Self-Censorship Isn’t More Honest Than Pseudonymity

Topsy is an indexing platform primarily developed to enable businesses to understand social trends. As such, their dealings are of primary interest to people in the social marketing space, so when Topsy released their Google+ comment searching tool in October of last year, the reception was limited to people in that niche.

In the past could of days, however, the function has been spreading among regular users of the network, creating something of a frenzy. Usage is simple: all you need is a Google+ user number, which appears in their profile URL. You take that and input it at the end of the Topsy Google+ search URL (http://plus.topsy.com/googleplus/), hit enter and voila! All public comments made across the social network appear before you awaiting your perusal. … Continue Reading

If You Want Your Insurance to Cover Birth Control, You’re A Slut and A Prostitute

Rush Limbaugh has betrayed his audience. I won’t pretend that I write without an angle, but I know that it is possible to do so without lying and distorting the facts. This is not the case for Limbaugh, as it became clear on his show on Wednesday night, during which he again lashed out against student and contraception coverage mandate supporter Sandra Fluke. … Continue Reading

Science Writer Carl Zimmer Publishes on Playboy, Internet Freaks Out

Carl Zimmer, a celebrated science writer, has published a piece about Neil deGrasse Tyson in the January issue of Playboy magazine (also featuring Lindsay Lohan!). Almost immediately after the article started making the rounds on the internet, the question of whether “respectable authors” should publish in Playboy arose. … Continue Reading

The Problem with Google’s Anti-Trafficking Effort

As someone who has been researching and writing about slavery and trafficking since 2005, I worry that the overall desire to help on the part of Google has overridden a lot of details that must be understood if we are going to find a way to rid the world of trafficking and slavery. The most harmful and least understood of these details is the importance of supporting organizations that distinguish between consensual sex work and sexual slavery (something the State Department finally does and something NGOs must do to really help combat this blight). Several of the organizations that Google is funding do not make this necessary distinction. … Continue Reading

Days Like Today

There are days that you wonder why you’re still here. You sit in your car, idling in traffic on Sunset or Santa Monica and feel like bashing your head against the steering wheel. You imagine some other city you love and how easy it is to get around. You think about the rent and how much cheaper it is. You think about how much easier it is to meet people. You think about things you don’t get here in Los Angeles: seasons, a sky full of stars, a restaurant that doesn’t require a reservation for dinner.

The more you think about these things, the more impotent and out of control you feel. There is nothing for you here, no inspiration — nothing. Los Angeles is a farce. … Continue Reading

Would You Let A Former Porn Star Read to Your Kids?

What our nervous sideway glances and jeers say is simple: if you let on that you have sex, you’re a danger to our children, and possibly to society itself. Never mind if you’re a tax-paying, law-abiding, philanthropic citizen otherwise — the second it becomes known that you have sex or are interested in it, you’re immediately labeled unfit.

This is what is happening right now with former porn star Sasha Grey, who quit the adult entertainment industry to focus on mainstream entertainment and has since appeared in the popular television series Entourage. She recently joined the National Education Association’s program Read Across America, which combats illiteracy by showing children the joy of the written word through age-appropriate book readings.

On Wednesday, November 2, Grey went to Emerson Elementary School in Compton, California and read Dog Breath by Dav Pikey to first and third graders. According to celebrity gossip site TMZ, parents were horrified to have a former pornographic star read to their children. They contacted the California Parent-Teacher Association, which got in touch with the principal of the school, demanding an explanation.

A representative of the school district denied Grey was among the stars who read to children each year, saying, “We have several celebrities who read to our students each year. The actress you have indicated was not present.”

This is technically true: usually, Read Across America is celebrated once a year on Dr. Seuss’s birthday in March. During the one-day celebration, stars read to the children of Compton United School District. Previous celebrity guests have included Raven Symone of That’s So Raven, Rachelle Lefevre of Twilight: New Moon, Quinton Aaron of The Blind Side, the voice of Spongebob Squarepants Tom Kinney, and many others. Sasha Grey was not present at the usual Read Across America celebration.

But she did read to children at Emerson Elementary with Read Across America, a program she joined because literacy is something she believes is essential.

“Illiteracy contributes to poverty; encouraging children to pick up a book is fundamental,” Grey said today in a statement posted on Twitter. The statement went on:

I believe education is a universal right. I committed to this program with the understanding that people would have their own opinions about what I have done, who I am and what I represent.

I am an actor. I am an artist. I am a daughter. I am a sister. I am a partner. I have a past that some people may not agree with, but it does not define who I am. I will not live in fear of it.

To challenge non-profit education programs is an exercise in futility, counter-productive and anti-educational.

Here is a woman who is contributing her time to get kids excited about reading. But we don’t want her help. Even though she is dressed conservatively, even though she won’t speak about the adult aspect of her career, even though all she will do is sit and read — she is dangerous. She is a bad example. She had sex and she did it on camera, and we will never let her forget that.

Does anyone else see something wrong with this picture or do you agree that anyone who has participated in adult film is unsuitable to being around children? I don’t get it and you’re welcome to explain it to me.

Photo by San Jose Library. Originally published on BlogHer.

The Story of a Disappearing Critique on Google+

On Wednesday, November 02, Bryan Jones shared a public post on Google+ protesting the censorship of artist Paul Roustan‘s art on Google+ which contained an album with 22 images. A handful of the images were quickly flagged by Google+ and some time on Friday, November 04, the post itself became restricted to other users.

Because Jones could still see the post, the movement he had sought to start to bring awareness to censorship practices on Google+ (illustrated by the hashtag #occupygpluscensorship), lost the momentum it had gained in the previous 48 hours. In a conversation with Googler Brian Rose, Rose told Jones that the post “should not have been automatically made private to me… something was wrong… and that he would follow up with Google’s Post team on Monday.” … Continue Reading

The Sad Ballad of Halloween

Halloween is an artifact that has existed far longer than this country, under various names and in many guises over time. It’s a weird, twisted survivor that survives by absorbing the qualities of the culture in prominence where the day is celebrated. These days, people shake their heads when they think about Halloween — how could a kid’s dress-up holiday have become so grossly sexualized?

The truth is that Halloween is not a holiday for kids. That shift is a very recent thing in its epic history, and I think the emergence of more and more sexualized costumes is both a reflection of our culture’s attitudes toward sex and an attempt to take the holiday back. … Continue Reading

The Good Men Project — Bad for Women?

Lili Bee had had it rough. Finally emancipated and making something of a living despite the abusive boyfriend in whose home she’d been forced to settle into in order to survive, she decided things were not so bad. Just as she was getting settled, her boyfriend forced her to audition at the Playboy Club in New York City to try to get a break in her career. She made it. In June, she recounted her story for the readers of the Good Men Project.

The club was strict, but she was well-paid and formed part of a union. For reasons that were not disclosed, she got in trouble some years into the job and was faced with the decision of having to leave the club. A man she had met through the club, who’d previously been very generous with her, suggested that she transfer to another club, or consider posing for the magazine. The magazine deal would provide money, he said, and possibly open the door for her in terms of modeling. … Continue Reading

How Can We Build Communities in a Potentially Hostile Environment?

We are moving toward a social horizon online. That enables us to have a lot more conversations with a wider variety of people, but it also creates a danger in that we can no longer determine the sort of content that we will put on our sites. Our profiles and what we put on there are governed by the terms of service of start-ups and companies. Even if these reflect our own values, there is always a chance that the company will be acquired, or the media will put pressure on a start-up to change the nature of its content.

However well-intentioned the desire to protect young users from age-inappropriate pornographic content, very often conversations about sexuality and sexual issues become conflated with pornography. It’s a dangerous road that disables people from having the open dialog that give the internet promise. How can sex educators and interested users build any sort of community in a network that could become hostile toward them at any moment? The answer is that right now, we can’t. … Continue Reading