Read the story at Expatica

Addendum: Story from Hurrynet with a few pics

This isn’t the first case of this nature we’ve heard about here at Erotic Vancouver, and it likely won’t be the last—we just wish it would be!

NOTE: The first stories we found on this, after being alerted to this by a friend, were from the Huffington Post. However we’d recommend the story printed in The Daily Mail from the U.K. because it’s once again taken a source from across the ocean to give more of the story, and because the Huffington Post thinks these two “dumb” kinksters warrant inclusion in a slideshow of “dumb” criminals such as a child abuser, an elder abuser, a man charged with beastiality, and a surveillance camera pic of a guy robbing a bank who hasn’t actually been caught, making its inclusion in a slide show of mugshots pretty dumb H.P.

Read the Daily Mail story here

 Read the not as good Huffington Post story here

There’s a rational debate to be had here, between the right to privacy of individuals, and the need for the police to have modern tools to fight modern problems associated with technology. In an age of emails and data encryption and online video the police no doubt feel their abilities and reach are hampered; no longer can they rely on merely shoe leather and witness statements to get the job done.

So the Conservatives have stepped in to help. Perhaps a new law was needed, but if we’re to erode people’s privacy rights I’d argue that law should be a scalpel, not a broadsword. And in implementing it perhaps we could avoid statements like “he can either stand with us or with the child pornographers,” which Canada’s Public Safety Minister Vic Toews made about his Liberal opposition critic.

What would be the threshold of evidence needed before the police could make a warrant-less application for information from an ISP? Would they have to have evidence that an illegal communication (ie. child porn) had been sent to or from a customer of that ISP? Would a simple complaint from someone with a beef be enough, without other follow up? Would an anonymous complaint be all that was needed?

And while they’re arguing from the standpoint that this is about child pornography and organized crime, the reality is that it’s likely going to be used against people committing the dreaded crime of downloading music or videos. And there are certainly no guarantees that political opposition and protest won’t be viewed as possible terrorist talk—if a First Nations knitting circle can find itself the subject of RCMP scrutiny and warnings then just about anyone can.

Prime Minister Harper, Minister of Public Safety Vic Toews, and Justice Minister Rob Nicholson need to answer these and other questions before this bill is passed by Parliament. It’s time for the Conservative government to admit that they either represent us or they stand with the totalitarians. In this one regard at least.

Read the full article at the CBC

Sign the Stop Online Spying petition at OpenMedia.ca

Credibility that, unfortunately, disappeared under threat. After the Sun ran an editorial calling for Harper to fire Moore the Minister abruptly flip-flopped, calling on the CBC to review it’s online content.

All this over a show called Hard, which is hardly pornographic — it depicts the struggles of a woman who, after her husband has died, discovers that he’s been funding their lifestyle with a pornography business that she takes over.

It’s hardly pornography. In fact, it’s pornography in exactly the same way that Sun News is a hate mongering propaganda station of the right wing. In that it’s not. You have to take things out of context to make either of those things seem true. Which of those statements is taking things further out of context I’ll leave you to decide for yourself.

Final delicious bit of irony that Maher points out? Sun Media, the company Tories are falling all over themselves to defend and support as it battles to rid the CBC of Smut: unrepentant porn peddler.

Read the article from Postmedia here

It’s true, when I find something I like — that I really, really like — and that I’m enthusiastic about, I want to tell people about it. And sometimes, just sometimes, that enthusiasm is contagious. A few years back I bought a set of leather cuffs from PRIAPE that had caught my eye (they’ll be the subject of my first Reive Raves within a day or two) and I showed them to everyone I could, and made a point to get more than a few folks into them. Soon PRIAPE was selling out of these cuffs on a regular basis here in Vancouver, and wondering why so many more were moving here than elsewhere. It seems I wasn’t the only one raving about the cuffs, as other people tried them out and bought them and used them, they told people about their experiences. The Rave Reviews were in, as it were.

Here on Erotic Vancouver you can look forward to reviews of a number of toys I play with, and hopefully some reviews from other people on the toys they play with. Some will be positve, and some may be negative, but if the review is titled Reive Raves then you know it’s going to be a good review – and you may just want to run out and buy whatever it is that’s garnered that level of enthusiasm even before you finish reading it. Because hopefully, just like PRIAPE, that product will be selling out!

During a D/s 101 workshop at Vancouver’s Westward Bound conference the subject of kink and abuse came up, and the conversation that ensued is an indication that this is a topic that, justifiably, is seeing the light of day more.

Interesting food for thought, and to my mind a must read for every responsible kinkster out there.

Read the Salon article here  (Scroll down to the article “When Safe Words are Ignored”)

More on this story from the SF Bay Guardian: The Bad Kind of Pain

And the U.S. isn’t the only place such concerns are being raised. Over in Germany the Green Party are calling on the government to pass regulations governing sex toys of the sort that govern children’s toys, according to Spiegel Online.

Here in Vancouver such concerns have been being raised for years – not by government, but by sex shop Womyn’sWare which has not only committed to carrying safe sex toys in their shop, but which has also been instrumental in getting the word out about unsafe ones.

So be aware of what your sex toys are made of, and if it’s not a “safer sex” toy then either stick a condom on it before sticking it in someone, or better yet stick it in the trash!

Read the original story at Blisstree

MILFing Marilyn credit: Marilyn Young & Malia Schlaefer

Okay, so the feud is actually fairly minor. But I couldn’t resist the pun, and I wanted to link to this story because it demonstrates just how pervasive the Madonna-whore complex is.

As Salon sums it up “Just weeks after adult actress Madison Young gave birth, she launched an art exhibit titled “Becoming MILF.” The idea was that she would explore how she now embodies a contradiction, the dichotomy to end all dichotomies — that of the Madonna and the whore.”

A pretty noble idea if you ask us here at Erotic Vancouver, but not so in the eyes of “Furrygirl” a self descrbied sex worker/pornographer. She thinks that publicly breast feeding her child, in a photograph, video blog and at a live event, makes Young a bad person.

She tweeted that only “creeps & pedophiles” are interested in seeing a porn star breast-feed and insinuated that exposing her child to such an audience was abusive: “It’s funny to see how many feminist kinksters don’t think consent matters when it comes to creating erotic art w/ a baby.” She called Young “a revolting person” and dubbed her defenders “baby fetishists” and “pedos.”

In Erotic Vancouver’s own research we discovered that Furry Girl is in fact a pretty stand up activist who, according to her bio on the sex worker advocacy site Swaay, is busy “arguing for the ho revolution.”

You know, so long as the ho doesn’t want to breast feed!

Read the full story at Salon

Front page challenges

It shouldn’t come as a surprise when the mass media sensationalizes and demonizes alternative sexuality, and yet the Friday August 19th edition of The Province still managed to bring my esteem for the paper to a new low with their story headlined Raucous sex club parties rock Delta neighbours in their online edition.

Including the cover The Province devotes more than three pages of real estate to this story, fully half of that in pictures. Mind you it was apparently a slow news day locally, and tabloid has pretty much given up even the front of offering substantial news coverage of international or even national stories, so I suppose the chance to pillory those who enjoy free love while filling column space was too hard to resist.

Right from the start of this article we’re set up for the vilification of the swing club owners. “Brenda Edmands points across the wooded ravine toward the neighbourhood sex club. She’s nervous about talking to a reporter. She hides her face from a photographer. But she’s tired of getting brushed aside by Delta officials — so she decided to go public.”

Yes, reader, Brenda Edmands is a whistle blower who has decided to go public. A whistle blower so nervous about her safety that she’s nervous about talking to the press (whom she called) and hides her face from the photographer. Call up the witness protection program, apparently this woman has ticked off the mob!

By and by it becomes clear that all this coverage is over what, at root, is a noise complaint.

This is how The Province covers sex

Is there a news story here? Quite possibly. There are allegations that a commercial business is being run out of a residential neighbourhood. The business is, in the view of several residents of the neighbourhood, noisy and disruptive. City hall has been informed and is apparently unwilling or unable to act to the satisfaction of at least some residents. That’s a news story. And if this were the The Delta Optimist, The North Delta Sentinel, or The South Delta Leader (who knew Delta had so many local papers!) this might warrant some photos and the majority of a page in coverage. But the cover story in a metropolitan daily? Please.

If this story were about a backyard mechanics business that was too noisy, or a local tree planter running his wood chipper in his backyard late into the night, or if these parties were the loud and raucous bi-weekly get togethers of an Amway distributor, it wouldn’t have received the 11 column inches that The Province dedicated to the uprising in Libya on this day, let alone been the paper’s cover story.

Not in my backyard

I’m not sure where I stand with regards to the neighbourhood in this story. I can say I have little sympathy for Brenda Edmands, based on her statement that after, after hearing what she thought was a rape but being unable to identify the house, she simply walked away and did nothing. Nothing! I’m happy to say that I don’t think I personally know of anyone in the alternative sexuality scene who wouldn’t have picked up the phone to call the police in similar circumstances. Ms. Edmands said she felt sick about that, but she chose to do nothing. Well, nothing until she learned that swing club was getting together in her neighbourhood. Apparently while she’s prepared to deal with the discomfort of a one time sexual assault, knowing that consenting adults are engaging in “raucous sex” with multiple partners on a regular basis is something that can’t be stood for.

The Province’s reporter writes about other neighbours who express misgivings about the noise from the house, and I think most people would express misgivings if a neighbour were going to hold loud parties twice a month in the neighbourhood. As long as the police, the city and neighbours themselves are addressing this as an issue of decibels and not deviance that’s valid.

Turn down the volume

The solution, it seems to me, is to turn down the volume; Club Allure needs to keep down the volume of their parties, the neighbours need to tone down the rhetoric, and The Province needs to tone down unnecessary muckraking. And for those who would defend The Province here I should add something that those reading the online version of this story might be unaware of: in addition to printing pictures of the house where these parties were held, along with it’s address, they also saw fit to print pictures of another house at which swing parties were held, a house not mentioned in the article, a house we’re not told of any complaints against.
But then printing this article wasn’t about practicing responsible journalism any more than it was about noise, so I really shouldn’t be surprised.

Bonn Germany's modified parking meter for collecting tax from street sex workers

Here at Erotic Vancouver we don’t pretend to know a lot about the typical sex worker plying her trade on the streets of Bonn, but we do know that women working the streets and back alleys of Vancouver are typically survival sex trade workers, and we’d certainly question the merits of taxing them. Spiegel Online reorts that sex worker advocates in the German are opposed to the new machines. But it did start us wondering: if this technology can be used to tax these sex workers, might it also be used to make their job a little safer.

We don’t know what Bonn is doing with this money, but we’d hope that if a similar system came to Vancouver that the monies raised would be directed towards organizations like PACE and WISH, and spent on programs like their jointly run MAP Van, the Mobile Access Project, provides services to women working on the street from 10:30 pm to 5:30 am, seven nights a week.