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Posts Tagged ‘CatalystCon’

How The Kathleen Hale Stalking Situation Affects Sex Bloggers

October 24th, 2014 7 comments

Ian Sane / Flickr

Ian Sane / Flickr

I was going to ignore Kathleen Hale’s Guardian piece because it doesn’t affect me. I don’t do many book reviews (though I’m working on three, right now), I don’t often read young adult novels, and now that I know Kathleen Hale is a psycho, I’ll never read or review one of her books, so I have nothing to worry about, right?

You’d think so, except…we haven’t had an issue exactly like this (that I’m aware) in the adult reviewing community, but a few companies have come damn close.

A representative from Pipedream once attacked an EdenFantasys reviewer (I think on the EdenFantasys website, but I can’t remember) for giving their product a critical review. EdenFantasys response (against recommendations made by its community-members-turned-staff) was to instruct reviewers to be more objective in reviews of toys they didn’t like. A few years later, GoodVibes has taken the same stance, calling critical reviews “sex negative” because they don’t take into consideration other people’s bodies, which, to me, sounds more like “your experience only matters if it makes us money” than concern for a person who doesn’t cum like a critical reviewer, but that’s just me.

Shiri Zinn has threatened and harassed reviewers and non-reviewers for multiple reasons, most of which include (but are not limited to) making critical comments and/or writing critical reviews about her shitty Cupcake Vibrator. She’s managed to talk such a big game that even mainstream publications that reviewed the toy (which shall remain nameless) “kept it classy” in their reviews, and avoided words like “orgasm” and “masturbation” to pander to Shiri’s “brand” of…chaste female stimulation. With a cupcake. I’m really not sure how this makes sense to anyone. Read more…

Why I Do Not Support CatalystCon and Probably Never Will

April 11th, 2014 6 comments
SheVibe Sex Educators Poster

used with SheVibe’s permission – click to enlarge

The audio of the closing keynote has been posted since the publishing of this article. You can find it here.

This is a long one. tl;dr I’ll not be attending or supporting CatalystCon until its leaders prove to me and the rest of the sex positive community that they actually stand behind the things they claim to believe, and are not just paying them lip service.

So we all know I didn’t actually attend CatalystCon (CCON) this year, right? I mean, I’ve never been. I’ve never really felt invited or welcome. Something about a drunk hooker joke, and my unpopular opinions.

I considered going this year anyway, because some really cool people that I really enjoy working with and talking to online were going to be there; like the crew over at SheVibe, and Tantus, and a couple bloggers we all know and love. But when it came down to it, my social anxiety and the knowledge that M would be so incredibly bored (and probably incredibly annoyed) won out, so I didn’t attempt to talk him into it beyond bringing it up once or twice in passing. “Oh, we could stay at Mom’s and drive into the city every day. Make a week of it at Mom’s, and end it with the con, ya know?” Read more…

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