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Cold and dark is the end of 2009 and I am looking forward to the new year. This has been a tough year personally, and Sex In The Public Square has suffered a bit as a result. Looking toward 2010 I am guardedly optimisitc that we can improve things.

Looking back for a moment, a few very good things did occur this year.

• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Service/Acceptable Use
• Comment Policy

 If you currently use a feed reader to keep track of us we want you to know that we're making some changes. For a long time we've been using Feedburner for managing our feeds, but we've noticed lots of "page not found" errors coming from Feedburner.

We've now changed our feed links throughout the site so that they connect to the site's own RSS publishing.

While the Feedburner feeds will continue to publish, we recommend that you update your subscription using these links so that you will not run into any problems with "page not found" errors. 

Whole-site feed: http://sexinthepublicsquare.org/rss.xml

Comments-only feed: http://sexinthepublicsquare.org/crss

 Check here for events and announcements.

Comments here are moderated to eliminate spam and to make sure that conversations are on-topic and respectful.

Some basics:

If you got an email today saying that your account was deleted please disregard it. The problem came from deleting some accounts on a test site. We did not realize that the test site sends out the same kinds of system emails that the live site does. 

If you want to be extra certain that your account is fine, please try logging in, or resetting your password. We have checked our databases, though, and all accounts appear to be fine. 

Please let us know if you experience any problems using the site. 

 LouFCD tweeted about this blog post which pointed to this article in the Sydney Morning Herald. The article provocatively asks us to consider whether "consent" is too low a bar to set for deciding whether sex that happens is okay. Adele Horin, author of the article, suggests that a better standard for deciding whether sex should happen or not is whether the "he" in the situation (she is presuming hetero encounters) is committed to "her" pleasure. If he approaches the sex with her pleasure in mind then consent is going to have to be part of the picture, but he will go beyond consent to make sure she is enjoying the sex she consented to. Horin asks:

What would happen if the burden of proof in a rape trial were turned on its head.

Visible, I mean. I logged out to look, and there it is.

I'll have a look at this tomorrow. Don't let me forget.

• A new color scheme and layout
• Sections, to better organize content (see them across the top menu bar, and note we're having to catalog the site, so do be patient)
• Better use of images
• Gravatar and OpenID integration
• Other cool stuff.
  Please let us know what you think as we continue to develop the site. Use this contact form.

I have never been a girly-girl. In middle school I never had the right hairstyle or knew how to wear my clothes the way the popular girls did. In high school and college - and since - I have developed my own style of course (perhaps more an anti-style) and while I very much like my image I have certainly never thought of myself as model material. At least not until recently. I must say that having been asked to participate in the Sex Blogger Calendar has changed the way I see myself, at least part of the time.