It’s been awhile since we last had a Sexy Media Monday. LONG overdue, I’d say!

When Athena sent me her latest article—an entry in Open Salon about 16th birthday vibrators for one’s daughters that I think is positively awesome—I thought to myself, meh, do I want to sign up for Open Salon just to leave a comment? Another network? For real?

I did sign up; you know, what the hell… and when I scrolled down to leave my comment, I noticed something fascinating.

Open Salon blogs allow registered readers to tip bloggers.

There’s an amazing little widget right at the bottom of the post that lets you tip the author a buck, or however much, and although I assume I’d have to sign up for an additional function in order to make it work—attach my credit card, or some such thing—I had to pause a minute and think about the whole idea. My determination of viability is really based on one thing, most of the time: Do I feel the urge to actually do it?

And I really did.

In fact, if I’d had any money in my bank account at that particular moment, I would have tipped the woman ten bucks. (You should read her stuff. It’s fabulous.) I wonder if tips show up on the post? Surely there are pros and cons. But what a concept! I’m sure someone’s done it before now, but I’ve never seen it implemented, especially in a way that made me actually want to participate.

In the same way that I typically show my gratitude for a great experience at a restaurant, I can also show my gratitude for a great experience reading a wonderful article… and this makes perfect sense to me.

Wow. I love it.

And oh! Geeze! I almost forgot…

Not too long ago, I got my grubby paws on Athena Bradford’s ebook, The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Vibrators. I’m a fan of intelligent, informative sex literature (ask anybody) and I freaking loved this book. I was so pleased by the hour or so I spent reading it that I wrote her an off-the-cuff review to vent my excitement. I’ve been looking for an excuse to post it somewhere ever since I emailed it to her, and I figure, hey, here’s my chance, right?

So, Athena Bradford has obviously found the ultimate way to make a living: Reviewing vibrators. (Crap, why didn’t I think of that?) What’s more, she’s a genius at it. She’s very honest and straightforward (even if you happen disagree with her on one or two items) and she lets you make your own decisions about the information at hand. She’s also FUNNY —the book made me laugh out loud constantly, which made the hour I spent reading all 40-or-so pages of it (and browsing links!) absolutely enjoyable.

The Intelligent Woman’s Guide to Vibrators is witty and super informative, with adorably cheesy puns and lots of understanding and encouragement. This is exactly what many women are looking for (and this review is my way of chipping in and helping them find it). Not everyone wants to discuss their sex lives at length the way I tend to do, and if you’re not used to the off-putting barrage of sex and porn advertisements that can await anyone searching for sex information on the internet, looking for what you need can be downright scary. Athena has put together a fabulous primer for women who like their private lives to stay private. She links you straight to the good stuff (and she picks GREAT good stuff).

She reviews lots of items, from the pocketbook-friendly to the top-of-the-line (and we both have been impressed by a few top-of-the-line models that are definitely worth the additional expense). Her categories are sensible and the information she provides is quite helpful. Plus, there are pictures of the toys in question (so you know what you’re going to look at when you click).

My final word: This is a DAMN good book. I’m pretty well-versed when it comes to toys, but I’ll probably make my next few purchases based on this guide. You can slog through the internets to find vibe information, and probably find a few good vibrator guides while you’re at it—but this one is brilliant and funny, right here in front of you, and more than worth its $17 price tag. If you’re at all apprehensive about finding solid, easy-to-parse information about sex stuff you don’t really want to discuss at length or deal with ads to find, this is going to make your day.

Did you read all that? I have a Twitter / LOLcats version, too:

PLS SEND @AthenaBradford MONEY TO CONTINUE VIBE RESERTCH. http://intelligentwomansvibrators.com/ kthnxbye!

See? Easy.

Anyway, if you decide to go experiment with Open Salon, make sure to tip Athena a few bucks for me. I’ll owe you coffee. ;}

Embarrassment. Fear. Dread. Uh oh. What will happen if they find out?

You know, I used to feel this way all the time. I used to feel this way about every little thing under the sun. And you know what?

I still feel this way a lot.

But now I remember what it is, and what to do with it.

What I don’t do is act on that fear—on my good days. When I feel it, I try hard to listen so that I can confront the thing I’m afraid of. What? What was that? Afraid of what people will think if you don’t shave your legs today, huh? Terrified? Imagining what they’ll say about you? Creating pariah scenarios in your head?

Oh yeah, really?

Time to get rid of all the razors and see what actually happens.

(Would you like to hazard a guess as to whether anything actually happened?)

As important as unrepressing myself was to the direction my life has taken—to everything I do now and everything I want to be, and all the skills that are allowing me to move forward—I’m still afraid when I post something to do with sex. “Sex is bad,” something says. I will be rejected for being willing to discuss it in public, it says. But you know what? That rarely ever happens. (I just did it again yesterday in a spectacularly entertaining and ridiculous way, so I’ll let you know if I get any more fallout than usual. That is to say, none.)

The thing is, I really care about the public dialogue about sexuality, even if I don’t write about it often these days. So knowing that I fear that discussion is really frustrating for me. Knowing that, I want to confront it whenever I have the opportunity. I think it’s the right thing to do. I think our fears need to be confronted.

That’s how we grow.

It’s not just about sex. It’s not about dating, or marketing, or cold calls. It’s not about parties or chatrooms. It’s not about flying in planes or swimming in deep water or moving to Africa. It’s not about having fuzzy legs, either. It’s not about polyamory or veganism or making new friends or launching a new business or any one thing.

It’s about you. It’s about who you’re meant to be. It’s about the person you can grow into, the person you’re moving toward, the person that happens if nothing squelches you. You don’t set out to be squelched. You set out to be amazing. So why would you let anything get in your way?

Get rid of all the razors in the house, or start writing about the topics that scare you, or whatever else you have to do to confront that voice in your head. Hell—it might be the only thing you have standing between you and greatness. You’re not going to let that stop you.

Are you?

All right. I have to try and qualify exactly why this was so funny. (I am not going to even suggest that it’s NSFW, because that would make this whole situation just that much funnier.)

First of all, you should know that I think sex is awesome.

I think sexuality is a wonderful thing to express, to explore, and to share with other people. (What is sex, after all, but a sort of sharing—even when it’s with yourself?) I think pornography, for all its many flaws, is a grand institution that should be protected, not destroyed.

Second of all, you should know that I greatly disapprove of spam.

Not so much that it continually makes me angry, but enough that I root it out wherever I can. I have developed a certain zen approach to dealing with it, but that doesn’t change the fact that I dislike it (like everyone else).

Furthermore, I get IM spam rather a lot. I’m not sure where I dropped my IM name, but I must have somewhere, because I get random bot IMs fairly consistently. I just block ‘em and close ‘em, and don’t worry about it. But this… this, I didn’t close. (In fact, I took a screenshot and I still haven’t closed it, because it delighted me.)

Let’s examine the situation.

Normally when we’re talking about porn spam, we’re talking about words, right? Larger / tighter genitalia, willing sex kittens, confused animals, etc. It’s always the stuff you don’t go looking for, the stuff that shocks you. It’s a horrible tactic, but I’m willing to bet it shocks some folks into looking, and many folks into getting turned on. And since arousal = cold hard cash, that’s good for the porn spammers. Why else would they keep doing it, after all? This is all speculation; I know pretty much nothing about porn spam. So take my appraisals with a grain of salt.

Since I typically keep HTML in my email turned off, I’ve never had to deal with image spam. The advertising director in a company I worked with once used to regale us with stories of the filth in his inbox. (His HTML was not turned off.) They were entertaining, but I doubt I’d be as entertained if the moaning gushing extracurricular randiness was being pushed to my inbox. I’m incredibly pro-sex, but I choose when and where—spam is, as usual, out of the question.

So why is it, this morning, when I received that IM, that I laughed so hard? Why is it that I left it up, and showed it to my friends? Why did I upload it to Flickr, and why am I writing about it now?

Well, it’s not commercial spam, for one thing. It’s not making anybody any money. It’s not shuffling anyone to a website, and the fact that I SAW it did not somehow suck my credit card digits through my optic nerve. (Wow. I don’t THINK it did…) Maybe if I’d responded to the IM, that might not be so great—and I guess I’d better be sure I did block the IM name, because it would be silly not to cover my bases. I don’t actually know the facts behind IM bots and why they do what they do, or whether they’re capable of doing something bad to my system.

But just having SEEN it, to me, was harmless. Neutral.

So here’s the really great part: Why was it AWESOME, instead of just neutral?

MINIMALIST ASCII GENITALIA, people! Don’t TELL me that’s not the funniest thing you’ve ever come across in your LIFE. I was NEVER one of the sniggering kids—I didn’t cackle when someone said “fart” or “sphincter” or “rod” or any of the other words that 8-year-olds go apeshit over. So why do I think minimalist ASCII genitalia is so brilliantly fantastic? Why did it make my day?

It’s just… adorable.

And it’s weirdly like art.

It’s a thing that makes you feel a thing. Even if it pisses you off, it makes you feel a thing. What does it mean to SEE something and then FEEL something? Isn’t that a fascinating reaction? Have you ever really thought about it? The way someone smiling at you makes you FEEL something? Have you ever looked at one of Marty’s nifty zombie-fighting illustrations and felt a swell of heroism? (Wait! Not that… THAT.)

I looked at that dumb little ASCII doodle and I saw a part of a person—a part that people take for granted, and get offended by, but a part that happens to be important for all kinds of great reasons. The spammer probably doesn’t care that it’s important, and wasn’t trying to SAY anything to me by sending it along. This particular part (whatever part you think it happens to be) is often used in exactly this manner to shock or take advantage of people. Except in this case, it was so basic—so minimal—that its existence was nebulous in purpose. So I could take from it whatever I wanted. It didn’t matter what the spammer wanted. All that mattered was how I felt about it. And it just so happened that it made me laugh. (Uproarously. It was awesome.)

Then it occured to me that many people take away something else entirely. They get angry. They feel violated. Offended. Because someone made them look at something they didn’t want to think about just then. So I thought about that—uncomfortable, I understand that. There’s a time and place, folks. Porn good, spam bad. And the fact that at first I wondered if I should share—sex is so demonized in our culture in so many ways that I wondered if people would be offended by the screenshot in Flickr—doesn’t that suggest that our typical reactions to sex and porn and all manner of other things is just getting to be absurd? Especially if a spambot thinks it can bug us by IMing us a little thing like that?

Hell, I understand the need to avoid invasive spam. Sharing sexuality is excellent, but privacy is extremely important, too. I am totally with you there. But this… how could this ever upset anyone?

And what I took away from it, instead of anything else, was joy. Art. A bizarre, childlike glee. Out of that dumb little interruption. Six characters in 11 point Arial.

So what do you make of that?

[Edit: More is surfacing, like this link (this is the best kind of punk’d, where I write a long involved post about sexuality), plus a few more thoughts of my own, like for instance, “Why didn’t I think it was a kissy face instead of something else?” and “Would it have been nearly as introspective and entertaining if I had?” and “If there’s a real person on the other end of that bot, what did THEY mean it to be?” I may or may not follow up on this later, but you have to admit, it says a lot about me and the way my brain works that I went straight to the explicit conclusion. Very Rorschach!]

[Additional Edit: Wouldn’t it be awesome if the person who sent that message showed up to tell us what they meant by it? Because that would be a great complement to the way my brain has been whirring a thousand cycles a second over what could reasonably be called “nothing”. What a fantastic process.]

[Additional Edit #2: This was (almost) undoubtedly a reference to Me and You and Everyone We Know (which I got a kick out of, by the way). As goofy as this whole thing was, I’m leaving it up for some twisted version of posterity… Ha!]

Sometimes even the most reasonable people make some pretty unfair assumptions.

Assumptions about motive, background, pastimes, lifestyle, character.

I guess it’s the usual error (isn’t it always?), but in this case it’s particularly unfortunate. Assumptions can put others into difficult positions, weaken diversity, and tend to shut down communication. Once you make that assumption out loud (especially if you follow it up with a harsh opinion), you may never get to hear the real story.

Men, women, Christians, pagans, citizens of every shade and sexuality, Trekkers, strippers, tree-huggers, sex workers, hackers, kings, queens, burners, raw foodists, furries. (Lenses, Rick would say.) This applies to anyone and everyone. The trim femme at work isn’t who you think she is. Neither is the practicing submissive across the street. Your cousin Jan isn’t polyamorous for the reasons you’d assume, and she hates it when you call her a swinger. (The swingers don’t like it when you make assumptions about them, either.) That completely “normal” dude in your car pool who mentioned a favored fetish while drunk might be a little embarrassed, but don’t jump to conclusions. You might be surprised at what you really don’t know.

These are all real people with real lives, doing the best they can to find peace and happiness in a complicated world. Some of them have made mistakes (just like you), but chances are their preferred lifestyle isn’t one of them, and none of them deserve hasty judgment from a badly-informed source. Do you really think your uneducated opinion is doing them a favor?

Please think hard before you publish.

Pace has written an incredible, incredible post about transitions—gender transitions, and entrepreneurship transitions. Her story is touching and amazing, and is a mind-blowing perspective on the kind of strength and determination it takes to make a life-altering change. Either of her topics are substantial, to say the very least. Her comparisons—from my point of view—are 100% spot-on, and the parallels are amazing.

Entrepreneurship and gender transition are crash courses in fear-facing. Your issues will come up. Your landmines will be stepped on. Your triggers will be triggered. Each of these disasters is an opportunity for growth. (”Another fucking opportunity for growth”, as my friend Reesa says.) If you can maintain a positive attitude even through the toughest challenges, if each time you fall down you learn a little more about how to get back up, then your self-work will eventually manifest in outward success.

I am grateful to have been reminded of so many overwhelmingly important things. This post really moved me. Please take a few minutes to read it.

Me: I have to download the Doctor Who theme now. So I can masturbate to it.
Marty: The awesome thing about you is you’re not kidding.
Me: I’m NOT kidding.
Marty: I know. That’s why you’re so awesome.

[Edit: Burning Flipside had singing Tesla coils that performed, among other things, the Doctor Who theme. There are vids of the Tesla coils (skip to 0:36) but none that I can find of the Doctor Who theme, which just blew me off my feet. Anyone who supplies such a video will be my Best Friend Forever.]

Awhile back Isabella Rossellini’s Green Porno went to Sundance, and now it’s been released online. You are going to love these shorts. They are incredibly creative and engaging, and they catalogue the sexual practices of insects. In fact, Isabella performs the male role in several of them (with her brilliantly constructed, papercraft-esque co-stars) and I can’t insist enough, you’ve just got to take a look at these.

I haven’t the vaguest idea as to whether this is work safe. It’s science, people! It’s very hot. ;}

Green Porno, by Isabella Rossellini

We’ve only posted a few updates since getting to Aggiecon, and they’re both at Marty’s blog—a brief check-in after our first evening and a cryptic sketch addition.

Apparently the MSC —the building Aggiecon is held in—has been bugging Aggiecon for years to get rid of the nudity in the con art show. This year I guess they were extra insistent about it, because when we got there we found out we had to tape over exposed nipples. At a fantasy / SF art show, you can imagine how many nipples were floating around. A lot.

This is absurd for a whole string of reasons, but the short story is that we did it and felt bad for the art show staff, who were obviously stressed and flustered. We doubt there would have been censorship without that particular pressure from the MSC. We don’t blame the con staff, except that we think it’s better to stand up than sit down, especially in such a ridiculous situation. For this reason, Angel obtained a roll of the same blue tape used to censor most of the artwork, and proceeded to censor all willing nipples at con. Yesterday there were hordes of us walking around with blue tape X’s on our shirts, and more today. It’s more a joke than a protest, but there’s something to it. Todd was also supportive (as you can see), and Steve Brust was downright pissed. I can relate to that. If you take this sort of thing lying down too often, you get used to it. That’s not a cool thing to get used to.

In any case, we have our blue tape gang and our backstory. Steve sounds like he plans to write a letter. This con is turning out to be thoroughly weird and nifty. Anyway, I’m having a pretty good time. You can tell:

Update: By the way, Marty’s Iron Artist entry (or result?) touched on this particular issue—so if you enjoyed his pasties sketches, you’ll like the pictures of the competition. Well, with penguins.

I’m a great fan of Klimt. Many years ago a convention friend introduced me to his work and it’s always been something that particularly appealed to me, all those patterns, everything fitting together in impossible but perfect ways. My favorite painting was my friend’s favorite, too: Klimt’s Danae.

I keep a number of sexuality and art feeds in my newsreader, and this week something especially fabulous came up—a set called La esencia de Klimt, by a photographer named Moises González, basically a live recreation of many of Klimt’s works. They’re really gorgeous, and although they’re not quite accurate down to the tiniest detail, they’re beautiful in the same way and really, really enjoyable to look through. They do contain nudity (as you might surmise if you are familiar with Klimt’s paintings) but hopefully that won’t keep you from browsing. I think they’re just amazing.

Link: La esencia de Klimt, Moises González.

I don’t know why Monday is sex day; it just seems to work out that way. Maybe we all need a little titillation to get us through the first day back at work (although personally, my Mondays are already a fantastic kind of exciting, as you may know).

Google TechTalks on YouTube has a fantastic recording of Violet Blue’s talk about sex on the internet, the realities of porn, sexual privacy, and a myriad of other issues that are super important to understand—and talk about! It’s down-to-earth, entertaining to listen to (plus, her slides are awesome), safe for work if your employer isn’t offended by intelligent discussion of sexuality on the ‘net, and full of really interesting (and wonderful, and sometimes horrifying) information.

Also, cute bits like this: “The internet is growing new users every single day, and will continue,” she says, wielding one finger in feigned accusation, “until you all stop breeding.” (I think that’s at around 18:20 in—adorable!)

Link.