Wednesday, June 13, 2007

Marital Aid Through The Ages


filed under: Design for Sex, Retrosexual by Melissa Gira | 2 Comments

To think there was once a time when just scanning past an advertisement for the euphemistically-named “videos for married couples” would evoke a tingle of curiosity. What, then, does it say for Designing for Sex at the turn of the last century to get a rise out of readers with the following:

lucifer’s anarchist marital aids

(from Lucifer the Lightbearer, “a journal of anarchism and sexual freedom”, via)

Wednesday, May 30, 2007

And the Sexerati Secretarial Pool Allows A Camera In This Morning


filed under: Retrosexual by Melissa Gira | 1 Comment

(The Virtual Typewriter Museum, where smut is categorized by Underwood and Royal, via Strange Ink)

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Lazysexweb: What Is The History of NSFW?


filed under: Strange Bedfellows, Retrosexual, Lazysexweb by Melissa Gira | 1 Comment

Apropos of Susie Bright’s questioning of the overuse of NSFW…

NSFW is unmandated, unlegislated censorship — there’s no ballot to punch, no senator to harangue.

The great majority of NSFW warnings are the result of unconscious class bias, with the conceit of American ethnocentrism. It’s made a mockery of out of journalism and the First Amendment.

NSFW and its slippery slope of “assumptions” leads to stories and ideas of all kinds being banned, firewalled, off the grid in places from universities to major wire services.

… and doing a bit of research…

I have searched for a history of this term but can find nothing. Interestingly enough though it seems as though every page on the web, that I have encountered, which purports to explain the history of NSFW is actually search engine SPAM designed to raise the Google juice for gambling and viagra sites.

… and of course, consulting the usual suspects, I’m still not any more clear on the origins of NSFW. Tips, pointers, remedy for our gaps in web history? Lux and I were reminiscing just this morning on our days online back when nary a banner ad had popped, but for the life of us, we can’t put a finger[1] on when NSFW was first deployed.

[1] Jokes for old sex nerds.

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