­sex­u­al ther­a­pist hired by Stripchat to offer free group ther­a­py ses­sions for site users.”
  * Sex­cam therapy (The Face)

• “Cute Little Fuckers, a gender-inclusive sex toy company, just launched a $13,500 campaign on Kickstarter. “This is the first one that has been approved for a while,” Kickstarter Senior Outreach Lead of Design & Technology Beau Ambur told TechCrunch.”
  * Cute Little Fuckers gets Kickstarter’s seal of approval for sex toy project (TechCrunch)

• “What Noori’s team found was that image type — whether it was a picture or a video — was the strongest predictor of differences in which parts of the brain became engaged. Unexpectedly, the weakest predictor was the subjects’ biological sex. In other words, when men and women viewed pornographic imagery, the way their brains responded, in the aggregate, was largely the same.”
  * What Can Brain Scans Tell Us About Sex? (NYT)

• Even in this writeup, Guardian seems like it can barely contain its hatred of porn. But it’s going to be a great show, and deserves attention. ““There’s an incredible history of queer and trans sex workers, who were at the forefront of the gay rights movement, also having a tremendous impact on art,” Heller said. “I wanted to explore the empowered history of the community, I wanted their stories to be told in an authentic way.””
  * Sexual revolution: the underseen art and activism of queer sex work (Guardian)

• “…in 2018 the U.S. passed rights violating restrictions via the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) and Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA). This legislation limits the sharing of vital safety information for sex workers online and causes economic harm and social marginalization.”
  * Key Facts About Human Rights Violations & Sex Work ~ For the 2020 UPR of the U.S.A (bestpracticespolicy.org)
  See also: Rep. Ro Khanna To Introduce Bill To Study Impact Of FOSTA On Sex Workers (TechDirt)

• Fairporn is “creating a certification authority to help ensure the rights and safety of everyone in the porn industry and helping people make better choices about the porn they watch.” Their new standards have just been published.
  * Fairporn Standards v0.1 (Fairporn.org)

• “In this technical report, we focus on definitions of pornography, paying particular attention to the question of whether it is possible to reach consensus on a definition across disciplines.”
  * An Interdisciplinary Definition of Pornography: Results from a Global Delphi Panel (Springer)

• I love this film so much! Terrific review. “It’s that rare film which makes you believe the actors were throughly in love with the material. There are f-stop jokes, for fuck’s sake. And there is a joyous sexual fluidity that emerges from the authentic emotional tinderbox in a way that manages to punish no one and reward everyone.”
  * Erotica for Filmmakers: a Porn Club review of SCORE (Pink Label TV)

• “…the Women of Sex Tech panel featured a collection of female founders and heads of companies from some of the most innovative brands in the sextech game, moderated by Erica Braverman.”
  * Women of Sex Tech Panel Kicks Off Sex Expo NY (XBIZ)

• “Gun Gun Pixies for the Nintendo Switch and PC is a third-person shooter-platformer about a pair of miniature aliens learning about human behavior by infiltrating a women’s dorm. It’s silly. It’s racy. There are panty shots galore and lots of censored anime nudity. I expected as much from the latest PQube release. What I did not expect was that the game would kick off with a cautionary tale about excessive dieting.”
  * Gun Gun Pixies Is A Silly Erotic Game With A Serious Message About Your Health (Kotaku)
  See also: Getting Down on the Farm: A Review of Nutaku’s CockVille (Future of Sex)

Main post image: Image: Angelo Madsen Minax, Live Nude Genitals, 2012, Neon, Plexiglas, featured in ON OUR BACKS: The Revolutionary Art of Queer Sex Work.

• We are not in the 1950s and this should not be happening. “Dr. Jennifer Gunter, a Canadian gynecologist who also contributes to the New York Times, wrote on Twitter Tuesday that her publishers had been blocked from using the word “vagina” in promotional tweets for her new book, The Vagina Bible.”
  * Twitter under fire for removing the word ‘vagina’ from ads for gynecology book (CNN)

• I can’t agree more: the attacks and misinformation of anti-porn wingnuts is pure anti-woman, anti-LGBTQ Trumpism. “It might actually be the anti-porn activists who hate women.”
  * Misogyny in Porn: It’s Not What You Think (Psychology Today)

• I love this angle of reporting on PornHub, and all outlets covering them should take note. “To me, the fact that a morally dubious pornography empire, associated with exploiting porn performers and facilitating piracy as well as developing the technology used as part of the UK’s questionable porn block law, is prepared to acknowledge the current state of the environment indicates that it has more gall than many of the world’s governments.”
  * Opinion: Pornhub wants to save the world from plastics. But all is not what it seems (Independent)

• I saw a lot of people cheering for this (alleged) move by Bang Bros., but I urge you to read performer Sinnamon Love’s Twitter thread about it below. Wikipedia is just as culpable, and I experience this personally. “Adult film production company Bang Bros announced on Thursday that it bought PornWikiLeaks.com—a website devoted to doxing and harassing porn performers—with the intent to shut it down forever … and included a link to a video of someone pouring flammable fluid onto a pile of hard drives and lighting it on fire.”
  * Bang Bros Bought a Huge Porn Doxing Forum and Set Fire to It (Vice)

• Incredible resource by and for the adult industry that should be duplicated in many industries. “Pineapple Support is sponsoring a free, eight-week course in dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) to help adult industry workers develop coping skills for anxiety, stress and depression. The online course begins October 1, with a new two-hour group session happening each week.”
  * Pineapple Support Sponsors Free 8-Week Therapy Course (XBIZ)

• Been seeing this in my timeline and replies, too. Glad it has been identified as the attack it is, rather than lumped into a reason to increase sex censorship. “Disinformation networks linked to the Chinese government have weaponized porn-related bots, aka ‘pornbots,’ in their campaign against the current protests in Hong Kong, according to an analysis of Twitter data by the International Cyber Police Centre (ICPC) of the Australian Strategic Policy Insititute (ASPI).”
  * Report: China Weaponizes ‘Pornbots’ to Spread Disinformation in Hong Kong (XBIZ)
  See also: Porn bots are now storming Twitter’s trending topics (Engadget)

• Terrific essay, bookmark it for reference when the Sheryl Sandbergs of the world say they’re feminists while pushing anti-sex work legislation. “This attack on women’s bodily freedoms is deeply worrying – particularly when women themselves are participating as opposed to resisting. Women’s freedom is central to making our societies more prosperous, more equal and more environmentally sustainable. Any attempt to undermine that freedom, no matter how well-intentioned, will make for a poorer and more unequal world.”
  * The real sexism problem in the discipline of economics (Aeon Magazine)

• What is it called when the cops kill their best informant? “… the government knew all along that Backpage was one of its best partners in stopping sex trafficking. Some new documents have come out as part of the ongoing lawsuit against Backpage and its founders by the feds that kind of undermine the entire narrative about Backpage.”
  * New Government Documents Reveal That Backpage Was Actively Helping Law Enforcement Track Down Traffickers (Techdirt)

• This YA author was invited then ejected for the crime of merely having authored lesbian erotica. “Watts was surprised to learn that she had suddenly been uninvited from the festival, and her name removed from its website. The reason? Allegedly, one of the adult festival coordinators was fearful that her adult lesbian erotica fiction was not suitable for teens. Of course, she was not planning–at all–to address or read from any of her adult books at a teen literary festival.”
  * 3RP author Julia Watts banned from Knoxville Teen Lit Festival – Three Rooms Press (Three Rooms Press)

• Banking’s war on sex is getting worse. “If this continues, it will disproportionately impact small sex-focused businesses, which lack the cashflow to withstand such financial setbacks, further marginalize sex workers, and decrease access to positive information about sexual health … these incidents have ramped up dramatically since March 21, 2018, when the Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) and the Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) passed in the Senate.”
  * Banks Are Waging A Secret War Against The Adult Industry (Vice)

• A new one by me, in which I wouldn’t let Apple talk off the record. “I started to hear warnings from adult-industry professionals that Apple Card’s privacy assurances were not to be trusted. It’s a good question: With Apple’s aggressively conservative stance on sex in the past, will it behave like banking’s war on sex and close out entire classes of “edgy” businesses, like the adult industry, marijuana-related companies and cryptocurrency?”
  * That Apple Card may not be as private as you think (Engadget)

• We’re putting up a big “send help” sign over here in the US. “We as a society can agree that the most effective policies are based on reliable data and rational debate. Moral panic on the right and purity politics on the left interfere with our right to sexual safety, pleasure and free expression by encouraging political in-fighting and self-censorship. Both threaten to replace the exchange of facts and civil examination of controversial ideas.”
  * America Is In a Sex Panic (Playboy)

Main post image: painting by Louis Braquet, showing now at Galerie Vinsantos/Funeral Gallery (New Orleans).

• In 2012 Louis Theroux took his cameras to Porn Valley and created one of the most misogynistic, warped, and utterly misleading video editorials I’d ever seen. Turns out, this was completely on-brand for Theroux, who describes himself as “puritanical” and went on-record supporting Britain’s disastrous internet porn restrictions. Looks like this time he’s gone after young sex workers, outing them and playing fast and loose with their consent, and the BBC is backing him up. (In this op-ed for Guardian, he depicts female porn performers as disease vectors for engaging in sex work.) “The BBC has issued a response after Louis Theroux’s forthcoming documentary Selling Sex came under fire from two of the people who took part in it.”
  * BBC responds to allegations against Louis Theroux’s new documentary (DigitalSpy)

• “Nars is making headlines for a “sexually-explicit” marketing video, which depicts a lipstick melting into a penis shape. The marketing video, shared yesterday on Nars’ Instagram channel, features the caption: “When the nudes keep you up all night”.”
  * Why beauty brands like Nars and Charlotte Tilbury are going X-rated (UK Style Yahoo)

• Marriott’s attacks on single female travelers and sex workers makes so much sense when this article reveals Marriott partnered with Polaris Project (Polaris got busted for making things up) to formulate this ICE-like program. “When the hotel behemoth Marriott International announced it was doing its part in the fight against sex trafficking by training more than 700,000 employees to spot the signs of potential trafficking in their guests earlier this year, the reaction wasn’t what the company expected.”
  * Marriott Trained Over 600,000 Employees To Combat Sex Trafficking, Which Sex Workers Say Is Harmful (Refinery29)

• “Experts have warned New Zealanders not to consume “sexy pavement lichen” because it could be contaminated with toxins. The University of Otago lichenologist Dr Allison Knight dubbed a common species of local lichen “sexy pavement lichen” after discovering it was being promoted as a natural alternative to Viagra in online marketplaces, especially in China.”
  * New Zealanders warned about the consumption of ‘sexy pavement lichen’ (Guardian)

• “Bella Thorne, who first rose to prominence as a Disney Channel star, has directed an adult film for Pornhub. “Her and Him” is described as an ethereal “Romeo and Juliet”-themed tale of two lovers wrestling between dominance and submission.”
  * Bella Thorne to Make Directorial Debut for Pornhub With BDSM-Themed ‘Her and Him’ (Indiewire)

• “Yesterday, ex-porn star Mia Khalifa left millions of her followers speechless when she revealed in an interview with life coach Megan Abbott that during the entirety of her short-lived but incredibly high-profile career, she only made a paltry $12,000.”
  * Mia Khalifa Saying She Made Only $12K Doing Porn Is Entirely Unsurprising (MEL Magazine)

• “A recent ruling by the California Supreme Court is causing a stir among adult business owners, including performers who have been discriminated against by the global banking system, raising hopes of relief — but misunderstandings may motivate merchants down a legal dead-end.”
  * Calif. Supreme Court Ruling Causes Confusion for Adult Merchants (XBIZ)

• “Today’s round of judicial nominations by the Trump administration include a Missouri district court seat for Sarah Pitlyk, counsel for religious group the Thomas More Society, a non-profit law firm formed to protect the right of protesters to harass people outside abortion clinics. The Thomas More Society now offers legal support to zealots waging the “War on Porn.””
  * Trump Picks Anti-Porn Activist for Missouri District Court (XBIZ)

• “Who is Maitland Ward? She’s one of the show’s season six stars, and what she’s doing now is so far from the wholesome qualities of Boy Meets World that we can feel Mr. Feeney blushing from here.”
  * ‘Boy Meets World’ Actress Maitland Ward Finds New Career In Porn (YourTango)

• “Pornography producers and sellers account for the lion’s share of copyright-infringement lawsuits in the U.S. — and judges may have seen enough. The courts are cracking down on porn vendors that file thousands of lawsuits against people for downloading and trading racy films on home computers, using tactics a judge called a “high tech shakedown.” In one case, two men were jailed in a scheme that netted $6 million in settlements.”
  * Judges May Be Reaching Limit with Copyright Profiteering by Pornography Sellers (Insurance Journal)

• “Berlin’s former Tempelhof airport has witnessed some major events in its time — it was a Nazi airfield during World War II, the site of the Berlin airlift during the Cold War, and most recently an emergency shelter for refugees fleeing Syria … The mayor of Berlin’s central Mitte district has proposed installing “Verichtungsboxen” — booths where prostitutes can meet clients — in the airport site, a bid to improve the safety of the city’s sex workers.”
  * Drive-in sex booths proposed at historic airport (Mercury News)

• If anyone is wondering I LOVE HER. “… the difference between a vulva and a vagina … why women should not put garlic in their vaginas. A challenge on Instagram from a woman who shoots ping pong balls from her vagina. A peer-reviewed scientific article looking at over 5,000 pieces of Chinese art and archaeological collections for vaginal jade eggs…that found none. Besides the word “vagina,” what do all of these viral moments of the past year have in common? Dr. Jen Gunter, MD.”
  * This New Book Answers Every Vagina Question You’re Scared to Google (InStyle)

• I think this is what’s been going on with me. “I asked Dr. Justin Lehmiller, a Research Fellow at the Kinsey Institute, why some people might be more likely to give themselves over to temporary celibacy during times of high anxiety … But anxiousexuality is different than a dry spell. It’s more existential.”
  * Are You Anxiousexual? (GQ)

• “She explained that costume departments know all about the items in her kit, but she doesn’t like to leave anything to chance. If she’s new on a set, she will bring Shibues in a full range of human skin tones and some silicone guards, too. She waved a lavender package containing one (brand name: Silicone Valley), then continued riffling through her supplies. “Knee pads or elbow pads in case someone’s on a hard floor. Sticky tape, moleskin. Wet Ones, tissues, breath mints. Baby oil so they can take anything that’s adhesive off…”
  * The Endangered Sex Scene (The Atlantic)

• “The L3 software requires a TSA agent to select the “type” of body being scanned, and there are only two options: male or female. Every time a passenger steps into the machine, a TSA agent must press either a pink button that activates an algorithm designed to analyze female bodies for potential safety threats, or a blue button for male bodies. If an agent isn’t sure, it’s official TSA policy for the agent to make a quick judgment based on the traveler’s gender presentation, and press a button accordingly.”
  * The TSA’s Technology Is Discriminating Against Trans People (PS Mag)

• “French web searchers who intend to find news and information when they type “lesbienne” into Google’s search engine will now receive informative results instead of adult content, thanks to critical tweaks to the company’s search algorithm … Numerama also found that Google’s Pride Month banner, intended to celebrate all LGBTQ people, would appear when users typed in such terms as “gay,” “homosexual,” “bisexual,” “transgender” and “queer.” But “lesbian” would display the banner alongside links to pornographic content.”
  * Google Tweaks Search Algorithm for ‘Lesbian’ to Display Less Porn (XBIZ)

• I’ve been saying this, with evidence, for well over a decade, but okay. “Women and men are equally aroused when presented with sexual images, a new study has found. It is widely viewed that men are more likely than women to become aroused by pornographic images.”
  * Women find porn just as arousing as men, study finds (Independent)

• “The idea came after the founders realized more and more doll owners were creating amateur videos with their gynoids. The content on the site is unlike anything else you’ll see in traditional adult content: a male actor talks with sex dolls as if they were real humans, kisses, and cuddles them.”
  * Adult Streaming Site ‘Dollbanger’ Shoots Exclusively with Sex Dolls (Future of Sex)

• “More than 800 men have joined a movement called “Abused in Scouting,” started by a group of lawyers who worried that the Boy Scouts of America were planning to file for bankruptcy, cutting short the timeline for victims to bring sex abuse claims against the organization in court.”
  * A Man Says He Was Abused ‘Hundreds’ of Times in Boy Scouts (TIME)

• “GOOP has promoted vaginal steaming, the origins of which include the false belief that that a uterus is full of toxins. If the myth weren’t so harmful, it would be laughable. If menstrual blood were filled with deadly toxins, how exactly does an embryo implant and thrive? This lie has been used to exclude menstruating women from school, work, and religious services. Vaginal steaming is a literal tool of the patriarchy. A literal tool of the patriarchy. I wrote that twice on purpose, because it’s a double tool of the patriarchy. You know the origins?”
  * No GOOP, we are most definitely not on the same side (Dr. Jen Gunter)

• “It is common for PayPal to place such permanent bans on content creators who deal, even tangentially, with the topic of sex—and these restrictions have become even more extensive following FOSTA. These bans have affected sex educators, writers, artists, and YouTubers—especially women and sexual minorities. But this is the first time that these opaque policies have been applied against a child sexual abuse prevention organization.”
  * PayPal fails to shut down Prostasia (Prostasia Foundation)

• “Many people, particularly from a younger generation, are coming to the issue from a different perspective than earlier generations. It’s no longer a moral judgment about sex; it’s a justice issue based on intersectional identities. Those who now support it “inherently understand that the decrim conversation is about economic justice, it is about racial justice, it is about gender justice, it is about trans justice,” Tasaki said.”
  * The Fight for Decriminalizing Sex Work Is About Justice (Rewire News)

• “A head sewn onto a mismatched body, a bucket of limbs and a cooler filled with penises are among items found by FBI agents during a raid on a Phoenix body-donation business.”
  * ‘Cooler filled with male genitalia’ found in raid of Phoenix body-donation company (AZ Central)

• “In this way, pedophile conspiracies act as a sort of propaganda of the counterrevolution, a fun-house reflection of the real threats to the social order. This is what connects QAnon and Pizzagate to McMartin to the witch hunts of the Middle Ages to the dawn of major religions. The demons may take different forms, but the conspiracy is basically the same: Our house is under attack.”
  * Epstein is a real pedophile. Why are QAnon and Pizzagate so focused on fake ones? (Mother Jones)

• “The Consumer Electronics Show will allow sex toys to win awards and be presented on the show floor next year, a year after the convention was mired in controversy when an award was revoked from a largely woman-run and woman-focused sex toy company.”
  * CES will allow sex toys at next year’s show (Verge)

Main post image by the amazing 2020Photography.

• The sex work vs. trafficking issue is a clear signifier of understanding around pro-choice. If they can’t demonstrate they understand the difference between adult women having consensual sex and girls being raped on the “Lolita Express” (Epstein) then they can’t be trusted with lawmaking around female bodily autonomy. Our bodies, our choices. We do not become children when we have sex on our own terms, nor is it vice-versa. The upside of this news item? Regular people get it now, and are asking lawmakers real questions. “In two separate exchanges during a town hall in Las Vegas on Saturday, Sen. Bernie Sanders was asked how he would distinguish between sex work and sex trafficking, an issue of particular relevance to people here. But the Vermont senator could not give a clear answer.”
  * Bernie Sanders didn’t give a definitive answer on sex work vs. sex trafficking (CNN)

• Oh god. Oh no. No no no no [DENIAL INTENSIFIES]… “Louise Linton, Instagram-disgraced wife of Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, is filming a “sex thriller” with Ed Westwick (better known as Chuck Bass) … Linton wrote, directed, and stars in the film, Me, You, Madness, which is about a thief who robs a Malibu mansion, only to discover that it belongs to a serial killer, played by Linton [who] plays a “bisexual psychopath killer” who is “uninhibited” and “very carnal and confident in her sexuality.””
  * Did You Know Louise Linton Is Filming a ‘Sex Thriller’ With Chuck Bass? (The Cut)

• “[RealDoll/Realbotix] upped their game with RealDoll X, a new Android app that allows users to create their own digital girlfriend. Similar to the beta version of the app released in 2017, the upgraded app enables users to design her personality, and then upload it into one of those sophisticated sexbot heads for an added boost of realism.”
  * RealDollX App Gets X-Rated Upgrade with Foreplay and Sex Modes (Future of Sex)

• The upside is that now we have big outlets like Out asking these questions. “In the wake of Tumblr banning porn and the increasing censorship of pornography as well as suggestive material online, many began to flock to Twitter as an outlet to share and consume pornographic content. But this week, a report from XBIZ pointed out that the service’s newly updated Terms of Service could put an end to communities that include porn stars, other sex workers and “alt accounts.” The social media platform, however, has no plans to restrict such content.”
  * Your Alt Account (and Favorite Porn Star) Have a Home on Twitter (Out)

• “Driven by a need to find community and speak freely about our lives, trans folks were able to find each other online. The trans internet grew out of the activism of the previous decades, when trans women like Anne Ogborn fought and put themselves in harm’s way to make sure that later chat forums and meet-ups could exist, online and IRL.”
  * An Oral History of the Early Trans Internet (Gizmodo)

• When life gives you lemons? “Harris matched with over 600 men. She started all of her conversations with a simple blunt request: “Dick pic?” In addition, her Tinder bio notified users that she was on a dick-pic hunt for a project … She says the flood of photos was almost too much for her phone to handle. “I had to turn [off] my notifications as it kept crashing my phone,” she said.”
  * 140 Dicks From Tinder (2019), Oil on Canvas (The Cut)

• It’s the least that should’ve been done. “Federal judge Joan Ericksen has sentenced Prenda Law’s John Steele today to 60 months in prison for fraud.”
  * Prenda Law’s John Steele Sentenced to 60 Months for Fraud (XBIZ)

• “According to former Badoo employees, Bumble has a misogyny problem within its own parent company, and her founding partner, with whom she says she speaks between two and five times every day, is right in the middle of it.”
  * Exclusive Investigation: Sex, Drugs, Misogyny And Sleaze At The HQ Of Bumble’s Owner (Forbes)

• “French, who had never dabbled in sex work—and didn’t even watch porn—was aghast at the idea … Two weeks later, with her financial situation stretched to the breaking point, she created a profile on a cam site. To her surprise, she loved it. “I realized that I was so wrong to think all the things I thought about camgirls before I became one, because it was not at all the reality of what it is to become a camgirl or a sex worker.””
  * The Former Cam Girl Shaking Up the Porn World (Daily Beast)

• Some people like to play with different senses withheld. Other people live there 24-7. “When I bring my hearing loss explicitly and intentionally into sex by turning it into play, it makes me feel understood and appreciated in a way that very little else does … I like to play with my partners’ sense of hearing (those who have normal hearing, that is) because it evens the playing field a little and gives them a brief glimpse into what sex is like for me.”
  * Having Great Sex With Hearing Loss Takes Practice (Vice)

• “Talent agencies in the adult industry have begun complying with new California Labor Commission requirements requiring them to “provide educational materials on sexual harassment prevention and eating disorders to performers who work with them.” This requirement, also known as California Assembly Bill AB-2338, applies to all talent agencies operating in California, both mainstream and adult.”
  * Adult Agencies Begin Complying With New Sexual Harassment, Eating Disorders Rule (XBIZ)

• “On Saturday, billionaire financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein was arrested for the alleged sex trafficking of dozens of minors in New York and Florida between 2002 and 2005.”
  * Everything We Know About the Sex Crimes Case Against Jeffrey Epstein (New York Magazine)

  See also:

  * Alex Acosta strongly defends handling of Jeffrey Epstein sex-trafficking case (Telegraph)
  * Everything We Know About Jeffrey Epstein’s Private ‘Pedophile Island’ (Intelligencer)
  * Inside Jeffrey Epstein’s New York mansion: ‘Vast trove’ of lewd photos, a life-size doll and other oddities (USA Today)
  * Southern District of New York memo Re: United States v. Jeffrey Epstein (Scribd)

July 4th post photo by Roseography, who can be supported on Patreon and seen on Twitter (he just got banned by Instagram and his Tumblr was restricted). I featured him previously in 2016.

• ““Deepfake” porn perpetrators are being given a free hand to “shatter lives” because the law is unfit for purpose, a study has found. Clare McGlynn, professor of law at Durham University and one of the report’s authors, said: “Due to the serious legal and policy failings identified in this report, we are effectively gambling with people’s lives.”
  * ‘Deepfake’ porn perpetrators are being given a free hand because the law is unfit for purpose, study finds (Telegraph)

• “Without context, [viewers of Midsommar] only see a girl becoming smitten, bright red hearts in her eyes. They don’t know they’ll soon be privy to a deliciously fucked-up courtship—or that it’ll climax in one of the most transcendently insane sex scenes in recent memory, as hypnotic and unsettling as it is just straight-up funny.”
  * Inside the Craziest Movie Sex Scene of the Year (Daily Beast)

• “Hawaii is the first state in the U.S. to remove a requirement that a person be a victim of sex trafficking to have a prostitution conviction erased.”
  * New Hawaii prostitution law is 1st in the nation (AP)

• “The creator of DeepNude, an app that used a machine learning algorithm to “undress” images of clothed women announced Thursday that he’s killing the software, after viral backlash for the way it objectifies women.”
  * Creator of DeepNude, App That Undresses Photos of Women, Takes It Offline (Vice)

• “MindGeek’s Nutaku.net is celebrating Pride Month with a multi-million dollar initiative for developing queer adult games, signaling demand for a more inclusive adult games industry.”
  * Adult games storefront Nutaku launches $5 million investment fund for erotic LGBTQ games (Game Daily)

• “Perhaps nowhere is this mismatch between experience and physiology more in the news than reports of erectile dysfunction attributed to pornography. Seven independent labs have been unable to find an association between time spent viewing sex films and experiencing more erectile difficulties with a partner.”
  * Porn Didn’t Break Your Penis (Daily Beast)

• “Miley Cyrus has debuted the video for the latest single from her recent EP She Is Coming. And it’s a doozy: a latex-heavy deconstruction of sex and gender and the human body, and one that acts as a stirring distillation of Cyrus’s rebellious artistry and increasingly political output.”
  * Miley Cyrus is a sex-positive Joan of Arc in new video for Mother’s Daughter (Independent)

• “A newly unsealed complaint shows how Google paid Android creator Andy Rubin $90 million in severance after he left the company amid allegations of sexual misconduct.”
  * This Former Google Executive Was Accused Of Running A “Sex Ring” (Buzzfeed)

• “Twenty-two women are suing the adult video production company Girls Do Porn for fraud, coercion, and misrepresentation, after the company spread and sold the videos online—even after it promised the films would likely never reach a wide audience … Not only did Girls Do Porn post the videos to its website, the videos were ripped off and spread on free clip sites like Pornhub and YouPorn, where friends and family apparently noticed them in some cases. Girls Do Porn also has an official channel on Pornhub, where it posts clips from the videos. Those videos have gained 672 million views …”
  * ‘Girls Do Porn’ Goes to Trial Over Allegations Women Were Tricked Into Videos (Vice)

• “So I fired up The Sims 4 and opened up a Cum Café. Listen, I can’t explain it to you any better than that—it’s a café that exclusively serves semen and semen-related products. I’m sorry. I thought it would make a good Kotaku feature, but instead I’m just deeply ashamed of myself and my actions.”
  * Life Got You Down? Load Up The Sims 4 And Open A Semen Café (Kotaku)

• “New age restrictions on pornography that are set to come into effect in the UK next month are a “privacy timebomb”, a new report has warned. “Due to the sensitive nature of age verification data, there needs to be a higher standard of protection than the baseline which is offered by data protection legislation,” said Open Rights Group executive director Jim Killock.”
  * UK porn block is ‘privacy timebomb’ (Independent)

• “Adult performer Violet Monroe was watching the new HBO Teen Drama “Euphoria” when she heard a familiar voice on the screen say “Oh, thank you. Aaaaaaahhhhh.” … We contacted Kink.com’s Mike Stabile, who was as surprised as Monroe about HBO’s use of audio from their content. “Kink had no idea this was happening,” Stabile told us.”
  * Violet Monroe Surprised by Kink.com Audio Cameo in HBO’s ‘Euphoria’ (XBIZ)

• “If you glance around a New York City subway car on any given day, you might spot a few advertisements for erectile dysfunction, male libido, and condoms. What you won’t see are ads for Dame, a sex toy company for women and non-binary people—because the Metropolitan Transit Authority banned it last year.”
  * A Sex Toy Company Is Suing the NYC Subway for Censorship (Vice)

• “On Sunday, Teen Vogue tweeted an article titled, “Why Sex Work Is Real Work,” and many clutched their pearls at the audacity of talking to teens about sex work. Conservative talking heads quickly posted their disdain: “Why is a teen magazine promoting prostitution to their 13-year-old readers?” Others falsely equated sex work with sex trafficking, such as Lila Rose, the founder of the pro-life organization Live Action.”
  * Teen Vogue Defends Sex Work Because Teenage Girls Can Handle Politics (Popdust)

• “Federal judge Joan Ericksen has sentenced Paul Hansmeier today to 14 years in prison for fraud … “Paul Hansmeier was the driving force behind this massive scheme,” the government stated with repetitive, harsh rhetoric. “It was Hansmeier who came up with the idea to construct a copyright settlement mill focused on pornographic films. It was Hansmeier who directed his brother to upload clients’ movies onto file-sharing websites to lure downloaders. It was Hansmeier who drafted nearly all of the legal pleadings used to deceive judges. It was Hansmeier who invented phantom hacking allegations…””
  * Prenda Law’s Paul Hansmeier Sentenced to 14 Years for Fraud (XBIZ)

• “For a while, Lacey and Larkin’s strategy had worked: They’d won case after case, with the support of Big Tech and civil libertarians alike. But by the time the Feds descended on Paradise Valley that morning in the spring of 2018, the tide had turned. Many of their friends and allies had fled, spooked in part by too much bad press. The tech industry, which faced withering scrutiny over its role in the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, had thrown them under the bus.”
  * Inside Backpage.com’s Vicious Battle With the Feds (Wired)

• “A robot sex expert and former far-right candidate who was awarded a Queen’s Birthday honour for “significant service to international education” says he is setting up a graduate school with Fraser Anning which will teach classes on “Trumpism” and “Bannonism”.”
  * Robot sex expert on honours list plans college with Fraser Anning to teach ‘Trumpism’ (Guardian)

• “This year, one thing stood out at the various parties and meetups: none of the people in attendance, from well-known porn stars to newly minted cam girls, could find each other on social media platforms. So we—your very much alive and visible authors—decided to search for one another. Sure enough, even typing our exact handles into Twitter’s search bar yielded “no results.””
  * Shadowbans: Secret Policies Depriving Sex Workers of Income and Community (Titsandsass)

• “A nurse assumed every health problem related to being part of the sex trade — including my sexual assault, which in reality had no connection. She failed to consider how part of my mental health issues were related to events from my adolescence, like my suicide attempts, car crash, and abusive relationship. This nurse put together a false narrative, which made me simultaneously angry, frustrated, and hopeless.”
  * No, Nurse, My Health Issues Aren’t All Rooted In My Sex Work (Bright Magazine)

• “In conversation with Vulture this month, the filmmakers and showrunners behind these projects expressed in no small terms that the process of getting queer sex onscreen hasn’t gotten any easier. But as more and more queer creators are being empowered to tell their own stories, onscreen depictions of LGBTQ intimacy have grown richer. Below, we ask Akhavan, Vida’s Tanya Saracho, Special’s Ryan O’Connell, Pose’s Steven Canals, Port Authority’s Danielle Lessovitz, and Wild Nights with Emily’s Madeleine Olnek to break down their best sex scenes and explain what makes each work.”
  * How Do You Choreograph a Good Queer Sex Scene? 6 TV and Film Creators Explain. (Vulture)

Main post image of Cenit Nadir via In the blue sparkling water (C-Heads Magazine).

• This is an interesting article, but even I am amazed how NYT managed to omit the key role misogyny and white-right campaigns against sex workers (like censoring ‘brigades’) has in this issue. “Amid the recent surge in hate crimes and shootings, some of the suspects in racist attacks and their supporters have invoked the societal ills caused by pornography in manifestos or online forums. White nationalists, misogynistic clubs and online forums have also drawn a connection between pornography and anti-Semitism. Many of the adherents appear to be young men who blame the prevalence of pornography online for their own struggles and what they perceive as society’s decline.”
  * Among Some Hate Groups, Porn Is Viewed as a Conspiracy (NYT)

• This link is straightforward coverage, but the context is important. Ms. Bergdorf is an out trans woman who is handling this situation with an outstanding amount of grace and sex-positivity. And the issue is now wrenching open a long-needed public discussion about the negative sexualization of LGBTQ people. “Childline has cut ties with Munroe Bergdorf three days after the transgender activist announced she had been appointed as the charity’s first LGBT+ campaigner. A representative for Bergdorf has accused the organisation of “bowing down to pressure from a transphobic lobby running a hate campaign”, pointing to Twitter users who described the appointment as “inappropriate” and referred to her as a “porn model”.”
  * Trans activist Munroe Bergdorf says NSPCC bowed to hate campaign in dropping her (Independent)

• Spoiler: the harassment epidemic (being ignored by platforms) is coming from anti-porn incel-style right wingers. “Porn performers have long been harassed on the web, but recently this targeting has spiraled into an industry crisis. In May, the Adult Performers Actors Guild—the adult industry’s union—sent a letter to Facebook, Instagram’s parent company, alleging that nearly 200 performers have had their accounts “terminated without explanation,” over the course of several months. The accounts didn’t bear any particularly scandalous content: In many instances, the letter alleges, there “was no nudity shown” on the shuttered accounts and “it appears that [individuals’ accounts] were terminated merely because of their status as an adult performer.””
  * Instagram’s ‘Solicitation’ Policies Are Exposing Porn Performers to Harassment (Daily Beast)

• I have very mixed feelings about Booker capitalizing on gender sex-exploration and the ‘porn ruins you for real life’ myths. “… the first of its three episodes, titled “Striking Vipers,” boldly goes where no Black Mirror episode has gone before: the world of porn … Rather than Gamergate or the homoeroticism of fighting games, Black Mirror co-creator Annabel Jones maintains that “Striking Vipers” was more about porn and how the brave new world of VR porn could affect people’s offline relationships.”
  * Inside ‘Black Mirror’s’ First Porn Episode: ‘It’s a Sexual Playground’ (Daily Beast)

• “Silicon Valley’s biggest companies have partnered with a single organization to fight sex trafficking — one that maintains a data collection pipeline, is partnered with Palantir, and helps law enforcement profile and track sex workers without their consent. Major websites like Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and others are working with a nonprofit called Thorn (“digital defenders of children”) and, perhaps predictably, its methods are dubious.”
  * Sex, lies, and surveillance: Something’s wrong with the war on sex trafficking (Engadget)
  See also: Behind the writing: Sex trafficking orgs, lies, and profit (Patreon | Violet Blue)

• “For the past six weeks, XBIZ has been conducting an extensive investigation into the deletion of an unusually large number of Instagram accounts of adult performers since the beginning of this year … Infantilism and secrecy, coupled with tech-bro culture, makes Silicon Valley the second element of this Perfect Storm against sex workers”
  * Instagram and the ‘War on Porn’: An XBIZ Explainer (XBIZ)

• “… while OhMiBod’s vibrators have enhanced the level of interaction between cam models and their viewers, these devices are not directly activated by tips. Rather the sex toys respond to the sound alerts models receive each time they get new tips. For this reason, I feel they are missing that exciting edge that that rival company Lovense has. Albeit with the slightly questionable and heteronormative tagline, ‘”Let him control you,” Lovense’s line of remote sex toys have revolutionized the sex technology industry. In particular, the Lush vibrator is especially popular among cam models.”
  * Cam Models Are Using Tip-controlled Sex Toys to Boost Income (and Intimacy) (Future of Sex)

• “Jennifer Tilly: This scene where I take her finger — I just thought, “Oh, [I’ll] put it in my mouth!” I improvised that. She’s like, “Oh, where’s this finger going? Oh, it’s not going south, it’s going north. Ok, now it’s going south.””
  * Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon revisit their lesbian neo-noir ‘Bound’ (Entertainment Weekly)

• “Riley Reyes, through her work with the Adult Performers Advocacy Committee (APAC) — like Lain and the FSC, Alana Evans through her advocacy with Adult Performers Actors Guild (APAG), and others — has seen the effects of untreated, unacknowledged suffering … “The biggest threat sex workers face to our mental health is stigma. Most problems performers face lead back to that. Working in a stigmatized profession can lead to loss of housing, banking and even the support of our own families,” she said. “The judgment and shame heaped on us by society can be an incredibly isolating force. It’s easy to forget that, while many fans idolize us, many other people demonize us. And neither is accurate.””
  * “Listen to Us!” Performers, Advocates Speak Out on Mental Health, Self-Care (XBIZ)

• “About 100 people stripped naked in front of Facebook’s New York headquarters on Sunday, as part of a protest against what they view as censorship regarding Facebook and Instagram’s policies around artistic nudity. As dawn rose over the city, the demonstrators lay naked on the road, each with large images of male nipples covering their genitalia.”
  * Demonstrators bare nipples outside Facebook HQ in censorship protest (CNN)

• “Mexico City lawmakers have given the green light to decriminalize sex work in the capital, hoping it will be a first step to a crackdown on sex trafficking that traps thousands of Mexican women and children.”
  * Mexico City will decriminalize sex work in move against trafficking (Guardian)

Main post image via Lotus Lain on Twitter.