Culture

My Google Plus profile was suspended for no apparent reason. Here, I break down the points made by the vague notice I received and discuss my dissatisfaction with the manner that Google+ is handling their spam sweep.

If this e-mail is truly from Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, I can only see their corporate position as dismissive and exploitative at best. Instead of transparency, which is what it looks like at first, they are cherry-picking the content they feature, focusing on everything but the heart of this conversation: that their ads are sexist.

The combination of these ideas, commonly present in young adult literature, perpetuate slut- and prude shaming and feed into a culture that victimizes sexual predators and guilts victims of sexual abuse. Literature imparts lessons and it is impossible to expect teenagers to grow into sexually healthy adults if writers continue to perpetuate damaging concepts.

The New York Times built on some of the points we made last week when we interviewed OhMiBod founder Suki Durham about the difficulties in running a small business when your niche is sexual pleasure.

The security of being able to filter adult content – a false promise unless dot-xxx is mandatory – is not enough to give up our ability to express ourselves however we desire, whether this is through a business enterprise or for our personal entertainment on our privately owned domains.

Give a human being the opportunity to name something — they’ll not only take it, they’ll make you proud. Behold the following examples encapsulated in the following wi-fi networks.

On Tuesday, a naked man took off running on the 405 and later attacked a woman. Unfortunately, details of the attack were lost in the frenzy of news reports, which gave preference to amusing celebrity tweets detailing the situation as stars and well-known personages sat in their cars.

Our editrix likes introductory e-mails from people she doesn’t know. At the risk of a whipping, we’re going to refrain from calling this practice slightly passé and suggest, instead, that if the usual method of requesting a friendship without comment fails to result in a connection, consider sending a short message explaining who you are and why you want to connect with the person in question.

Why would someone attack a painting? Last week in Washington DC, a visitor to the National Gallery’s “Gauguin: Maker of Myth” exhibition took hold of the frame of the post impressionist’s artist’s Two Tahitian Women, then began to pound her fist against the plexiglas protecting the painting. A by-stander tackled the woman, enabling museum officers…continue reading.

On Monday, over 100 University of Southern California students marched in protest of the school’s inaction in response to a misogynist e-mail said to have originated among members of the school’s Kappa Sigma fraternity. To date, neither Kappa Sigma national nor USC have done anything. Students, worried about the sexism at their school, protested against this inaction.