Blowfish has always had a strong pro-sex-work ethic, and wishes that archaic laws in the US against such were brought up to date. However, it is always good to remember that we do live in a world such as this:
Whatever approach we take to the liberalizing of sexual commerce has to take account of this, and find ways to make sure it is eradicated.
[via warrenellis.com]
If you go to an opera about a pagan who abandons the mother of his two children to run off with a young virgin, causing the mother to plot to kill her (and his) own children, but at the last moment the mother denounces him to the Druids, and they cast both of them onto a funeral pyre…
… of course the most scandalous thing in the whole evening will be a perfume ad in the program.
[via Fleshbot]
From the Freakonomics blog:
Turn now to the United States, where the Federal Government has spent upwards of $1 billion over the last decade on abstinence-only sex education. (Call it defensive dating.) The idea is that not teaching students about contraception, safe sex, etc., will lead to better outcomes, including less unwanted pregnancies and fewer sexually transmitted diseases.
Except … it turns out that teenagers are circumventing their abstinence education and having sex anyway.
Thank you to Cindy Chupack, who said amazingly nice and wonderful things about us in the October 2007 issue of O: The Oprah Magazine (no, really!). We couldn’t have said it better ourselves:
Blowfish.com turns out be as user-friendly as amazon.com. In addition to extensive privacy policies, it features enthusiastic, well-written reviews and a whole section of couples videos.
Of course, our loyal customers knew all that, but it’s cool to see it in a national magazine.
We’d like to offer a round of applause and congratulations to Tim Pratt, author of our Caught in the Net column and our video reviewer, for winning the 2007 Hugo Award (the highest award in Science Fiction) for his short story “Impossible Dreams.” We are proud to be the only company of our type to have a Hugo Award-winner on staff!
Even though this should come as a surprise to absolutely no one, the BBC reports on a Oxford University team which examined 13 US abstinence-only trials involving more than 15,000 people. The conclusion?
Researchers found none of the abstinence-only programmes had an impact on the age at which individuals lost their virginity, whether they had unprotected sex, the number of sexual partners, the rates of sexually transmitted diseases or the number of pregnancies.
Yet, an entire third of the Federal government’s HIV protection budget goes to these programs.
Blowfish urges everyone reading this to support the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, and help with their defense of Gordon Lee:
For nearly three years the Fund has defended Georgia retailer Gordon Lee, seeing him through multiple arraignments and procedures, and racking up $80,000 in legal bills. The charges stem from a Halloween 2004 incident in which Lee handed out, among other free comics, an anthology featuring an excerpt from the critically acclaimed graphic novel The Salon. The segment depicted a historically accurate meeting between 20th Century art icons Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso, the latter depicted in the nude. It was a harmless sequence, no more explicit than the nudity displayed in the award winning Watchmen. Yet because the title found its way into the hands of a minor, Floyd County prosecutors hit Lee with two felony counts and five misdemeanors. The Fund eventually knocked out most of the charges, but must now defeat the two remaining misdemeanor counts of Distribution of Harmful to Minors Material, each carrying a penalty of up to one year in prison and up to $1,000 in fines.
This link has information about the case and the CBLDF. For the months of June and July, Blowfish will donate 10% of the price of all comics sold to the CBLDF.
Last year, about this time, we were proud to announce that The Crash Pad by Shine Louise Houston won the “Best Dyke Sex Scene” award at the Feminist Porn Awards. This year, both of her new movies, Superfreak and In Search of the Wild Kingdom were in competition . . . so who would win? What would happen? The suspense was nearly overwhelming!
The envelope please . . . they both did!
Superfreak won for “Best Dyke Sex Scene,” and In Search of the Wild Kingdom won for “Best Trans Sex Scene”! Woo! Congratulations, Shine, and thank you to the organizers for recognizing her wonderful movies with a clean sweep!