The bad news: For the past two years, conservative anti-porn organization Morality in Media had $150,000 in Congressional funding.

From the Morality in Media announcement list:

Dear Friend of Morality In Media,

You can’t save the world if you can’t pay the bills.

It’s a sad truth. Many a fine project has disappeared into the dustbin of history because of a lack of funding.

And now Morality In Media is facing a financial crisis. The Congress has changed hands, and MIM has lost vital congressional funding for one of our most important projects.

Which means that, in months ahead, MIM will have to raise $150,000 from other sources to keep this project operating!

If you want us to keep up our battle against pornography, please click here to donate your most generous possible emergency contribution!

Let me explain how this happened.

You see, for the past two years, Congressional appropriations for the U.S. Department of Justice have included critical funding for MIM’s obscenity-fighting website.

That website, www.obscenitycrimes.org, supplies vital information that federal investigators and U.S. Attorneys can use to investigate and prosecute internet obscenity.

I’ve told you in the past of the important role this website plays in our nation’s fight against internet obscenity.

In fact, since its inception, MIM’s website has received over 60,000 reports of internet obscenity!

But we are now facing what is for us a major crisis.

You see, for the past two years MIM has received an annual grant of $150,000 for our website. That money was contained in an Appropriations Bill that was passed by Congress.

But, this past November, Congress changed hands.

And with the change in Congress, the Appropriations Committees changed. As a result, the 2007 Appropriations Bill contains no funding for MIM’s obscenity-fighting project.

Yes, we can and will apply directly to the Justice Department for a new grant. But when we do so, we will be competing with thousands of other applicants.

MIM won’t know for months whether we will get a new grant from Justice. But one thing is certain – THIS PROJECT SHOULD AND WILL CONTINUE IF WE CAN RAISE THE ADDITIONAL $150,000!

That’s why I’m writing you today with this appeal.

You know, fighting obscenity and indecency is tough work. But there are also great rewards.

And I want you to know that there is one reward that all of us at MIM find very encouraging.

It is the realization that so many Americans are willing to sacrifice to help us in our battle against pornography.

Yes, the generous and faithful support of Morality in Media’s donors gives us great inspiration in our work.

But the job also has its hard parts. And today MIM is facing a potential deficit of $150,000. And today I am asking you to make a truly sacrificial gift to Morality In Media.
So here’s what I’m asking you to do…

First, we need your fervent prayers in support of our work. We simply couldn’t survive without them.

Second, we need your most generous support possible, right now. I know from what MIM president Bob Peters tells me that MIM depends a great deal on gifts of between $100 and $1,000.

Some of our donors can make donations of much more than $1000. And others of very limited means give us $10 or $25, with their enthusiastic and prayerful support.

Can you help Morality In Media at this critical time?

Please click here to make a truly sacrificial contribution! Can you support our work with a $250 donation? I know it’s a lot, but this situation is crucial.

Your critical donation today will assure that Morality In Media can continue its vital work to combat illegal obscenity and indecency in every facet of American life.

And let me assure you, with your indispensable help, we will continue that battle on all fronts.

In recent months, MIM lawyers submitted amicus briefs in two federal court cases involving the broadcast indecency law.

Both cases were filed by broadcast TV networks that are unhappy about specific indecency fines they received for polluting the public airwaves with vulgarity and nudity.

But the networks aren’t just asking the courts to reverse the fines for specific programs. They are asking the courts to declare the broadcast indecency law unconstitutional!

And by suing in both New York and Philadelphia, they think they have a better chance of finding friendly judges.

Yes, these are critical battles, and MIM needs your most generous possible help to win them!

Thank you, and may God bless you.

Sincerely,

Christopher Manion
Vice President

If that lengthy fundraising letter has you fumbling for your wallet, I’m sure the Free Speech Coalition (adult entertainment advocacy group) will be more than happy to take your money.

You can find out more about Morality in Media through their official website and through ObscenityCrimes.org.

Today, March 9, is the last day to comment on the proposed .XXX domain extension.

• .XXX domains would cost $60 per URL per year
• The new extension would be voluntary, punishing businesses that choose to self-regulate and not addressing the vast majority of adult webmasters using .com, .net, or international extensions
• Defining adult content, commercial or noncommercial, is very subjective
• The extension would likely become mandatory or pseudo-mandatory through credit card processor regulations; this would financially penalize the adult industry in a way that no other industry is subject to as well as open the industry up for censorship

From the Free Speech Coalition:

It is imperative that ICANN hear from the industry in a BIG way! Please send an e-mail to ICANN and simply state “I am in the adult entertainment industry and I oppose .XXX”. If you are a webmaster, state that you are a webmaster in your e-mail as well as how many websites you manage.

E-mail your comments to: xxx-icm-agreement@icann.org.

Public comments can be viewed at: http://forum.icann.org/lists/xxx-icm-agreement/. Comments received on or before March 9, 2007 will be considered at the next scheduled Special Meeting of the ICANN Board.

“Oppose .XXX,” Free Speech Coalition

Act now and make your voice heard.

(Thanks to Madame for the reminder.)

So here’s what I want to talk about with class. This guy was all, “I would like to see sex shops zoned into a particular area.” Well that’s how it Already IS, fucker!! That’s how it’;s BEEN for decades now, and guess what, that’s where the PROBLOEMS come from! Just think for one nanosecond about the term “slumming.” That is fucked up. That implies a direct corrolation between porn/sex/dirty stuff and LOW CLASS. And let’s not forget lower class folks are presumed to be “wilder” and all that bullshit… oh and when it comes to sex shops, strip clubs, etc., eben if they DON’T want it in their neighborhood, guess who has the most effect when it comes to NIMBY (not in my back yard) bullshit? It’s not the poor!

Look I was blind to a lot of this stuff (not all of it tho) for a long time but now that I see it? I fucking see it EVERYWHERE, and it pisses me the fuck off!! Because to me it is now so fucking OBVIOUS, that it pisses me off that some people just.don’t.see it.

Okay and this is one of the main things that annoyed me about Pamela Paul’s book Pornified too. She doesn;t want porn to go away. She just wants it to go back to being something confined to the wrong side of the tracks. And she doesn’t see anything wrong with that! She just puts it out there like there’s nothing worth examining. She even used the phrase “low class stripper” a couple times and just didn’t think there was anything wrong with it.

-the fabulous/infamous Amber Rhea, under the influence of a little vodka and a lot of pissed off

(“Drunkblog RANT – classism and other shit,” Being Amber Rhea)

It’s funny – I didn’t see it either for a while, or I saw it and didn’t focus my eyes on what I was seeing.

For a lot of women sex work is a last-ditch option, something we all consider in the back of our minds when we’re growing up; we ask ourselves once or twice, if we needed the money, would we strip? Would we do porn? Turn tricks? And that fallback, that fishnet safety net, is there for every woman when times get tough.

Of course, it’s a valid emergency gig, but it’s not a decent job, let alone a respectable career choice. Once again, nice girls don’t. Well bred girls don’t. It’s beneath them – much like community college and dating outside their background.

So, yeah, it’s a class thing. Sex work is something a woman can turn to when she’s down and then slander once she’s back on her feet. In fact, she’s expected to. That’s part of the ritual of the redemption of the whore: she has to cast off her old life to be reaccepted into society.

It’s funny, the correlation between porn and lower-class neighborhoods. There’s an assumption that sex shops lower property values, so they’re restricted to less desirable areas. Interestingly enough there is no cause and effect there. According to Manhattan lawyer Herald Price Fahringer, “[New York City] did a study a couple of years ago that showed no rise in crime or decline in real property values.” (There’s been more on that issue recently, but I can’t find the link I’m thinking of; if anyone turns up some info, you’ll be duly rewarded with link love.)

Question your assumptions: porn is adult entertainment, and a working-class stiff doesn’t have half the entertainment budget a CEO does…

* For more information on the voluntary Restricted to Adults label, visit RTALabel.org.

The Adult Industry Podcast Network just launched and is taking submissions. If you’ve got a podcast out there geared toward the adult industry, or if you’re about to start one, check them out. They’ll host your podcast and promote you to their listener base.

Frankly I’m glad to see an industry-specific business podcast for adult entertainment. If you’re an adult webmaster or do sex-related affiliate marketing give their podcasts a listen.

Sam Sugar’s TGP.com is now in beta and is also taking submissions. The site’s relaunching with a bold new look and a very 2.0 theme:

TGP.com has entered the public Beta phase, allowing users to contribute to and benefit from what its owner calls “one of the adult Internet’s most valuable URLs.”

Here’s how the system works: Users upload erotic photos and links to their websites or affiliate programs. The photos automatically are placed in a gallery, and surfers who visit the site vote for their favorites. The most popular galleries appear on TGP.com’s home page, thereby generating significant traffic for the originating website.

“TGP-dot-com Announces Live Public Beta,” AVN Online

Affiliate links are more than welcome, and Sam has invited both the amateur and professional sex blogging community to participate. Solo models, your time has come…

At its core orgasm control and denial is about men submitting to the control a woman has over their pleasure and orgasm, letting her have her way with him even when it means she might deny him his way. It’s radical for questioning the idea that foreplay is for women (since as we all know, men aren’t interested in foreplay or being on the receiving end of a pleasurably teasing touch) and that the male orgasm is the natural culmination of sex.

Many submissive men sometimes get off on the idea that their teaser finds male orgasms messy and disgusting and sex with them a hassle. They eroticize the idea of female disinterest in their cock. It’s a form of erotic humiliation that some thrive on and it can be fun but in reality it’s not my style.

After the great feminist blowjob debate of 2006 it’s worthwhile to remember the immense amount of power and control a woman has over her partner’s orgasm… the ability to speed it up, slow it down, hold it off, make them beg, or deny it completely. It’s a rush and yes, you can feel that power on your knees with your hair held in a fist. The choice to cover your teeth or let him feel them and be reminded you have claws…

Men have a right not just to the pleasure of taking but the pleasure of surrender – perhaps the last great male taboo. Too many women still look down on their man if he shows such a sign of “weakness” as submission to her power and strength, even for a night. Too many women fear themselves, and being able to ask for – no, demand – what they really want. It’s easy to hesitate. Dominating is hard work and requires self-knowledge and self-control any student of the occult would envy.

It’s more about the tease, the art of the coquette, the temptress, the tester, than the denial. It’s very much about the possibilty of denial in its most basic form, the removal of pleasure… part of the dance of love, part of the art of increasing wanting, taking away your interest, your touch, your company.

I love directness and boldness and honesty but there’s no sense in being artless when it comes to the oldest arts of all.

There’s nothing wrong with making him beg for it. In this age of cheap and easy instant gratification pleasure delayed is all the more precious. We’ve been told for too long now just to cut to the chase, only to find out that maybe all he really wants is to be seduced “our” way. (I say this knowing full well that for huge swaths of women, “our” way is to cut straight to the chase. I’m a big fan of the “Wham Bam, Thank You Sir” approach myself at times.)

Chicks don’t get a monopoly on the either foreplay or the oh-so-willing victim role. Sensual touch just plain feels good and there’s something incredible in giving another person complete control over your orgasm. It makes the eventual – okay, possible – release that much more potent.

To a smartass tease, the game of stroke-and-release has a lot of potential for mindfucking. Modern culture assumes the male orgasm. It’s almost a right in any given sexual encounter: the man will come.

In tease and denial that assumption is blown out the window. He gets what she chooses to dish out. If he comes without her permission, she might subject him to punishment. (Of course sometimes the punishment’s half the fun, right?) I kinda like the implications this has for premature ejaculators. Ladies, we have our retraining program and the men are already lining up.

Tease and denial is a very feminist femdom slant on male/female equality and parity. Standard fare “male” sex isn’t the one true way – for either men or women. Not all guys want it fast and hard and now now now. And not all girls feel like giving it to them that way, anyway.

Some of us would rather see them beg.

To me, feminism means equal opportunity gender roles. I can play sugar mamma and he can stay home with the kids. I can wear high heels and lipstick and try to coax him into eyeliner between bouts of hardware swapping and stick fighting. I can ride him hard and fast, use him for my selfish pleasure, and he can surrender to a sweetly langorous sensual touch that may or may not end in anything at all. You choose which traits to reject or claim, whether they were labeled pink or blue.

Of course that’s tease and denial from a female dominant/male submissive perspective. There are other flavors. I think the gender role flip is most pronounced with femdom/malesub, though.

By Steve Javors
Tuesday, October 10, 2006
XBiz News

CANOGA PARK, Calif. — Stepping up educational efforts in anticipation of upcoming elections Nov. 7, the Free Speech Coalition issued its first online Congressional Report Card. The report was compiled from numerous online sources and voting records.

The final grade utilizes a numeric rating system to calculate an average voting record, which is then converted to an alphabetic grade for the incumbent politician in each U.S. House and Senate race.

“Our goal is to inform FSC members how votes in Congress can affect their access to adult entertainment products, and to encourage them to vote their ‘erotic interests’ as well as their economic and security interests in this year’s critical midterm elections,” FSC Legislative Affairs Director Kat Sunlove said. “With the hostile attitude of this administration and this Congress toward our industry, we felt that our members and our consumers needed this data in order to cast an informed vote.”

(full article at XBiz)

If you’re pro-porn and you don’t vote, keep in mind that the members of groups such as Morality in Media do. Outside of the FSC the adult industry has few advocates. We can use all the help we can get.

$pread Magazine Produces Sex Industry Art Exhibit

NEW YORK, NY – $pread, a quarterly magazine by and for sex workers and their allies, presents Sex Worker Visions, an exhibition featuring art by sex workers and about the sex industry, at the LGBT Community Center David Bohnett Cyber Center at 208 West 13th Street, New York City, from March 29 – May 20. Visions kicks off with an opening reception on March 29 from 6 to 9 pm.

Visions is curated by Audacia Ray, Executive Editor of $pread and former Assistant Curator at the Museum of Sex. Artists include sex activist and educator Heather Corinna, former SuicideGirl and illustrator Molly Crabapple, exotic dancer and photographer Charise Isis, and former prostitute and filmmaker Anne Hanavan, as well as Paul Sarkis and George Pitts’ intimate portraits of porn stars. Photographs by Erin Siegal and illustrations by Fly and Cristy Road originally appearing in $pread will also be on display. Sales will benefit the non-profit magazine.

The March 29 event is also the opening night of the Sex Work Matters conference, a joint venture of CUNY and the New School (www.sexworkmatters.net). For $pread, the evening will also mark the start of its second year of publication. In its first year, $pread won Best New Title from the Utne Indepenent Press Awards. The Spring issue of $pread will be available for sale at the reception.

For opening night only, the exhibit will be completely interactive with a webcam video project, “30 Second Sex,” masterminded by multimedia artist and erotic professional Melissa Gira and featuring webcam pioneers Ana Voog and Echo Transgression camming from remote locations. Computer monitors around the Cyber Center will display the websites of sex worker rights advocacy groups for the public to peruse. Former call girl Tracy Quan along with sex worker activist Carol Leigh (aka Scarlot Harlot) will be signing copies of their respective books, Diary of a Married Call Girl and Unrepentant Whore.

Get a sneak peek of the exhibition at http://sexworkervisions.blogspot.com

WHAT: Sex Worker Visions opening reception

WHERE: LGBT Community Center’s David Bohnett Cyber Center, 208 W. 13 St., NYC

WHEN: 6–9 PM

—

And if you want to know a little more about the babe behind the scenes, Audacia’s brand new interview with Gothamist gets into her thoughts about modelling, sex work, the Sex Worker Visions exhibit, the Perverts’ Saloon, and where the hell this sex-positive activism movement is going. Very cool stuff.

The one that was lingering in the House, that involved making lascivious exhibitation of the genital area and simulated sexually explicit conduct – presently exempt – subject to 2257?

The one that, if it became law, would make R-rated movies subject to 18 U.S.C. § 2257 regs… Yeah, that one.

The U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill yesterday (also Blog Against Sexism day… more on that in the next post); HR 4472. Title 6 of HR 4472 contains language that was basically adapted from the Pence Amendment and adds to 2257.

Right now you’re thinking, “Oh, joy! Who else is going to have to take down their porn when – not if – this piece of horseshit passes the Senate?”

Why do I say when? Aside from the fact that the language in question is sneakily buried within a bill targeting sex offenders and street gangs (and who can say no to that, with midterm elections coming up and MySpace predators on the evening news every night?), XBiz reports:

The bill was passed under a suspension of House rules, so no debate or discussions were allowed, [industry attorney Jeff] Douglas said, further signaling a possible agenda on the part of lawmakers to rush it through to the Oval Office as quickly as possible.

“According to a House Republican, they have gotten a guarantee that the Senate also will take it up in an expedited fashion, and this suggests they don’t intend to hold any hearings,” Douglas said, adding that there has never been a congressional hearing on 2257 law since it was enacted in 1988.
“House Passes 2257-Related Bill,” XBiz

I haven’t read the language of Title 6 yet, but I’ll try to do it before lunch and post some followup. This not only directly affects me, it directly affects the chances of you seeing my sweet pink activist cunt.