SAN FRANCISCO – No matter how “adult friendly” a mainstream platform may be (or at least start out to be), it’s never a surprise to me when one tightens its content policies or community guidelines to make it clear porn is an expressive form non grata thereon. The crowdfunding...

RAQQA, Syria – When reading or thinking about ISIS –- what motivates its foot soldiers, the extremity of its ideology and all the varied ugliness and violence of its methods –- one of the last things on anybody’s mind is in what ways ISIS members may be like the rest of us. It’s...

LOS ANGELES – As I’m sure you’ve read, over the weekend Hustler founder Larry Flynt published an ad in the Washington Post offering up to $10 million for “information leading to the impeachment and removal from office of Donald J. Trump.” Naturally, the first thing that came to...

LONDON – The “Internet Safety Strategy green paper” published this week by the U.K. government is unsurprisingly sprawling and ambitious. By their nature, green papers essentially are an invitation to consult, a statement of intent calling upon a wide variety of stakeholders to...

JERSEY CITY, N.J. – In a couple of her recent columns for Forbes, psychologist and sex-myth-debunker Dr. Zhana Vrangalova has zeroed in on the results of a study with the catchy title “Sexual diversity in the United States: Results from a nationally representative probability...

GUANGZHOU, China – In recent years, a lot of ink and countless column inches have been dedicated to the problem of porn showing up on various social media platforms, so it’s no surprise to see emerging technology designed to help alleviate the perceived problem. As noted in a...

LONDON – While reading the story of erotic photographer Annabel Findlay’s dispute with a neighbor and a builder working on her neighbor’s house, it occurred to me what may stand out most to some people is the nature of Findlay’s work, rather than the nature of the offense with...

SOUTHAMPTON, England – The story of Ella Hughes, a former law student who now makes her living performing in porn, has spread far and wide since the BBC published an interview late last month. The question that seems constantly lurking behind the often breathless, pearl-clutching...

SALT LAKE CITY – There’s a motion afoot in the Utah legislature to remove from its state code language that created an “Obscenity and Pornography Complaints Ombudsman.” The legislature created the office in 2000 to, among other things, “advise citizens and local governments about...

WASHINGTON – When the news broke of Hugh Hefner’s death, expressions of condolence and affection poured in from all corners of pop culture, from John Lurie to Kim Kardashian, Gene Simmons to Paula Abdul. Unsurprisingly, the perspective of anti-porn crusaders was not as positive...