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>> Thanks everyone for coming and it's my pleasure to present Leila Blue.
>> BLUE: Hello. Thanks for coming and piling in here. This is really packed and it's really,
really awesome. Before I say anything, I just want to let you know that there won't be any
explicit *** imagery up here. I'm sorry. Everyone's over 18, right? But there is going
to be some frank *** talk. So, if you're uncomfortable with frank graphic, explicit
*** talk, now is the time to probably leave. I saw some of you brought luncheon. You might
want to finish that up, probably a good idea. So, if you look at the posters that were so
sweetly put all over the Google campus, you've an idea of sort of my résumé and what that
basically describes is that I've been a sex educator and a writer for almost 10 years.
I have over 20 published books in this form, the print form and I have some e-media as
well. I have audio books and some e-books coming out soon. The stuff that I've written
is all non-fiction, so it's all how-to information on sex which stems from being a sex educator,
working in the field, lecturing, doing peer to peer support, peer to peer counseling and
working with sex information hotlines, San Francisco Sex Information that's sfsi.org
which is basically we take anyone and everyone who has some kind of crazy emergency, sometimes
non emergency or just sort of "Am I normal?" question about sex and talked to them, and
I lecture to the students. So, I'm actually at the point now where I educate the educators.
And when I worked at Good Vibrations, I helped developed their educational department. And
what I did there was I also developed their outreach department which was sending teams
to places like planning parenthood and teaching them about sex toys, and sending teams to
places like halfway houses for developmentally disabled adults and teaching them, you know,
about good sex and bad sex and being able to sort of navigate their life as adults and
things like that. So, I have a pretty wide repertoire. I have a lot of experience--a
lot of online experience with sex and searching for sex. Not just because I've had a blog
for a long time and I've been doing pod--sex podcasting for a long time but also because
I've been working for a site called fleshsbot.com for the past several years. And Fleshsbot
is a Gawker Media site. However, we're sort of an island onto ourselves in many ways and
that it's been run by one person. It's been ran by John O. for a very long time and I
was the second person that he hired to come on. Partly because he was re-blogging a lot
of stuff that I was blogging and then we started talking and we're like, "Hey, we should just
do this together," but he also wanted to bring in inclusivity to the site. So, it's a site,
you know, that's for--it's primarily targeted toward a heteronormative audience, so like
a straight male audience if you will about ***, run by a gay man, administrated by someone
like me. So, and then--since then we've hired a bunch of other bloggers so that we can have
a really--cover a really diverse spectrum, all genders in all orientations and sort of
also getting a little bit of a perceived message that there's isn't just one kind of sex out
there. So, the title of this talk is Sex On The Internet, The Realities Of ***, ***
Privacy Online and Search which actually wasn't the title that I picked. That was my editor
in front row. So, I came with a subtitle which is Cataloguing All The World's Information
Even If It's Taboo. As you can see I have someone looking for Ceiling Cat and if you're
unfamiliar with Ceiling Cat, there--it's an online little cat mean Ceiling Cat is watching
you ***. So, the joke is that Ceiling Cat is watching you do naughty things which
I think is a great analogy for things about *** privacy online. And I'm going to be
doing a bit of reading here because there--I've done--there are a lot of things in here called
facts that I want to make sure that I get right, so believe it or not. The Internet
has changed human sexuality forever as we know it. I think that we have yet to see the
effects of how the Internet has changed the way that we express ourselves as human beings.
Basically, *** information has been locked down, commodified. It's been held in certain
channels. It's been presented in certain ways. *** information and *** has been
held to controlling interest due to government influences, due to personal opinion, due to
religious influences and also due to distribution influences. Distribution influences primarily
being people like booksellers who want to sell books about certain sex topics which
is why a majority of my books are with independent publishers so I can talk about sex from an
all genders, all orientations perspective which means stream sex publishing is still
scared to death of. Even though they're trying to negotiate with me for books, they're still
like super afraid that I talk to gays and stuff like that. It's amazing how backwards
they are. But the Internet has sort of leveled the playing field for what I see is a democratic
dissemination of sex information and being able to sort of talk to everyone about that.
Basically, it's sort of like a free market approach to sex. People are being able to
sort of look for what they want and find what they want. Working on a site like Fleshsbot,
I've been able to see and see stats and look at stats and what people are actually interested
in. I've been able to sort of play with and test with looking what, you know, people have
been looking for--well, and not just on Fleshsbot but on my site and other sites as well. What's
really afforded people the opportunity to start to make choices about developing what
I see is their own sort of *** operating systems because I come from the belief that
everyone's sexuality is as individual to them as a fingerprint and we sort of taken information
from different places and we assemble what works best for us and I think that it's a
constant assembly. I think that, you know, if the first version didn't work, say, it
was beta, and do it again. So, basically what's affording people the ability to do this is
being able to go online and have what they perceived as *** privacy. You know, it
used to be that you need to go to the *** store or you would go, you know, you would
get an Adam and Eve catalogue with a very limited range of things to choose from that,
you know, where sex toys weren't even necessarily chosen because they're made of healthy products
but because they're made of cheap products and put together by people who don't really
care about the *** health, the *** pleasure or what's going on with people that they're
selling these products to. Well, like I said the Internet has changed that to make these
people to have privacy. Of course, the problem is the people aren't as anonymous as they
think. What I want to talk about first, I want to talk about the user first and it's
who looks for sex online and what are they looking for. Well, I think the first obvious
answer to all of that is that people are looking at sex online to get off. And I know that
it's horribly taboo to talk about but basically what we're talking about is ***,
people jacking off. There are a lot of perceptions about people who are interested in sex. The
idea of anyone being interested in sex other than for usual mainstream immediate reasons
is quite taboo. The idea of looking at sex or being interested in sex purely for the
sake of pleasure is something that a lot of people just simply don't want to talk about.
And the presumptions of people who are doing that tend to get shoved in the corner of the
guy with the raincoat, you know. It's that sort of stereotype where it's like, "Oh, well,
if you're really interested in sex or if you're searching for or looking for it you must,
you know, immediately be doing something immoral or be thinking bad thoughts." Who else is
looking for it? Well, people who are curious, anyone who is curios about sex. I'm sure pretty
much everyone in the world at this point has opened up a browser and typed in sex just
to see what's going to come up because we're curious, we're monkeys. It's true. I think
another group of people who are looking for sex online are people who are seeking accurate,
non-bias, non-judgmental sex information. Sometimes, that information that they're looking
for is urgent and I'll go into that in a second. Another subset of people who are looking for
sex online are people who are seeking community. People who feel alone, desperate, isolated
and even folks who just want to know if they're normal or not which is pretty much the most
common question "Am I normal?" A couple of quick points which I'll develop later as well
is the role of search in all of these. First of all, I think the role of search--the role
of search in sex, the strongest role is fighting spam. It's a big, big problem. It's a big
problem for people like me who want to get accurate information out there and I just
can't even imagine what you all go through dealing with spammers because they're just--they're
pretty insidious. Unfortunately, they're not like trolls because trolls are stupid and
easily defeated. Spammers tend to be a little smarter which is a bummer. Also in the role
of search I think is understanding perceive *** minorities or people who are perceived
as *** minorities, their practices and especially their self-labeling. Seeing active
with the current online taxonomy for the terms that perceive *** minorities and I'm talking
even about lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans people. Seeing current with that taxonomy
that they use to self-identify with is really tricky because it's changing all the time.
I recently did a series of pieces where I was data mining Craigslist and I data mined
Craigslist because I just wanted to see like who is looking for what at any given point,
any given time and any given neighborhood in San Francisco and it was pretty interesting
to see who is into what in the different neighborhoods. Some things were fairly predictable like the,
you know, the cliché of the businessmen looking for the quick *** in, you know, in, you
know, the hotel district that's pretty obvious. But I came up with some other surprises as
well. What I really came up with that surprised me which I didn't develop into a piece was
what I started figuring out when I was dating mining Craigslist and I'm talking about, you
know, just the quick and dirty personals, is when I started doing it out on a nationwide
level because I started to unearth taxonomy that even I was unfamiliar with that people
were using those terms to search for and to connect with each other. So, I think that
part of the role of search is kind of keeping up with those terms and maybe even having
community liaisons who can help explain with these terms mean and demystified these terms.
One piece I wrote, well, I was at South by Southwest. I got this email from an F to M
*** site which is Female to Male ***. And they were having a hard time with their
Google AdSense words where words that day considered respectful and that they used to
identify themselves in a way--there are a lot of disrespectful terms that are used toward
these *** minorities, especially *** people. And the terms that they used to self-identify
were sort of getting put in the wrong bucket and ending up coming up as, you know, ads
for things that were really insulting, degrading, disgusting and even illegal. So, they appealed
to me for help. And I just sort of made some noise about it and I think it sort of raised
the level of awareness of how people are labeling themselves. So, I think the other role of
search that I think is really important is understanding the importance of unbiased results
whether for the user's tribulation, i.e., ***, healthy *** expression, pleasure
and enjoyment. And, you know, as we all know *** is legal in America, the emergent trend
of sex using entertainment resources such as blogs or for the delivery of accurate sex
information, all of which, I think can easily get confused with spam. So, that's really
tricky. So, the question is and I'll go back to who these people are now is who needs ***
privacy, accurate search results and unbiased sex information the most? And now, I'm talking
specifically about perceive *** minorities; lesbian, gays, bisexual and transgender people.
Those identified by their *** orientation or gender identity regardless of their interest
in the active sex. In most places, LGBT in questioning people face hostility from within
as from without the outside world. Community healing hookups and hot *** which is important
can be found online, of course. Matthew Shepard found out in 1998 that being gay in Wyoming
was a death sentence. Brutal transgender murders like Brandon Teena which is what the movie
"Boys Don't Cry" was based on still happen as evidence in the 2002 *** of 17-year-old,
male-to-female Gwen Araujo from Newark, California. But with a Quick Google Search now, trans
identity becomes more of a community and less of a mystery or a "gay panic" *** defense
when justice should have--should have been served which is wasn't. Anyone with an outsider
*** interest such as people, Apple folks--now, this is actually--I was in the--I was in the
pride parade this year and so I thought this was a great shot that I took from the car
that I was riding in. I was like--I was riding with my adoptive mother who is transgender,
captain or president rather of the Police Commission of San Francisco, Theresa Sparks.
But anyone with an outsider *** interest such as a fetishist, and by fetishist I actually
mean someone in the balloons or [INDISTINCT] with colds. It's a real site. Check it out.
It's not explicit. It's really cute. Anonymity in direct access allows someone who feels
alone, possibly self-hating and misunderstood and often a fetishist highs their favorite
way to *** from their chosen and life long sex partners to find community. And fetishes,
you know, just really quickly--I'm not just talking about loners but I'm also talking
about--I mean, when you think of *** fetish, you know, we tend to think of, you know, the
people who are sort of more interested in like the fringes or the more extreme or the
more funny or the more, you know, or outrageous or easy to make fun of *** interest but,
you know, common *** fetishes are more socially accepted fetishes are like big ***
or big dicks, so it's fit for thought. BDSM and Kink is interested people as well. Those
interested in power exchange sex, bondage, sensory play of pain, complicated scenarios
and predicaments that involved fear and power over scenes are common targets for media discrimination.
Until Hollywood gets over it and the dinosaur era mainstream media outlet stop showing BDSM
as abuse. Using it as a trope for female degradation and telling us that Kink.com BDSM are dark
and dangerous habits that can kill you which is exactly what happened in the--as of quickly
two weeks ago and in a CNN article yesterday. And psychiatrist stopped categorizing BDSM
interest as an illness. These people still need access. They need information in the
community. Again, anyone needing non-biased accurate sex information, that's any kid in
the bible book worried that they're pregnant because their boyfriend came on their leg.
This is an actual question that we got on the Spizzy hotline. And this--we've seen actually
as a direct result of four or five years of absence education in schools. Since absence
education has come into schools across the nation, we at the hotline have seen an increase
in calls from young people who really are like, "Oh, my god, can I get AIDS from sitting
on a toilet seat," because no one's telling them what's going on. And unfortunately as
an effect we're seeing a rise in STD rates as well because they're not knowing how not
to get and they didn't even know what they're doing actually. I think they can--they think
that, you know, not--they think that oral sex isn't sex and they're thinking that ***
sex is something that helps maintain their virginity. So, we're also talking about trans
people so desperate. They want to self-medicate with hormones. Someone's wondering if they're
gay. Someone's trying to fixate themselves during *** without killing themselves
and needing to know how. The guy who wrote me last week about a broken *** with his
girlfriend or the girl that emailed me last month who just had sex for the first time
and couldn't stop the bleeding and didn't know what to do. I was the person she reached
out to, a total stranger but someone that she felt that she could ask this question
to. And, you know, that's also the guy with the flashlight stuck in his ***. You should
have just visited Spizzy.org. So, who else needs this information? Women. In a January
nails in that ratings poll, they found that one entry women were accessing *** online
and that's just women who self disclosed that they were--we, we're accessing *** online.
Of course, we're looking at *** but we're doing some privacy or at least what we perceived
to be in privacy. We're more empowered as ever, women, period, to ask for what we want
sexually at least of ourselves in anonymity and be and *** whoever we want in whatever
form we want in places like second life where you can be a different gender if you want
to. Female bloggers don't need to be sex bloggers to have serious need for online privacy but
gender does make a *** targets. I don't need to communicate to you how many--about
how women are *** targets online. Statistically and in real life, we all know a female ***
victim. Cyber stalking as we all know gets perfectly ugly when it's focused on women.
Sex workers, sex workers of all gender. This means *** stars as well. I have an interesting
example of that in a moment actually. Their online privacy also equals to physical safety
and different jurisdictions may or may not agree. Sex shoppers, *** and sex toy consumers--costumers.
People plunked down their credit cards and personal info online all too often without
accessing their risk of doing so. There's often so much *** shame involved and whatever
they're buying they tended to just go for it. Some companies bait and switch costumers
saying they'll ship in a Plain Brown Rapper or selling costumer in photo during parties.
Pretty much everyone, anyone who could lose a job, a lover, a friend, a court case, child
custody or visitation, freedom under the constitution or could face physical or emotional harm from
being added for their interest in sex or *** identity. And that sounds like a sermon but
I have a couple of examples to show you. So, what we're talking here about and a lot of
ways is the illusion of *** privacy online. If people knew how much their privacy was
at risk when they paid for *** or post it or answer that Craiglist ad or search for
K9 in Google, were they still do it? Probably. It's easy for those of us who know our way
around the Internet still laugh at a Nigerian bank scammers but the Internet is growing
new users every single day and will continue to until you all stop breathing. But no one's
telling people not to do stupid things like give up personal info in *** situations
from experimentation and *** to point of purchase because the whole topic is still
taboo. How many of you have heard of a Craigslist experiment? Okay. So, that's--I would say
about a quarter of the room. All right. Sorry to show you this photo. It's horrifying. The
Craigslist experiment. In September 2006, griefer extraordinaire Jason Fortuny and his
friend took a hardcore women seeking men ad from another city and reposted it on Craigslist
Seattle to see how many replies he and his friend could get in 24 hours. Then he published
every single response, photos, emails, IM info, phone numbers, names, everything to
public Wiki, Encyclopedia Dramatica. Then they went public on Jason's live journal page
calling at the Craigslist experiment inviting readers to identify the Craigslist ads responders
and add more info "Your goal, identify people you know, IRL, in real life, and point them
out. We've already had great successes here." The page is still alive. This is a screencap
from just last week. It wasn't just any kind of ad but a hardcore BDSM ad posting where
a female submissive was looking for a rough male dominant to beat her up and *** her.
The ads language suggest me and many other sex educators that the original post were
actually had no idea with the language they were using meant. Clearly, what the person
was asking for was well beyond the safe same SM community definitions. This and the few
other details suggested to me and other sex educators that I talked to about it that the
original ad may have indeed been place by a man experimenting with transgender identity
searching for that female extreme, the extreme of female submission. Here's the text. The
point is Jason and his cohort took--cohort took the ad at face value as an average and
got a face value response to what the ad's message sent out to the world. They got 178
responses with 145 photos of men, ***, faces and more, full email addresses both personal
and business addresses, names and a few IM names and phone numbers. One respondent uses
a--one respondent used a Microsoft employee email address and another used a USR army
military email address. Respondents emailed Fortuny asking him to take the info down and
he simply published their requests. Fortuny then had his private info published at Craigslist
and was threatened physically with lawsuits and has been basically headed on by everyone
from online BDSM communities to Wired who called him sociopathic. Now, while researching
my sex books, I've placed ads on Craigslist just to get a random sampling or to get ideas.
Every time I have received an overwhelming amount of troll responses, of course, with
photos I didn't ask for, authors I didn't ask for, and sometimes some pretty evil language.
I've definitely entertained the idea of doing something with this information that they're
sending me but just thinking about it makes me feel better. It would--it's something that
I could never conceive of someone actually doing in real life but unfortunately, in this
case, someone did. And it's pretty common. I actually have joked with other female sex
bloggers and female sex educators about receiving unsolicited, like, extremely personal information
from people via email and, in fact, I've joked over beers, "Oh my God, you pic. You're great."
So ultimately, in the Craigslist experiment, a high percentage of these guys' lives were
changed in a major way. Now, here's the--here's the not eat your lunch photo. Censored. Censored
for your viewing pleasure. And this is how we censored it when we out it on Fleshpot.
The top photo is someone's whose--someone whose photo was reposted and the bottom photo
was the photo that was used in the ad. Some might argue that the Craigslist experiment
is an inevitable form of online natural selection. If you have something to lose, don't do something
that could make you lose it. And I think personally that if our culture was made to feel less
ashamed about sex, Jason's results would be quite different. In a follow-up to the blog
posting that I did on my personal blog, I received an email forwarded from the King
County prosecuting attorney's office stating, "Based on whatever the media counts, I would
like to say that there was no violation of our state criminal code involved here yet."
So what he did was actually legal. Right after the Craigslist experiment, granted this was
last year around this time, there was a copycat in Portland. Yesterday in Gainesville, Florida,
there was another copycat post which was flagged and removed within a few hours. So I have
another example for you. It's a very hot photo. The police officer recently fired having an
adult site. Last month, an Arizona officer was officially fired for running a sex website
with his wife when off the clock. A three-judge San Francisco Ninth Circuit US Court Of Appeals
panel ruled against the former first officer's First Amendment Free Speech Right and right
to privacy-focus case which, of course, directly affects any individual *** privacy online
and shows, I think, just how ignorant a lot of US circuit judges are about the internet.
The judges ruled that because what the former officer did was "vulgar, indecent, ***
and disreputable," he has no right to keep his job as a public servant. The thing is
what the officer and his wife did was simple, boring, amateur ***. Okay. I'm sorry. But
I'm surprised anyone paid for it. Seriously. It was just--it was like they're swingers,
right? It was just like him and his wife and it was a paid site and there would be pictures
of him and her having sex, pictures of her *** or pictures of her with another
girl. So I mean, it's pretty pedestrian stuff considering what's out there. The only offense
here is that they were a couple being exhibitionist swingers. One judge didn't agree, and I thought
that was really interesting. And I have a little bit from his concurrence in a judgment.
"With all due respect," this is from Judge Kennedy, "With all due respect, I am unable
to join the majority opinion. Under the facts of the case and the existing precedent, the
police department could not discharge Dibble," Ronald Dibble, that's his name, "for his website
expression without violating the First Amendment. As the majority opinion points out, Dibble
was careful not to identify himself or his website with the police department or the
police status at all. Now, I recognize that ***, although apparently popular,
is not a very respected subject of First Amendment protection in many quarters, the majority
opinion here reflects that distaste variously characterizing Dibbles expressive activities
as vulgar, indecent, *** and disreputable. But vigorous enforcements of the first--of
the Free Speech Guarantee of the First Amendment often requires that we protect speech that
many, even the majority, find offensive. *** and *** expression in general is protective
by the First Amendment when that does not constitute obscenity and there's no showing
that Dibble's expression meets that extreme standard. When applied to sexually--sorry.
When applied to sexually expressive activities, this ruling has disturbing potential for expansive
application." And this is a photo I actually took at Pride this year. The--all of the--I
rode with the police contingent which is really fun and they were very, very proud. These
were their pride beads hanging from their side arms. The judge concluded a measurable
segment of the population, for example, is vigorously antagonistic to homosexual activity
and expression. It could easily be encouraged to mobilize where a police officer discovered
to have engaged off-duty and unidentified by his activity in a gay pride parade or expressive
cross-dressing or any number of expressive activities that might fan the ambers of antagonism
smoldering in the part of the population. I have another example. And this is a--this
is a more first person example here. The story of anonymous sex blogger girl with a one track
mind. This is a recent screen cap from her site. As I've told you, I've been a blogger
and an occasional girl Friday editor of fleshpot.com for the past few years. A job, when full time,
requires me to scour the internet for explicit *** content of reasonable quality. We endeavor
to cover a wide range of *** expression in all genders and orientations. And I'll
tell you, when--Joanna lives in New Orleans and when Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans,
I ended up running fleshpot for two months by myself with no--basically no other employees.
So I was doing 12 to 15 posts a day. So that pretty much required me to be an expert on
taxonomy and terminology, where to find it, how to find it, who was doing circle jerk
linking, who was doing spamming, you know, who was, you know, doing re-directs and get
myself really familiar with all the variety of different variety of different types of
*** expression online and also see how they could be blogged. We have a regular feature
that's call The Sex Blog Round Up. And what The Sex Blog Round Up is it's really cool
because what it is is it's a weekly installment where we do a post that takes excerpts from
sort of the best of individual sex blogs. And these are sex blogs that are text, usually
no photos, in fact, rarely photos if ever. So what we're concentrating on is text ***
erotica, basically *** lit, but what's exciting about it is that it's generally people's
real life experiences as they're writing them down usually as anonymous bloggers. When I
did this weekly, I had upwards of 200 text-only sex blogs written by individuals worldwide
in my RSS reader. Outside the 50 to 75 usual suspects of variety sex blogs, MSN new, link
dumps, and other sex news blogs, every week, I would have to call for new blogs and read
them and add to my feeds more because invariably, a handful of sex bloggers who were blogging
anonymously had to quit blogging, meaning they were, for one reason or another, no longer
anonymous. It was such a regular occurrence, I developed a pretty snarky attitude toward
the limited lifespan anonymous sex blogger even though they often offered up the juiciest
and most explicit posts about sex. There are still a lot of regular anonymous sex bloggers
who maintain their privacy but they're extremely careful and very web savvy in doing so. Although
I know a number of them outside their web personas from New York to Alaska and to London,
London is where I found the hot post of single anonymous female sex blogger, the loved and
respected Girl with the One Track Mind. When I visited London a few years back, I met the
girl in a flesh and we had a very good night of good old fashion English drinking. We went
out to pubs and we had a fabulous time. What was really interesting though was that the
entire time that I was hanging out with her and talking about trials and tribulation of
sex blogging, blogging on the internet, blogging--personal blogging, you know, versus blogging private
stuff et cetera, et cetera because on my personal blog, I blog about my own life as well. She
refused to tell me her actual name the entire evening we spent together. She, in fact, told
me a psuedonym. I thought that was kind of interesting. She also picked my brain because
she really, really wanted to be a published author. She wanted a book. She wanted a book
about her website. She wanted a book about her blog and a book about her exploits which
she got. She later did get that book deal named after her blog and upon publication
in August of last year, found herself ambushed outside her London flat by paparazzi and outed
in the UK tabloids three days after the book was published. She wrote, "I guess I was lulled
into a false sense of security regarding my anonymity because I knew that Bel de Jour,
who is another anonymous sex blogger and also British, was hounded by the press and still
managed to keep her identity private. Whilst I may have a high traffic blog and a book
detailing my *** adventures in the shops, I'm not a *** like her. So, why, I
figured, would anyone really be interested in who I am?" On the 2000 anniversary of her
outing, she recently blogged in retrospect, "I could talk about how I was the laughing
stock at work, everyone in the UK film industry knowing and discussing the most intimate details
of my sex life." She worked on the Harry Potter films, by the way. "I could talk about how
I had to go into hiding and how, for a week, the tabloids poked their long lens cameras
through my parents' letterbox and rang their doorbell and telephone constantly, making
both me and my parents live in a state of anxiety. I could talk about how profoundly
I was affected by the articles on me, both in the media and online, how I wanted to challenge
the lies, misrepresentations and personal attacks but couldn't. I could talk about how
I wasn't made rich by the book and that losing my film career as a result of it made me worry
that I wouldn't be able to pay my rent. I could talk about how my friends were offered
money to spill the dirt on me and people from my past suddenly reappeared in my life, making
me paranoid that I couldn't trust anyone." And here's a picture of her. She writes for
Guardian UK now. "I could talk about how all my ex-lovers contacted me, concerned that
I had disguised them fully, all of them now aware of my previous hidden feelings about
them. I could talk about how I then decided to give online dating another go, only to
discover that somehow every man I got into conversation with, ended up on a date with,
knew that I was Abby Lee and was a fan of the blog, making me immediately scamper in
the other direction because I felt so vulnerable. I could talk about how almost all the men
I've met and/or been intimate with have asked me not to write about them even when we've
had no more than a pint together. I could talk in explicit detail about all the hot
or not sex I've had but feel too exposed now that everyone knows who I am and my friends,
colleagues and acquaintances all read the blog. I could talk about all these things
on the blog if I were still anonymous, but I'm not. My outing last year was a huge strain
on me. And yes, I have managed to find a silver lining out of it, but the ability to freely
do the one thing that gave me such pleasure, blogging, has been destroyed. Take the anonymity
away from a blogger who depends on it and you get a blog with no heart. True sincerity
and authenticity about events, people, thoughts and feelings rely on anonymity. I'll challenge
anyone who says that anonymity shouldn't matter when someone is writing about their own lives.
It does." So, let me lighten the atmosphere for a minute. So, active threats to ***
privacy online. Well, right now, that would be the US government. Is anyone here familiar
with 2257 Laws or The Child Obscenity Act? A very small amount of people. Okay. Great.
In a nutshell, 2257 refers to regulations under the Child Protection And Obscenity Enforcement
Act of 1988 which specifies record keeping requirements for those wishing to produce
sexually explicit media and imposes criminal penalties for failure to comply. This is supposedly
to ensure that no person under the legal age is involved in ***, though it's, of course,
only pursued within the realm of the perfectly legal adult *** industry and applicable only
in the United States. The regulations are directed toward the terms primary producer
and secondary producer. Oh, and if you feel like reading, this is the 2257 statement on
a Canadian website. It's kind of ironic, don't you think? So, the regulations are directed
toward the terms primary producer and secondary producer. This part is important. A primary
producer is defined in a set of rules as any person who actually films, video tapes, photographs
or photographs a visual depiction of actual *** explicit conduct. A secondary producer
is defined as any person who produces, assembles, manufactures, publishes, duplicates, reproduces
or reissues a book, magazine, periodical film, video tape or other matter intended for commercial
distribution that contains a visual depiction of actual *** explicit conduct. Different
record keeping requirements exist for primary versus secondary producers. One may be both
a primary and secondary producer. Not surprisingly, this has come under many legal challenges
as the definitions of actual sexually explicit conduct and secondary producer are vague,
perhaps intentionally so. Just as the definition of obscenity in the courts is left to so-called
community standards, for instance, a *** DVD may not be considered obscene by San Francisco
community standards but it most certainly would be in Laramie, Wyoming. That's how obscenity--that's
how obscenity is prosecuted in America on a federal level at this point. It's sort of
a blanket, you know, leaving it to community standards, letting the communities decide
what's obscene for them or not. But I believe that these laws are intentionally vague. I
believe that the wording about sexually explicit conduct is intentionally vague and I believe
that the definition of sexually--secondary producer is intentionally vague as well. And
I think that that sort of Mafia style on the government side of things to keep anyone who
comes near a *** image ever unsure if they're in violation of law. And when recent 2257
record keeping requirements came down about a year and a half ago which have been challenged
about secondary producers which is reposting the content, I got in this great conversation
with a friend of mine who runs an *** online magazine which is primarily just like non-explicit
pin-up galleries and covering sex events around the United States and then articles about
sex and sexuality and sort of news briefs and things like that. And his boss made it
his job to go through every single image that they had on the site and try to determine
if each image was considered sexually explicit conduct. And I talked to him on the phone
while he was going through it and he was like, "I'm looking at this picture of a girl's ***."
And I'm like, "Is that red from a sunburn or is red from a spanking?" So, you see what
we're going through here? Now, the idea of having *** producers keep stringent laws
or keep stringent records is, of course, a really good idea. What's unfortunate is that
this is being enforced in legitimate adult businesses. It's not being thought of or applied
to anything outside of legitimate adult businesses and these, you know, mainstream *** people
who have these giant companies and corporations like Vivid and Wicked and stuff like that,
they want to keep their businesses. They're making a lot of money, of course, they're
going to follow the rules. It's ridiculous that they're rating these people and they're
not really doing anything else with this. But what's interesting about this to me, ***
privacy wise, this poses a serious threat to sex workers. I know you wouldn't think
about this but I have personal experience with this at this point not because I'm a
sex worker but as a blogger. She looks pretty young, doesn't she? It's kind of creepy. This
is on her teen website. This is what she's using for her 2257 documentation. So, if you
click on her site for 2257 documentation, this is what you get. This is why you'll start
to see it's a pretty serious threat. People don't know what to do and they're doing some
really scary things. Notably to *** performers and actors in video and imagery, the government
might consider sexually explicit conduct. For example, more than once for FleshSpot
and for my personal blog, *** creators, you know, and people who make ***, they want,
you know--they're starting to get the Internet, right? They want access to blogs, they want
access to traffic and they also want access to people like me who are educators that will
present their material in context. And to, you know, promote their stuff, they'll send,
you know, do you want images, do you want a short clip and do you want the 2257 materials
that go with this? To my alarm, I'm FedEx-ed DVDs with scans of each performer's driver's
licenses, Social Security cards, images of them holding their IDs and their Social Security
cards next to their faces, copies of their contracts and signatures complete with current
address and all personal information like their true names. What's important to know
is that these performers have no idea this information has been sent to me nor do they
know who I am. And this business practice is commonplace, unfortunately. Some admittedly
low grade sites I've found allow surfers to click through and see the photo IDs of the
models. I believe we have yet to see the dark ramifications of the privacy protections these
sex workers no longer have. And equip Google image search 2257 ID. It's right there. You
can find a lot more, so. >> I mean, I have a serious question. What
types of searchers lead to things like this? >> BLUE: He's asking what type of searches
lead to things like this. And all I did, well, safe search off.
>> Because the passports are very explicit. >> BLUE: Hello, I know. Yeah, and there's
a lot more like this that are US-based. But it was--it was simply matter of safe search
off, going to Google image search, typing in 2257 ID. And I also found some when I went
to 20--when I typed in 2257 proof. This was on page four. The teen, I think, was on--for
the previous teen was on page two. So--and this is--these findings are from a week ago,
last Friday, so. I'll get a fresh one for you next time, hopefully not. Okay. So, what
else is interesting about *** privacy online in what sort of is posing a threat or bringing
up some interesting questions? 2.0 sites and understanding what is and isn't ***, ***
or not? Good questions these days, don't you think? On photo sharing social sites like
Flickr, some users are finding that their simple pictures of their own feet are ending
up in foot fetishes photo pools. Oh, some people are perfectly fine with that. Others
are totally freaking out that someone is having *** thoughts about their feet without their
express consent, nonetheless. Is it Flickr's role to please these activities? Well, it's
a really good question and brings into play the changing cultural values and judgments
about what constitutes ***, acceptable use of images individuals create and how they're
seen by others. All argue that any foot fetishes probably sexualizes feet on the bus, in the
park or online. The only difference is that the online software is giving the foot owners
the access to see how the people in the world around them might see their feet. Now they
know what they, otherwise, wouldn't know and can't control. The notions of community standards
for *** or obscenity, I believe simply don't work in application to worldwide data clusters.
Social networking sites have no idea where they fall under 2257 regulations as to their
role to users and have been fumbling blindly with the notions of community standards with
disastrous and embarrassing results. This was a direct result of when--or what Flickr's
been going through trying to work with the German government around how they want to
police their internets. So, I am aware that you had a talk here on September 21st by someone
named Shelley Lubben. >> She decided not to [INDISTINCT]
>> Oh, no. That's so sad. I really wanted to come. It was the day before my birthday.
Oh, I had questions for her. Well, I'll go over a couple of her points because I think
they're really interesting and I think that they were circulated to all of you as fact.
I, you know, one of my questions was just if she could provide data or URLS for any
of the things that she was asserting and... >> I believe [INDISTINCT] someone actually
offered. It was someone who just [INDISTINCT] offered to, you know, find--help find fact
and things like that, right? >> Right.
>> Like offered to go over a presentation and find what things are supported by even
surveys or any sort of data points but I guess that was a bit intimidating. And so she decided
to quit because she thought that, that was too hostile.
>> BLUE: Oh, goodness, gracious. Well, it's a good point though. So you've got people
like Shelley Lubben out there running around, right? Saying how *** is bad and *** is
evil and she's getting a lot of access. Media like to listen to people like her because
she says crazy things about *** and people like O'Reilly Factor just eat this stuff out,
you know. For instance, I'm--the frightening visage of Shelley Lubben AKA *** star Roxy
who was a performer 10 years ago and hasn't been involved in the *** industry since.
So that's, you know, kind of speaks to some of the accuracy of her recent experience and
data. One of the things she told you guys was that 66% of *** performers are infected
with ***. The truth to that is that one in five Americans are infected and *** performers
are no different. How do we know they're no different? Well, I talked with people like
Sharon Mitchel and AIM. AIM is the Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation which was founded
many years ago when there was an *** outbreak in the adult industry. And Sharon Mitchel
was working in the industry at the time and realized that there was a serious need for
sex education in the *** industry. There was a need for accurate information about
STI, STD and virus transmission. And also, she wanted to set up basically a standardized
testing center where all performers would go through the standardized testing center,
get tested, be tested regularly and has worked very closely with the mainstream adult industry
people which are the same people being rated by the FBI to make sure that they're records
are at, you know, that they're employing adults. She works closely with these companies and
everyone is on a 30-day regimen for testing. And they must provide their 30-day testing
documentation in order to perform. On the day that they show up, they have to have the
documentation with them. They don't--they can't fax it, they can't say I'll bring it
later or anything like that, they have to have it. And I'll also add too that I've done
a lot of work and a lot of research and a lot of writing about the type of testing that
AIM does because I was really curious. Like, 30 days for screening, like, you know, normally,
when one goes to get an *** test, it's a three to six month window in San Francisco and I
was like how are they doing this turn around in 30 days. Well, it turns out they're using
one of the most advanced *** test that you can get in the United States, the PCR DNA
test. So, they're pretty on it. One of the things that our lovely Shelley also told you
guys was that women do not enjoy making ***. This plays into the myth that women don't
like sex, wouldn't enjoy sex out of the contexts of heteronormative romantic relationships
or enjoy sport ***. *** performers are not like the rest of us, they're not. They
like sex for sport, they are physically *** athletes. It's like Cirque du Soleil sex.
Seriously, they bend in these crazy positions like--and they do it because they like it.
People who don't like being in the *** industry leave the *** industry, they don't stay in
it. There's a constant amount of people who are interested in getting involved in the
*** industry because it's quick and easy money, it's starting be a semi-glamorous profession
and it's pretty regulated. So, there's a bit of a safety net. Oh, one of the other safety
nets I wanted to mention too that AIM does is that every "new talent" that comes in,
every new model that's girl, boy, trans, whatever comes through and goes through a pre-counseling
session before appearing in a video where they sit down and they watch a really kind
of boring video that's long and talks about STD's and getting tested and what their tests
are going be like and talks to them all about their privacy and their confidentiality. Also
talks to them about the social ramifications of getting involved in working in *** and
doing sex work. Also talks about the counseling programs that are available to them through
AIM if they want to do any counseling or they need anybody to talk to. And also, AIM has
a transition program for people who want to transition into other types of work. So, they
also help people get other jobs if they decide they don't want to do *** anymore. One of
the things Ms. Lubben also said which is a very commonly assertive myth, *** stars are
victims of child abuse and *** abuse including early exposure to ***. As it--as you
probably have heard, there is no single unbiased study that bears this assertion out. It's
another shameful myth perpetuated about sex workers. The minute I find a study--the minute
I find a study that bears anything about this out, I will most certainly publish it on my
website. The only thing--the only thing is that I've come--that I've come across that
are close to making this assertion based on "poles" or anything like that come from Christian
organizations. So, they have an agenda. Another thing that Shelley talked about was that approximately
10% of *** performers are currently infected with *** and that goes with her 66% of ***
performers being infected, you know, the dirty shameful myth about how they're all gross
and dirty and spreading disease and stuff. Shelley doesn't have access to those statistics.
She doesn't have access to AIM's statistics because they're confidential. One of the other
funny things she said, I love this, no other industry has more suicide related dust than
the *** industry. According to--according to the Association of Psychologists and Psychiatrists,
healthcare professionals, doctors and dentists have the highest suicide rates, also EMTs
and nurses followed by food assembly and preparation personnel. That would be people in--working
in slaughter houses actually. What's important to know is why people like Shelley want to
come and talk to you and why they want to talk to everybody about why this is all dirty
and bad and evil and how we need to close off the internets so people can't, you know--for
the kids, which, you know, whenever people say that they're doing things for the children,
it's always a foil for some other agenda and you should always see it as a red flag as
far as I'm concerned. Shelley Lubben is an active proponent of Utah CPAD legislation
which states the essence anybody providing open wireless access that a minor users to
access *** will be subject to a fine. Repeated violations are subject to criminal
and/or civil prosecution. A part of my talk, I was going to go in the internet and show
you the man behind CPAD legislations, a guy named Ralph Yarro. And you might want to check
him out, check out his Wikipedia page. I mean, as updated and accurate as Wikipedia is, it
still has interesting information about him and about his CPAD legislation which is, you
know, for [INDISTINCT] the most recent version of the CPAD legislation was signed off and
publicly endorsed by the governor of Utah. So, that's something you all want to check
out and keep in mind. So the question is, right, what do we do? How do we talk about
this? What are our next steps? As a sex educator, I think that it's a case of informed risk
and Harm Reduction. Is anyone aware of what informed risk or Harm Reduction is? Any sex
[INDISTINCT] couple of people. Don't be--don't be embarrassed. I think that for everyone,
*** privacy and *** access to non-biased, non-judgmental information should be seen
as a case to informed risk and an attempted Harm Reduction just like we say for sex. Simply
put, Harm Reduction is a progressive approach to public health which takes into account
that people are going to engage in risky behaviors even if they know better or not. Unprotected
sex, drug use and I'd like to add sex in the internet. Harm Reduction attempts to mitigate
risks and dangers by creating alternatives. Some things that Harm Reduction has done is
rather than just say no or don't drive drunk, Harm Reduction creates designative driver
campaigns and controversial initiatives like the provision of condoms in public schools
and needle exchange programs. So, here's another fun picture from PRIDE. Opponents counter
that Harm Reduction condones unsafe sex--activities. I think with sex online and particularly with
***, it's more extreme because pervasive culture attitudes are still so deeply anti-sex
and sex negative. *** interest is considered immoral in both media and government. So,
I think it's now become, sort of, I don't know, a pet project of mine or at least a
civic duty to try and tell people how to protect their *** privacy because I think it's
the most vulnerable kind at this point. I have a huge safer *** surfing page on my
website for that very reason. Users need to know basics about protecting their identity
and I think online businesses should educate their users in a non-biased way and it's getting
pretty urgent for them to do so. At the very least, there are basic general privacy guidelines
that anyone should know about, basic safety precautions right up there with all those
used lube for *** sex. So, people are going to do uninformed and sometimes done things
with their *** privacy on the internet. As I said earlier, knowing the risks the ***
surfer will still click a risky link to get off or because they're curious or get themselves
in shady or dangerous situations because they lack community or information and even more
so since the barriers to internet access in making online content becomes less and lower
everyday. Those were the cops at PRIDE. Here's the user again and thank you. Thanks for listening.
I don't know if we have time for questions or what.
>> All right. So, I've got a microphone here. >> BLUE: Cool.
>> The Utah legislation that you brought up made me wonder about something that I've only
ever heard, sort of, rumors and myths about >> BLUE: Uh-hmm.
>> When you have an international community website, like any kind of blogging or live
journal or something like that... >> BLUE: Uh-hmm.
>> ...then really--like do you know whose jurisdiction things that are posted there
come under? Is it who's hosting the site or is it where they're reading it? And here,
I mean, prosecuting the people who are giving the Wi-Fi seems a little bizarre to me.
>> BLUE: It does, doesn't it? Definitely prosecuting people providing Wi-Fi seems extremely bizarre.
And I think that it speaks to the ignorance of the legislators. When you start to talk
about sex, *** privacy and *** activity online, pretty much all doors shut when it
comes to legislation, unless you talk about something that you're doing to save the children.
The important point that you brought up is where exactly do social sites fall? Where
do--where do things like live journal fall, you know, how do these--how are these companies--how--where
do they fit? How are they going to deal with this? Right now, nobody knows and they're
all, sort of, trying to figure it out on their own. And I don't think there's an answer to
that yet, unfortunately, which is why I'm telling everybody. Hi.
>> So, 2257 may not bother the big professional pornographers but it can be a big hassle for
social networks, photo sites, anything with users, I mean, its contents.
>> BLUE: Right. >> What do you think is going to happen in
that area? >> BLUE: That's a really interesting question.
Because social networking sites, some of them have wandered audibly and not, whether they
fall under 2257's secondary producer content restrictions. I don't know if some of you
remember tribe.net, but tribe.net a couple of years ago, for whatever their reasons,
decided to start voluntarily applying 2257 regulations to their users on their social
networking site. And they did so in--with a lot of blanket. So, the tribe Bubblewrap
Fetish which was really just about bubblewrap was suddenly marked as a mature tribe, ***
off the users. And it also made users who had adult site--had adult tribes, you know,
which are--were basically places where people could cluster and sort of talk about their
interests, suddenly they were told directly that they were going to be held responsible
for 2257 documentation for everything within their tribes. Basically, everybody fled tribe
and it was the downfall of that site. It's now trying to resurrect itself again but it
didn't work out very well for them. So, where do they fall? That's a really good question.
Did I answer all of that? Okay. >> So, you were talking about how--when you
were maintaining the site, it was hard for you to get up-to-date on all the different
language available that's... >> BLUE: Uh-hmm.
>> ...community specific, and I'm wondering--I think it will also be challenging for someone
who is realizing they want to become part of a community to figure out what the appropriate
language is especially if there's not any local influence. What do you think--I guess,
what do you think the development for that would be? What do you think the future of
that is? How do you think that can be made easier?
>> BLUE: I think that making--the development of that and making that easier is definitely
going to be the lowest entry level access that people can get to information about things
like this. So, keeping something like Wikipedia up-to-date would be really, really, helpful.
And I would love to see more sex educators get involved in keeping Wikipedia up-to-date
at least just with the, you know, with the terms and everything that everyone is using
and write--speak more about, you know, how people are self labeling their gender, what's
acceptable and what's not. And also what I'd like to see added to that too, is sort of
some guidelines to people who do have *** fetishes and sort of may need some guidelines
about how they would behave online as well. One of the things that came up when I was
taking a look at the whole feet thing and people being upset about the feet thing on
Flickr, was that some people who were--some of the foot fetishes were essentially adding
themselves by leaving really inappropriate comments, you know. And so, there needs to
be some language out there that's, you know, as accessible to everyone as possible about
that. I think that having sites network, sites that do indexing in particular, having them
network with community liaisons, people who are working actively, you know, with peer
to peer counseling and frontline counseling like [INDISTINCT].org and organizations like
that and, you know, even community health clinics to just sort of keep up with, you
know, what people are calling themselves, you know. And also, you know, even sort of
graphing, like, what sort of the urgent interests are at this point as well. So, keeping it
as low entry level as possible like Wikipedia, basically, and trying to keep it up-to-date.
>> Through your presentation, you were using the words anonymous and private...
>> BLUE: Uh-hmm. >> ...more or less interchangeably, but they're...
>> BLUE: Always in quotes. >> ...they're different concepts.
>> BLUE: Yes. >> Right?
>> BLUE: Right. >> So, what do you think is more important
to people searching for accurate sex information or for ***?
>> BLUE: What's more important, anonymity or privacy? Well, I don't think that I could
choose either one because I can't speak for the majority of users. And I would also say
that the majority of users confuse the two terms. I think that there is a test of--I
think that users [INDISTINCT] think that when they're online, they just are anonymous. They
don't know that they need to go uncheck things, they don't need to, you know, they don't know
that they need to erase their search history. They don't, you know, the new user doesn't
know about cache and cookies and things like that. So, I think that--I mean, we're talking
about people who are just figuring a lot of the stuff out. They don't need--you know,
they don't know that shopping at an online sex store, you know, well, the sex store may,
you know, can--like guarantee their privacy in terms of shipping and packaging, may not
necessarily guarantee their anonymity when it comes to selling their info to third parties.
So, I think that there's a lot of confusion between the two terms and as far as choosing
which one is more important, I would say that on a--on a cultural value level, anonymity
because it allows people the freedom to figure out and look for and explore and trying to
understand who they are more. And--but I think that privacy is a more--would be the more
physical urgent thing because privacy is the way that people get found out, it's the way
that people get outed, it's the way that they can be tracked, it's the way that they can
be harassed, stalked, humiliated, lose their jobs, etcetera, etcetera, so it's...
>> Back to the 2257 searches. >> BLUE: Uh-hmm.
>> Were the--are the paths to those--to that content primarily through image search or...
>> BLUE: Yes. >> ...are they--and not so much through other
search entry points? So, if I, you know, if I search for 2257 on google.com web search,
that doesn't generally lead to that type of content?
>> BLUE: That's correct. It was just the image search that led to the direct files. Although,
I've also randomly found websites that are like "Here's our 2257 info for each girl."
And the girl with their IDs and I'm like "Oh, no."
>> So, this is back at the very beginning. You were talking about how you basically,
you know, did a search through Craig's list. I was just really curious, do you have or
do you have like an easily rememberable link to what the actual breakdown is? I was just...
>> BLUE: Oh, when I was data mining? >> Yeah. Like what do people mostly look for?
I don't know. >> BLUE: You know what, it's a Google spreadsheet
and it's public. >> Oh. Cool.
>> BLUE: So, I'll blog it. >> Is it linked on or...
>> BLUE: As soon as I'm done, I'll put it on my--on my site. And it's local data and
then the beginnings of me starting to do the national data. And then get to--I got totally
freaked out about people having sex with dogs in Texas, so I stopped for a little while
because there was, like, a lot of them and I was like, "Oh, this is isn't going to be
a good article for the Chronicle." So, how can I--no. But, yeah, it's a Google Doc, yay,
Google Doc, so it's in public because I think that--and, you know, as I add, you know, go
back and add more information, it's fun to have people, sort of like, watch it grow and
change and e-mail me about, you know, different stuff. So...
>> Awesome. >> BLUE: Anybody else? Yay. Thank you.