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Dinner and talk with the smart and sexy
February 25, 2006
On Thursday night, after our respective long days, I had dinner with Rachel Kramer Bussel and Heather Corinna, who was in town to give a deposition for the ACLU. As crazed as I’ve been getting with my work, and as many bleary-eyed hours as I’ve been spending in front of my computer, 42 documents open on my desktop, phone ringing off the hook and barely able to keep up with it all, it was really awesome to meet up with these women and remember why I’m doing this and that I’m not alone (and I’m especially not alone in being frazzled, over worked and unable to say no to good projects).
It was awesome to meet Heather, whose work I’ve followed for years – her website Scarleteen is the site that a lot of sex positive over-18 websites (mine included) set their “exit” redirect to on their splash page, and for good reason. The site offers age-appropriate sexually explicit information for teens. And it’s this combination of things, “age-appropriate” and “sexually explicit” that brought her to New York to give deposition in the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) case.
Sam Sugar and Sabrina both wrote a bit about COPA this week, noting that COPA hearings were happening a few years ago – well, this is true, but the damn feds keep appealing the case, so they were happening again this week, and the fucking thing is going to trial next fall.
Yes, we agree (and under that “we” I include pornographers whole-heartedly) that children need to be protected from the evils of the world as well as from things that they are not yet ready to process. However, there is a delicate balance to strike so that information about things like sexual health and pleasure is still available, not banished.
This means that there is a careful dance being done around the age-old questions “what is porn?” and “what is art?” and “what is education?” and “what is ‘merely’ prurient?” These questions are complicated – and also kind of stupid, because the answers will always be somewhat elusive. If nothing else, they provided the opportunity for Heather to gleefully testify to the fact the she masturbated to novels by the Brontë sisters when she was thirteen – that’s something worth having in the department of justice’s records.
In addition to the politics of the day, we talked a lot about the sort of things that sex people talk about: writing, community, fetishes, political correctness and the things we do to take ourselves away from thinking about sex all the damn time. Good stuff, I tell ya – the evening definitely re-energized me to take on the work I’m going to be facing in the next few months.
Posted by Dacia at February 25, 2006 10:58 AM
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Comments
Heather Corinna is my HERO. She’s not who I want to be when I grow up - she’s who I want to be right now. I’m tres excited she’s moving to Seattle. Maybe I’ll get to actually meet her!
Posted by: lioness at February 26, 2006 12:48 AM
