Eros Daily Musings and Digressions

A few weeks ago, I noticed some Tweets of MayMay’s regarding personal attacks, and was shocked to read  that he had been singled out because of his leadership in KinkForAll and called a child molester and pedophile.

A group called “Citizens Against Trafficking” (which Maymay has been referring to “Citizens Against Sexuality Freedom and Discussion” (CASFD)),  and which is co-founded by a University of Rhode Island professor named Donna M. Hughes and one of her students, Melanie Shapiro, issued a bulletin authored co-authored by Donna M. Hughes and Margaret Brooks (a professor of economics at Bridgewater State College, nee Margaret Landman) portraying KinkForAll as an event ‘for kinky sex and sadomasochists.’”

This couldn’t be further than from the truth.

Let’s remember that Donna M. Hughes is the same person who lobbied mightily in favor of the law that criminalized indoor prostitution in Rhode Island, and ridiculed sex workers when they testified against the legislation.  She also took an anti-education stance, opposing Megan Andelloux’s opening of the Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health.

Both MayMay and Sara Eileen, who came up with the concept of KFA, became adults at a time where information about sex and sexuality was much more freely available through the internet. I’m trying to remember my sources of sexual information, and it wasn’t my mother, a Western trained OB-GYN (see the irony?), who had enormous difficulty overcoming cultural conditioning and discussing sex with me.

KinkForAll’s core concept is of a serendipitous, ad-hoc unconference about the “intersection of sexuality with the rest of life.” It is most emphatically NOT  an event that includes any kind of sex or play. I have personally participated in two KinkForAll events in New York City. These are fast paced events, and the goal is to share, DISCUSS and TALK about aspects of sex and sexuality. I remember the tremendous energy and enthusiasm that came out of the first event. A number of individuals have taken it upon themselves to organize events around the country, including DC, San Francisco and Providence. Yes, there is taping, blogger and participants may Twitter, but this is explained in the rules for KinkForall:

KinkForAll will be talked about, blogged, recorded, photographed and logged in order to create, share, and distribute a repository of knowledge and experience. Participants always have the option to opt outof being photographed or otherwise recorded.

Because of MayMay’s openness about his sexuality, it’s easy for him to be singled out as the poster boy. It also minimize the involvement of Aida Manduley, the university student who should be applauded and given credit for her role as the principal organizer of KinkForAll Providence, held at Brown University. See Aida’s post where she clarifies many of the issues raised in the flyer. She also talks about how Margaret Brooks repeatedly emailed Brown Univ. officials, but never talked directly to her about the event,

It’s pretty terrifying to be the subject of an attack on the Internet. You can read MayMay’s account of what has happened thus far. And it’s pretty easy to “take out-of-context statements and blend them with factual inaccuracies to produce a piece of writing capable of creating (or sustaining) irrational moral panic on the part of those who read it.”

Professors Donna M. Hughes and Maragaret Brooks are mixing up human trafficking with the exchange of sexuality and intimacy between adults. It’s as if they don’t really understand what a pedophile really is.

MayMay is trying to find common points of interest with them, and addresses their concerns  in another post, and invites their dialog on how KFA could be made safer for all participants, including young people. Will they engage and actually participate in a dialogue? Not at all likely.  Donna M. Hughes is someone who is horrified by tattooed women. Professors Donna M. Hughes and Margaret Brooks are engaged in scare tactics, not civil discourse.

This has been a rather long and rambling post for me. Other people have articulated these issues much more clearly than me. The bottom line? Stand up, and speak out. Support MayMay. Support the KinkForAll concept, perhaps by attending and/or supporting a KinkForAll event. You’ll have to excuse me now, I’m helping plan a third KinkForAll in New York.

Tags: Donna M. Hughes, education, kinkforall, Margaret Brooks, sex education, sexed

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if dating profiles were honest… (sexagenarian and the city)

If it were a bit warmer today, if high school graduates could read, if the New York subway system had hard plastic barriers up (that opened when the trains came) so that no one could jump or fall or be pushed on the tracks, if diet coke were good for you, if my maternal grandparents were still alive and healthy, if I weighed 15 pounds less, if Chai came directly out of one of my faucets, if there were no rats in Manhattan, if there were already a good health insurance system in effect in this country, if all the women who wanted to get pregnant could and all the women who didn’t want to be pregnant weren’t, if — if — if –

Well, let’s get to the point: if dating profiles were honest, well, hey, then where would the sport be in internet dating??

All the fun would go out of it.

Yeah, and dating profiles — or at least the profile of one man I dated recently — would read something like this:

If it’s a warm day when we meet, I’ll be wearing a t-shirt, and you’ll notice a bluish-purplish mark on the inside of my left wrist. What is it? you’ll wonder. Well, I was a heroin addict in my youth, and that’s what it comes from. You gotta problem with that? If so, go away.

More . . ..

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scientists film HIV spreading for the first time

For the first time in the history of HIV/AIDS, a team of scientists from UC Davis university in California, and Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York filmed an HIV infected cell as it infected a healthy cell — and it’s going to change the way HIV is treated because it’s not replicating the way everyone thought it was. To film it, they inserted a protein into an infected cell (a clone of one, to be precise) that glows green when exposed to blue light, and the captured it on digital film. You can see HIV in action above; it’s fucking creepy. Basically, it creates an intentional bridge to a healthy cell through which it trucks the infection. Sneaky. To understand why HIV has spoofed science with its infection process, the Telegraph UK explains:

For decades it was believed that HIV was mostly spread around the body through freely circulating particles, which attach themselves to a cell, take over its replication machinery and make multiple copies of themselves.

In 2004, scientists discovered that cell-to-cell transfer of HIV also occurred via virological synapses, but it was not understood why the process was so effective in spreading the virus.

Due to this, previous efforts to create an HIV vaccine have focused on priming the immune system to recognise and attack proteins of free-circulating virus.

The new video footage indicates that HIV avoids recognition by being directly transferred between cells. (…read more, telegraph.co.uk)

Sex 101 Comedy Show in NYC April 11th

One of our very own Babelanders has created a comedy show about sex! It’s going to be a perfect mixture of knowledge and comedy. If you live in New York, you should absolutely check it out.

Here’s what the creator has to say:

Well hello there honey bunnies. I am giving a spectacular lecture on the ins and outs of being a great lover. You’ll learn everything you need to know about being on your back, on all fours or hanging from the ceiling, while also getting a few laughs. Cause what is sex if not funny.

We’ll be featuring special side kicks:
The Fabulous Shannon Sutherland
Alex Michaels
Julie Notwicz
Alison Grillo
Scout Durwood
Jason Black
and
Poppi Kramer!!! (of Biggest Loser Fame)

April 11th at 7 pm

The City at The Broadway Comedy Club

53 between 8th and 9th.

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