Amanda Todd and the wrong message about bullying and sexuality…
Over the next few months, society will report and debate the death of Amanda Todd, a teenager who committed suicide after posting a Youtube video about bullying. I truly mourn her loss. This is someone who was intelligent, creative, had some artistic capability and seemed to understand a great deal about what was happening to […]
Execution of Childhood Sexual Abuse Victim
I receive dozens of political messages every day, and seldom forward any of them. Usually they are either of such dramatic scope I assume everyone knows about them, or I feel they’re a matter of personal preference and conscience. But this is a little different. I’m passing along the ACLU post in this case whole […]
The GOP and Porn
I don’t usually post on politics but there are a few stark facts I want to look at I have to admit that I read the Master/slave forums on Fetlife and a few other sites and see people bashing the President, or voicing support for his opposition and I just say “WTF.” Look, I’m a […]
The Thorny Issues of Consent
This was originally written as a continuation of the discussion of consent, however I think it stands alone as a basic outline of the issues with consent within our community. In many ways, I think you can boil the core issue in consent in BDSM down to the Foo Fighters. “The only thing I’ll ever […]
Consent and Non-Consent in Power Exchange
If you find this post interesting, please consider commenting where it appears on the Consent Counts Group on Fetlife A few days ago, the NCSF dropped me an e-mail…which I assume went out to every other person on the NCSF mailing list, about starting a national dialog on consent, here on Fetlife and in […]
Dialog on Consent – NCSF Appeal
I received the following from NCSF and I wanted to both boost the signal and mention how important this is to our community…particularly the discussion about consent listed below.I believe in consent and I’m on record writing about the importance not only of titular consent but informed consent which comes from a full understanding of […]
Letters to Dave Navarro
I got this from JayLynn. I don’t ordinarily promote causes here, but this is something so bizarre and enormous that I felt I should pass it along. I honestly did not believe the first site…talking about the internet harassment of Dave Navarro for seeking a divorce, until I actually went to the second site. Part […]
MacMcClelland, Rape, and PTSD
In the past few weeks there has been a lot of traffic in the online world about a piece by Mother Jones journalist Mac McClelland for Good. That’s not surprising in itself. If you’ve never heard of Mac McClelland, she’s one of those rare people in the world who is out to do some good…and cut a […]
Advocacy for M/s and other Fetish Issues…
In a group I follow on FetLife, the question came up of displays of M/s in public and whether or not that was appropriate. I wanted to share my personal feelings, and expand that into the larger sphere of public advocacy. The first thing I want to say is that I think that effective advocacy […]
Compare and Contrast – Poly in Five Years – WaPo and Washingtonian
When it comes to social matters, I’m an optimist. Whatever happens in the present, the fact is that better communications have always driven a more liberal culture. Sometimes they drive a more repressive one first because a facet of new communications is often that a group of people who weren’t involved in broad cultural discourse […]