Weekend links

I have much more I want to say but have been hibernating this weekend and trying to get back to being the person I want to be, not whoever I've been the last few weeks or months. Kind of a mind/body overhaul, or at least, the start of one to try to knock some sense into me. So more later but for now, some links:

I got to have a lovely dinner with Lux Nightmare, Miriam Datskovsky and her boyfriend the other night, and realized I had failed to see this interview at Sexerati with Miriam. Sexerati has lots of great content about the convergence of technology and sex/dating and investigations into various sexual subcultures.

"Outrageous Injustice," ESPN.com, about a 10-year-sentence without possibility of parole given to a 17-year-old for getting a blowjob from a 15-year-old: (via)

Once, he was the homecoming king at Douglas County High. Now he's Georgia inmate No. 1187055, convicted of aggravated child molestation.

When he was a senior in high school, he received oral sex from a 10th grader. He was 17. She was 15. Everyone, including the girl and the prosecution, agreed she initiated the act. But because of an archaic Georgia law, it was a misdemeanor for teenagers less than three years apart to have sexual intercourse, but a felony for the same kids to have oral sex.

Afterward, the state legislature changed the law to include an oral sex clause, but that doesn't help Wilson.

In a different but connected way, Sexerati recently posted about the Dakota Fanning brouhaha. The connection being that if we pretend that teenagers do not have their own sexuality, are ignorant of the topic and don't deserve credit for having some agency in the matter, we wind up failing our children by brushing both actual rape and instances of consensual sex under the rug. Here's Lux:

We are terrified of sex and sexuality, and this is nowhere more apparent than in the issue of adolescent sexuality. We can’t cope with the idea of children, of adolescents, as sexual beings: can’t cope with the idea that children can have these experiences. And so we refuse to discuss, refuse to acknowledge that these things are real – and we push away the discussion, we hide from it, we wrap our children in a fluffy, white towel of ignorance, all in the name of protection. And we wring our hands in fear of all the bogeymen that surround us: the slutty teens, the neighborhood child molester – and we celebrate the fear, because it’s all we know how to do.

Can a porn film be kosher? (love that my dad sent me this one)

Did you know that there's a Bukkake Social Club? Ah, neither did I. I feel so old because there was a time when I might have wanted to join such a thing and now I'm infinitely more interested in babies than sex. Well, not infinitely, but, as an example, I was invited and agreed to go to a sex party next weekend and I'm really just thinking of it more as a work thing. I don't want to have sex at a sex party, I don't plan to meet the love of my life there, it's just not really my scene, if it ever was. That being said, I'm interested in the way this party was described to me and the people there and save for occasional bouts of misanthropy and hibernation, I love parties and meeting new people but for my personal life, I think I need to go with the most conservative people I can find. Okay, not all that conservative, but I need to find me one of those guys who want babies.

The Stranger's review of Offbeat Bride (a review that was bought in their Strangercrombie auction, no less!) - along with a photo of the author, Ariel Meadow Stallings, as a bride with a bong, taken by Heather Corinna

Speaking of reviews, I love the spirit of Lisa Carver's review of Neal Pollack's Alternadad even if I don't agree with her. And by "spirit" I mean that she tells it exactly how she sees it. I don't always have the guts to do that and it's one of the many reasons I admire Lisa.

The San Francisco Chronicle looks at how a variety of Bay Area publishers (including Cleis) are being affected by the AMS bankrupty