Scanner : privacy

The War On Sex Rages On...

Brian Fairbanks — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 20:30:00 GMT

The War on Sex in this country has never been at more of a fever pitch. Church signs damn lesbians as hellbound. An accidental visit to a website that contains child pornography lands you in trouble with the law. A teacher is jailed, not without cause, for sleeping with a student of legal age. And on and on.

This week, we interview author/sex therapist Dr. Marty Klein, PhD about the State of the War on Sex, what we can expect under a McCain-Palin administration, and how we can win the war...

First, you're a sex therapist. You wrote a book called The War On Sex. In these troubling sexual times, how are you able to have a regular sex life? The people that must come in, with their problems...

Well, I can say this... Every good sex therapist communicates with his or her partner and every good sex therapist knows what they like erotically and is not afraid to communicate it and hopefully enjoys the satisfying consequences.

You say the War on Sex is different than your typical culture war. Can you elaborate on that?

The term culture war implies that there are two sides, like the North and South back in 1861. The truth is is that the War on Sex is really not two sides, equally equipped with opposite agendas. On one side, you have a group of people who just want to be left alone and not force other people to go to nude beaches or have abortions or anything like that. On the other side, you have decency groups... and local, state, and federal government... they not only have their own private agenda, they make it a public one when they tell people how they want them to live. The latest example of this is Sarah Palin: it's not enough that she doesn't want her children to read certain books, she wants to prevent other people in the community from reading those books by removing them from a public library...

Another example is the government in Phoenix, Arizona... even though none of the members of the government had ever gone to any strip clubs and no one had ever complained, they felt that they had to shut them down. The problem isn't too much government, it's the government pursuing a moralistic agenda.

Do the conservatives want to bring us back to the sort-of Puritan era?

You know, it's really unsettling to hear people say we need the government to roll back the rights we've been accumulating over the last century. It's unsettling to hear people say, "All social problems can be traced back to sexuality." Or that sexuality needs to be somehow repressed. There's no data that says our social problems can be traced back to "sex."

You say in your introduction that some people "hate sex." What do you mean by that?

If you listen to some of these groups, like the person Bush asked to run the FDA, you would think that people need to be protected from their own sexuality, that adults need to be prevented from making choices... because those choices might be harmful to those adults. These people tell kids that sex can make them sterile, that sex can make them suicidal, sex is a toxic substance they need to keep away from. And that's just an awful training for young people.

What made you decide to write this book? Was there a final straw?

[Laughs] Well, I've been feeling that way for a while. Anyone who does this kind of counseling is inundated with the shame from people about their own sexuality and the sexuality of their partner. And then watching the Bush Administration dismantle, particularly our rights around reproductive health services and watching the Bush Administration fund religious institutions that were discriminating against sexual minorities and training young people to fear their sexuality, that was a real motivator...

It's just become clear to me that the level of misinformation in the culture about sexuality is no coincidence. It's the result of years of careful programming and massive funding... the kinds of things that make Europeans shake their heads and say, "What's up with those Americans?" Because they do-- they think that about us, and they're right. It's no coincidence all this is going on.

Until this book, no one made the case that it's all connected. The fight against gay rights, the fight against strip clubs, it's all connected: the money and the power is all connected.

You say in the book that the American people can win the War On Sex. How will we win it and how will we know we've won?

Well, I don't think there's going to be a day on which we decide we've won. Basically, it ends when the government decides that it's going to treat privacy issues regarding sexuality that same way it treats other private behavior. Which is that, "We don't care what you do, as long as you don't burn down somebody's house while you're doing it..."

Dr. Klein's book and website here.

Scanner Highs And Lows: Privates And Privacy

Blue Light Special -- On Your Privacy!

Sloppy Seconds: Half-Naked Woman At A Blue Jays Game

Palin's Grandbaby Daddy: Self-Proclaimed F*cking Redneck

Germans And Poles Are At It Again...

12 Year Old Girl Arrested For Distributing Nude Photo

Brian Fairbanks — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 14:00:00 GMT

A twelve-year-old girl in Westport, CT, which is one of the richest towns in the country, was busted for possession of child pornography. Well, not specifically for child pornography... but technically, the photo of her classmate she had been sending around is illegal child porn, but that's not what the cops nabbed her for...

The investigation began on May 12 when the incident was reported to Westport police after word circulated throughout Coleytown Middle School that a nude snapshot was taken during a video chat and distributed to others.

The authorities, as usual, are skirting the First Amendment by charging her under "disturbing the peace," must as they used the same argument for busting vagrants in the Olden Days. We have a feeling that this is not going to last as a criminal case (if this is a rich family, as we can suspect, given her location, they may get a decent attorney who can get the case thrown out, no?), though, if it's the pictured student who helped launch the investigation, this may turn into an ugly civil suit.

Although, of course, we're pretty sure whoever had their picture taken either a) consented to it or b) may actually not have cared and that it was parents who alerted the police without his/her agreeing to it or c) didn't consent to have his/her image saved and is learning a valuable lesson about internet privacy, end of story.

The girl is being referred to Juvenile Court in Norwalk on a charge of second-degree breach of peace, which involves the distribution of offensive and indecent material.
“In light of how sensitive this case is for all the families involved, I don’t feel it’s appropriate to comment at this time,” said Mark Sherman, an attorney for the girl.

The arrest comes amid growing worries among parents about teenagers snapping naked pictures of themselves on their cell phones and sending them to their boyfriends and girlfriends. Many of the pictures are falling into the wrong hands or being posted on the Internet, leading to criminal charges.

Via The Norwich Bulletin.

NYC Oversharer To Blame Internet For Her Misery

Bryan Christian — Wed, 16 Apr 2008 18:04:00 GMT

Normally we'd feel a litle weird about posting the picture of someone who's allegedly engaging in a secret office romance with a coworker. Like, we don't know who this person is, or what her story is, and God knows it's between her and her bedmate whatever happens between them. Except, as Gawker reports today, when she goes and blabs loudly about it at the airport, so that everyone getting on her plane knows her story, and the names of her friends, and how great they've been through it all, etc., etc.

In which case, we think that Little Miss Blabbermouth here loses any claim to privacy on the matter (and, as we learned on one of last night's TNT Law & Order reruns, the courts might actually agree with us). More importantly -- you, our beloved readers, deserve a reminder that, in this day and age, pretty much nothing in public counts as private.

So, is that Orwellian? Common phone ettiquette? Um... Pass!

PS: The Standing Room, the site that initially posted the woman's picture, has removed it from their site. Conscience or something less magnanimous? Who can say...

Scanner's Sex Boycott for New York Post Readers

Emily Farris — Thu, 14 Feb 2008 13:53:00 GMT

As we reported yesterday, The New York Post revealed the identity of a man who happened to choke while minding his own business at a BDSM club. The Post ran a series of stories about the man, his family and his profession and called his presence at the club his "shameful habit." When questioned about the ethics of revealing the man's name, a spokesperson for the paper shamelessly declared "The Post will happily name every adult caught in a dog collar."

We've never been big fans of The Post and its yellow journalism. This particular incident has sent us over the edge. We thought about calling for a boycott of The Post, but that wouldn't do much good. What would we do? Keep not buying The Post? Plus, we're going to go out on a limb and guess that a fair number of the people who get their news from The Post think it's probably okay to out someone like that. So, instead we're calling for a boycott of sex with people who read The New York Post.

That's right. If you believe that what The Post did was wrong, and you're sleeping with someone who reads that paper, or considering sleeping with someone who reads that paper, don't do it. We're all for sex, but we're also all for people having the right to practice whatever sexual fetishes they want to do freely (as long as they're not hurting anyone else, which this man clearly was not) without having their names and faces splashed on the front page of a New York City tabloid.

How long will a Post reader go without nookie before s/he finally makes the switch? And what kind of effect could this have on The Post's sales? We know it's already hurting for readership, that's why they shove free copies in everyone's faces. What would a sex boycott do to The Post?

All we want is for The Post to issue a front page apology to the man. Oh, and never pull that shit again. And even if they don't apologize because of our little boycott, do you really want to sleep with someone who gets his or her news from a source like The New York Post? We thought not.

[Previously on Scanner: "The Post will happily name any adult caught in a dog collar."]

"The Post will happily name every adult caught in a dog collar."

Emily Farris — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 18:44:00 GMT

A quote offered by The New York Post's spokesperson after the paper identified a 67-year-old man who choked at a BDSM club in New York. Not only did The Post name the man in an article, the editors felt the need to report every thing he was wearing (including a collar, nipple clamps, and high heels), and call his wife and former students for comment on the "incident."

Obviously, people—including us, Dan Savage, and the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom—are outraged. This man committed no crime and is not a public figure, yet The Post decided that they needed to "out" him for his sexual fetishes.

Oh, but wait, they misidentified the man in yesterday's paper, calling him Richard, not Robert. And after correcting the story, a Post reporter visited Robert in the hospital, and coaxed an "exclusive" interview out of him where he discussed what the paper called his "shameful habit." They splashed the story, and the man's picture, on the front page of today's paper.

Shame on The New York Post. Not that we ever read that crap for anything but gossip anyway.

[Portfolio: Sexual Vigilanteism at the 'New York Post']

[NOTE: Obviously, The Post ran their faces, we just blurred them out]

Blue Light Special -- On Your Privacy!

Bryan Christian — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 21:18:00 GMT

If you guys are looking at this site or any other online smut on a computer purchased at either Kmart or Sears, you might want to have a look at this:

According to [Internet security researcher Benjamin] Googins, the [My SHC Community] product monitors not only all of the user's Web traffic, but also keeps track of secure sessions such as visits to bank sites, sniffs through email headers, and then sends that information to a ComScore.

Our heads are spinning here. Sears is still around?

[Via BoingBoing]

"Leave Mark Zuckerberg alone!"

Emily Farris — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 18:26:00 GMT

In a not-so-surprising turn of non-events, some unflattering information about Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has been made public.

The dispute stemmed from a lawsuit charging that in 2003 and 2004, as a student at Harvard, Mr. Zuckerberg stole the idea and some of the computer source code for Facebook from some fellow students. They were planning a networking site of their own and had hired Mr. Zuckerberg to help with the programming.

And now Mr. Zuckerberg wants that information taken down. While we know this is different than posting your favorite books and relationship status on a site you think is fairly private and then having that information made public, it's pretty funny. When you put yourself out there, whether founding a social networking site and becoming a bazillionaire by age 23, or putting your own information up on one, people who are not your "friends" are probably going to learn a few things about you. But it's not up to us to decide what's ethical in the world of social networking. We'll leave that up to Rupert Murdoch.

[Via The New York Times]

Previously:

Stating the Obvious: People Read That Shit

Blogger Reveals Facebook is 64% Female; Experience Reveals MySpace is 95% Jackasses

Scanner : privacy

The War On Sex Rages On...

This Week In Gayness: Sex Lives of the Gay and Famous

Scanner Highs And Lows: Privates And Privacy

Blue Light Special -- On Your Privacy!

Sloppy Seconds: Half-Naked Woman At A Blue Jays Game

Palin's Grandbaby Daddy: Self-Proclaimed F*cking Redneck

Germans And Poles Are At It Again...

12 Year Old Girl Arrested For Distributing Nude Photo

NYC Oversharer To Blame Internet For Her Misery

Scanner's Sex Boycott for New York Post Readers

"The Post will happily name every adult caught in a dog collar."

Blue Light Special -- On Your Privacy!

"Leave Mark Zuckerberg alone!"