Archive for March, 2005

Press Bias

March 9, 2005 | News Reports

Damn, I hate when wire services not only present a biased slant, but actually spin the stories they send to their partners. The Washington Times, a conservative paper owned by the Rev. Moon, had a UPI piece that claims Louise Bizzari and Barbara Hackett were suspended from the rehabilitation pool for kissing.

Gee, that’s funny, I haven’t heard that excuse anywhere else. According to a comprehensive article in the New York Blade, reasons given were as varied as “we don’t take your insurance” and that the women made threats against the staff and facility. But even if the women were expelled for kissing, the point is that the UPI blurb spins it by just saying “kissing” - this vagueness allows the reader to imagine them making out in public areas, when the reality may have been simple “see you later” peck on the cheek in a locker room.

Did I mention that I hate the conservative press and its spin?

Lesbian Mom Fights for Custody

News Reports

This particular custody battle is a little different from the other’s I’ve written about - in this case, the biological mother died in a car accident and the surviving mother is fighting with the bio-mom’s parents for custody. Originally, the West Virginia courts found that the surviving mom was the boy’s “psychological parent” and awarded her custody, giving the grandparents visitation rights. The grandparents appealed and custody was switched, so now the mom has had to take the struggle to the state Supreme Court.

One element of this I found interesting was that the grandparents’ lawyer says that because they boy’s biological father is still alive, the surviving mom has no claim to custody. (The father, by the way, supports the mom having custody and isn’t involved in the child’s life.) It’s ridiculous that they’re pulling the father into it…yet another reason I’m thinking unknown donors are the better choice.

Network Update: darkPlay

March 7, 2005 | CyDy Network

Have you ever gone a trip and wished you could take your sweetie with you in a suitcase? If you were dating one of Cl-Erotic’s models, you could! darkPlay has a special feature this week with one of the contortionist girls of Cl-Erotic.com, a Russian site. She can literally fold herself up into a suitcase! The process is presented in reverse, as the soft-sided suitcase is unzipped and the girl inside climbs out. If you’re into this twisty turny fetish, check it out now!

Butch Femme Book

Literature

I heard about the Butch Femme Book from Daddy Preston, who is in Australia. It’s a call for materials - writing and photographs - relating to the butch-femme subculture. Be warned though, the site is entirely Flash with very little information on regular pages.

Look, Latex!

Sex

There are lots of great updates around the CyDy Network to post about, but they will have to wait until I get home…I can’t exactly browse porn from work! Livejournal.com URLs are usually quite innocent, though, so I read Livejournal during the workday.

I wrote about Ulorin Vex a couple of months ago, but she’s got another set of pictures that’s so awesome I just have to share. It’s a shoot she did with her identical twin sister for a site called Fetish Eyes. If you like latex, gas masks, and/or wetsuits you will love the sample photos she posted! (Actually, I know a guy who loves women in wetsuits, the only wetsuit fetishist I’ve ever met…I should send him this link!)

Anyway, go check out those pictures. My favorite is the last one, personally…so striking!

Killer Pleads Guilty

March 5, 2005 | News Reports

In a plea deal that spares him some nasty sentences, the man who killed Sakia Gunn in May 2003 has admitted that he deliberately slashed her. Previously he had claimed that he was defending himself and she ran into his knife, but he was facing a possible bias-related murder charge and a prison sentence of over 115 years. Now that he’s pleaded guilty of aggravated manslaughter, he will probably only spend 25 years in jail.

This is utter bullshit. Sakia Gunn was 15 years old. She and her friends were waiting for a bus when this guy tried to pick them up on the street corner, and they let him know they weren’t interested by mentioning that they were lesbians…whereupon he began gay-bashing them. The fatal stabbing may have been part of a heated fight and not exactly pre-meditated, but he most definitely was already committing a hate crime when it occurred. I can’t believe this guy is going to get off so easy.

Tattoo Removal

March 3, 2005 | Pop Culture

I feel like a gossip hound, constantly talking about the Portia/Ellen thing…maybe I should make a category just for them. Anyway, this latest update is from the latest (spring 2005) issue of On Our Backs, who got it from DigitalSpy.co.uk.

Portia de Rossi has contacted a dermatologist about removing a tattoo of her ex-girlfriend’s initials from her ring finger. De Rossi, who has now moved in with comedienne Ellen DeGeneres, is having the initials “F.G.” removed after splitting up from Ringo Starr’s step-daughter Francesca Gregori.

Great. So as if presenting a negative picture of the sustainability of gay relationships wasn’t enough, she now has to prove that getting a tattoo of a lover’s name is pure stupidity. If it were me, I’d leave it there. The relationship was obviously an important part of her life, or she wouldn’t have gotten the tattoo, and so she should be able to face up to her own past by leaving the tattoo there.