Category Archives: Asides

“Of course it’s great when you can turn people onto some scientific information or break through a religious charade of sexual dishonesty. Very worth it. I’ll always be happy to share the basics. But so much of sexual life is determined by politics, which not enough people get involved with— or by hormones and electrical [...]

“I wouldn’t kick Steve Jobs out of bed!”

“It’s not romantic to have an iPhone in the bedroom. Brian once said that every time he goes online, he feels like he’s meeting a bunch of friends. Well, I don’t want a bunch of friends in our bed.” - Lisa Katayama, the new boingboing gadgets Advisor. (see also: American gals love creeps!)

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 [...]

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, [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

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)