To read: "The Slut Shot" and "Going Wild"

I'm off to Martha's Vineyard for the weekend, though of course bringing the laptop as I've both fallen behind and gotten handed new assignments this week, so I'm sure I will poke my fingers into this blog.

In the meantime, read my fellow Voice columnist Tristan Taormino's "The Slut Shot" about the HPV vaccine:

The right wing's refusal to teach teens or provide contraception to them is supported by flawed ideas: (1) To acknowledge that young people are sexual beings robs them of their innocence; and (2) if we give them sexual information and make condoms, latex gloves, dental dams, and birth control easily available, they will run out and have sex because we encouraged them.

Unrelated but also worth reading: Greta Christina's "Going Wild: A Feminist's Defense of the 'Girls Gone Wild' Girls"

But we all deserve sexual liberation. We all deserve the freedom to make sexual choices -- even dumb ones or crass ones. As someone whose name I can't remember once said, not all censorship battles can be about Ulysses. (Does anyone know the source for that quote, btw? I couldn't find it.) And the battle for sexual liberation and the right to sexual expression can't always be about brilliant sex-themed performance art, or beautiful ecstatic lovemaking in loving long-term relationships. Sometimes it's about college girls at big drunken parties pulling their shirts off for the video cameras. That's the whole point of feminist sexual liberation -- we don't get to go around scolding other women for their consenting sexual choices.