A past pro-lifer reflects on the pro-life movement.

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I realize that there are likely some readers who are pro-life, and this post is in no way meant to be an attack, by me, on your perspective. Yes, it's about someone who left the pro-life movement, and yes, she dismantles many of the arguments made by those who are pro-life. But for those who are pro-life, her post is still worth a read, as it will help you better understand what can be done if the end goal is to reduce abortions rates.

By Libby Anne, of Love, Joy, Feminism:

How I Lost Faith in the “Pro-Life” Movement

The spring of my sophomore year of college I was president of my university’s Students for Life chapter. The fall of my junior year of college I cut my ties with the pro-life movement. Five years later I have lost the last shred of faith I had in that movement. This is my story.

I was raised in the sort of evangelical family where abortion is the number one political issue. I grew up believing that abortion was murder, and when I stopped identifying as pro-life I initially still believed that. Why, then, did I stop identifying as pro-life? Quite simply, I learned that increasing contraceptive use, not banning abortion, was the key to decreasing the number of abortions. Given that the pro-life movement focuses on banning abortion and is generally opposed advocating greater contraceptive use, I knew that I no longer fit. I also knew that my biggest allies in decreasing the number of abortions were those who supported increased birth control use – in other words, pro-choice progressives. And so I stopped calling myself pro-life.

My views on fetal personhood and women’s bodily autonomy have shifted since that day, but when I first started blogging a year and a half ago I was nevertheless very insistent that the pro-life movement should be taken at its word when it came to rhetoric about saving “unborn babies” from being “murdered.” I insisted that the pro-life movement wasn’t anti-woman or anti-sex, and that those who opposed abortion genuinely believed that a zygote/embryo/fetus was a person with rights in need of protection just like any other person. I believed that the pro-life movement’s actions were counterproductive, but that they were merely misinformed. I wrote a post with practical suggestions for opponents of abortion. I believed that the pro-life movement was genuine in its goals, but simply ignorant about how its goals might best be obtained.

I have come to the conclusion that I was wrong.

As a child, teen, and college student, I sincerely believed that personhood, life, rights, and the soul all began at fertilization. I was honestly opposed to abortion because I believed it was murder. It had nothing to do with being anti-woman or anti-sex. I thought that the pro-life movement writ large – the major pro-life organizations, leaders, and politicians – were similarly genuine. I thought that they, like myself, simply wanted to “save the lives of unborn babies.”

I have come to the conclusion that I was a dupe.

What I want to share here is how I came to this realization. And if you, reader, are one of those who opposes abortion because you believe it is murder and you want to save the lives of unborn babies, well, I hope to persuade you that the pro-life movement is not actually your ally in this, that you have been misled, and that you would be more effective in decreasing the number of abortions that occur if you were to side with pro-choice progressives. If this is you, please hear me out before shaking your head.

Read the rest here.

And the follow-up to the criticisms and questions here.

Dan Savage and the straight man.

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From the Atlantic:

Dan Savage: The Gay Man Who Teaches Straight People How to Have Sex
One of the Savage Love columnist's most notable qualities is his concern for heterosexual men—but that wasn't always the case.
Two summers ago, over the Fourth of July weekend, the New York Times Magazine published a cover story I had written about infidelity and the future of marriage. My main character was Dan Savage, the writer and activist who for years has argued that many good marriages fall apart because couples have unrealistic expectations about monogamy. For months after my essay ran, I heard from friends, and from total strangers. Some of the mail was creepy: I got letters from two husbands who said they had been trying to broach the subject of an open marriage with their wives, and now they were hoping that, by leaving my article lying about the house, they could casually segue into the topic. But most of the letters were sweet and sincere and not the least bit unctuous. One newlywed woman, a neighbor of mine, saw me on my street and said, "Thanks for that piece. Dan Savage has meant a lot to me, and to my marriage."
As it happened, almost every person who wrote or spoke to me about the piece was heterosexual. Dan Savage is famously gay, one of the most famous gay Americans, and I had no idea how deeply many straight people related to him—even more, how much they loved him, how grateful they were for what he said, for what he wrote, for him.
Savage promotes the nuclear family unit because he believes that it is a healthy model for everybody: gay couples, straight couples, children. But his cheerleading for heterosexuals goes even further. He always seems to be rooting for us. I believe that one of Savage's most notable qualities is the particular compassion he feels for straight men.
But Savage did not always feel so warmly. After a rough adolescence, he expected to find a little company in the theater department in college, and he was a bit perplexed, he recalls, to be "the only gay guy in the acting program." After college, "all these other guys in the acting program came out. That made me mad at straight people." Blaming straight people for closeted gay people does not make immediate sense, but remember that it was the mid-1980s, gay men were filling the graveyard, Ronald Reagan was doing nothing, and an out, proud gay identity was one possible munition against the enemy. If straight people were shaming gay people into the closet, fuck straight people.
"I started writing Savage Love still really mad at straight people," Savage says. "But getting their mail. . . . It's really straight guys who get the bum rap. The way straight people have redefined marriage, and the way they define sexuality, it's really unrealistic about male sexuality.
"And reading letters from straight guys made me hugely sympathetic to straight guys. And I was already sympathetic to straight women, because men are pigs and I sleep with men so know what that's like. I arrived sympathetic to straight women—I became sympathetic to straight men, reading these bat-shit letters from straight guys who were being terrorized and being driven crazy, because sex is scarce if you're a straight guy. It's not scarce if you have a pussy or if you're a fag. But if you're a straight guy?
"Straight guys run the world, but that includes the Taco Bell franchise. They're less free sexually than anybody else. The girl who eats pussy once or twice in college can tell her husband, and he's not going to believe she's a lesbian, and she is not going to be terrorized by that experience. But these poor straight guys, who meet the one guy who blips onto their sex radar, and they're devastated! They think no matter how much sex they've had with women, this is proof . . . because straight male sexuality is two negatives bundled together: it's to not be a woman and to not be a fag. So anything a straight guy might be interested in that is perceived as feminine or faggy is really destabilizing to their selves.
"After reading their letters for a couple years, I realized gay men and women were complicit in this too. If you've had sex once with a man, they say you're gay. Gay men want you to be gay—if you look like Tom Cruise. There is not a lot of speculation whether Seth Rogen is gay. I fucked women. Nobody ever says to me, 'Oh, you couldn't have done that if you weren't actually straight."'
And soon enough Savage had a lot in common with the average straight guy. He is a breadwinner in a fairly traditional marriage, with a son and a stay-at-home spouse. He is, to me, a fellow dad, one whose heart clearly lies with the two-parent family with children. As I learned in Seattle, he is one of the few men as boringly earnest on the pleasures of parenting as I am; he is adoring of his husband, Terry, and much of his finest work—his books, his This American Life essays—are hymns to close relatives.
Right now, Dan Savage is our country's sex doctor and its love doctor, its number-one gay and its cheerleader for straights, its theorist of gay marriage and of straight marriage. There is, therefore, nothing particularly gay about the work he does at the moment; he has transcended those categories. And that is a feat only a gay man or lesbian could accomplish. I could never win the kind of acceptance as an authority on gay sex, or gay families, that Savage has won among straights. Our very few openly gay actors cannot get cast as straight leading men—they may be tolerated, even loved, but they are still marked—but Savage has broken free of the box. He is, I think, the first openly gay American to do so.
"One should never underestimate the simple radicalism of an openly gay man giving straight people sex advice," Andrew Sullivan told me. "To come out swinging like that, as an openly gay guy telling straight people what to do in bed, was more revolutionary than we now realize." It's true; I never realized it.
When I am watching Dan Savage, or listening to him, or reading his words, I never even think about the revolution. I just think about sex, or I think about love. How radical is that.
This is an excerpt from Dan Savage: The First Gay Celebrity, by Mark Oppenheimer, an e-book that can be purchased here.

Gay bashing and homophobia in the Ukraine.

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Evangelicals stage a protest in 2007

From the BBC:

Ukraine takes aim against 'gay propaganda'

Svyatoslav Sheremet, head of Gay Forum of Ukraine, is attacked earlier this year

The Ukrainian parliament could give final approval next week to a bill that aims to outlaw "pro-homosexual propaganda" - any "positive depiction" of gay people, gay pride marches, or even the screening of a film like Brokeback Mountain.

Critics have described the legislation, which imposes indeterminate fines and up to five years in prison for repeat offenders, as a throwback to the Middle Ages, although it is only a couple of decades since homosexuality was a criminal offence here and in the rest of the USSR.

In some ways, Ukraine is an open and tolerant society. It was the first former Soviet republic to decriminalise homosexuality, in 1991. It has sprouted its own gay rights movement, and gay night clubs operate freely in central Kiev.

But despite this, the bill - which sailed through its first reading last week - enjoys wide backing. All major political parties are united in support, and polls indicate that many Ukrainians support some restrictions on the rights of sexual minorities.

One of the legislation's incubators is the Christian Hope evangelical church in Kiev. Located in a nondescript five-story structure outside the city centre, Christian Hope provides a wide array of educational and charity services, and has established a network of some 150 churches throughout Ukraine. It has also helped collect thousands of signatures in support of three anti-gay bills put forward in parliament this year.

After a rousing service in the church's warehouse-like auditorium focusing on the agonies of sin and bliss of salvation, I meet the chief pastor, Valery Reshetinsky. For him, the fight against homosexuality is a matter of "national security" upon which the survival of the nation depends.

"Here's the issue," says Pastor Reshetinsky, a large-boned man with a slight moustache, tells me. "In a real democracy, my freedom and rights are limited by the freedom of someone else."

In his opinion, freedom of speech for sexual minorities is a violation of what he considers his inalienable right not to have to hear something he finds offensive.

"You can't do everything that you want to do, because there are people who have the exact same rights as you do," he insists.

The pastor goes on to accuse a worldwide conspiracy of Masons, New-Agers, postmodernists and financiers of various nationalities, of imposing ideas that are not "characteristic for Ukraine" on the nation's children.

The first reading of the bill last week unleashed a deluge of condemnation from human rights organisations, both inside and outside Ukraine, who have christened it a "gay gag law". The ban would be a gross violation of European and international conventions, they say, leading to further marginalisation of Ukraine's LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender) community.

Read the rest here.

Can men and women just be friends?

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From Scientific American:

Men and Women Can't Be "Just Friends" Researchers asked women and men "friends" what they really think—and got very different answers

Can heterosexual men and women ever be “just friends”? Few other questions have provoked debates as intense, family dinners as awkward, literature as lurid, or movies as memorable. Still, the question remains unanswered. Daily experience suggests that non-romantic friendships between males and females are not only possible, but common—men and women live, work, and play side-by-side, and generally seem to be able to avoid spontaneously sleeping together. However, the possibility remains that this apparently platonic coexistence is merely a façade, an elaborate dance covering up countless sexual impulses bubbling just beneath the surface.

New research suggests that there may be some truth to this possibility—that we may think we’re capable of being “just friends” with members of the opposite sex, but the opportunity (or perceived opportunity) for “romance” is often lurking just around the corner, waiting to pounce at the most inopportune moment.

In order to investigate the viability of truly platonic opposite-sex friendships—a topic that has been explored more on the silver screen than in the science lab—researchers brought 88 pairs of undergraduate opposite-sex friends into…a science lab.  Privacy was paramount—for example, imagine the fallout if two friends learned that one—and only one—had unspoken romantic feelings for the other throughout their relationship.  In order to ensure honest responses, the researchers not only followed standard protocols regarding anonymity and confidentiality, but also required both friends to agree—verbally, and in front of each other—to refrain from discussing the study, even after they had left the testing facility. These friendship pairs were then separated,and each member of each pair was asked a series of questions related to his or her romantic feelings (or lack thereof) toward the friend with whom they were taking the study.

The results suggest large gender differences in how men and women experience opposite-sex friendships. Men were much more attracted to their female friends than vice versa. Men were also more likely than women to think that their opposite-sex friends were attracted to them—a clearly misguided belief. In fact, men’s estimates of how attractive they were to their female friends had virtually nothing to do with how these women actually felt, and almost everything to do with how the men themselves felt—basically, males assumed that any romantic attraction they experienced was mutual, and were blind to the actual level of romantic interest felt by their female friends. Women, too, were blind to the mindset of their opposite-sex friends; because females generally were not attracted to their male friends, they assumed that this lack of attraction was mutual. As a result, men consistently overestimated the level of attraction felt by their female friends and women consistently underestimated the level of attraction felt by their male friends.

Read the rest here.

Woman turns herself into real-life Barbie doll.

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From cnews:

A Ukrainian model who claims to have reached her lifelong dream of being a real-life Barbie doll says she got that way through "hard work for years and good genes."

Since Valeria Lukyanova joined Facebook on April 21 — filling her page with hundreds of photos showing her wide, doll-like eyes, shockingly small waist, long golden locks and, of course, huge breasts — she's garnered more than 92,500 "likes" and sparked dozens of media stories speculating on how much plastic surgery she's had or how much her pictures have been Photoshopped.

On Good Morning America, Dr. Anthony LaBruna, director of Manhattan Plastic Surgery, estimated Lukyanova spent hundreds of thousands to achieve her look, which would have required her to "cut some ribs out."

Dr. Malcolm Roth, president of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, told ABC News Lukyanova shouldn't be going under the knife so often at such a young age.

"Valeria is only 21, so certain milestones in growth and physical maturity ought to be considered before plastic surgery is performed," he said.

But in a video posted to her YouTube page on Thursday, roughly translated to English by the site IBTimes.com, Lukyanova lashed out at the media, claiming she got her Barbie body by eating raw foods, working hard, abstaining from booze and having "good genes."

Reporters have been repeating rumours of her plastic surgery "like parrots," she said.

Lukyanova said she is a new age composer and singer with "wide vocal range and coloratura soprano" who has written more than 70 songs. Her YouTube page is filled with videos of the pixie-thin sensation playing music and crooning with an operatic voice.

On her website, Lukyanova writes almost daily about spiritualism and dreams, posts new songs and links to video clips of supposed UFO sightings.

She writes that you can't achieve "true beauty" without finding "inner peace."

"The most important thing for me is spiritual development. Nothing is more important than to get to the bottom and learn the meaning of infinity. Everything else is an illusion in my mind, only a distraction from the truth," she said.

More photos of her on her Facebook page: link.

And a video of her singing:

Uploaded by amatuecumna on 2011-11-15.


The sex lives of conjoined twins.

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From the Atlantic:

One thing we know for sure about the sexuality of conjoined twins: People who aren't conjoined are fascinated by it. At least it seems that way, judging by the number of reporters calling me to ask about the sex lives of conjoined twins since the TLC reality show Abby and Brittany went on the air several weeks ago. As I've told callers, although there are no real studies of the sex lives of conjoined twins, we can safely assume that conjoined twins want -- and occasionally feel conflicted about wanting -- sex, as we all do.

[...]

Sex is often mentioned by commentators on conjoinment as one of the beautiful things supposedly made instantaneously horrible by conjoinment. I'm afraid I just laughed when, in writing a book on conjoined twins, I came across this 1984 line by a nurse writing in a medical journal: "Two people never being able to obtain privacy to bathe, excrete, copulate, or eat defies imagination."

Surgeons sometimes openly allude to sexuality as a motivator for separation surgery. In 2002, as soon as he had made the cut separating two little girls joined at the head, the neurosurgeon involved paused to announce to the assembled medical team, "We now have two weddings to go to." Indeed, when I talked to contemporary surgeons about how they decide whether to undertake the substantial risks some separations involve, I found that surgeons had two fears, sort of conjoined: one, that twins would grow up conjoined and thus never have sex; two, that twins would grow up conjoined and actually have sex.

[...]

So, I suppose I should get to what the people really want to know: what do conjoined twins feel when they have sex? If one is sexually stimulated, does the other feel it? If one has an orgasm, does the other enjoy the same, however unwittingly?

The short answer is that we don't know. Conjoined twins, like the rest of us, tend not to talk in great depth publicly about their most intimate moments. Based on what we know about the significant variability of one conjoined twin to feel a body part (e.g., an arm) that putatively "belongs" to the other twin, it's hard to guess how any conjoinment will turn out in practice. Nerves, muscles, hormones, and psychology all probably factor in to who feels what. If twins share one set of genitals, they're both going to feel any touching down there. Whether or not both are "having sex" with the third person in the equation depends on how you think about "having sex."

Read the whole article here.

The homosexual agenda.

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The Betty Bowers site is satirical commentary on what's been called the gay or homosexual agenda by social conservatives. The contention is that the gay community, and those who support it, is trying to infiltrate all aspects of society in attempt to normalize non-heterosexual sexual orientations. This includes indoctrinating school-ages children and influencing Hollywood's programming. I've posted some other satire about it before (link).

From her site:

As every Christian knows, there is only one enemy that threatens our entire civilization. And I am, of course, not talking about Satan. I'm talking about those damned homosexuals! Yes, they give otherwise dull hair radiant highlights and our imperfect décor those fabulous flourishes that elude our more predictable heterosexual sensibilities, but at what price? In exchange for a little panache, we allow homosexuals to steal our children and destroy our Christian marriages. And how do they do this? With their secret masterplan -- The Homosexual Agenda!
Many a well-intentioned person has asked me, "Betty, what exactly is The Homosexual Agenda?" Well, if you have to ask, you are probably already under its pernicious influence and blithely hop-scotching your way straight to Hell. Nevertheless, the details of The Homosexual Agenda have -- up until this day -- been kept more secret than the nature of John Travolta's and Tom Cruise's marriages. But I am pleased to announce that through innumerable free vodka sea-breezes and some artful Christian skullduggery, I have gotten my hands on an authentic copy of The Homosexual Agenda. Praise the Lord!
I have had my secretaries, Miss Anne Thrope and Anita Priceczech, transcribe The Homosexual Agenda from the back of a used cocktail napkin (the original is to be placed in the Smithsonian Institute) for your convenient reference. Never again shall we be surprised by what these malevolent Nancy Boys are up to. While they may still be able to surprise us with a cunningly perfect piece of Chinese porcelain for our Biederimeier end-table, they will never again be able to surreptitiously take over our culture, families and prime-time television without God-fearing Christians being one step ahead of them! Praise the Lord!
And a sample from the agenda:
8:00 a.m. Wake up. Wonder where you are.
8:01 a.m. Realize you are lying on 100 percent cotton sheets of at least a 300 count, so don't panic; you're not slumming.
8:02 a.m. Realize you are actually in your own bed for a change. Wake stranger next to you and tell them you are late for work so won't be able to cook breakfast for them. Mutter "sorry" as you help him look for his far-flung underwear. You find out that you tore his boxers while ripping them off him last night, so you "loan" him a pair of boxer-briefs, but not the new ones because you never intend to see him again.
8:05 a.m. Tell the stranger, whose name eludes you, "It was fun. I'll give you a call," as you usher him out the door, avoiding his egregious morning-breath.
8:06 a.m. Crumple and dispose of the piece of paper with his telephone number on it when you get to the kitchen.
8:07 a.m. Make a high protein breakfast while watching the Today show. Wonder if the stories you've heard about Matt Lauer are true. Decide they must be.
8:30 a.m. Italian or domestic? Decide to go with three-button Italian and the only shirt that is clean.
8:45 a.m. Climb into red Z4 and try not to look too much like Barbie driving one of her accessories as you pull out of your underground parking. Revos or Armanis? Go with Revos.
9:35 a.m. Stroll into office.
9:36 a.m. Close door to office and call best friend and laugh about the guy who spent the night at your condo. Point out something annoying about best friend's boyfriend but quickly add "It doesn't matter what everyone else thinks, just as long as you love him."
10:15 a.m. Leave office, telling your secretary you are "meeting with a client." Pretend not to notice her insubordinate roll of her eyes (or the cloying "poem" she has tacked to her cubicle wall).
10:30 a.m. Hair appointment for lowlights and cut. Purchase of Aveda anti-humectant pomade.

See the rest of the agenda here.

Misrepresentation data from OkCupid.

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OkCupid is one of the largest online dating sites on the web. Before it was purchased by Match.com, there was a crack team of geeky researchers who poured through the data and reported interested findings on the OkCupid research blog, OkTrends. I've posted some of those findings previously (here, here, and here). If you want to go directly to the source, click here. Sadly, the blog hasn't been updated in over a year.

Jenn alerted me to some findings regarding members' misrepresentations of themselves. This ties in nicely with what was discussed in class this week. The first attribute they discuss is height.

Here's an excerpt from beginning on the post:

The Big Lies People Tell In Online Dating

[...]

Anyhow, in many online situations, self-misrepresentation is totally harmless. Like, who cares if your Halo 3 avatar is taller than you are in real life? Or if flickr thinks you're single when you're really married? But in online dating, where the whole goal is to eventually meet other people in person, creating a false impression is a whole different deal.

People do everything they can in their OkCupid profiles to make themselves seem awesome, and surely many of our users genuinely are. But it's very hard for the casual browser to tell truth from fiction. With our behind-the-scenes perspective, we're able to shed some light on some typical claims and the likely realities behind them.

Let's get started.

"I'm 6 feet tall."

REALITY: People are two inches shorter in real life.

This whole post was inspired by an amusing graph we stumbled across while trying to answer the question Do taller guys have more sex? The answer, to a degree, is yes, and I'll expand on that in a little bit. But in this case what was more interesting than the sex was the (supposed) tallness of the guys.

The male heights on OkCupid very nearly follow the expected normal distribution—except the whole thing is shifted to the right of where it should be. You can see it better when we overlay the implied best fit below (pardon the technical language):

 

Almost universally guys like to add a couple inches. You can also see a more subtle vanity at work: starting at roughly 5' 8", the top of the dotted curve tilts even further rightward. This means that guys as they get closer to six feet round up a bit more than usual, stretching for that coveted psychological benchmark.

Women show a similar pattern. Go read the rest, including data about finances and attractiveness, here. This graph, in particular, is very telling:

STI cupcakes.

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From the Huffington Post:

STD Cupcakes Meant To Shock, Educate, Perhaps Entice Visitors At Unique London Exhibition

HIV, syphilis, gonorrhea, genital warts and other sexually transmitted diseases adorn a set of specially prepared -- and painstakingly anatomically correct -- cupcakes that will be part of an exhibition this weekend at the London St. Bart's Pathology Museum.

The second annual Eat Your Heart Out exhibition features a wide array of bizarre and grotesque goodies curated by "evil genius" public relations manager "Miss Cakehead" aka Emma Thomas (HuffPost Food has featured some of her other work previously). The goods are available for purchase by non-squeamish pastry lovers.

The STD cupcakes are meant to do more than shock, however. Besides having audiences admire the obvious skill of the chef behind the sugar-spun boils and warts, the event aims to help raise awareness about the dangers of unprotected sex.

Jenni Powell of Two Little Cats Bakery designed the cupcakes (which come in lemon, vanilla and chocolate flavors) for The Evil Cake Shop's exhibition and told The Huffington Post the experience was certainly a memorable one.

"I already knew a fair bit about STDs and their symptoms," Powell wrote in an email to HuffPost, explaining that she had worked as a "sexpert" on her university's sexual health outreach team. "A lot of diseases don't have visible symptoms, so I wanted to pick ones that would really make a statement on a cupcake!"

Despite her background, researching the symptoms was still a challenging process, one she called both "fascinating and disgusting in equal parts."

"I wanted to make the symptoms as true to life as I possibly could, so used medical journals and the good old internet....seriously my google image history is quite stomach churning," she said.

Response to the cakes has been mixed, according to Powell, but the best emails have been from people who said "they didn't realize that the swellings, scabs etc. look like that, and they're off to buy some condoms," Powell wrote. "Even if one person takes away the educational message then we've done a good job!"

Customers wishing to purchase the cupcakes can buy STD boxsets, available for £12 (about $19) each at the Pathology Museum.

Buyers will not be able to choose the cakes they get, however -- a purposeful choice, according to Thomas.

"It's like having unprotected sex with a stranger," she told The Sun. "You never know what you'll get!"

See the rest of the cupcakes in the gallery at the bottom of the page, here.

Twincest porn.

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From Salon.com:

Gay porn’s most shocking taboo "Twincest" is pushing limits in an industry known for extremes. What is it, and why are so many people watching?

Based on their YouTube channel, Elijah and Milo Peters just seem like your average, slightly awkward Czech teenage twins. They enjoy role-playing games and steak. They like frolicking around on the beach in their elaborately patterned underwear and taunting each other while bodybuilding. (“Hey you lazy-ee boy! Put some weight on eet!”) But the Peters twins aren’t quite as innocent as their goofy grins and adorable accents suggest.

Over the past few months, they have become two of the most controversial performers to hit the gay porn world in a very long time. That’s because they’re willing to break a taboo that, even in an industry that thrives on extremes, is too extreme for many: twin incest (or, more succinctly, twincest). While the concept of twin performers is not new to the gay porn world, the Peters twins are notable both because of the extent of their popularity and the things they are willing to do with each other on camera. They French kiss; they perform oral sex on each other; they have anal sex; and most shockingly of all, they do it in a tender and romantic way.

“My brother is my boyfriend, and I am his boyfriend,” says one of the twins during a phone call from Prague (Elijah and Milo sound so much alike on the phone it is impossible to tell which one is speaking). “He is my lifeblood, and he is my only love.”

The twins’ astonishing lack of shame — and their willingness to do anything with each other on camera — has helped turn them into a gay porn phenomenon. Since they first began appearing on Czech porn studio Bel Ami’s website (NSFW, like all links in this story) in 2009, the company’s traffic has doubled to 1.5 million users per month, and Milo and Elijah have become the subject of breathless coverage on adult blogging sites like Fleshbot and The Sword. They’ve even been flown from Prague to the United States for a whirlwind tour of Florida gay nightspots. But their surprising popularity raises some disturbing questions: Who are these twins? What keeps so many people watching them? And what, exactly, are viewers getting off on?

[...]

The twins first appeared on Bel Ami’s site in the summer of last year, as performers in a couple of “group scenes.” At first, Elijah and Milo didn’t really touch each other in their scenes, but over the course of several months, in a rollout worthy of “Cloverfield,” the studio either let them (or pushed them to) go further and further with each other on-screen. At first this involved them jerking each other off during group sex, then, in a scene with a gangly performer named “Trevor Yates,” performing oral sex on one another, and finally, in a much-hyped video, having full-on sex. The studio sent out a press release in the days preceding it, warning gay porn bloggers that “twincest” was coming.

Read the rest here.

Documentary: Virgins Wanted.

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As far as I can tell, this is legit (check the crazy terms and agreements here - of course, they got the hymen aspect totally wrong). Trailer:

Virgins Wanted follows one man (Alex) and one woman (Catarina) as they defy social norms, putting their virginity up for auction to the highest bidder. The series examines their motivations behind remaining virgins, as well as their day to day lives and their hopes and dreams for the future.

 

The homepage is here.

Currently, the highest bid for Catarina is $450,000 - the highest bid for Alexander is $2,500. This massive difference is not surprising. If you rule out attractiveness, there are likely two other factors at play: (1) men's interest in, and willingness to, pay for sex; and (2) that women's virginity is considered a much more valuable asset than men's.

The elk who loved cows (too much).

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From the Huffington Post (and posted elsewhere):

100 Mile House Lovestruck Elk Stripped Of Crown, Mating Partner

100 MILE HOUSE, B.C. - Somewhere east of this Cariboo community wanders an enormous bull elk, stripped of its crown of six-point antlers and a misplaced attraction for one of Greg Messner's cows.

The elk, a loner that had been turning up at the century-old 100 Mile Ranch to check out Messner's herd for three years, was relocated earlier this month for its own safety and for the probity of the cow.

"He stuck around for a couple of days the first year," said Messner, whose wife has had the ranch in her family for its entire history.

"Then last year, he was just hanging around again for a couple of weeks and not really doing anything, just hanging around and looking at the cows. This year, he decided to go for it."

Messner said the elk's visits have been a curiosity. Elk are so rare in the area that Messner and anyone else who stopped by to have a look at the impressive creature in the pasture simply call it The Elk.

"It's kind of like the Queen," Messner explained. "There's only one of them."

This year, the beast decided to stay a while and ended up mingling in the herd for about two months during its rutting season.

One of Messner's cows was also in heat and the pair became a freakish but constant spectacle.

"If you were there watching, it would be an X-rated movie. Several times a day," Messner said through a chuckle.

"He was pretty aggressive. He'd put his head down with his great big antlers and poke the little calves and push them away and send them for a little ride once in a while and flick them around."

Messner estimated the elk at about six feet tall and four feet wide and weighing about half a tonne.

He said he finally called a biologist at the University of Northern British Columbia after inquiries from neighbours about whether his cow could have been impregnated by the elk.

"He had a huge rack, but he was too well-endowed by chromosomes," Messner said.

Messner was told an elk has eight more chromosomes than a cow, making the likelihood of a hybrid calf a near impossibility.

But it wasn't the amorous nature of the elk that finally prompted Messner to break up what he called "the harem" in his pasture.

The ranch is bordered by the highway and cars were stopping as passengers tried to get a look at the amorous ungulate, which from time to time would hop from one side of the pasture fence to the other.

Messner said the final straw was when hunters turned up, the lure of a six-point rack potentially dangerously enticing.

"Trucks were pulling over and people were watching this poor elk through the scope of their gun and people were doing U-turns on the highway. It was becoming a real dangerous situation."

Messner called in the conservation officer. He, the officer and two RCMP officers sedated the elk and removed its antlers to make it less appealing to hunters and less of a threat to the cows should it decide to return.

The elk was then loaded into a truck and taken about 20 kilometres out of town, towards the mountains.

"I kind of think he will be back next year," said Messner.