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Tuesday, April 10, 2007

Jet Sex: Evading Censorious Internet At the Taipei International Airport

filed under: Jet Sex, We Are The Sex Media by Melissa Gira | Leave a Comment

Violating Terms of Service a-go-go, I’m finally on my way back to the States after two weeks ‘overseas’ as I kept telling the few folks with my phone number who still managed a call. (N.B.: that one can get perfect cell service in the ruins of Angkor Wat cannot be over-emphasized.)

Let’s try some sex news hunting from this very special Google, then, while we’re at it, this morning — afternoon? — evening? — special to Taiwan:

Nothing says American romance abroad like the International Herald Tribune, which offers this bit on Taiwanese roadside betel nut saleswomen charged by the Center for Disease Control to convey safer sex messaging. What’s nut selling have to do with sex?

…vendors often compete by staffing roadside sales booths with young women in bikinis, translucent blouses or nurse’s uniforms with miniskirts.

In Phnom Penh, ‘orange juice seller’ was polite for ‘transgender woman street sex worker,’ who ply juice as a way of not being hassled for loitering in the parks that serve as their stroll. What an amazing research project, matching goods sold euphemistically by sex workers with region to look for cross-cultural significance. (Yet again, Sexerati: coming up with your Master’s thesis so you don’t have to.)

And now, as my flight is being called, I have the perfect excuse to stop talking with this older gentlemen at the terminal next to me about how his grandchildren sent him up with a MySpace ‘but I have to get out of that!’ Oh, snap. See you for some sex American style soon enough.

Monday, April 9, 2007

HOW TO (Jet Sex Edition): Share a Lover

filed under: Jet Sex, HOW TO: by Melissa Gira | 2 Comments

Once you begin to move in the jet sex world with slutty confidence, more fitting partners may cross your path than you have time to take as lovers, or, oh so more realistically, the lovers you have time to enjoy may not be so enjoyable after a time. Needless to say, sexual experience means that you end up with, for lack of kinder words, a reserve.

What better to do with your excess, then, but to redistribute accordingly to friends, to offer up these Ms. and Mr.-Right-(for-Someone Else)’s to one’s former and current lovers, even? No, we’re not talking about wholesale polyamory — more, a system of sexual microcredit. True, it’s unproven in economics, but in love? Usually what fails in finance, actually, fails spectacularly in love. Be that as it may, we present all the same, a guide for modern lovers who wish to share the love, literally.

Read more

Monday, April 9, 2007

Rock Hard, Explosive, and Profitable: “The sexual performance perfection industry”

filed under: State of Sex Ed, We Are The Sex Media by Melissa Gira | Leave a Comment

You know we can’t resist a good college paper’s de rigeur “sex issue,” especially one that claims to not be “a cliche sex issue” as “Baltimore’s top campus paper,” The Towerlight, does.

Taking sex culture to task is so the new how to have sex, and I can’t say that’s totally a bad thing, so long as — hey, this is academia — we’re all doing some research with our ranting. Which is why, as much as I’m fond of the phrase coined therein, of “The sexual performance perfection industry”…

The members of this industry include most large pharmaceutical companies, members of the medical/surgical establishment, as well as certain entrepreneurs, some of whom manufacture sexual “enhancement toys” and others of whom produce sexually explicit films. The SPPI, which evaluates all sexual encounters in terms of performance rather than satisfaction, tends to “medicalize” any type of sexual behavior that is not consistent with the industry’s definition of sexual perfection.

… is it really possible to collapse all sexual products and media into this one purpose, that is, to produce a sexual discourse centered on never being a good enough fuck? (Take that, Foucault.) Is there not room in the business of buying and selling sex stuff for disruptive business models, one’s that are based on making goods that make for better sex, and doing the necessary education around how to use those goods? Does this perpetuate bad sex, or bad sex education, or does it support a more sexually sophisticated consumer, one more likely to return for more than one made to feel ashamed, powerless, or lacking?

In short, sure, a lot of what’s sold as sex is nothing but, and it’s purveyed in the ethical vacuum of a capitalist market that sort of relies on our increased estrangement from eros. (And take that, Marcuse.) But can we not also resist the medicalization of sex and sexual disatisfaction with better sexual art, design, and culture? Just as the market already guarantees a demand for sex toys and smut by virtue of desire’s role in driving the wheels of commerce, so, too, can we put our desire where our wallets are and ask for sex consumables to promote smarter, hotter sex.

PS: Dude, you have a psychoanalytic practice around sex, and you’re not part of the sexual market? Oh, denial, how it cuts both ways.

Sunday, April 8, 2007

Weekly Wrapup: Missed (Internet) Connections Edition

filed under: Weekly Wrapup by Melissa Gira | Leave a Comment

The things we do for sex, like, shack up in a stifling little internet cafe in Siem Reap, taking a Sexerati siesta.

As I’ve been traveling all week (and shooting video excessively, patience!), it’s been a bit of a missing week. Take my excuse, too, if, say, your lover ditched you with a Twitter message. Maybe you just missed it with all those promiscuous little API’s downing the site.

Likewise, the W’s signature “whatever/whenever” service is a bit hit-or-miss depending on where you stay. Condoms, we know, they can handle. Socks, though? Oh, fuck it. Is there anything really worth doing in a W room that requires socks?

And no, we didn’t write this one, but it’s hard to believe we didn’t: Om Malik offers this, on why not to declare our affair with Web 2.0 over just yet:

The current situation is no different than the dating process. The first few months of flirtation are full of romance, where all you choose to focus on is your partner’s best qualities. Three months into the relationship, the nose hair, shoe fetishes and other habits come as a bit of rude awakening. We all adjust, if we believe in the relationship. If not, we go looking for a new love.

Excuse me as I take the question of what’s more Fetish 2.0, stilletoes or kitten heels, away with me to the unplugged world: poolside. (Oh, it’s got wifi, of course.) Have a fabulous week, and yes, I miss you, too.