Look, September has been a rough month. Rampant wildfires across the western US (including here in Montana), the passing of Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the political shit show that followed, a blatantly racist miscarriage of justice for Breonna Taylor leading to further violent clashes between police and protesters, a continuing disintegration of American democracy around the black hole of a president, pushing past a Covid death toll of 200,000 here in the States…The list could go on. But instead, hey, let’s take a moment to celebrate that whoever is reading this made it (mostly) through September, 2020!
Here we are, on the brink of October! I’m sure next month will be an exploration of how bad the world can be, as well. But if there’s one thing this year has taught me so far, it’s that we must celebrate the little things wherever and whenever possible. So, cheers to us! And now, on to the links I’ve amassed as September crawled painfully by.
Lynsey G’s September Shenanigans
I got up to some tomfoolery on the internet in September! Here’s a round-up of most of it!
- It’s been a while since I tried my hand at making videos on the internet. But #BiWeek 2020 seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up. In this YouTube video, I talked about the the terms and definition of bisexuality and pansexuality, and what they mean to me, personally. And I even made my own captions! Watch here!
- I also wrote a blog post with most of the same info for #BiWeek, so you can read or watch as you like.
- I also joined a really fantastic panel on queer representation and community in fandom for Con-Tinual: The Con that Never Ends! Sponsored by the Billings Public Library, the panel featured yours truly, Gretchen Evans, Natania Barron, Tracy Holt, and Michael Williams. You can view it here to watch us talking about finding ourselves represented in media…okay, mostly in Star Trek. We talked about Star Trek like…a lot.
- That Kickstarter I was running through all of July and August? It succeeded! We made our funding goal, plus an extra 50 percent, on September 10! And, to celebrate our victory and your generosity, we followed through on our promise to debase ourselves on camera…That’s right! We ate a Peeps Jell-O Salad live on stream. And actually, I didn’t really mind it so much? You can watch a clip from the stream right here.
- Ever wonder what I think of indie comics? …No? Well, that’s fine, because I’m not the one writing them! The Oneshi Press spokesfish, K.F. Kat Fish, recently began his indie comics review column over at the Oneshi Press blog. First on his roster? Is’Nana the Were-Spider #1 by Greg Anderson Elysée, Walter Ostlie, Lee Milewski, and Joshua Cozine. It earned 5 out of 5 starfish! Read the review here.
- As a blog reader, would you be willing to help me navigate this ship? I’m looking for responses to this survey right here. It will take you less than a minute because there are only two questions, and I’d really value your input! (It was initially meant for readers of my newsletter, but it can apply just as well to blog readers!) Please respond to the survey over here.
- I’ll be making a very Big Announcement on October 1! Stay tuned…
Informative Links about S-E-X
The world has been a mess. Yep. But there have been some really interesting things going on in the world of sexuality, too. So take a break from doom-scrolling and give these links a try…
- Over the weekend, I learned volumes about ass eating in Medieval European texts. From a Twitter thread. As a bona fide (hah!) sexual trivia nerd, I found this information very illuminating (haha! get it? like an illuminated manuscript? …no? just me?). Anyway, fine, you can read it here.
- Full disclosure: I haven’t watched the documentary Skin yet. But after reading this review in Variety, I plan to. Skin is “A History of Nudity in the Movies,” and it tracks nakedness in movies from its earliest iterations back in the early 20th century up through almost today, from what I hear. It appears that the film focuses mainly on what we’d call “mainstream” film today (as opposed to pornographic films). But, since there was quite a lot of overlap in the early days of cinema and then again in the 1960s and ’70s, there’s a good amount of both. And, much to my delight, my girl Audrey Munson—the world’s most famous artists-model-turned-actress—plays a large part in the documentary. Because she was the first woman to appear nude in a non-pornographic film way back in the early 1900s. I don’t appreciate the implication that it was her nudity on camera that caused her breakdown and eventual institutionalization, but I suppose it’s worth exploring. (You can read more about Audrey in my article for Bust.)
- I don’t know if you know this, but I am a huge zoology nerd. I love learning about the natural world, and in particular, about the mating habits of animals. That shit is wild and frequently fascinating, as a recent Ted Ed video from Menno Schilthuizen, with animation from Mette Ilene Holmriis, attests. The video goes into the wildly overcomplicated world of animal genitalia, and it is weirdly adorable yet illuminating. For instance, did you know that kangaroos have two uteruses? Or that some crane flies have musical penises? It’s all true! So go watch the video! You’ll love it!
The News from P-0-R-N
The world of adult entertainment has been nearly as tumultuous as the rest of the world recently. Here are just a few of the big stories that I’ve followed over the last month.
- Content warning: Sexual assault talk all over the place.Speaking of adult-entertainment blowups? This is a gross one: Ron Jeremy is in prison for sexual misconduct, which we already knew. He’s been there, on $6 million bail, for months. But since his incarceration was made public back in June, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has heard from dozens of women who came forward to say he abused them, too. He’s now facing—brace yourself—28 criminal charges.
- You can read my round-up of the news on YNOT.
- And, if you’re interested in knowing how my own traumatic experience with Ron Jeremy helped put him in jail, you can read my blog post about it, too.
- Or, then again, you can read about it in my book, Watching P()rn!
- Former mainstream actor turned adult star Maitland Ward just penned an essay about how she, Kayden Kross, and a team of other fearless pornographers shot a feature p0rn film in a pandemic. I wrote about it at YNOT!
- In weirdly unsettling news, child star Aaron Carter apparently is doing porn now. I was never a fan, myself, but something about this new development makes me uncomfortable. I think it’s the way the media sensationalized his first camming experience. It reeks of “he’s desperate and spiraling and that’s why he’s doing this”—a mentality I really don’t like. Sure, it’s possible that’s what’s happening here. And sure, plenty of other people have tried porn for that very reason in the past. But I don’t like exploiting people’s bad situations for headlines. And I especially don’t like the implication that the only acceptable reason to do sex work is desperation. So. I dunno. Anyway, here’s where you can read about Aaron Carter.
- Apparently Mia Khalifa got an OnlyFans account, which caused much furor after her years of disavowing her time in porn. I don’t particularly care one way or another whether she gets nude in front of a camera or not, but the 180,000+ folks who have signed a petition demanding porn companies take down her old videos seem to have taken her flirtation with sexy nudes as a slight. You can read some commentary over here if you want.
- Speaking of OnlyFans! Holy crap. Did you hear about the blowup over Bella Thorne’s $2 million debut on the platform? Or how that debut screwed thousands of models on the platform? Or how she apologized about it but everyone is still made? It was a whole thing. I wrote about it for YNOT, and you can read it here.
- Here’s an article from Bustle about 7 free audio porn apps you can try! I can’t report on my own experience with them yet, since I haven’t started testing, but you can bet that I will pick my favorite soon! I’ve been wanting to give audio porn a go for a while but haven’t gotten around to it yet. And this article is just the poke in the crotch I needed.
- Back to the sex nerdery. A lot has been made over the past few years about the deleterious effects of watching porn upon the sexuality of young people. Social conservatives are so terrified of it that they’re proclaiming pornography a “public health crisis” left and right. Porn has often been equated with sexual aggression—and just as frequently been scientifically shown as not a cause of sexual aggression. (Nixon’s commission on the topic? I’m lookin’ at you.) But rarely have young people been studied, since, you know, porn and youth and laws make it difficult. But a new study from Aleksandar Štulhofer at the University of Zagreb in Croatia has found that—and I quote—”callousness, but not pornography use, significantly predicted sexual aggressiveness” in male adolescents. You can read about the study here!
That’s it for September! Stop by again in late October for more links!
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