Posted by Lilly | 5 Comments

This was going to be an intellectual post with thoughts and musings about vibrators and couples with me tempering my rage against those who get offended by sex toys

A reader pointed me to this article on Salon.com by an author I know and like, Rachel Kramer Bussel. Said reader thought that the topic was relevant to me and my site. Sure. It is.

But then all thoughts of writing up something about what she wrote went out the goddamn window when I made that tragic, tragic error. You know that error. When you read sex-based articles outside of our blogging bubble and actually read the comments:

image courtesy of theoatmeal.com from this comic

And then it all went off track. I actually can heavily relate to a lot of the comic that I’ll be borrowing images from, “Some thoughts and musings about making things for the web“. You see, I thought about leaving a comment. And then I found that I have to have an account on salon.com and log in and frankly, I’m too lazy for that shit half the time. So I read the comments, and immediately regretted it.

Really. Really?? You make assumptions about the writer and THIS is what you assume???

Again. They don’t even read, do they….

I think Willie99 is a straight man who likes vibrating buttplugs and is ashamed to admit it for some reason.

*headdesk*

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

I know. I asked for it. But Mr. Oatmeal was right.

All of this is why I decided a few weeks ago to turn off commenting on a Youtube video I posted. I made up a clip with some introduction text about the rabbit vibrator scenes years ago from Sex and the City. Holy mother of pearl the COMMENTS. The women that I wanted to pet and take under my wing, who said in all honesty something along the lines that they would like one but their husband/boyfriend won’t let them. To which my inner feminist goes “what do you mean ‘LET’ you??? YOU own your body!!! [insert rage here]“. And the men trolling for fights, saying the things that I don’t have to repeat, you already know.  I know that sites like Salon.com think that having open season on the comments like that increases their traffic and shit. Who knows, maybe it does. But it doesn’t mean people aren’t going to talk about it and link to it. However, it now means that (as depicted above) the experience of just reading the article for itself has been tainted, nay, ruined, for the other people who succumb to comment-reading.

The article in question, after all of this? Oh, it was fine. I have no issue with it. The title does come off a bit misleading but I blame Salon for that, not the author. It’s a little hard for me to be completely unbiased though on the contents of the article simply because the author, and her boyfriend, are acquaintances of mine. Although I have to admit that my go-to reaction is still “Seriously? A vibrator is making him feel insecure? *sigh*”. It’s a touchy subject with me. I usually do try very hard to see both sides and I have done my level best to see it from the jealous person’s point of view. After all, I used to feel the same way about my partner watching porn, years ago. But really it boils down to something that needs to be talked about and worked out, and keep this in mind: The problem lays with the person who thinks that the vibrator is a threat. The problem isn’t the person who wants/needs the vibrator. The problem isn’t the vibrator. Are you (the trolls, not you lovely readers of mine) really going to tell me that I AM A BAD PERSON, or that I am addicted to vibrators, or that I ruined my own clitoris because I rarely can climax without a vibrator???? Yes, I’m sure they will say that and truly think it. But when we judge a person for anything, we usually don’t know their path or their story. Learn their story and go beyond the surface, and you’ll find truths that shame you for your judgment. To judge me for my need of a vibrator is to tell me that my body is broken; I spent years almost never having a clitoral orgasm until I found vibrators. Do you really think I’m not worthy of something as base as an orgasm?

 

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Posted by Lilly | 5 Comments

Street Harassment: It’s everywhere, all the time

Inspired by Stoya’s story over at Jezebel, I’m speaking up along with all the other women. This paragraph, after talking about how men treat her on the street, “They say I have a sweet ass, nice tits, a real pretty dress. They say I’m their future wife, or I’d look good with their dick in my mouth.” really spoke to me.

Before you try to tell me that it’s because I take my clothes off for a living, let me tell you that this started way before I was 18. Let me tell you that every single woman I know has at least one truly terrifying story of street harassment and a whole bunch of other stories that are merely insulting or annoying. Let me remind you that in a room of pornography fans, who have actually seen me with a dick in my mouth and who can buy a replica of my vagina in a can or box, I am treated with far more respect than I am walking down the street.

A few years ago my work experience took me to a place that I’d never been before. No, I don’t mean a new city or a new type of job….I mean fearing my walk home from work.
I grew up in an area that predominantly white, middle-class. My town, regardless of the financial status, was predominantly white. It didn’t matter where I worked, the most distance I had to walk from my car to the door of the building was during Christmas when the parking lot of the retail store was full. I didn’t have much urban experience; the closest large city was an hour away and we only went there for special occasions. But a few years back the job I had moved us to a different city and I worked downtown.
The city was poorly laid out, and only the upper tier of government workers had access to the parking garages – either by way of their income or they were given the parking spot for free because of their high position. So us lowly workers had to park in lots anywhere from 1/3 to a full mile away from our building. The downtown office area was literally surrounded on all sides by the lowest income residents of the entire area. Next to one lot that I parked at for awhile was a small “camp” of homeless people. The poorest people in the city….they’re not the ones who gave me trouble. It was, every single time, the “hood” guys. Black, latino, white, mixed. All loud, thuggy, blowhards. And every single one of them scared the crap out of me thanks to the handful of men who harassed me on the streets as I would walk from my office building to my parking lot.

Somehow the public’s thought is that only pretty women get harassed on the street. Women who expose skin. Who just naturally attract attention. I never would have expected that I would get harassed and hit on, but it happened over and over. I was a fat, moderately attractive white girl dressed in what was usually bland office wear. During the time period that I worked there I was in 2 different buildings and 6 different parking lots. I couldn’t afford to pay for the garage – it cost 3 times as much as the lot. But after one harrowing, scary experience combined with bad winter weather and the darkness that hit just in time for my walk, I called enough and we somehow scraped together the money for a few months of garage parking. When we were starting to not be able to afford it, luck intervened and we were prepping to move away.

I’ve never been good at handling myself when put on the spot. Ever. I don’t have snappy comebacks; when confronted by an angry person I shake and become meek. Fear silences me. So when I was first hit on / harassed during my walk to the car, I didn’t know what to do. He wasn’t yet rude, but I was walking down an alley by myself. He did make me uncomfortable and I didn’t know how to respond. He scared me so I didn’t want to ignore him. I was afraid to walk to my car, I didn’t want him to know which one was mine. I ended up seeing a store that I could duck in to. Other encounters were more or less harmless, but no less uncomfortable. Sometimes I would walk with headphones on and music playing. I thought that this would give me the excuse of music, that I wasn’t ignoring them on purpose and therefore wouldn’t anger them. Apparently unless I donned a gigantic pair of true headphones, this tactic was useless. One day after nearly being hit by a pissy driver, I was passing a trio of white tough guys dressed all gangster-like who said a few obscene things to me but I didn’t make eye contact; I pretended that I didn’t hear them and felt it would be enough as I obviously had a pair of hot pink earbuds in. I guess they didn’t see that because their words then turned nasty and frightening and they started to follow me a little. I kept on going towards my parking lot and continued to pretend as though I didn’t hear. But I was terrified. Unlike the guys that people think are typical of busy NYC streets doing their catcalls, the men I encountered actually expected me to interact with them. When I did not, they turned on me. We’ve all seen on reality-type shows like Dateline or even just the news how people will ignore a crime happening right next to them. Despite being surrounded by cars and people, I did not feel safe.

No one else in my department had to work as late as I did, or if they did they didn’t park anywhere near me so I always walked to my car alone. I was always scared when I would see non-professionally-dressed men walking towards me.

That kind of fear, day to day, is fucking unacceptable. Yet it exists. Everywhere. Every day. To all kinds of people.

 

___________________________________________________________________________
This post has been sponsored by Sextoys.co.uk, a great place for all my UK readers to buy vibrators!

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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 | 4 Comments

Assumptions and Asshats – That’s a lot of ass, and not in the good way

“She was asking for it, dressed like that”

It’s a common “rape apologist” statement. The women who are raped are blamed because they dared to present themselves as a sexual being. I think that sex bloggers get a little bit of this mentality from male readers. I present my sexual thoughts or even sexual photos. Once upon a time on this blog I even asked for HNT suggestions for new sexy photos. I don’t do that anymore for various reasons. In fact I’m not all that provocative or sexual, period, on this blog. That is a topic though for another post.

My irritation¹ lies with the readers who “in fun” take what I give and then demand more. In the vein of “it never hurts to ask” they claim they’re being flirtatious or really just paying me a compliment. If I wanted suggestions, I would ask for them. If I wanted to post more (quantity) photos here, then I would. If I wanted to post more revealing photos here, then I would. But the key here is that it’s whatever I want to do. If you don’t like it, if you don’t find it to be “enough”….then please, seek out what you want elsewhere. There are no shortage (thank god) of sexy sex bloggers who are more revealing, more flirtatious, more interactive than I. I’ve been at this 4 years now and perhaps this is a sign to wrap things up but nonetheless I’ll thank you to keep your assumptive asshattery to yourself.

What prompted this mini rant, you ask? Not just yet another guy² who thinks it’s ok to ask for more (even when it should be plainly obvious that I have never / not for 3 years posted anything like it) but the utter cheek of a fellow blogger, a fellow female sex blogger (I presume, given her response, I haven’t a clue what her site is) who then takes my response to the guy and makes assumptions about HER. I don’t even know this chick. I didn’t make a derogatory comment about others who might post such photos, I didn’t say “ew gross no”. I said nothing but “I don’t do that”.

My response would have been similar if someone had commented and asked “Hey that’s great, but you really should review breakfast cereal more!” to which I’d say “Um, have you read my blog, does it look like I review breakfast cereal??” Would I be slamming those who review breakfast cereal? Fuck no. Nor am I slamming the women who do post porn with their reviews.

I might have happily acquiesced if he’d caught me circa late 2008 and had bothered to correspond with me and develop a rapport. Might have. But other than a few other irritatingly “cute” comments on Facebook, I don’t know this guy. He’s the equivalent to a stranger spying me wearing a low-cut top and asking, with an arrogant grin, for me to just show off the rest of my tits why don’t I. Ms. Buttinsky there is the equivalent to a stranger in proximity saying “hey, I’m a stripper, I take offense to your offense at baring your tits, what’s wrong with that, I do it all the time you bitch!”. Anyways, I’m getting off track here.

The bottom line is that now I not only have to deal with the “ugh, not this shit again” of unwanted and disrespectful demands for more of me, but I can’t even tell someone off on my own goddamned space of the internet without someone not at all involved thinking she has any damn right to assume and be offended at a perceived slight.

Seriously?

Fuck off.

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Posted by Lilly | 17 Comments

Ugly on the Inside

Most people are not graced with the symmetrical beauty that is deemed “perfect”. Many people do not have what is considered by fashion to be a “perfect” body – i.e. no excess fat, certainly no rolls or pudges, no stretch marks, skin that defies gravity, etc.

But are most people ugly?

No.

I will not sit here and claim to be a saint and say that I never ever make poor comments about a person’s clothing/body/whatever. Sometimes I do. I think most of us do. But when you do it all the time and out loud? I don’t care what you look like. I don’t care if you are Angelina fuckin Jolie’s twin sister. You are ugly. A lot of people don’t know the reasons why I started Wanton Wednesday. One of the reasons was that I didn’t care for the attitude the creator took against “sex bloggers” (an attitude which he has spread to others); I didn’t care for the attitudes of many of the bloggers who participated in HNT, either. Is Wanton Wednesday then the “misfits” version? I don’t know. I don’t care. I sure as fuck am not going to win any beauty contests and I will fully agree that many people do not find fat women attractive on the outside. You know what….you do your thing, I’ll do mine, and if you’re going to judge me or other people who could very well be the most awesome somebody you might ever meet, just on their looks? You’re not a person I want to know.

I visited the blog of someone and really…I should have known better. I already know what kind of person she is. Somehow she’s able to spout off shit like this and get pats on the fuckin back. Glad I don’t know any of the people who were commenting, either.

I don’t want to read anymore posts from women pushing 40 who go out and get liquored up.  I outgrew that before I was 20.  Grow up.  I don’t want to read anymore posts from so called sex bloggers.  The bulk of them are people sneaking around behind someone else’s back.  Grow a pair and get out, or work on what is there.  I don’t want to watch people who’s own marriage is such a joke give marital advice to someone else!  One day I just realized how small and stupid so much of this is.  People posting photos of themselves, so someone else will say how hot they are.  Because, let’s be honest here.  No one is going to say…”Sugar, you have cankles, or those boots you think are so naughty make your pudgy calves look even fatter.”  No one is going to say, please stop showing us your saggy boobs.  It’s like a competition to see how many compliments they can get.  It’s mind numbing and shallow.  There are a handful who actually do it well, and look good doing it.  But the bulk of them……sheesh.

No, I’m not linking to blogger and I probably won’t tell you if you ask – her identity isn’t the point and most likely you don’t know her anyways (one of you will). She is ugly on the inside. I do not want to associate with her or people like her and I hope to hell that no one who participates in WW is anything like her. In her posts she may or may not be referring to people I’m friends with or hell, even me for that matter (” Women who’s nipples look like they fed an entire third world country should NAWT be showing them off on the internet.” or ” At one point I didn’t know where my place was in blogland. I wasn’t a Mommy blogger. I did NAWT want to be one of the crazy sex bloggers.” could easily apply to me, lol).

I don’t care what you look like. I care what is INSIDE OF YOU. I want friends surrounding me who are beautiful on the inside, so beautiful that they outshine others. Many of the people I consider a friend would fit into that. I am not a happy go lucky person – I can be grumpy and cranky and get easily disappointed/upset at the shittiness of peers. But I do know one thing. I am NOT ugly inside. I won’t tolerate anyone who is, anymore. Excuse me while I go fuckin belt out “Don’t Rain on My Parade” or something.

To my friends, to my loyal readers, to my Wanton Wednesday group:

You are beautiful no matter what they say
Words can’t bring you down
You are beautiful in every single way
Yes, words can’t bring you down
Don’t you bring me down today…

No matter what we do
No matter what we say
We’re the song inside the tune
Full of beautiful mistakes

And everywhere we go
The sun will always shine
And tomorrow we might wake on the other side
All the other times

We are beautiful in every single way
Yes, words can’t bring us down

~”Beautiful”, Christina Aguilera

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Posted by Lilly | 6 Comments

Scandal Shack Dot Com – Thievery and Copyright Violation!

A lot of my fellow bloggers are having their content scraped and posted on scandal shack dot com – They’re flat-out stealing; they put your words (or photos!) onto their ugly ass ad-laden website without any links to the blogger who wrote it or anything. The only way that you can tell is when someone uses a WordPress plugin that adds copyright protection words/links to their RSS feed (like AAG does).

It’s being done by scraping the content from your RSS feed – they’re pulling from a lot of sites so it’s not being done by hand (quite obviously, or this lovely post by AAG wouldn’t be showing up as a post on SS.com, hehe). I’m posting this warning for you to go check out the site and make sure your content isn’t being scraped. Mina tangled with them directly to no avail, so there’s info in her post on how to report the copyright violations directly to the site’s host. Hopefully with enough complaints the site will go away altogether.

But that only fixes that exact site. And who knows, the guy might do it again. In fact, it’s not the first or last time we’ll ever see our content illegally scraped. I personally use a plugin for WordPress called “No More Frames” which does something to prevent the scripts the scraper is using from pulling your content. My content is, so far, not on the site. It is either because this plugin does actually work OR my feed isn’t worth scraping :)

I guess we’ll find out soon enough, if this post shows up on his site.

This is a lot worse than what a certain vibrator company once did with copyright violation and sex toy reviews, because at least they acted professionally and took things down from their site. This guy is just using it as content filler to fill up the gaps (albeit small) between the garish ads.

 

ETA: The host of the site is on Twitter, perhaps we can employ that method after aggrieved parties have formally sent in their copyright violation email? it’s @Hostgator.

ETA2: I asked, “How many reports of copyright violation does it take for you guys to shut down his site altogether?” @HGSupport, who had been responding to the @Hostgator complaints from bloggers, was asking for support ticket numbers. I personally don’t have one, but others have reported it. Their response to “how many”? -  “Just one, which has not been received at this point. Again, if we can get the ticket it will be handled as quickly as possible.” Which makes no sense, because Mina said in her post that HG removed the posts that she reported as scraped. So they DID have one report. Sadie also sent a complaint on Friday. Are they just blowing smoke, or are they slow?

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