Literate Perversions

48 Hours to Go (SXSW)

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I posted before about the panel that Elizabeth Wood, my co-conspirator in Sex in the Public Square, and I are trying to organize a panel on the “Pink Ghetto” at SXSW in Austin this year. It’s about how we’re required to keep our sexualities walled off from all the other aspects of our lives — to speak publicly about what we do sexually beyond a leer or sly hints is considered a massive breach of manners and professionalism. At best, it can make your friends uncomfortable. At worst, it can get your ass fired — or never hired at all.

To get the go-ahead for the panel, we have to get it voted in, via SXSW’s online panel picker. Voting endeth tomorrow, September 21, at 11:59 pm. Please help us out by going to the site and doing some last-minute voting. And check out the other panels that I make note of in my original post, even if you’re not going.

Send Me to SXSW!

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It won’t even cost you a dime. Promise.

Elizabeth Wood, my partner in creating the online community Sex in the Public Square, has proposed a panel for SXSW Interactive with herself as moderator and me, Lux Nightmare, Violet Blue, and Rachel Kramer Bussel on the panel.

The title of our proposed panel is Pink Ghetto Blasters: Destigmatizing Sex via Online Community Building. The term “Pink Ghetto” is one that I first became familiar with through Lux’s writing:

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Launch Successful

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Last Friday was a knockout for me. I’m still a little high from it.

The main project that I’ve been involved in for the last few months, which has taken even more time and energy away from this blog (but worth it), has been co-conspiring with Elizabeth Wood on expanding her personal blog into a full-blown web community called Sex in the Public Square. The purpose of Sex in the Public Square, briefly, is to provide a public space for intelligent discussion of sex. Both Elizabeth and I are big believers in the idea that talk about sex shouldn’t be locked behind closed doors. What we have now is an obsession with sex, mixed with a conviction that sex is a toxic thing, and our public world, at least, should be kept G-Rated. We want to see the day that we put that idea in the ground and bury it so deep that no one can ever imagine it existed.

What better way to celebrate the creation of a website devoted to keeping sex out of the closet than to throw yourselves a massive coming-out party? Well, that’s what we did. It was last Friday the 17th, at Rapture Café, a very queer and very cool new coffee house/bookstore/bar on Avenue A in the East Village. For those of you in NYC, I highly recommend that you check out Rapture.

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