That’s pretty much the long and short of it! (zing)

It’s actually a really impressive campaign. It’s aware enough to know that 1) safe sex campaigns need to be tailored to specific communities, especially with regard to race and class, and 2) safe sex campaigns need to start with age groups that are probably not yet having sex. As some one from abstinence-only middle America, it’s a little mind-blowing to see such a frank effort to destigmatize youth-based sex education.

The campaign started in the 80s with a single comic, but it was apparently so well-liked, the 2 Spirits Project (a queer aborginal sex education group) and Queensland Health just released a second issue with an updated look, and a new STD-fighting partner—Lubelicious. Lube prevents condom rips, folks!
 

 
It might look a bit cheesy (and slightly absurd), but the dedication and insight of the activists involved is definitely not in question. Check out the Facebook! They dress up!
 

 

 
The fabulous chanteuse Anne Pigalle returns with a new exhibition of artwork, Is There Life After Sex?, which will be on show at Natalie Galustian Rare Books, 22 Cecil Court, London, from February 1st-21st.

Following on from the great success of Miss Pigalle’s last exhibition (at the Michael Hoppen Gallery), Is There Life After Sex? is a must-see show which will continue her discourse on relationships and the important role of sexuality in our lives.

Miss Pigalle will also be holding one of her legendary Salons, on February 14th, where Anne will perform a choice selection from her acclaimed erotic poems L’Ame Erotique. For those who wish to experience something new, important and very special, I suggest they go along to see the Last Chanteuse Ms. Anne Pigalle. Check here for details
 

 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

 
Bonus video of Anne PIgalle, after the jump…
 

 
Playboy Bunnies invade England in 1966. News report featuring Roger Moore and scenes of Hef’s club in Mayfair, London where Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich perform “Bend It” as a dance floor full of swingers do exactly that.

Ah the Sixties, when color was really color.
 

 
Wow, porn companies are really thinking outside the box these days! 

This James Deen clip doesn’t need much explanation, only to say it’s totally Safe For Work, and in fact, it’s more silly than sexy: 
 

 
The Veruca James/surprised kitty clip (pictured above) is here.
 

 
I like to say I’m a connoisseur of vintage pulp. I like to say “connoisseur of vintage pulp” because it sounds a lot better than “I like rifling through bins of moldy old porn at antique shops,” but I digress…

While high camp is (obviously) the appeal of this sort of pulp novel, 1963’s Commie Sex Trap is the only example I’ve ever seen with an explicit Red Scare plotline. My copy is still en route to me in the mail but I kind of don’t need to read it to know what’s going to happen. In case the brief synopsis on the front cover wasn’t enough, they got a little more scandalous on the back!

“Sergeant Joe Guthrie was in love, but he was also an American soldier in the all-important Berlin decoding room. Would an American sell his country short for the woman he loved? Could the Communists force a healthy man to surrender to their army of sex sirens—trained rousers schooled in every area of erotic abandon?”

Joseph McCarthy—and Michele Bachmann—eat your hearts out.

 
Over a decade ago, I directed a piece for television about “extreme” pornography and the societal effects it would have on a generation of young men who were but a mouse-click away from “Anal Armageddon 3,” “Barnyard Fun” and midget gangbang videos. They didn’t even have to suffer through the hang-dog wanker’s ignominy of dealing with a frowning video store clerk, it was just there already, right in their very homes.

For many young men coming of age in the past decade, probably more than anything else, the Internet represents a Pandora’s Box of digital perversions that can often be quite specific. 12% of all websites are pornographic in nature and 25% of all Internet search terms are for porn. Around the time that modems got fast enough to allow for video streaming, there seemed to be a corresponding spike in how sick, twisted and violent porn could get, each fuck film auteur trying to outdo the rest of them and raising the bar little by little, one fucked-up “gonzo” scene at a time.

Surely having such violent and dehumanizing images seared onto one’s retinas at the point of orgasm, I don’t think could ever be considered a healthy thing... Certainly it might at least prove to be, well, confusing, if not far, far worse, when a generation of men are getting their sex education from the likes of Max Hardcore. One of the interviewees I talked to, Australian writer Luke Ford, said that pornography was for the soul what cigarettes are for the lungs. Author Anka Radakovich, who was also in the program, mused that it might take ten to fifteen years before the full data was in and to get back to her with the same questions then.

It’s been thirteen years now since that TV piece and “Did Porn Warp Me Forever?” a brutally honest essay about growing up with unlimited access to smut from 23-year-old Brooklyn-based writer “Isaac Abel” (not his real name for obvious reasons), I think, has some answers for us:

With a teenage sex drive only inhibited by a vague shame, I quickly fell down a “kink spiral.” After all, we’re talking about reaching climax — when the overriding thought is often just “more!” The unknown, the unseen, was sexy to me, and I pursued novelty with vigor.

I found myself rapidly desensitized to online images. If a threesome was kinky last week, then I’d need something wilder this week. To reach climax, I had to find that same toxic mix of shame and lust.

By my sophomore year in high school I felt torn. Even though I was fairly certain that most guys my age were regular porn watchers, I felt ashamed about the type of porn that I was watching (not something that even the son of psychotherapists was eager to share with friends).

—snip—

These questions continued to bother me. I worried that real girls wouldn’t do it for me. So my senior year in high school, I decided to quit. Cold turkey. For five months. I actually decided not to masturbate at all, and I had few sexual encounters. It was refreshing, and I definitely became more easily turned on by “traditional” things — including the women around me.

But when I started having sex, I realized that I had far from cleansed myself, even though I had continued (and continue still) to keep up my boycott on pornography. I had trouble getting and maintaining an erection with the first three women I slept with. This didn’t feel like a small matter. It seemed like all the schoolyard jockeying ultimately came down to that moment of phallic power, and I just couldn’t do it. Was I more turned on by porn than by real women? What did that mean about my sexuality?

I starting seeing a young woman regularly, and some confluence of alcohol, weed, no condom, and the trust, comfort, and affection I felt with her allowed me to start enjoying sex — to an extent. I wouldn’t acknowledge it, but the majority of nights I had “good sex” I was intoxicated. And, what’s worse, I was fantasizing about porn during sex.

It was a dissociative, alienating, almost inhuman task to close my eyes while having sex with someone I really cared about and imagine having sex with someone else or recall a deviant video from the archives of my youth that I was ashamed of even then.

I’ve talked with other millennial men who’ve experienced this, and it’s not particularly surprising. A decade before we were having intercourse, our neural pathways associated ejaculation with an addictive, progressive perversity that demanded a superlative overstimulation — skipping from climactic scene to climactic scene so that it’s always the most novel, deviant, kinky.

You get the picture and it’s not a very pretty one.

Read more of ”Did Porn Warp Me Forever?” (it’s excellent stuff) at AlterNet.

 
The 30th annual Adult Video News Awards was held at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino Las Vegas this past Saturday. Who knew, right? Anyway, there was an amazing category for “Clever Title of the Year.” The nominees are listed below:

Clever Title of the Year

Asphyxia Heels the World, BurningAngel/Vouyer
Brooklyn Egg Cream on the Roxxx, Seymore Butts/Pure Play
Chocolate Covered Crackers, Black Magic Pictures
Chocolate Yam Yams, Black Storm/Monarchy/Vantage
Does This Dick Make My Ass Look Big?, Vouyer Media
Look Mom, My First Black Penis, Mike Hunt/Juicy
My Wife Caught Me Assfucking Her Mother, Devil’s Film
Nice Shoes, Wanna Fuck?, Electric/Hustler
Occupy My Ass, Bobbi Starr/Evil Angel
She Plays a Mean Rusty Trombone!, Lethal Hardcore/Pulse
Show Me Your Shithole, B. Pumper/Freaky Empire
Somebody Shave Me, Zero Tolerance Entertainment
The Spit and the Speculum, Mike Adriano/Evil Angel
Subtle Fragrance of Her Private Parts, Swank/Pure Play
We Vow to Bang Black Beotches, Kelly Madison/Juicy

And the winner is – drum roll please …

Does This Dick Make My Ass Look Big?
 
Via Nerdcore

 
I’m primarily sharing this because of the glorious picture sleeve! I mean, just look at it!!!

Anyway, the artist’s name is Barbara Markay and her 1980 disco single was called, as you can see for yourself, “Give Your Dick To Me” (the b-side was the PG-rated “Give Your Flesh To Me”).

You can give your love to your mother
You can give your head to your coat
You can give your heart to your music
And honey that ain’t no joke

But since you sure know how to use it
Give your dick to me
Give it to me

Sadly, the song really doesn’t live up to this amazing cover. But here it is below, if you’re curious:
 

 
Noise Artist, Elizabeth Veldon has announced that her record label Black Circle will only promote gender variant and trans artists, who will use the label as a place to air their views, for the foreseeable future. Veldon has told Dangerous Minds that her actions are in response to the recent transphobic articles in the British national press.

‘I am doing this in reaction against the surge in anti-trans articles published in the UK press. This began with Suzanne Moore refusing to apologize for a rather silly comment in the New Statesman, and instead throwing transphobic abuse at anyone who criticised her. She was then given a chance to make transphobic comments in the Guardian.

‘The Observer (the Sunday Guardian) then published an article by Julie Burchill, so full of hate speech that the public reaction against it forced the Observer to withdraw the article.

‘The apology the Observer put in place spoke of ‘causing offence’ but did not recognise that hate speech causes violence, causes hate.

‘This was followed by the Daily Telegraph republishing the article and the Independent publishing several articles defending Burchill and claiming that gender variant people complaining about her article where “a mob,” “bullies,” and “over sensitive.”

‘In addition Caitlin Moran, and the editors of the New Statesman, the Spectator and Vanity Fair have all came out to demand an oppressed minority to respect ‘bullies.’

‘In addition to this many cis gender (that is non trans) people commentating on the stories have sought to tell us what is and is not offensive to us.’

Black Circle is recognized as an important independent Noise and Avant Garde label, with a strong commitment to politics and activism. It also has ‘a policy of not giving a forum to people using hate speech, racist, sexist, homophobic, abelist or agist language.’

Veldon believes that by making Black Circle a focus for discussion on issues of gender, identity and sex, will help educate the public.

‘The intention is to allow those actually effected by this hate speech to have a voice which exists outside of the sound and fury of the comment boards of national newspapers, who would use our outrage to increase click rates and therefore to sell more advertising space.

‘I want to allow the voices of an oppressed minority to be heard, to allow us to contribute to this discussion in our own space and hopefully to educate some people.’

Black Circle have [square], Ars Sonor, Guillotine Munter and Pee-Tura and Elizabeth Veldon ready to release new work over the next few weeks.

The first release will be Elizabeth Veldon’s “A Prayer, A Benediction, A Curse”, which will be available as a digital download and limited edition tape. Veldon has also released “The Ever Present Fear Of Violence (For Julie Burchill)”.

Black Circle will also be releasing a zine, containing writing by all those involved with the releases.

More information from Black Circle here.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous Minds

Transgate: Liberal paper’s hateful editorial opens up ‘free speech’ floodgate

This is actually the cover of her first album, while the song below is from her second. You read right, she had two albums.
 
Well, ‘song’ is perhaps a too ambitious a label, but Xaviera Hollander, the former sex worker and author of The Happy Hooker: My Own Story never fails to entertain.

It’s sort of avant garde, totally cheeky and self-aware; the way she exclaims “my vibrator” on the chorus is so prim!