TonioTimeDaily

"The depiction of racist stereotypes in porn and the marginalization of black performers has been a topic of discussion within the industry for years. “Pornography is the least progressive industry in America,” says Sutra. “There’s no other industry that can say, ‘You are black so you cannot do this movie.'” Yet many in the industry see the conversation kickstarted by the Black Lives Matter protests as a prime opportunity to get prominent companies to change many of their problematic practices. That discussion intensified when the adult industry media publication AVN ran a story alleging police brutality victim George Floyd had links to the porn industry, sparking massive backlash and prompting AVN to delete the story and publish an apology."

"Porn was created as a choose-your-own fantasyland. There are genres for massage sex and bondage sex and cartoon sex and public sex and whatever else you want—even if what you want is race-based hate. Because in the kink-is-king world of adult-film production, racism isn’t a terrible injustice or catalyst for a national reckoning. It’s a commodity. And one that’s exploding.

Memberships on sites that offer only racist porn have swelled, according to new data obtained by Cosmo. At the beginning of the summer, during the height of the Black Lives Matter protests, internet searches for “racist porn” tripled. And between May and June, searches on Pornhub for Black porn—which can return racist results—spiked. A Pornhub representative tells Cosmo that the site is constantly moderating content for anything that would violate its terms of service and recently removed several racist videos from its platform, but plenty remain. And so on, across dozens more sites, from xHamster to XNXX to xVideos."

"In fact, over the course of a months-long investigation, Cosmo found hundreds of racist videos featuring Black women across nearly every single site that offers porn. In one, viewed more than 4 million times, a white police officer tells a Black woman in handcuffs that “we’re doing things my way” as he unzips his pants. In another, a Black maid is penetrated by her “white master.”

"This shift means that when nonwhite content creators raise concerns about racist categorization, sites need to listen and then act, lest they lose a huge swathe of their workforce. “I think things should be focused on the [performed] act” says Noire of the way these sites are organized. “The acts are universal. I’d like to be able to find people of color, I just don’t want the tags to be racist.” Jet Setting Jasmine, a performer, licensed therapist, fetish trainer, and porn film producer, believes that the same standards should apply for all performers, regardless of race. “If something only needs to be tagged when it’s ‘other’ or nonwhite, then it’s definitely elevating whiteness as the norm,” she says. “It should be equal, for everybody.”

https://www.who.int/hiv/pub/sti/sex_worker_implementation/swit_chpt2.pdf• Basic information about violence, including laws and policies against violence with a focus on sex workers. • Identifying those who may be experiencing violence based on physical or psychosocial symptoms (e.g. depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, suicidality or self-harm, substance use, injuries). • When and how to inquire about violence. • Collecting forensic evidence for investigating sexual violence. • Providing clinical and psychological care and treatment as per WHO recommendations. • Where to refer for support services in the community. • Providing non-judgmental care that does not stigmatize those who experience violence. • Implications of mandatory reporting of violence (not recommended in the WHO guidelines). Although not in the WHO guidelines on health-sector response to violence, in the context of sex work, training may also include: • human rights of sex workers • laws and policies pertaining to sex work that make sex workers vulnerable to violence • violence faced by sex workers in health-care settings and obligations of health-care providers not to discriminate, stigmatize or perpetrate violence against sex workers • providing clinical and psychological care to male and transgender sex workers who experience violence.  2.1.2 Values and principles for addressing violence against sex workers

Core values • Promote the full protection of sex workers’ human rights. This includes the rights to: nondiscrimination; security of person and privacy; recognition and equality before the law; due process of law and the highest attainable standard of health; employment, and just and favourable conditions of employment; peaceful assembly and association; freedom from arbitrary arrest and detention, and from cruel and inhumane treatment; and protection from violence. • Reject interventions based on the notion of rescue and rehabilitation. Even when ostensibly focused on minors (who are not sex workers), such raids deprive sex workers of their agency (the choice, control and power to act for themselves) and increase the likelihood that they will experience violence. • Promote gender equality by encouraging programme planners and implementers to challenge unequal gender roles, social norms and distribution and control of resources and power. Intervention strategies should aim for more equitable power relationships between sex workers and others in the wider community. • Respect the right of sex workers to make informed choices about their lives, which may involve not reporting or seeking redress for violence, not seeking violence-related services, or continuing in an abusive relationship. Programming principles • Gather information about local patterns of violence against sex workers, and the relationship of violence to HIV, as the basis for designing programmes (see Chapter 3, Section 3.2.2, part A). • Use participatory methods. Sex workers should be in decision-making positions where they can engage in processes to identify their problems and priorities, analyse causes and develop solutions. Such methods strengthen programme relevance, build enduring life and relationship skills and help ensure the long-term success of programmes. • Use an integrated approach in designing interventions. Holistic programmes that include provision of health services, work with the legal and justice sectors and are community-based4 can have a greater impact on violence against sex workers and the risk of HIV. Such programmes require establishing partnerships with a wide range of groups and institutions. • Build capacity of programme staff to understand and address the links between violence against sex workers and HIV. Programme staff should be able to respond sensitively to sex workers who experience violence, without further stigmatizing or blaming them. (See also Chapter 6, Section 6.2.6, sub-section on hiring and training staff.)"

I think the craziest taboo about masturbation is the one that links self-pleasure to “sin”, seeing it as a “dirty” practice. I believe that there must be a reason why we were born with sexual organs and spots that can give us pleasure – actually, there are many good reasons. For so many years sexual science has taught us only about what technically happens in our body during heterosexual sex, implying that the only purpose of it should be procreation.

Luckily, today we are more aware of the benefits of masturbation, with studies demonstrating how it can reduce stress, improve sleep, and also help balance a couple’s libidos! For women especially, masturbation allows you to explore and understand your body better, so you will know exactly what you like when you have sex with a partner. We need to keep on feeding the sex-positivity debate both online and offline, and normalize the conversation around masturbation as a wellness practice.

Many women out there think that something is wrong with them for not being able to comfortably have penetrative sex with a partner. Although sexuality is less of a taboo in society now, scientific knowledge about women’s sexual wellbeing is still young, and many of us still are suffering a lack of information and support regarding sex, plus the message that women need to sexually please men first is still widely promoted in the media and in society.

I wanted to show that penetration isn’t possible for everyone, and that’s okay. So I asked a member of my team who experienced vaginismus herself to address the issue and identify some of the psychological and physical causes of it. Check out the possible treatments for vaginismus and why non-penetrative sex is still sex.

“L’amant” by Jean Jacques Annaud had a huge impact on my filmmaking style. The first time I watched it was a revelation: the protagonist becomes an adult through sex and an unconventional love story, and this is completely shown from her point of view. Also Jill Soloway are a huge inspiration for me, as they strive to push the boundaries of gender and to represent diverse sexualities in their works, such as I Love Dick and Transparent. Their production process is incredibly inspiring to me and something that I’ve implemented into my own work.

The main inspiration, however, comes from the sexual fantasies that people share with me on XConfessions! I receive lots of lusty confessions from my users and from time to time I to pick up a few of them to make them into a movie! Usually I choose the ones that inspire me the most and then I adapt my imagination to these anonymous fantasies. Other times I wake up with an interesting concept that I want to translate into a movie and then find a confession that feeds my idea."

I value the values of equal pleasure, diversity, fair pay, fair commissions, transparency, safe sex environments, no surprises, and worker standards! 

Women's pleasure matters. Our female characters have their own sex drive and desires, and are not passive objects focused primarily on pleasuring the men.

Represent all people equally and respectfully. Do not reduce performers to any primal feature, whether that be body shape, ability, age or ethnicity.

We pay every person fairly, from interns to performers. When you pay for your porn you ensure that everyone working on the movie gets the right pay.

Every performer on every shoot must provide up to date STI tests & choose which method of safe sex they will use.

All shoots include multiple breaks, food and a welcoming, relaxed atmosphere.

Every director or studio featured is paid commission for the sale of their films.

Each part of the film is discussed and agreed upon with all performers well before the shoot.

We have nothing to hide because we are proud of what we do. Unlike the tube sites, you can see the name of every person involved in each part of making an Erika Lust film. Meet the team!

"ERIKA LUST WANTS to get more women in porn—in every possible position. Writer. Director. Producer. Star. She broke into the biz herself once and knows what it takes. And, like the growing number of advocates calling for more women behind the camera in Hollywood, she knows that the more inclusive the adult industry becomes, the better—and, OK, sexier—the results.

"Here we are, in a time when feminism and gender issues are in the media more than ever, the conversation around female sexuality is happening all the time, and still, mainstream production companies keep creating the same boring stuff and are managed by the same kind of narrow-minded men," Lust says. "We need another perspective; we definitely need the female gaze." Now she’s just got to prove she’s right."

"When in Doubt, Go Indie

It is, however, what Lust is shilling—and she’s not alone. Even going back to the 1980s, directors like Candida Royalle, one of the first porn stars to move into directing, were making female-focused porn and launching their own efforts to do so. By the 2000s, creators like Anna Span and alt-queer film director Courtney Trouble redoubled efforts to produce and distribute adult films by and for women. And while the Internet has exposed a lot of young people to porn, it also—much like it did for artists of all varieties—provided a distribution channel for a lot of independent producers and performers to release material that doesn’t fall into cliches. (It also, like it did for other industries, caused a lot of problems.) To that end, there are now even sites like Cindy Gallop’s Make Love Not Porn that allow, for lack of a better term, amateur performers to produce and distribute whatever turns them on.

"The beauty of technology is that now anyone can be a pornographer," says Carlyle Jansen, founder of the adult store Good For Her, which produces the Feminist Porn Awards. "But gaining skills in directing and being able to pay performers well (rather than just featuring yourself) and rent interesting sets and pay a full camera and editing crew to make quality interesting films such as Erika's would be an extra service that many could not afford."

Providing those services is, of course, exactly what Lust is trying to do with her new initiative. But she’s also just one person, and porn has a lot of issues of representation that need to change. "Certainly it is fabulous to get more women making porn," Jansen says. "[But] what I feel is almost more important is to fund transwomen, people/women of color, older folks and people/women with disabilities. These are the people still either fetishized or stereotyped in porn or just left out of the picture. There are very few positive images of these folks in film, especially done by their own communities."

"Kobe Bean Bryant (/ˈkoʊbiː/ KOH-bee; August 23, 1978 – January 26, 2020) was an American professional basketball player. A shooting guard, he spent his entire 20-year career with the Los Angeles Lakers in the National Basketball Association (NBA). Widely regarded as one of the greatest basketball players of all time,[3][4][5][6] Bryant won five NBA championships, was an 18-time All-Star, a 15-time member of the All-NBA Team, a 12-time member of the All-Defensive Team, the 2008 NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP), and a two-time NBA Finals MVP. Bryant also led the NBA in scoring twice, and ranks fourth in league all-time regular season and postseason scoring. He was posthumously voted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2020."

Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kobe_Bryant#NBA_career_statistics

"Bryant’s widow remembered her late husband and daughter on Instagram late Monday night, posting a letter she received from one of Gianna’s friends:

Mourners this past year have paid tribute to the sports legend in many ways. Murals of Bryant have been painted across the Southland and the world. The L.A. City Council is considering a proposal to rename a downtown L.A. street outside Staples Center as Kobe Bryant Boulevard.

The L.A. City Council has also declared Aug. 24 as Kobe Bryant Day in perpetuity, on the date of the jersey numbers he wore with the team.

Bryant played his entire 20-season career with the Lakers, leading them to five NBA titles."

He scored 33,643 points, the fourth-most in league history. Lakers’ superstar LeBron James, who had a very close relationship with Bryant, has 34,241 points. He passed Bryant on the all-time list on Jan. 25, 2020, one day before the helicopter crash. Over the weekend, James was asked about the anniversary.

James was asked about the impending anniversary following the Lakers’ game on Saturday night.

“Man, it’s a saying that says, `Time heals all,”‘ James told reporters. “And as devastating and as tragic as it was and still is to all of us involved with it, only time (will help). And it takes time. Everyone has their own grieving process. Everyone understands that everyone individually is different. Everyone is going to grieve differently. All you can do as a friend or a loved one or anyone in our brotherhood or our familyhood that we have here in the Lakers organization is to put an arm around someone when they need it.”

The L.A. Lakers legend, who had retired in 2016, had tweeted to James just hours earlier to congratulate him for surpassing him as the third highest scorer in NBA history. (He retired in 2016.) "Continuing to move the game forward @KingJames, Much respect my brother," Kobe Bryant had told James. It was his final tweet.

When the Lakers faced the Heat on January 16, 2006, O'Neal and Bryant made headlines by engaging in handshakes and hugs before the game, an event that was believed to signify the end of the so-called "Bryant–O'Neal feud" that had festered since the center left Los Angeles. O'Neal was quoted as saying that he accepted the advice of NBA legend Bill Russell to make peace with Bryant.

Another second is not promised, never be too upset to display the blessing the kindness. Be gentle NOW! Don't leave without blessing somebody: https://www.businessinsider.com/kobe-bryant-death-promised-teen-selfie-tomorrow-2020-1. 

We have to treat our public figures we respect:

Their mental health is more of a sensitive matter than ours because they experience more attacks (written, oral, and in art pieces), and more pressures to be all things to all people than we do.