1. Porn star delivers satisfaction in debate
2. Tell Me Where It Hurts
3. Welcome to the dungeon
4. Murray's lawyers want evidence excluded
5. The ties that bind
6. Government loses test of obscenity laws
1. Porn star delivers satisfaction in debate
2. Tell Me Where It Hurts
3. Welcome to the dungeon
4. Murray's lawyers want evidence excluded
5. The ties that bind
6. Government loses test of obscenity laws
Porn star delivers satisfaction in debate
by David Cohen
The Independent Florida Alligator
January 27, 2005
UF [University of Florida] students, brimming with anticipation, finally got their fill Wednesday when Ron Jeremy came to debate his racy trade at the Stephen C. O'Connell Center.
The Great Porn Debate, hosted by Accent, welcomed approximately 2,800 to witness porn superstar Jeremy and award-winning author Susan Cole duke out the pros and cons of pornography.
Cole opened up the debate in a somber tone toward pornography that would continue throughout the night.
UF professor Diana K. Nagy attended the debate.
"I don't think anyone really won," she said. "Both of them are coming from the same direction. They both agree that S&M and child pornography are unacceptable."
[continued]
To read this entire article, go to:
http://www.alligator.org/pt2/050127porn.php
To respond, write to: editor@alligator.org
Tell Me Where It Hurts
by Keith Bowers
East Bay Express (San Francisco)
January 26, 2005
Are all novels autobiographical at heart? In Stephen Elliott's new release Happy Baby, the protagonist watches his mother dying agonizingly of multiple sclerosis. As an adolescent, he flees a household marked by addiction and abuse. He becomes a ward of the court. Having learned to associate pain with affection, he grows into a young man haunted by sexual confusion. He works as a sex-show barker in Amsterdam and strives to figure out how the whole mess started.
To say that Elliott graduated from the school of hard knocks is more than just an understatement.
In Happy Baby, he confronts some harsh themes that mirror his life. Its protagonist Theo grew up in the Chicago foster-care system and returns in his thirties to visit an ex-girlfriend and learn more about himself and his past. Elliott wrote the book in reverse order, with each chapter representing another step backward in time.
Sadomasochism is a recurring theme, but it's not the "safe, sane, and consensual" flavor that's so popular these days. "Nobody does anything safe in that book," Elliott says. Theo's girlfriend, for example, is a brutally domineering fortysomething who burns the backs of Theo's wrists with lit cigarettes when she learns of his plans to visit Chicago. The scene isn't negotiated, and Theo takes no enjoyment from it, but he lets her do it nonetheless. That said, the act — like other painful situations in the book — is implicitly something both characters need, or at least are drawn to perform together.
He says that writing Happy Baby helped him confront many of his own fears surrounding sex, intimacy, and S/M. "I learned a lot. … I could never write a book like this again. It's discomfort that creates art," he notes, and discomfort is something this author has put behind him, at least as it relates to his sex life. Everything is a little easier now. For example, in one recent relationship, Elliott and his girlfriend negotiated dominant and submissive roles and maintained them 24/7.
[continued]
To read this entire article, go to:
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/issues/2005-01-26/culture/profile.html
To respond, write to:
the author at keith.bowers@eastbayexpress.com or
the editors at feedback@eastbayexpress.com
Welcome to the dungeon
by Dan Savage (opinion column)
Detroit Metro Times
January 26, 2005
Q: I've just started dating a guy who is into being dominated. He also has quite the foot fetish. Problem is, I have zero experience with any sort of kinky sex. He's 35 and has been around the block, while I'm 24 and all I've ever had is sex with guys who claimed to have no fantasies. I really want to please him, but I don't know what to do. He says that he's not really into pain and that his kink is more centered around being mentally and emotionally toyed with. I've asked him for specifics, but he says he doesn't want to freak me out. I'd wing it, but I'm clueless. Tramp In Training
A: "This couple sounds like they're off to a great start," says Lady Green, author of The Sexually Dominant Woman (Greenery Press). "He's willing to talk about what he wants, at least in general, and she's open to trying it. That immediately puts them in the top 10 percent of the folks I talk to who are into female domination. Now, it's just a matter of getting the details ironed out."
Your urge to wing it is admirable, TIT, but Lady Green and I both agree that you shouldn't attempt anything too ambitious until your boyfriend comes through with some details. "The most she should try without getting some more specific ideas from him," Lady Green says, "is building a little control and/or fetish play into your lovemaking. Put one of your feet in his face for him to smell and nuzzle during intercourse, for example, or place a hand over his mouth to block speech during whatever else you might be doing."
[continued]
To read this entire article, go to:
http://www.metrotimes.com/editorial/story.asp?id=7231
To respond, write to: the author at mail@savagelove.net
Murray's lawyers want evidence excluded
by Eric Weslander
Lawrence Journal-World (Kansas)
January 23, 2005
Attorneys for a Kansas State University English professor charged with murdering his wife have filed a pretrial motion alleging some evidence was mishandled.
Attorneys for professor Thomas E. Murray, who's charged with murdering his ex-wife, Carmin D. Ross, in November 2003, asked Judge Robert Fairchild on Friday to keep several categories of evidence out of Murray's upcoming jury trial.
… Other categories of evidence Murray's attorneys are seeking to keep out of court:
Evidence that Murray, a linguistics scholar, co-authored the book "The Language of Sadomasochism," a glossary of terms used in sexual sadomasochism. They say it's irrelevant and prejudicial, and there's no evidence he has ever engaged in sadomasochism.
[continued]
To read this entire article, go to:
http://www.ljworld.com/section/citynews/story/194081
To respond, go to:
http://www.ljworld.com/site/submit_letter/
The ties that bind
by Helen Rosner
Jewsweek
January 22, 2005
After 5000 years of persecution, you'd think we'd be sick of it: name-calling, whips and chains, submitting to dominance. We Jews ought to be pretty over that whole scene by now. And we are — until it comes to the bedroom door. Most sex experts estimate that ten to fifteen percent of sexually active adults regularly go in for kinky sex — and much as our rabbis might prefer to keep it under wraps, the tribe fits right into that kink-inclined population.
Jews who like it a little different have been going public lately, coming clean about their interest in the intertwined cultures of sadomasochism, bondage, and leather play. Many express this by joining fetish groups: some general interest, some drawn together precisely because of a shared affinity for knishes and kreplach. At this past November's Fetish Fair Fleamarket, an annual event in Boston that brings together BDSM leaders, practitioners, and the just plain curious, one of the most popular discussion sessions was "Birds of a Feather" — a space for Jewish conference participants to discuss pressing issues like how to reconcile traditional Jewish views of sexual behavior with an active BDSM lifestyle.
… Most Jewish BDSM adherents don't mind interpreting halachah to their advantage: Vivienne Kramer, an observant Jew and a fixture on the Northeast fetish scene — she's chair of the New England Leather Alliance and president of the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom — has no problem reconciling her religion with her sexual practices. "I probably wouldn't play [engage in BDSM] on a Friday night," she says, merging the two practices into her own version of religious observance. Madame Alexia, a product of 12 years of Hebrew school and a Jewish Studies minor at a state university, views the textual omission as a go-ahead: "my understanding is that the Torah forbids certain actions — sex outside of marriage, rape, and things like that," she says. "Even if you interpret it in a modern context, there's no mention of restraint, domination and submission, or anything like that being taboo."
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To read this entire article, go to:
http://www.jewsweek.com/bin/en.jsp?enDispWho=Article%5El1607&;enPage=BlankPage&enDisplay=view&enDispWhat=object&enVersion=0&enZone=Ar ticles
To respond, write to: editor@jewsweek.com
Government loses test of obscenity laws:
Case involves films of women being abused
by Torsten Ove
Pittsburgh Post-Gazaette
January 22, 2005
The Justice Department yesterday lost the first major test of obscenity laws in at least a decade when a federal judge in Pittsburgh threw out an indictment of Extreme Associates, which sells films of women being gang-raped, defecated on and having their throats slit.
U.S. District Judge Gary Lancaster dismissed charges of distribution of obscene materials brought here last year against the California company and its owners, Robert Zicari, 31, and his wife, Janet Romano, 27.
In a 45-page opinion, the judge said the federal obscenity statutes as applied in the case violate constitutional protections of liberty and privacy.
The statutes say possession of obscene materials is legal but distribution of them is not.
In essence, the judge said that the government ban on distribution of obscenity illegally infringes on the people's constitutional right to possess it.
[continued]
To read this entire article, go to:
http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/05022/446543.stm
To respond, write to: the author at tove@post-gazaette.com or the editors by going to:
http://www.post-gazette.com/contact/comments_form.asp?ID=40
[Editor's note: for additional commentary on this case and how it may effect NCSF and Barbara Nitke's court case regarding the Communications Decency Act (Nitke vs. Ashcroft), we recommend visiting: http://www.livejournal.com/users/alanesq/47050.html
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