Australia Dominating Sex News

An in-depth review of weird sexuality news has uncovered a trend - Australia is dominating sex news. Below are just three most recent examples:

A nude-only party that lasts a month, to combat economic downturn (!?). The tourism industry hopes that the party will re-ignite tourists' interest in Australia. Apparently, kangaroos are just not enough.




Mayor of this picturesque Australian town, Mount Isa, has attempted to be the most misogynistic, judgmental, insensitive, and sexist public official. He succeeded. His basic premise: in a town where men vastly outnumber women, ugly women ("beauty-disadvantaged") have a great chance to live "normal" lives. Apparently, the mayor quite often sees an unattrative female walking down the street either remembering the previous night's sexual adventures or anticipating next night's success.


Millions of people are customers of the sex industry, yet this industry is highly underrepresented in politics. The Australian Sex industry decided to correct that. Meet the Australian Sex Party. Their slogan - help us fight for your adult business and bedroom rights (plus get a copy of the EROS magazine and twice weekly eNews!). The party predicts that the economic crisis will stimulate the demand for the industry's services, as "we're a cheap luxury that can make you feel good." And that demand needs to be represented on the national level! The party is "serious about sex and serious about the Sex Party." Please do not confuse the Australian Sex party with the month-long nude party listed above.

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National AIDS Strategy

More than 100 organizations called for a National AIDS Strategy. After all these years in the epidemic we still don't have one and the number of people that are being infected every year is not going down. Having given up on Bush, and who hasn't, they call

AIDS is a national crisis. The next President of the U.S. should develop a results-oriented AIDS strategy.

You can be part of this effort and sign the petition for a National AIDS Strategy.
Senator Edwards is the first of the presidential candidates to support this effort.

That is very good to see. Who can forget his vice-presidential debate with Dick Cheney. Gwen Ifill asked both men to talk about African American women's increased exposure to HIV. Don't talk about African women, she said, African American women, you know, who live in this country. Neither men could do it and it was a shameful moment (one of many to follow for Cheney to be sure). Edwards has learned and that gives me hope. I imagine that he actually did feel ashamed then and now is part of the action. What little hope we hold on to sometimes, when it comes to our national leaders.

Via POZ: Health, Life and HIV

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Never underestimate a political foe

When I read Amanda Marcotte's question on RH Reality Check

“How on earth could one of the most powerful political movements in the nation collectively be unable to string two thoughts together in any type of coherent form?”

I thought for a moment that she would be refreshingly self-critical. But alas. All she can add to the conversation about reproductive rights is that the anti-choice people don't think. How is that helpful?

Of course anti-choice people think. And they think real hard. How else can such a minority have been so successful? That is the more important question.

There are are two intellectual traditions that suggest another way of thinking. One is better known and suggests that all people interpret the world according to frames they have in their minds. George Lakoff is the one person I know best and he has tried to make frame analysis useful for progressives in his book Don't Think of an Elephant: Know Your Values and Frame the Debate--The Essential Guide for Progressives. Since anti-choice activists have a very different frame, they literally see the world differently than Amanda and I do. But that is no reason to suggest that they don't think. Worse, it is completely useless to suggest that they don't think. They think perhaps harder than we do, for they know that being right and getting it right are two different things. I am bothered by smug progressives who simply think that being right ought to be enough.

Of course, I would betray my own discipline of anthropology, were I not to suggest that we have a country with very different cultures. For the current purpose, proposing to think in terms of culture is not that different than talking in terms of frames. With one notable difference. The culture concept invites the consideration of a broader spectrum of emotions and cognitions than frame analysis. Anthropologists also take religion more seriously and understand its fundamental importance to people's lives.

Let's also recognize that the anti-choice movement is not anti-sex per se. That again is too simplistic. They often suggest that good sex is important. However, good sex for them means intercourse between a man and a woman in the context of marriage. That is where we disagree. For me, sex can be many things between all kinds of people as long as they consent and achieve pleasure. Anti-choice people have orgasms. Women too. They don't mind other people having orgasms either, as long as they are married. That fits within their frame.

Underestimating such a phenomenal political foe as the anti-choice movement is the last think to do.

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