Culture

The message surrounding “panty gate” is clear: if you let your nine-year-old near “adult” undergarments, you’re going to turn her into an unrepentant sext-fiend, a modern (if digital) version of the town slut. It doesn’t even matter what kind of underwear Jenny Erikson buys her daughter — the mere fact that she is taking her into a Victoria’s Secret store is sufficient to turn her into a total nympho. Really?

The other day, we discovered a bizarre bit of American trivia that we just can’t leave alone: the candle salad. This “salad” consists of stacking some pineapple slices, putting a banana through them and topping it with a cherry. We thought it was a joke at first — until we found it in the 1957 edition of Betty Crocker’s Cookbook for Boys and Girls. “It’s better than a candle, because you can eat it!”

So basically, according to Rush Limbaugh, seminars that are meant to educate people about how to lead informed, healthy and sexually satisfying lives are a secret ploy devised by a national conspiracy of liberal universities who are in cahoots with Big Tobacco. First orgies, then smokes! We couldn’t make this up even if we wanted to.

You would think that given how much advertising seems to depend on sex to sell things that it would be in the industry’s interest to try to get sex right, or at least be sensitive to sex-related issues that have powerfully impacted the national consciousness. Is the inability to create ads that portray sex and desire decently the result of an industry in dire need of fresh blood, or is it that advertisers are showing an increased interest in exploiting hot topics to get more “engagement” out of their ads?

Instagram has been “securing” (i.e., suspending) accounts, giving users a deadline to upload a form of valid identification. Many initially suspected this was a phishing scam, but a Facebook spokesperson told CNET, “Instagram occasionally removes accounts due to violation of terms and, depending on the violation, may ask people to upload IDs for verification purposes.” This is another failure on Facebook’s part to handle issues within the photo-sharing site in a way that helps users feel secure.

A source at the Weekly tells us, “the Village Voice profits incredibly from sex, but they don’t know how to feel about it. It’s so much easier to just cut ties with it. The question now is how they mean to survive without it.” Will this be true of the “new” Voice Media Group? It’s a valid question. Divorcing the papers from Backpage.com will enable advertisers to continue doing business with the weeklies without having to fear consumer boycotts for their indirect support of a site accused of enabling the “sale of humans.”

Miriam Bellard and Andrejs Skuja, creators of the game Seduce Me, which focuses on high-brow interactive erotica, have been banned by Valve, owners of the Steam gaming platform. An hour after submitting their game, they received a stern form-letter response from Valve: “Your game must not contain offensive material or violate copyright or intellectual property rights.”

The District of Columbia is launching a campaign to promote respect for D.C.’s transgender and gender-non-conforming communities. The D.C. Office of Human Rights has focused much of its attention on inculcating in the population that gender identity-based discrimination is illegal. To them, this campaign is a part of this effort.

In this clip, Josh Robert Thompson imitates the voice of Morgan Freeman while reading excerpts from the popular ‘Fifty Shades of Grey’ and offering his own commentary. Here’s a sample: “There are some sick people in this world. I cannot honestly believe people read this crap. ‘Do you want the regular, vanilla relationship with no kinky fuckery at all?’ My mouth drops open. ‘Kinky fuckery?'”

Men have followed me down the street poking me in what one can only assume is an attempt to get my attention. Men have grabbed the cord to my headphones and ripped them out of my ears. Multiple times. Men have grabbed parts of my body, or my coat or purse strap. They ask if they can get my number, they ask where I live, why I’m not smiling, why my boyfriend lets me walk around by myself.