eruthros

thingswithwings and I are ramping up to round two of kink bingo, which means a) finishing making prizes b) making icons and c) researching kinks. Which means a lot of googling. I've googled for images, I've googled for resources, I've googled for things I didn't even know existed three weeks ago.

So, there I was at the blog for Male Submission Art, and I followed the source link under one of the nicer pictures, just in case the linked blog was awesome. And there were no pictures, and no well-laid-out informational posts, but -- hey, this chick compiles sex toy giveaways! And look, there are only twenty people who put their names in the hat -- might as well comment with my name, those are pretty good odds, right? And so I enter a couple of them and then promptly forget about it, since none of them had useful resources or images. But I just got an email today from one of them, and I won!

So, yes, as a direct result of doing kink bingo, I will shortly be receiving an Onye Vibrator in a satin-lined case.

PS: there's another giveaway over here for the Lelo toy of your choice (!!!) that I haven't entered yet, because you have to submit a story or image or something and that seems like work. (But fandom should totally be on that, guys, y'all are awesome at this sort of thing.) Anyway, the closing date is April 10th.

The Department of Education has finally ruled that university gag orders on rape victims -- if you want us to investigate, you can't talk to anyone, even your parents -- are, who would have thought, violations of federal law. UVA said this was about protecting student privacy, and necessary to comply with FERPA, but fortunately the Department of Education finally saw through that. (Don't read the comments on the article; it will hurt.)

The case was based on a University of Virginia rule, but UVA is hardly the only place that has had such a requirement -- several American universities have attempted to protect their reputation as "safe" at the expense of rape victims, who are sometimes told by boards of inquiry that they can be expelled for talking about their cases. If protecting the reputation of the university involves harming rape victims, so be it.¹

Other relevant links:
A story at the SAFER blog in which an Adelphi University alum talks about the obstacles to reporting rape, and her university's gag order.
Abyss2Hope's discussion of some of the social consequences of the gag order.

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¹ At my undergraduate university, in fact, various administrators frequently tried to keep women from reporting sexual assault -- one administrator tried to get rid of the anonymous sexual assault help line; she said that the rape counselor had to get the student's name and make her name her assailant or she couldn't take the call. This might've been legally true, I dunno, but there was no excuse for this: When this drove down the number of calls significantly, she then tried to use it as evidence of a reduced rate of sexual assault on campus, claiming that my university was one of the safest in the state.

On a new proposed US Health and Human Services Department regulation:

The administration drafted the proposal to implement laws prohibiting recipients of federal funds from penalizing health practitioners who refuse to perform abortions or provide abortion referrals.

The draft proposal covers Catholic Charities and other employers who object to abortion, by defining their insurers as health practitioners. It would define abortion as any procedure or drug that terminates a human life after conception, "whether before or after implantation."

This means, of course, that health insurance plans could choose not to cover contraception because it's against their religious beliefs -- it's basically a regulation drafted to keep California and New York (and a few other states) from enforcing their laws requiring insurance companies that cover viagra to also cover various forms of contraceptives. AND IT"S DEFINING CONTRACEPTION AS ABORTION TO DO IT. ON A FEDERAL LEVEL. YOU GUYS.

More here.

Apparently this has been open to public comment since August 7th; was there some big hoopla about it that I didn't notice 'cause of being out of the country?

OKAY. So... this is not the sort of thing that I'd usually share with my friends. But this is an incredible deal, and I'd feel bad for not spreading the word.

See, Tantus -- makers of many fine, pthalate-free silicone sex toys -- has a storefront now. And with the storefront? A section for year-end closeouts, somewhere around 55-70% off. Here's what we learned when we did workshops in college: silicone is the ideal sex toy material. It can be sterilized by boiling, doesn't offgas ... and is really expensive. Turns out? Not if you buy the closeout colors. Apparently copper is out this year.

Also, the storefront descriptions are usually nominal; for more info, check out their main site.

And once again, word to David Brock. (The man's everywhere these days.)

Media Matters for America has produced a commercial inside of a week and already have it on the major cable news channels -- including Fox News -- in Washington D.C.

The commercial compares Donald Rumsfield on the torture of Iraqis to Rush Limbaugh on the torture of Iraqis. I'm not saying the ad's necessarily a good idea -- while it definitely says "Rush Limbaugh is really offensive," it also kinda paints Rumsfield as a moderate in comparison, which maybe is not what we want to be doing now. But regardless of overall strategy and all that, word up to David Brock for calling Limbaugh on his offensive language.

Also, some more from the right wing ( behind this cut )