Category Archives: Asides

More on the tech sex ed front: The Birds and The Bees line, a service advertised on MySpace, where adult sex educators can answer teens’ questions via text. Predictably conservatives are throwing anger around on the premise that the program is run without teens needing permission from their parents to participate. Which is precisely the [...]

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The web and the death of pornographic context

The best bit of Nerve’s deceptively swift history of how sex drove the internet, from ARPAnet to gonzo pro/am sites: “Yet, as normalized as online pornography may be, the material itself has become increasingly stripped of any greater context or meaning… The digital revolution has accelerated this trend greatly — partially because bandwidth costs money, [...]

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Porn is code for dissident

A follow-up on China’s demands to Google and other search engines to block Chinese citizens access to web porn: PRI’s The World reports that Chinese activists believe this crackdown has far more to do with intimidating dissidents than going after porn. Not only is Google being held responsible for regulating material they do not control, [...]

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More danger than joy in her sex.

Susan Quilliam, who recently revised the hirsute 1970’s classic, The Joy of Sex, describes her understanding of the internet’s role in shaping sex: “There are two things to be said about the Internet: The first is how wonderful it is and the second is how terrible it is. I stress both. There’s Internet pornography, there’s [...]

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Why not let prostitutes advertise online legally then? Or would that seem easier?

Friendfinder Networks, home to Alt.com and AdultFriendFinder.com, filed its initial public offering with the US Securities and Exchange Commission at the close of 2008, but has found only one underwriting bank. Suspicions as to why others have been slow to sign on point to “reports… suggesting that some of the sex listings on Adultfriendfinder.com, as [...]

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Submit, come, and over-document sex::tech, March 22-23 2009

Abstract submissions close on Monday for sex::tech, a conference focused on youth, sexual health & sexuality, and technology. I attended and presented at last year’s sex::tech, and just generally ran about causing trouble that week with Nikol Hasler of The Midwest Teen Sex Show, who was honored for her work in engaging teens through online [...]

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No sex ed ads for teens on Facebook

If you’d like to place a Facebook ad promoting sex education & health, their ad guidelines stipulate that you must target it so that only users over the age of 18 to see it. No sex ed for teens: no contraception, no condoms. Then again, on Facebook, dating ads are supposed to be restricted to [...]

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China to punish Google for porn they don’t actually host.

Claiming the need to “purify the Internet’s cultural environment and protect the healthy development of minors,” China is seeking to punish Google, Baidu — the leading search engine in China — and other web portals simply for providing search results containing links to porn. (via VentureBeat)

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We know how badly the iPhone functions when covered in tears, let alone cum.

The iHand Massage app unlocks control of the vibrator inside your iPhone. (via sexuality.about.com, via Gizmodo)

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You know someone will say Data is transgender.

From sex, art, and politics, the most queer theory-packed of the smart sex Tumblr scene, here’s a bit of intertextual courtroom teevee reading on the meaning of intercourse. Where cocks are concerned, sci-fi comes out not only with obvious shades of Foucault and Harraway (interrogation scenes! cyborgs!), but more compassionate, than “reality” cable.

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