I’ve been reading Jaron Lanier’s book, “You Are Not A Gadget“. Contrary to what you might think, having been online forever (my very first 19.2 baud connection, I had a user address savannah@savannah.ip.portal.net. I seem to recall at the time that there were only about 4 commercial services to even get online with, to access things like usenet, and the very start of www) I don’t consider myself anything close to a techie. Or maybe you are a tech person, in which case that won’t surprise you at all. I consider myself more of a casual observer of online culture, and even when it comes to that, I sort of skipped the last 3 years or so.

At any rate, I was thinking about something that Lanier mentions almost in passing: what are the conditions necessary to create trolling? You know, of course, what trolling is: making inflammatory comments, being inordinately mean to other people, not seeking to engage in discourse, but just to spew venom that is ultimately not constructive. You get to say your hateful thing, then move on without being challenged in your ideas or assumptions. It’s one of the things I despite most about online life, and as I try to decide and develop a community aspect of JanesGuide (user logins, places to store info, ability to rate sites) it’s something I’m thinking of more and more.

There are websites out there that I think are good sites, but are plagued with a larger trolling percentage than others. Examples: in celebrity/fashion blogging, one of my favorite funny sites is GoFugYourself. They are merciless in their critiques, although they do try not to be MEAN. Just witty and keeping it to (mostly) sartorial critique. They have very little public problem with trolling in their comments. But visit their parent site, Celebuzz, and take a look around their comments. Yikes. The difference there is that GFY shut down their comments for a couple of years, because they couldn’t stand the uber-negative. When they re-opened commenting, tentatively and on only select posts, they did so with a warning: that they could and would shut it all back down if it was abused. Now I don’t know what they deal with behind the scenes, and maybe they still have a pain-in-the-ass process, but publicly it makes their site a nice troll-free zone.

In the midst of doing a review for Nubiles.net today, I was noticing how they attempt to use certain aspects of community building, but in a way that circumvents trolling. If you’re a member there, you can create a profile and rate things. Other users can see what you rated highly, and through that it helps to sift through the mountain of content on the website, for users. Find someone with similar tastes, and your work is much less. However, I noticed that this community is only about leading each other to content that might be enjoyable. There is no commenting that I found, other than the user forum. And then, either the user forum is extremely well moderated, or the general tone of the site suggests that being an intelligent person is an attribute here, because again I wasn’t finding a bunch of hateful garbage. Contrast that to the (also well-reviewed, but only from a content and price point) Videobox. Their comments and ratings by users are by and large trollish and hateful. It’s sad to have a great value and super technology made awful by user-trolls.

So back to my initial point. What Lanier pointed out when he talked about trolling was that the condition that needs to exist is not anonymity, but “transient anonymity“. What is the difference, you ask? Well – I am relatively anonymous in any of the places I post online, in that the chances of someone showing up at my actual home unannounced because they had figured out who I am and where I live are slim. In the vast noise of the web, the chances of my “real” life and my “online” life intersecting are rare, and I’d have to make an effort for that to happen. However, over time I have built up a community in various areas that I participate in. I care as much about my online persona as my real life persona, because they are both me. They are both how I choose to interact with the others, and as such they are both valuable to me. This is why almost 100% of trolling is from either a totally anonymous source, or a brand new user who sets up an account quickly enough to spew whatever garbage s/he wants to, and move on. It’s transient anonymity.

When we do get any kind of user community going on JG (there are a number of software solutions we are looking at as possibilities) there will be levels of access. Unfettered access is going to be a privilege, not a right to anyone who takes 5 minutes to sign up.

Today has been a crap day so far. Mostly because you know the old saying, about when it rains it pours. I’ve found that to be true for both positive and negative things. Although sometimes what seems a negative at the time turns a corner in a way you never could have expected. Still, having a hard time finding the silver lining in my day.

Elliott is sick, the youngest has a bad cold (she passed her driver’s test on the 2nd time around, btw – now her drive is next week) and the middle daughter has a mystery ailment still yet to be diagnosed. Early next week she moves up from nurse practitioner to specialist. It’s a helpless feeling when your child has a malady that is making her sad and stressed and in a bit of pain, but is not an immediately apparent diagnosis. All we can do is wait.

Then, on another note, we are trying to figure out immigration law. A very close friend of the girls, who feels like family now after 4+ years, is an undocumented immigrant. I believe that is the current phrasing, anyhow. Short story: he was brought here when he was a minor, knowing not a word of English. Against all odds and any type of family support for it, he stayed in school, became one of the rising stars in high school sports, and as I said, practically a member of my family. He feels like an American, he’s been here half his life. And yet, now that he’s turned 18, he’s “illegal”. There are things that are in the works, like the DREAM ACT that has been stuck for awhile in legislation. It’s a pretty cool thing, because it addresses his exact situation: he was brought here as a child, when he had no say. Now, years later, he has no (legal) future and is in-between cultures. He wants to go to college, become a chef, could probably get a sports scholarship. But he’s illegal. The whole situation breaks my heart, but the more I read, the more hopeless it sounds.

Before people go off on what a drain “illegal immigrants” are to our system, I would send you here: http://damnmexicans.blogspot.com/ – go read some of the sidebar info. It’s important. This child is already hard working. (yes, he does it with illegal papers) But just what does that mean? Well, it means he pays into our social security system and has taxes taken out, when he will never be able to file for a refund as would anyone else at his income level. It means he supports our commerce system, but gets the worst of both worlds. Taxation without representation, plus the constant worry of deportation.

Anyhow, I’m seeing an immigration attorney next week. I know I will probably end up paying for nothing but to be told the worst, but honestly the whole process is so confusing I just want to know what, if anything at all, we can do. I don’t usually get into politics on my blog, but – well, I just think that people need to hear circumstances like this, because it’s not something most of us think about. The first part of gaining acceptance is in realizing that people you know are affected. Speaking out is good.

For the past couple of days, I’ve been reading “Whip Smart, A Memoir”, by Melissa Febos.

I will admit, it took some digesting for the past 24 hours. I started to write about my thoughts on it yesterday, only to realize as I discussed it with Elliott over dinner last night, that my theory and take after some reflection had completely changed.

When you self-identify with a misunderstood community, it can be difficult to separate your own emotions when reviewing something like this. Add to that complexity the fact that I believe there is not enough introspection of negatives within the community, and you would think I’d be leaping all over this book. However, at the end of the day I don’t feel like this was a book about BDSM at all.

I do not doubt that the author was paid to work in a dungeon for four years, nor do I doubt her stories of what went on there. Having never personally done much in the way of topping, professional or otherwise, I imagine there are others who would react with far more annoyance to her calling herself a dominatrix. The only experience I’ve had that I can liken it to would be how I felt after studying pilates for years, and doing well over 1,000 unpaid apprentice hours so that I could teach, only to have people who took a single weekend course also calling themselves pilates instructors. In other words, it sucked, to have something I believed in enough to learn as much as I could and be truly good at co-opted by someone who saw it as the next trend that they wanted to jump on. Those in the professional dominatrix field who are there by choice, love what they do, are compassionate towards who they do it with, and knowledgeable to boot, DO exist. Not in near the numbers as the type of dominatrix the book describes, but yes they are exist. Oh, and they’re better at setting boundaries, which is something the author is clearly not good at.

Anyhow, to me while that part of the book is annoying, in the end it wasn’t what really struck me. I’ve been reading all of these reviews, both mainstream and just Amazon user reviews, about how witty and insightful and feminist and blah blah blah this book was. I wondered why, as I read it, I didn’t find it funny or witty, or particularly feminist, just incredibly sad.

The thing is, if you are paying attention as you go along, Ms. Febos reminds us over and over again of two things: how smart she is, and how much she doesn’t care about other people. From the stories of how she left jobs, friends and lovers, all she cared about was getting “From Point A to Point B, no matter the cost”. To me, it just sounded like a sociopath talking. I mean she repeatedly brings it up, her lack of compassion for essentially everyone around her, at the same time justifying her actions as being those of a “social anthropologist”. The thing is, that doesn’t ring true. She never addresses wanting to find out about the root of anyone’s desires or why they come to her. Rather, she admits that the talking part of it post-scene disgusted her more than anything.

In the end, after reading through several years of her life, she supposedly has a couple of “breakthroughs” about her motivations and why she can’t give up that chosen field. Then she leaves it as she did other jobs, by sneaking out the door. The scene where she leaves her office job with nary an explanation, stealing muffins on the way out the door, sounds almost exactly like the scene where she finally leaves the dungeon. Oh, except that there she was just taking her own stuff.

In the end, the parallels she feels between heroin use and BDSM are never truly examined, not even a little. To me, this books smacks of exactly the thing that she kept hammering on – her desire to get what she wants and tell people what they want to hear. Getting from Point A (unknown and unemployed writer) to Point B, (critically acclaimed author) just involved using a misunderstood subsection of people she doesn’t care about. A drug-user getting clean wasn’t titillating enough for that to happen. S/M apparently was.

Today I was going through some of the event listings that JanesGuide’s FB page has, and I was shocked and saddened to read that tattoo artist Gypsy Jill had passed. In my absence from the local community these past years, I’ve just missed a lot. She did the two most significant tattoos I have – the first time she worked on me, it was to add/beautify the tattoo on my heart chakra. At the time, I am sad to say, I didn’t even realize how unhappy I was, but Jill did. While she experienced negative energy that I am very regretful about, it was a healing experience for me. I was grateful when a few years later, she agreed to do another tattoo for me, my phoenix cover-up on my left shoulder.

The thing that strikes me the most is just how accepting and non-judgmental she was. She knew everyone in the community I was in, including the person I was trying to “rise from the ashes” from with my phoenix, and whether or not she had an opinion on my motives, I won’t ever know as she was a consummate professional. Both tattoos she did for me are creations that I cherish, and life experiences that I chose to permanently carry with me in ink.

I am looking for a Seattle photographer who would be willing to try to get some high quality images of the work she did on me, so that I can submit something to The Gypsy Jill Project. Whether it will be included or not, I don’t know, but I would like to offer something for inclusion. If you might be interested, please write me.

Somehow during my absence from the web, I missed the sextoy revolution. Something that was barely talked about is all of a sudden the main feature of about half of the blogs that I run across, and while that’s fine, it’s hard to believe there is really THAT much interest.

Way back when I met Elliott, I was in negotiations with a large magazine publishing company that was thinking of buying JanesGuide. It was a deal that came very close to happening, although in retrospect I’m glad it didn’t. At the time, my former partner and I were trying to figure out how to split things up, and selling seemed the easiest. Instead, the deal fell through and I ended up buying out his interest in things. But anyhow, I digress. On to the point: the main negative issue they had with my website was the sextoy reviews. Bukkake? No problem. Bondage? Sure. Sextoys? Run screaming.

I don’t know if the prevalence of sextoy review blogs now on the web means that sextoys in general have a more mainstream acceptance, but it certainly seems there is a larger audience than I realized. What do you think, are men (generally speaking) still afraid of sextoys? Or have sextoys come out of the closet? Just curious…

First, a note from yesterday: Natasha totally loved the gift I picked out, and I remain the queen of gift-giving. yay!

Now on to other things: I am attempting to re-categorize and update the review index. I do not want to make it too extensive, because the longer the list, sometimes the more difficult it is to find what you want. However, I do want to keep it as sex-positive and gender-positive as possible, while still making it easy for people to figure out the categories. This is important, and falls into the “not everyone lives in the love bubble” area. Terminology that might be totally normal to me, may not be so well known to the very broad audience that comes here. So, with advice from the wonderful Courtney Trouble, and of course AAG, I am in the midst of the work in progress, shown below, and am eliciting comments/suggestions. Email or comment away, any and all help is appreciated.

Mainstream:
Amateur (Solo girl)
Amateur (Multiple people)
Indie
Hardcore
Softcore
Fine Art Nude
Glamour/Beauty
Vintage/Pin-up
Porn Star
Celebrity
Asian
Latina
Black
Interracial
BBW
Mature
Men
Public Sex / Flashing
Sextoy / Machine
Natural Breasts (silicone-free zone)
Blowjob
Gangbang
FTM (Female to Male)
MTF / Shemale
Gay Male
Queer
Girl/Girl
Lesbian/Dyke

BDSM:
Bondage: Women
Bondage: Men
BDSM – M/f
BDSM – F/m
BDSM – F/f
BDSM – M/m
Spanking
BDSM Art
Community Sites

Fetish:
Foot Fetish
Panties/Stockings/Garters
Voyeur / Upskirt
Forced Feminization/ Sissy
Latex/PVC/Rubber
Enemas/Watersports
Goth/Vamp
Pregnant/Lactating
Bodybuilder
Pony Play
Fighting / Wrestling
Ageplay (Adult Babies)
Balloons
WAM (Wet & Messy)
Hirsute
Tickling
Girls with Glasses
Other Assorted Fetishes?

Adult Services:
Online Dating
Swinger Community Sites
BDSM Community Sites
Phone Sex
BDSM/Fetish Phonesex
Podcasts / Internet Radio

Adult Products:
Sextoys / Safer Sex Supplies
Lingerie
Corsets
Fetishwear
Plus Size Positive
Shoes
Books/Magazines
eBooks
Podcasts
DVDs
Custom Videos
Worn Panties
BDSM Gear
Audio / Aural-erotica
Cross-dressing apparel?

The Written Word:
Sex Columnists
Advice/Education
Polyamory Info
BDSM Info
GLBT Info
Adult Blogs – Personal
Adult Blogs – Product Review
Adult Blogs – Photos
Erotic Fiction
Alt/Sci-fi Erotic Fiction
BDSM Erotic Fiction
Humor/Satire

Sex Industry:
Website Design Services
Website Hosting
Sex Work Info / Advice
Sex Educators
Adult Casting
Adult Industry Awards
Adult Affiliate Programs

Highlights:
Porn Produced by Women
Award Winning Websites
Staff Favorites

what say you, dearest readers and contributors and site owners?

Hey! So it’s a sunny Saturday, and I spent a huge chunk of the day trying to find a good birthday gift for my bestest friend, Natasha. Now given that I currently own a little home/gift shop of my own, you’d think that this would be an easy task. But it’s not – because Natasha is the one who takes care of the shop when Elliott and I are out of town, and she does it in exchange for store credit. So, as you can imagine, she already has everything from my shop that she might want. Well, except maybe a couple of the furniture pieces. (incidentally, I will totally finally link to my shop when the website is finished for online shopping, as it will be .. ahem… someday. It’s taking a really long time to finish.)

Anyhow, I dragged the oldest teenager along (ok, I didn’t drag – she wanted to get out of the house) and proceeded to wander through every good shop I could think of in town. 4 hours later, and I THINK I found a gift she’ll like, but I guess I’ll find out in an hour or so when we meet up for dinner. I generally really enjoy shopping for gifts for people I love, the only time it’s even remotely stressful is when there is a deadline involved. Then all of a sudden I get brainfreeze, and simply can’t make decisions.

Anyhow, looking forward to a delicious dinner and time with Elliott, and our favorite couple. Good friends take a lot of time to develop, and N is just about my favorite person in the world to hang out with.

Just a quickie this morning – I am off to take my youngest child to take her driver’s test. In two short weeks, all 3 of the teenagers will be legal operators of motor vehicles. I find that really hard to believe. It seems like only yesterday that half of my day involved driving them around. I will say it’s a task I don’t miss, not even a little bit.

As for the rest of the day, well – it’s beautiful out. Definitely want to take the doggie for his bayside walk. Have to work at the shop, too. This evening, I don’t have a clue what the plans are. Pondering what might be fun, now that I have Elliott back from constant school. :)

So.. it’s been a long time since I’ve actually addressed any reader mail on my blog. Usually I write directly back to people who are looking for something obscure. I don’t write back at all when it’s someone asking to find, say, a category of niche sites that we very clearly have, and they could find on their own simply by visiting our review index and READING.

But, an email yesterday sparked me to write about a very common (in my inbox anyhow) request. While I won’t reprint the entire thing, the gist was

I’ve tried to find some websites where I can upload pictures of my penis, but they seem to be dominated by gay men. Do you know of any sites where I can submit photos (free is preferred) and the audience is primarily heterosexual and female? Thanks much for your assistance.

As I mentioned, this is a request I hear quite a bit. In sharing many an anecdote with other women over the years, I feel fairly safe in saying such a thing doesn’t really exist. In my years of online experience, I just have not encountered any significant female audience interested in photos of penises. Usually the person most interested in it is the person it’s attached to. Now this is not to say that women are anti-penis, obviously heterosexual women are not. However, I still have not encountered many women who want to look at pictures of them, regardless of how much they might enjoy one inside of them.

I think exhibitionism is a fine thing, it’s nice to be comfortable in your own body, happy with your body image, and so on. But online (and this is important) you don’t get to control who sees the images you post, or what they might fantasize about as they do so. If you are uncomfortable with that idea, then posting images online is a bad idea. There WILL be people looking at your photos that you wouldn’t want to sit next to on a bus. There might be people looking at them that fit your criteria of your fantasy viewer, but there might not. So: my best advice, if you can deal with the fact that you are giving up control of the viewing of your image, is to get really good at fantasizing on your own about who is viewing it.

~Jane

As I’ve mentioned, we are trying to figure out which site upgrades to do to make our site a better resource, and in what order to do them. One thing that we want to possibly try is to introduce free hosted blogs, like blogspot.com, livejournal.com or blogger.com does. While I definitely believe that it’s nice to have your very own domain, not everyone wants to start that way, and some people are perfectly content to stay on those services no matter how popular their blogs might become. But it’s nice to have options.

I have owned the domain sexpositive.org for probably 10 years, with several ideas over the years as to what to put there. I was thinking that would be the perfect spot for blogging. So, it’d be kinda like blogger in that a user would have a url like janeduvall.sexpositive.org. For adult blogging, I think that’d be sorta cool.

I was trying to identify what needs, if any, aren’t being served by current solutions. I know at blogger.com, there is an adult warning whenever you get to an adult blog. We wouldn’t do that, we’ll put the whole domain on ICRA labeling and such, and leave it at that.

I remember at blogs.com that I was worried about not having control over my content, ultimately, and not wanting to put things up and then lose them if I moved. We want to us WPMU software, and make it super-easy to grab all your content, should you decide to ultimately register your own domain and move. I believe that’s possible with any of these services, we just want to make it super-easy and user friendly to do.

We won’t run our own ads – we will probably do a small bar across the top like blogspot.com does, that links into the entity as a whole. It will probably say sexpositive.org blogs, courtesy JanesGuide. It might have a tiny stickgirl, just like blogspot puts their logo on it. That would be the extent of our presence on anyone’s page.

The other thing I wanted to do is be helpful in getting people set up who DO want their own domains. In other words, we’re going to offer paid hosting if someone does want their own domain, BUT we’re not going to push it, we’re just going to offer it. At a low cost, because we have the bandwidth and the space to do it. Trying to figure out what that cost should be. I know you can get super cheap hosting all over the web, but I want ours to be reliable and fast, as well as inexpensive.

So what I’m asking for are suggestions from the bloggers out there: do you have needs that are not being met now, and if so, what? Please email me instead of using comments, although I welcome both. Email is just easier to refer to later when we’re trying to get this programmed.

It’s funny to be finally working on this project – it’s something we’d intended to do with the janenet.com domain more than 10 years ago. :) At any rate, this time I hope to bring it to fruition, because I have a kick-ass programmer and a wealth of backend resources. So. thoughts? jane@janesguide.com