Meet CleanReader, a little app that sanitizes the language in books, removing all potentially objectionable language from profanity to racial slurs. Should context be insufficient, the reader can hover over the word to see inoffensive adjectives. It is, in short, an emblem of consent culture. But not all writers are thrilled about the prospect of having an app edit their manuscripts without their consent.
As high schools graduations are celebrated around the country, a number of seniors and parents are turning to the Princeton Review to make final choices about colleges, but the women’s rights activist group UltraViolet worries that parents don’t have all the information they need. This month, they kicked off a campaign petitioning the popular college guide to list sexual assault prevention and response rankings.
O is an accomplished photographer, sophisticated fetishist and passionate seeker of a master worthy of her total surrender. Captivated, Steven is determined to possess her totally at whatever cost, little knowing how dear that cost might be. Set within the universe of modern Los Angeles, a cast of colorful characters act out a dramatic tale of erotic power at once familiar and exotic.
Astrobiologist David Warmflash doesn’t go into detail about what it’s like to grapple with Newton’s third law of motion during space sex, but fortunately for all of us curious and hopeful space sex tourists, we have the experience of Michael Behar, who took on this question in 2006 with his wife, Ashley. Writing for Outside, Behar details how a fascination with sex in space led him to Zero Gravity Corporation, which uses a modified Boeing 727 to create some 20 thirty-second periods of weightlessness.
Most of us probably couldn’t name all the books he authored, but I doubt there is someone out there who doesn’t know Dr. Seuss as a brilliant creator of children’s books. But did you know he tried his hand at books for adults, too? Yes, when I say “for adults,” I really do mean for adults.
On the eve of the millennium, the Bloodhound Gang released a song with an earworm of a chorus: “You and me baby ain’t nothin’ but mammals, so let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel.” The song reduced the often complex human courtship ritual into images of animals mounting one another freely and joyfully on the savanna. If you’re still holding on to the belief that other species have it easier, we can help.
Gender is complicated, but we like to pretend it’s not. From the moment we’re born, society ascribes to us pink or light blue, these toys or those toys, this type of clothing or that type, making assumptions about everything from what we should like to what we are supposed to be attracted to based on a single binary: male or female. Few resources exist to help people understand gender variants — until now.
The Adult Trading Card Company (who last year brought you the rather lolsy porn-meets-Dungeons and Dragons-sorta-kinda moment with their Fantasy Series cards) is upping the ante this coming year with a coffee table book called Naked In Nature showcasing the day’s hottest porn stars, posed naked in the wild. It’s like Earth Porn, only with naked porn stars lounging in the beauty of the natural world!
Everyone you speak with in the adult industry is fast to spell out the evils of copyright infringement online. Everyone except Farrell Timlake, that is. Timlake is the founder of Homegrown Video, a 31-year-old company with over 800 videos in its main series. Timlake thinks there is something to be gained from the sort of community free helps to build — something he learned while selling tie-dye shirts on a number of parking lots as he followed the Grateful Dead around the nation.
“Bad sex is what happens when we believe that talking about sex is ‘redundant’ and writing about it is ‘crude,'” writes Laurie Penny. “It’s what happens when sexuality becomes a shameful, angry place at the forbidden centre of culture, where all the angst and hate and gendered pain is enacted on the bodies of others.” She’s absolutely right.
