Topless woman protest topless rightsElizabeth Book protested for 8 days on Daytona Beach, noting that not one child on the planet has been harmed by the female breast (12 March 2010)
Sex and the Public LibraryAudacia Ray from Sex Work Awareness (and elsewhere) shared with me this smart and simple research project, funded by the Association for Progressive Communications. The project is attempting to get an idea of the state of access to sexuality information in U.S. public libraries. From the project website:
We are investigating the use of content filters on public library computers with Internet access. The priority research areas are access to information about sexuality and sexual reproductive health. We need help with this work, and request that people all over the United States visit their local public library and do some simple searches using the computers provided by the library. In places with filters, the items that are filtered are not standard across systems. Filtering today cannot be fine-tuned to exclude only pornographic or violent content rather than health information. For example, in a large east coast city, only the word "anal" seemed to be filtered, which prevented people from gaining access to information about anal cancer as well as any potential sexual content.
The site (linked below) includes an easy to use form that prompts you to run simple searches and document your results. Because the research site itself may be blocked (you can't spell sex research without S-E-X) they also offer a word document you can print out or they'll email you the form within the body of an email and you can open that up at the library. I live in Canada but travel to the U.S. all the time and I'm going to start making trips to public libraries wherever I go.
Check out the project and participate: Sexuality Information Access in U.S. Public Libraries
Sex and the Public Library originally appeared on About.com Sexuality on Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 at 00:01:10.
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Chicken born half-cockedOne in 10,000 chickens is born gynandromorphous, half male, half female (13 March 2010)
It's Not Too Late for Sex:Tech 2010
Next Friday the 3rd Annual Sex:Tech Conference kicks off, focusing on Internet and mobile technologies and STD/HIV prevention for youth. Each year the conference has grown and each year I learn more at Sex:Tech than at most of the other conferences I attend, combined. It's not just the tech side of things, the conference brings together folks working in sexual health at so many levels and with such diverse populations, that every session and every hallway conversation is a little revelation.
The conference is put on by Internet Sexuality Information Services (ISIS), an organization which I volunteer for as a board member. Sex:Tech is in many ways a perfect reflection of what they do every day. ISIS is always working, and working on many levels. They're with public health departments and small non-profit start ups. They work with big media companies and grass roots community organizers and activists. To every project they not only bring a depth and breadth of experience, they bring an approach that's intelligent, open minded and big hearted.
This year's 16 workshops and three plenaries cover a wide range of topics, populations, and ways of doing sexual health education and promotion, from working with marginalized youth (locally and nationally) to feminist approaches to sex education to new tools for doing sexual health research online to the use of online video in college level activism and consciousness raising. True to their multi-tasking nature, they're also using the conference to further like minded work overseas; you can bring your old cell phone(s) to Sex:Tech and they'll get them to health educators who need the hardware.
Finally, I'm excited about this year's contest. The first year they had a video contest where youth made videos of their vision for the future of sex education. This year ISIS teamed up with MTV, Say Now and Funny or Die for the Say What?!?! Contest. They asked people to call in and share the best or worst sex advice they ever got when they were kids. They received thousands of entries and the winners have been chosen (you can hear the winning and runner up entries on the site). The very deserving winners (you'll agree once you listen) get flown to LA and will perform in a Funny or Die video inspired by their story.
It's Not Too Late for Sex:Tech 2010 originally appeared on About.com Sexuality on Friday, February 19th, 2010 at 00:01:02.
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Joggers have more sex10% of joggers say that they have sex everyday, compared to non-joggers where 25% say they have sex one per month (11 March 2010)
Just what is sex?The Kinsey Institute at Indiana University has found that "sex" means different things to different people. For example, over half said that anal sex does not count (12 March 2010)
Recommended Reading: Of Youth and LoversGearing up for Sex:Tech (which starts in two days!) I came across the sex week postings on a website called The Next Great Generation. It's a marketing site packaged as an opportunity for youth to "speak for themselves". It's a bit of a head scratcher. Of course youth are already, and always have been, speaking for themselves. And the Internet is one of the richest sites to find such speech. So a self-serving site by a marketing company is a bit hard to swallow as an innovative or radical idea.
Why is it that people in positions of power and privilege stop always confuse their inability to listen with marginalized groups inability to speak. We the marginalized (youth aren't the only ones with fewer rights) are all speaking, all the time. We even sometime yell and bang on the window trying to get your attention. If you want to hear what we have to say, just show up, and listen. Admittedly is not an easy task.
But I digress. Despite the flimsy premise, and many posts that seem to be written by youth who are working in marketing (at least I think that's what they do, many of them refer to working for "agencies" which I'm pretty sure isn't the euphemism I'm used to it being), I came across a short piece that I just loved. Written by a journalism and philosophy student Alex Pearlman, and called My Decision To Take A Lover, it's well worth reading.
In it Pearlman tries to carve out of the media mess that is young sexual representation, something of her own experience. She describes the struggle to find time to make any sort of sexual contact, and the differences between partners, hook ups, booty calls, and lovers. She writes:
"A lover is not a boyfriend. A lover is not a friend with benefits. A lover is a person you meet who you maybe go out with once or twice, but, let's face it, you don't have time to devote yourself to. A lover is more than a booty call, and although they do serve a similar purpose, a lover is more than just sex."
The piece is funny and personal and practical (how great to read something about sex that manages to be both evocative of the joy of sex and deal with real life stuff like paying rent and getting work done). It's not without its idealism. I wish Pearlman were right when she suggests that a lover is the "one person in your life that isn't stressful" when in reality, if you keep your lover long enough, stress will come. But it feels more like hope and promise instead of hype or pollyannish. I'd love to quote more of it here, but you should just go read it.
Read more - My Decision to Take a Lover (from The Next Great Generation or direct from Alex Pearlman's Blog)
Recommended Reading: Of Youth and Lovers originally appeared on About.com Sexuality on Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 at 00:01:06.
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Prom cancelled over lesbian dateFulton, Mississippi Itawamba Agricultural High School has cancelled its high school prom, after one of the students petitioned to take her girlfriend along as her date (11 March 2010)
Dutch nurses: no sexual servicesNurses in the Netherlands say that sexual services are not part of their standard care, after a patient tried to have a nurse fired for refusing him (12 March 2010)
Actress strips for Calendar GirlsBritish soap actress Jennifer Ellison is to appear on stage nude, in Calendar Girls (13 March 2010)
