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Thursday, December 21, 2006

Because We All Know ‘Sex Offenders’ Only Get One Username

filed under: Strange Bedfellows by Melissa Gira | 1 Comment

In a truly ‘bad design for sex’ story out of Virginia, a 41-member task force investigating child pornography has released its findings and suggestions for how to combat “the dangers of the Internet.” Virginia State Attorney General Bob McDonnell, speaking with the usual smarts of politicians trying to make sense of the… what did he call it?

“The Internet represents a new frontier of the last 10 years or so for criminals,” McDonnell said during an afternoon news conference. “The big challenge is, How do we take those good old warnings we heard as kids into the cyber age?”

Oh, cyber. I was wondering where that prefix went.

In addition to proposing an educational campaign aimed at parents, the task force has discovered a peculiarity of user interface specific to those who have been convicted of sex crimes:

Last week, McDonnell announced he would seek a law requiring sex offenders to report their e-mail and instant-messenger addresses to the state so they could be blocked from the popular Web site MySpace.

That’s right. Of all the people who sexually abuse people, the tiny percentage who are actually caught and then convicted, plus all those people who find themselves labeled sex offenders for life for being queer in the wrong place at the wrong time (cruising at a truck stop, or in a tea room, for example)… once any of those folks crosses the line into registered ’sex offender’ territory, they automatically lose the ability to sign up for a new gmail account or a secondary iChat login.

If ever there were a reason that teenagers needed to be able to run for government, not just be protected by it, this is it — or maybe we just need some late-term politicians who manage their own Top 8.

Bonus polisex sleuth points to someone who can track down former Republican Congressman Mark Foley’s IM screennames (and I am so going to a special place in Google hell for just searching the pornalicious string, ‘republican foley IM teen’) so we can start adding to that upcoming database like the good citizens we are.

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

Tagging Redux: Find Sex Nerds Near You

filed under: Dating 2.0 by Melissa Gira | Leave a Comment

As an experiment, and not because they are kicking me a dime or anything (really), I’ve put a widget over on the right sidebar for Consumating. The widget displays only those folks who are tagged “sexnerd,” so either tag yourself or your crush and see who else is messing around with tagging for purely scientific reasons, yes.

Update: Speaking of sex nerds, warming-you-all-by-the-fire year-end congrats to the friends-of-Sexerati who made violet blue’s 2006 top ten sexiest geeks list from one of 2005’s outgoing top ten (that’s me). To Audacia, who makes me so grateful for such dear comrades in arms, to Casey & Rudy for taking us to the far ends of the video podcast universe (and being the sweetest vlogstars, ever), and to Mike, who holds the roof over the head of ‘The Future of Sex’ with blip.tv (and doesn’t even blush when strap-on’s come up in his direction), I’m so grateful for meeting you all this year, and job fucking well done!

Monday, December 18, 2006

Art + Ladies + Liquor Are Coming to You

filed under: State of Sex Ed, We Make Art Not Sex by Melissa Gira | Leave a Comment

Sexerati fave and tartstar Molly Crabapple is touring the East Coast early in 2007, bringing with her the cabaret/artschool collision that is Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School, where participants can get properly soused (or caffeinated) whilst sketching beautifully barely-clad models in a slightly salacious environment that puts the life (and then some) back into “life modeling.”

Molly is touring now in support of the first Dr. Sketchy’s publication/propaganda piece, Dr. Sketchy’s Official Rainy Day Coloring Book, which she promises is…

Much like popular Victorian cure-all tonics, Dr. Sketchy’s Official Rainy Day Colouring Book is a natrual cure for boredom, apathy, shingles, gout, sobriety, and erectile dysfunction. It can even buy you Love! (or at least explain how to hire her for an evening to strip down to her pasties). Lovingly illustrated, adorned with dirty humor and black wit, this book is twice as good as James Joyce’s Ulysses- and three times as sexy.

Fear not if you’ve no Dr. Sketchy’s yet where you call home — here’s how to start your very own.

Monday, December 18, 2006

“Transparency is for politicians, not for lovers.”

filed under: Dating 2.0, Love & Other Glitches by Melissa Gira | 1 Comment

Susie Bright interviews sex & relationships psychologist (no, don’t run screaming) Esther Perel, author of Mating in Captivity: Reconciling the Erotic and the Domestic, and it’s too good not to quote them both excessively…

Esther argues that erotic passion— to a certain but critical degree— is built upon distance and ambiguity. In her view, transparency is for politicians, not for lovers.

“It’s often assumed,” Esther writes, “that intimacy and trust must exist before sex can be enjoyed, but for many women and men, intimacy— more precisely, the familiarity inherent in intimacy— actually sabotages sexual desire. When the loved one becomes a source of security and stability, he/she can become desexualized.

“The dilemma is that erotic passion can leave many people feeling vulnerable and less secure. In this sense there is no ’safe sex.’ Maybe the real paradox is that this fundamental insecurity is a precondition for maintaining interest and desire. As Stephen Mitchell, a New York psychoanalyst, used to say, ‘It is not that romance fades over time. It becomes riskier.’”