Be heard on the issues that matter most to you!
Blogger Deliciously Naughty has recently found herself knocked up and on the very brink of adding a third member to her household (how the hell did that happen, DN?). Whether you know DN in real life or only through her writing, you know how much she loves her kink, and pregnancy adds extra challenges to vanilla sexuality, never mind activities like bondage and flogging, and literature on the practicalities of dealing with those desires and practices is rare at best. Ironically, once women enter the role of mother, it makes it even more important for them to be well-behaved and chaste.
I'm going to give a mixed response to Reneé at Womanist Musings today. On the one hand, props on her masterful, passionate analysis of the media coverage of the murder of Elizabeth Acevedo, a 38-year-old disabled woman who worked as a prostitute. Avecedo was fatally struck on the head in the hallway of her apartment building, possibly by a client. And like I say, I have to give props to Reneé for her post, but part of me is pissed at her for ruining my otherwise excellent mood. Acevedo's death is tragic enough in itself, but the coverage of her death is just damn ugly. In particular, the gossip site Bossip describes her death as "comedy gold." Acevedo lost a leg in a train accident several years ago; therein lies the humor of her too-early death, and it seems that newswriters can't use the phrase "one-legged hooker" quite enough, as though 38 years can be summed up in those three words.
Ren has two more posts up as part of her guestblogging stint at Feministe . They both address issues that seem like they should be stunningly obvious to anyone with progressive politics and who sees sex workers as human beings, but they turn out to be hornet's nests of controversy:
There are very few things that give me hope these days, but one of them is that Renegade Evolution has landed herself a guestblogging gig at Feministe this week, writing about sex work activism. She's already written three incisive, orderly posts, one giving an overview of the issues pertaining to sex work activism and her own personal beliefs about it; the second is a basic guide to the philosophy of harm prevention, especially as applied to sex work, and the third speaks out about decriminalization. They're both very orderly, intelligent pieces, but the thing that makes me most optimistic is that so far, neither seems to have triggered the weird, hysterical blend of erotophobia and misogyny that masquerades as "radical" feminism.
Kudos to belledame for spotting this quote about sex and authoritarianism from George Orwell's 1984, which explains much of life in the modern world.
Ethan Persoff's
personal website is one of the best rationalizations for the existence of the Internet. In addition to being a talented cartoonist himself, Persoff has compiled a fascinating archive of comics history that includes some incredible specimens of pop culture that typically falls through the cracks. His collection includes a complete set of comics produced by Alcoholics Anonymous between 1968 and 1974; »
People 
like Pat Robertson or Fred Phelps will never succeed in silencing the voices of queers. They're too recognizably vile, and create an instant, impassioned response against them, to ever act as anything other than very good rallying points for people who believe in social justice and sexual equality. The worst enemies of sexual minorities come from within the LGBT communities themselves. They're the people whose vision of LGBT activism involves making the homos just like the heteros, and want that so badly that they strive not to broaden our culture's vision of sexuality, but instead work to narrow the community's vision of itself. Look, for example, at this quote from Joseph Sabrow's editorial in Metroline, a New England gay and lesbian publication, that Autumn Sandeen spotted:
There's a lot to say about the ineptitude and lack of foresight involved in the creation of this sign, but ultimately, the message gives some good, solid advice for those who don't want to accidentally reproduce. (via)
One of the problems with politics is how words and images can slip from being portrayals of people's lives into trite cliché so easily that you can't even remember when the line was crossed. For example, take the coat hanger.
The 
coat hanger has been the symbol of activists who work to keep abortion a viable choice for all women everywhere. It represents the bad old days, when abortion was illegal in many parts of the country, although being illegal never stopped it from happening. The coat hanger has become ubiquitous in the debate over abortion. So much so that its meaning seems to have become invisible. It's been over thirty years now since Roe V. Wade was first handed down, and a couple of generations have grown up and become sexually active with the choice of abortion as something that could be taken as granted. The coat hanger and the deaths and self-mutilations it represents has become part of our intellectual wallpaper, something that is so old and familiar that we barely think of it at all. When we do, many people are likely to see the coat hanger as more symbolic of earnest young activists wound up on idealism and hyperbole than as part of our history.
