Mini-Notions #4

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Here are some interesting ebooks to add to your collection:

  • Imaginative Sex by John Norman. Strange and almost anachronistic scripts for couples to use when doing sexual role playing. Norman is a prolific sci fi writer who authored the Gor series.
  • Devil At Large: Erica Jong on Henry Miller by Erica Jong. In-depth review of Miller’s life and works, plus some of Jong’s thoughts. Looks great. I read Henry Miller in college — mainly for the sexual lyricism — and regarded him as a second tier writer, but am willing to revisit that judgment.
  • Whatever You want: We Write, You Decide by Rachel Timms and Laurence Hayes. A spicey adult-themed maze story.

When I was in 7th grade, I got in trouble for bringing a National Lampoon magazine to school and reading aloud parts of an X-rated story to friends during lunch in the cafeteria. The story was  called My Vagina — about a teenage boy who wakes up and discovers he has a vagina. I remember being fascinated by the concept and the story itself. 

A year  ago I randomly thought about that story and googled it. To my delight I found that it was written by legendary 1980s director John Hughes (who did Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller, 16 candles, etc). Here’s the original story and a similar story he did called My Penis.

Here’s a thoughtful and informative history by Geoffrey R. Stone of how sexually explicit content has been handled by different generations of Americans.

I’ve been busy getting volume 2 ready for publication in December. I guess I will do a separate post about that.

During this political season, it’s important to remember that the Republican Party has talked about prohibiting porn. Project 2025 says “Educators and public librarians who purvey it should be classed as registered sex offenders,” and “The people who produce and distribute it should be imprisoned.” (SOURCE) Sure, this is just an aspirational policy, but it’s neither moral nor grounded in good social science or policy. At the state level, there’s a lot of age verification laws (currently under review at the US Supreme Court. Here’s one critique of the policy and another longer critique. I definitely understand the impulse to keep adult content away from minors, and I think the bigger platforms definitely need to keep their hardcore content in URLs for logged in users only. Frankly though, the ambiguity of content standards make content creators avoid lots of borderline content. Requiring that adult-themed sites pay for ID check services is an undue burden on free expression — especially because it applies to individual creators running simple sites (like this one).

I particularly worry about fiction sites like this one and maybe artist portfolio sites (for comics and paintings, etc). Maybe the government can pay 100% of the costs for these age verification services? About a decade ago I came across the blog of a radical-minded blogger who once posted a handful of nude photos of himself on his blog. Is this guy going to need to pay a third party an annual fee just to keep the state of Texas off his back?! (See also my thoughts about how to prevent your minor child from viewing this site).


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