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Stop the presses – There are Willing Submissive Women at DomConLA!

A Twitter friend pointed us to HuffPo’s article on this past weekend’s BDSM-angled con, DomConLA. She was specifically pointing out that RedemptionsGirl is in a few of the photos, but what I took notice of was actually some curious wording.

“…..who is a willing submissive at a dungeon party during the DomConLA convention”

I cocked my head and thought it a bit strange. And then when I flipped through the slideshow more, I saw that that “disclaimer” was on every. single. photo.

Except for three. The three that featured a submissive male being whipped.

” Domina beats a submissive man at a dungeon party during the DomConLA convention”

There is no distinctive wording here to emphasize that he is a willing submissive. Why? Why is there a need to state the obvious for the female subs but not the male? Why state the obvious at all? The article is about DomConLA – a highly respected kinky conference that has visitors from all levels of kink & fetish.Taking bets on how many times Consent was reference, inferred or discussed at length would be like guessing how many M&Ms are in that 5 gallon jug at the bridal shower.

Then again….the comments on the article are filled with ignorant trolls. It’s fairly clear to me that the aspect of ‘Fifty Shades of Gray’ that is “sweeping the nation” isn’t the BDSM aspect at all. It’s the “saving the man” aspect; it’s the Cinderella-twist aspect; it’s the “she orgasms on command over and over and over and over” aspect. The majority of the general American public is just way too judgmental to even tolerate a mere article on DomConLA.

“People often abuse their bodies because they feel ugly inside.”

“these people didnt get enough hugs growing up…”

“or they got way too many!”

“Maybe that’s the only way ugly people can get attention…?”

Not all comments are negative like this. But enough are to make me never go back and read anything else “sexually progressive” at HuffPo. Anyways these jerks aren’t my point. My point is that I fail to understand on any level why apologies, excuses and special words are needed to make sure the intolerant jerks don’t flip out even more about these “willing submissive women”.

Please weigh in with your opinion. Enlighten me. Because I’m not going to understand this all on my own.

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Posted by Lilly | 8 Comments

A Very Merry Un-Birthday….to Me

Today was my birthday. Yet it was also an un-birthday. What I mean is that it really wasn’t celebrated in any traditional sense. And you know what?

It was pretty damn good.

I lounged around reading magazines, and felt no guilt. I played my Facebook games. I made myself a wonderful steak salad for lunch. I sweetly asked for, and promptly received, copious cups of coffee from husband. Husband (who cleans much better than I) cleaned up the kitchen and hey! We have a kitchen table again! Dinner was lovely; I roasted some purple carrots, made a simple and creamy pasta Alfredo with the most wonderful cheese from Whole Foods, and topped it all off with sauteed langostines. My birthday cake was this chocolate mousse ganache confection from Trader Joe’s. I received birthday hugs from Husband whenever I demanded them.

Could it have been better? Sure. But it was a lot better than last year. So the only family member I spoke to was my mother. So what. So a number of friends said nothing of my birthday. So what! Those that did hold a special place in my heart. So I had no presents to unwrap. So what! Instead, I received a check from my mom and one from the in-laws and today I spent them. They’ve not even been deposited, and I spent them. So I stayed home all day. So what! When you get down to it I’m really not all that social and I don’t know if I would have enjoyed going out with a big group of friends. I did it last year before I moved and left my job, with work friends, and I didn’t enjoy myself at all (but that speaks more about those friends than me). I might have enjoyed a dinner out, but at least in cooking for myself I was able to make it healthier and I was able to make it all taste exactly as I wanted it to.

I bought this quirky yet adorable bag:

I know. They’re weird and adorable and make you stare and make your brain kinda hurt and they’re totally not me. I don’t care. I like the idea of confusing others.

My other purchase might seem fairly boring to most. 10 days ago I saw this video; a video many of you might have seen. It made me cry. It gave me hope. It came to me on the wings of an unexplained beginning of some sort of inner peace. All of sudden, about 2 weeks or so ago, I started feeling…..good. Mentally and physically. Mentally strong. Physically neutral.

It started out as a feeling
Which then grew into a hope
Which then turned into a quiet thought
Which then turned into a quiet word
And then that word grew louder and louder
‘Til it was a battle cry
~Regina Spektor, “The Call”

That song makes me weep. I cry the ugly cry. But that beginning fully describes me lately. It was a feeling. Then I had cautious hope. And this is my battle cry. I’ve started doing this program, done by the man linked in the video above, called DDPYoga. I figured that if a disabled veteran who couldn’t walk without the aid of serious crutches, knee braces and a back brace could do this and transform…..well then, why not me? Honestly about 3 weeks ago I’d started to give up. The outlook was hazy. I’d just come out of a 3-week long back spasm brought on by absolutely nothing. Everyone says walking is the best exercise but what happens when walking is really bad for your bones? Specifically my pelvis and my spine. I couldn’t find anything that didn’t hurt like hell. But then I saw that video and started the program and joined the community site for it and everything changed.

I can’t actually be certain if my deep-seated happiness started before I saw Arthur’s video or the day after but it took me a few days to recognize the feeling. It is a happiness that is not because of another person; it is a happiness that is deep in me, bubbling up like a volcano that is waking up. I can’t explain where it came from. Have the natural supplements I’ve been taking finally kicked in? No clue. I’ve found inner peace and acceptance in regards to other things, too. I sent off an email to someone and while they didn’t really need to know that I’ve changed and have let them go, I needed to say it out loud to them. I needed to make it real. It reinforced my emotional/mental fortitude that I’m experiencing and made me realize I’m just fine without them.

Where was I? Oh yeah, the other birthday gift purchase. A Yoga Rug to go on top of my not-yoga-mat because I sweat like crazy doing this stuff; it’s unbelievable to me that I can get my heart rate up and that yoga isn’t some peaceful, easy pretzel thing made for thin, lithe healthy folks. This shit is hard but it’s going to be so worth it. And unlike anything else I’ve done, DDPYoga was created by someone with the same back injury as me so everything is done to benefit the back. The other purchase was a “bolster” which I didn’t know existed. I’ve been using a latex pillow with piss poor results (smooth fabric meant I slipped off it and landed myself flat on the floor in what I dubbed the “dead frog” pose) because I have a problem putting weight on my shins or knees (kneeling/Table positions) thanks to the fibro. I normally would have continued on making do with what I have around the house but the birthday check pushed me to get something nice. After all, this isn’t going to be a passing phase.

So I am starting out my 35th year with a happiness I’ve not felt for a very long time, love from those that matter, an answer to a problem I’ve been dealing with for many years, a healthier lifestyle, chocolate cake, realistic expectations, hope and the faint outlines of promising future life plans.

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Posted by Lilly | 3 Comments

Ethical Blogging: Attribution does not equal Permission

The bane of a bloggers existence some days is the evolution of the Scraper. The Scraper is someone who has set up a website solely to garner advertisers. They have numerous sites like this and they obviously don’t have time to write their own content, so they “scrape” illegally from others. It’s only scraping, though, if they are stealing your entire post¹. Many times these scrapers have automated the process and will scrape directly from your RSS feed. I’ve added on anti-scraping plugins to WordPress which put in things such as unique keys (so that I can search for that key and find who else is using it) and copyright / anti-scrap notices in the post – they alert the reader that if they’re reading the post anywhere other than Dangerouslilly.com, it has been illegally scraped and please contact me.

Even worse, however, is when a fellow community blogger or sex toy manufacturer/retailer uses your content in entirety without permission. Some are just completely uneducated as to the rights and wrongs of blogging, but really….we all started out in the same clueless space and most of us have gotten where we are just fine without violating copyright, stealing content or plagiarizing, ever.

What is Copyright?

According to Wikipedia, copyright ‘is “the right to copy”, but also gives the copyright holder the right to be credited for the work, to determine who may adapt the work to other forms, who may perform the work, who may financially benefit from it, and other related rights.’

A few years ago when I was dealing with a site that took harassing me to a new level, which included posting my photos without my permission, claimed that all was well and fair in the copyright world simply because they had attributed the photos to me. Nope, sorry, that is not the only condition that must be met. Especially not since I have this copyright notice at the end of every post and at the bottom of my main page: “All text and images on this site require permission before they can be used anywhere. To obtain permission click here to contact me”. Notice how I’ve stated that all text and images on this site require permission before they can be used anywhere? Yeah. That’s kinda the whole key.

Permission.

Consent?

eh. fine line.

There’s an article on Sexis about bloggers and copyright – not necessarily our own copyright but talking about how we steal things. Namely, photos. Some are more guilty than others of course but the fact is, copyright violation in terms of using a photo in your post is pretty rampant. Not just sex bloggers, but any blogger. So while attribution doesn’t equal permission when you’re talking about using someone’s entire post, attribution can equal permission when you’re dealing with photos. It will simply depend on what the copyright holder allows. But if you found the image on Google because hundreds of others have used it without attribution, what can be done? The best we can do is protect ourselves with watermark copyrights on our own photos, and when we use a photo that we know actually belongs to a fellow blogger, retail store or manufacturer…..attribute it. Ask for permission if it is a blogger.

Microblogging vs Blogging

Now, here’s the rub: With the over-saturation of social media sites where you “share” stuff with your followers, you “reblog” on Tumblr, you “retweet” on Twitter…you have a blurry line of kosher sharing when it comes to blogging. When you reblog and retweet on Tumblr and Twitter respectively, you are copying what someone said and providing attribution. The line is blurred even further with Twitter, where “copyright” doesn’t really seem to exist. I mean, how can you possibly lay copyright to a Tweet? On Tumblr it’s a little different I suppose, but many people treat Tumblr as blogging. So if I posted a photo on Tumblr and nowhere else, I still retain my copyright. That photo is my intellectual property and if you post it on your own Tumblr without an attribution link, then you’ve effectively stolen content.

The fine line lays in the type of sharing. Tumblr, Twitter, Pinterest, even Facebook are all considered forms of “microblogging“; places where the “reblog” is common practice and accepted. Standard Blogging is vast and varied; we’re accustomed to WordPress-based sites, Blogger, LiveJournal, etc but there are many other places as well. Somehow, the concept of “reblogging” seems to have bled over (incorrectly) to regular blogging with the prevalence of microblogging.

Product Reviewing and Ethics

In the past I went toe-to-toe with Lelo when I noticed that suddenly they went from quoting excerpts of reviews to pilfering entire (but slightly modified to remove retailers links and in some cases, had no links to the review itself) review posts. They’d never told anyone reviewing products (given to the reviewer by Lelo) that this would be done; they never asked for permission; and in fact they did this on reviews where the product came from retailers! After raising a fuss like I am wont to do, they apologized and removed it all and now only have excerpts (with links).

I’ve noticed that niche sex toy maker Duncan Charles has been lifting entire reviews², as well, and what’s worse is that they have ignored emails. Back when I posted about Lelo, Shanna Katz commented that it had happened to her a lot over the years as well.  I was offered the chance to do reviews for Nexus and at the time I viewed their site, I noticed that they had full text of reviews with no hyperlink. They had a text-only site address, though. But I wasn’t cool with having my entire review posted so I turned them down.

Ethical Blogging Practices

~Reblogging is NOT copying someone else’s entire blog post without their permission, throwing up an attribution link and calling it well and good. I see this as copyright violation and content theft. Also, just Bad Blogging Manners.  You can quote something from my post, with an attribution and link, and that is a horse of a different color. You can share a photo I’ve posted here via Tumblr, with an attribution and link, and that’s just fine.

~Posting someone’s photo without an attribution is content theft and copyright violation. I don’t care if the click-through link goes to their blog, the attribution line  (and link) is absolutely necessary.

~Creative Commons licenses on someone’s blog does not mean you get to skirt copyright basics or do away with attribution. Creative Commons exists to allow someone the flexibility of letting people know that sharing and even revamping is fine (with attribution) but it doesn’t dissolve copyright.

~And please…don’t EVER think you’re doing someone a favor by putting their content on your site. It’s insulting, it’s copyright violation, and it will earn you a very bad reputation.

 

this post sponsored is by: EdenFantasys (What this means), the place I buy my sex toys

 

 

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Posted by Lilly | 1 Comment

Happy Mother’s Day! The Winner of the Crystal Delights Plug is…..

I love that Rafflecopter makes entering contests and having contests so easy. It’s really a lot less of a headache! Of course, in fairness to all, manual verification of entries still needs to happen to be sure that everybody followed all of my rules and restrictions but I was able to do that as things went along for the most part.

After a lovely run and lots of entries, I’m pleased to announce that the winner is……

 

 

Penny, who writes the blog “A Penny for Your Dirty Thoughts”!

 

Congrats Penny! She really spread the word about sex toy safety – her Twitter posts, Tumblr posts and even a great blog post about sex toy safety!

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Posted by Lilly | 6 Comments

Do all birthdays suck?

Please allow this old lady a bit of self-involved moping and grumping for a mo’, would ya?

Last year’s birthday REALLY sucked. Perhaps this year’s birthday won’t suck so badly because I’m aware that it will suck in advance and I am preparing myself for that. The asshole now-ex-friend who forgot my birthday last year is off the hook now due to being a large douchebag who I don’t speak to anymore. Husband has informed me that he will not at all be up for anything fun or even dinner out, due to very stressful workplace goings-on this month that have my poor guy so wound up that we’re both at our less-than-best lately. We’re rescheduling for an unknown date in the near-ish future, at least.

Even my birthday wish list was produced with as much effort as pulling one’s own teeth. Money would be grand, though, so if a bunch of people were to buy sex toys from my affiliate links over there in the sidebar, I’d be tickled pink! We’ve decided to save up for the down payment on a house so any job offers or projects would be lovely too.

In a few weeks I’m turning 35 and I must admit I’m not pleased with that. I can’t say anymore that I’m vaguely in my “early 30′s”. I’ll suddenly be closer to 40 than 30 by just a smidge. Age is just a number, you say? 35 is the new 25, you say? The problem is I’m most certainly feeling like I’ve not done jack shit of importance in my life, that I’ve behind the 8-ball and failing miserably.

Growing up, my birthday was usually a big deal. I guess that’s what you get when you’re an only child? I wasn’t lavished with expensive presents but I didn’t ask for anything expensive, either. I don’t think it existed! We didn’t have cell phones or computers or handheld game thingiemabobbers. WE HAD STICKS. Ok, fine, it was better than sticks. And aside from my senior prom falling on my birthday one year and half the invitees not showing up to my 16th party, birthdays as a kid were pretty good. I’d have one with friends and then one with family. God, I miss my grandmother’s cake frosting.

So yeah…I guess the reason why my birthday list is so short on tangible items is that I’m realizing I’d rather have people. I’d like to go back to the busy, love-filled birthdays of childhood. I want to spend a whole day doing fun sightseeing with my husband, something we haven’t done in ages. I’d like to feel loved and appreciated by friends and family. Are we really all too damn busy for birthdays anymore? Are we really at the level where the most we can be arsed to do is post something on someone’s Facebook wall (and only then because Facebook reminds you) and call it job well done?

(please don’t comment to wish me a happy birthday, or I will stab you)

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A rant: Your crappy writing skills turn me off

“Contrary to what some people seem to believe, simple writing is not the product of simple minds. A simple, unpretentious style has both grace and power. By not calling attention to itself, it allows the reader to focus on the message”
–Richard Lederer and Richards Dowis, Sleeping Dogs Don’t Lay, 1999. More Words of Wisdom

Journalists and book authors were once held to impeccably high standards in terms of grammar, spelling and content matter. Somehow our society has degraded on the whole to what feels like a 4th grade level. Sometimes it’s even worse thanks to the prevalence of “text speak” in situations where it is so very inappropriate. Hyperbole and a Half said it best (regarding coping mechanisms to avoid exploding in a ball of white hot fury): “When someone types out “u” instead of “you,” instead of getting mad, I imagine them having only one finger on each hand and then their actions seem reasonable.  If I only had one finger on each hand, I’d leave out unnecessary letters too!”

Scenario 1: I decided to read Fifty Shades of Grey recently out of journalistic compulsion given all the drama and controversy surrounding it. While I can appreciate the overall sentiment to the book, the author’s absolutely horrid writing skill and dreadful lack of editing (and seeming inability to pick up a Thesaurus) ruined the promising plot and eclipsed even the awful and baffling fictional depiction of a BDSM relationship. Read the reviews on Amazon; some annoyed readers took to looking up the word count for certain things on their Kindle edition. I don’t care to do it for myself but someone else did! The repetition of words is distracting to the point of ruin. I’ve seen many media bits about this book/trilogy that laud it as “well written”. This is well written? Seriously? I have many more thoughts on this book but that is meant for another post. Jeez. Oh my…!

Scenario 2: I was reading the report on CNN about the Army nurse captain who died during a Skype call to his wife. The original story has now been fixed but when I read it it was:  “(CNN) — An Army captain’s wife witnessed her husband’s die while the couple was engaged in one of their regular video chats”" Oh CNN, why? Who should be blamed here? The writer or the editor or both?

Scenario 3: I like my erotica. Let me rephrase that: I like my well-written erotica. I do not expect something to be at the level of Anne Rice or whatnot but I do expect that you’ve read through it before hitting “publish” to pick out any spelling errors. When someone relies heavily on spell-check it is obvious! There is one erotica blogger/writer that I read despite the annoying spelling errors they refuse to care enough about. I notice the errors because of the tone of the prose; each error sticks out like a sore thumb. It causes me to halt in my reading like a needle being yanked off a record to figure out what word they meant to use. Oddly enough if it were a transposed letter, like writing “soemtimes”, then I would be more likely to not notice. But when one leaves off a letter (not/no, off/of, and/an, an/a, too/to) or screws up too/to/two or your/you’re or simply uses bizarre swaps like the/that it comes across as lazy writing. Unintelligent writing.

Scenario 4: Recently I’ve been editing on-site sex toy reviews before they go live. I fully understand that everyone has to start somewhere. Even I cringe at my early reviews for the tone and my childlike enthusiasm for some things. However….some people should not be writing reviews. Of any type, in any place. In fact they should please just stop writing altogether. Some of the reviews are so bad it’s difficult to edit them for better grammar without resorting to re-writing them entirely, which I’m not willing to do. I wish now that I’d copied the original bits from some of the particularly bad ones just to show as evidence.

 

I realize that most bloggers are not being paid for their words. But whether it’s a blog post or a sex toy review – don’t you care about how you look to others? A spelling error or two I can forgive. I’ve done it. But when it is consistently done then I stop respecting you. If it is done to the point of distraction then I’ll just stop reading your blog altogether. I also realize that many people are purposely writing to mimic the way they speak. This is fine to a point. And I’ll admit that comma placement still confuses me sometimes but when I see people obviously abusing it to the point where even I think it’s too much, I have to wonder about their intelligence. I’m not a “grammar Nazi” and I’m not a college English professor. I’m just a reader who wants to read words that make sense when thrown together in sentences and paragraphs. I don’t expect perfection; I just expect simple readability.

Read through your blog post or product review before you publish it! If you need to, read it out loud to aid in finding typing mistakes, run-on sentences or missing words. Polish up on comma placement (you don’t have to put a comma in a sentence for every time you would pause in speech); bookmark sites that have a list of commonly misspelled words such as lose vs loose or breath vs breathe (the latter is one I always screw up); stop using “alot“; learn possessive vs plural; and for the love of Pete if you’re writing about sex toys it is SILICONE not silicon. Another bizarre mistake I keep seeing is forgetting to use a question mark to cap a sentence that was obviously started in the tone of a question. Something I personally should learn to fix is something called “writing in the passive voice“. It’s how I speak and therefore how I write. Not enough importance is placed anymore on simple things such as apostrophes in contractions or capitalizing “I”. Another trick to figuring out if your personal speaking/writing voice comes off stilted/weird/wrong to others is to read through your writing and be sure to pronounce every word fully. Example: “…the reason for that is that Mary thinks…”¹. Say it the way you speak naturally. Do you change the second “that” so it sounds more like “thet” or “thit” and it rolls off the tongue quicker? Now read it again where both “that”s are the same and rhyme with “hat”. It sounds weird, right? Redundancy!

Mark Twain: “As to the adjective, when in doubt, strike it out.”

When you write in the passive voice or have run-on sentences longer than the average paragraph….with lots of ellipses….with alot of redundant phrases ….. can tick of even the most forgiving reader². There are a lot of helpful sites³ that can make you a better writer. Letting out this rant and researching the links for common mistakes has opened my eyes to things I do wrong, too, so I’m not proclaiming to be a perfect bastion of the English language here!

I also recognize that true blogging⁴ contains many moments when your text is your voice – or rather, your speaking voice replacement – and that writing in your speaking voice is more acceptable there (to a point). I’ve done it a lot and I’ve seen plenty of others do it in ways that personality, dialect and humor/emphasis shine through wonderfully. But when you write a post that you want others to take seriously, you should take a moment or three before publishing the post to the public. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to showcase a blog post as my Editor’s Pick on e[lust] because of the subject matter but bypassed it because the writing was just atrocious.

And finally, remember this: we are largely an online-only community. Your written words are your clothes, your power, your voice, your facial expressions and that by which we measure intelligence, personality and even attractiveness. Does your writing portray you in the best light? Please don’t underestimate the power and sexiness of intelligence.

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