Erika Lust's Blog, page 11

Because it gets better…

Justin Aaberg. Billy Lucas. Cody Barker. Asher Brown. Seth Walsh. Raymond Chase. Tyler Clementi.

What do they have in common? They didn't think it would get better. And they killed themselves. They were excluded, bullied, degraded, humiliated, even tortured. Why? Because they were gay, or suspected to be gay by their peers. An upcoming term for this seems to be bullycide – and statistics seem to prove that schoolkids being bullied are more likely to commit suicide. They didn't belief in a positive future anymore, and they didn't have any support or gay role models showing them that they can get through and that it gets better. After this series of suicides, Dan Savage and his partner Terry created a YouTube video to tell LGBT youth everywhere that it indeed gets better.

According to the NY Times, Dan had the idea after he blogged about the suicides and a reader commented: 'I wish I could have told you [talking to the boy that killed himself] that things get better.' Dan felt the same way. He regularly speaks at colleges, but wouldn't get permission to do so at middle and high schools. But not to leave those kids to 'parents, preachers and teachers' who 'believe they can terrorize gay children out of being gay as they grow up', he did the first video. Inspired by this initiative, the It gets better project was founded, first on YouTube and later on its own website, after it reached the YouTube video limit in the second week. It's a worldwide movement against harassment, with 5000 users and more than 15 million views. On the homepage young people can listen to the stories of people who had similar problems, and how – and most importantly THAT it got better, and that they can have the same in their future. People sharing their stories and people seeking help.

There's a lot of interesting contributions, like for example openly gay lance corporal Wharton from the British military, also a number of celebrities like Janet Jackson. As well as a lot of politicians contributed to the project, even Barack Obama:

Whatever it may be, the only advice is to stick it out, to get through – it will get better. After graduation things will change rapidly, popularity contests, peer pressure, bullying drops off (basically you never have to see the people from school again if you don't want to), you can leave the small and conservative little town, you can find a working place where you'll be accepted and you can be yourself openly, you'll get more independent from your family, and they might even learn to accept it.

Hold out – it gets better!

XConfessions – Share your stories

Hey everyone,

I'd like to present my brand new initiative: XConfessions.com. It's a website on which you can share your sexual fantasies, anecdotes, memories… without censorship. Since lately Facebook&co have been censoring everything with a nipple, I felt the need to create a place where everyone could talk about sex, say words like fuck, orgasm, boobs… and have a nice time sharing and reading stories. And it's completely anonymous so no worries on this side.

Besides, we created a gallery with illustrated confessions featuring designs, pictures and drawings from the Internet. If you want you can even suggest your creations and your findings and send them to me so I can upload them on the website, as long as you give the author's name (and url if possible).

There are already a few confessions, I hope you'll help me boost the site up and share your deepest thoughts…

You can also share your favourite confessions on Facebook and Twitter…

So far, which confessions is your favourite?

Special Xmas contest – win an erotic vinyl

To celebrate the inauguration of Lust's new collection of erotic vinyls - Lujuria de Barcelona – today starts a special and very kinky contest on Facebook and Twitter in which you can all participate.
What can you win?
One of the Lujuria de Barcelona's erotic vinyls.
How to participate?
Choose your favourite vinyl from the collection and tell me where you would put it in your house. You can give me your answer by posting it on my Facebook wall or on Twitter, like this: @erikalust the "lust for life" vinyl #lujuriadebarcelona
The person whose answer I think is more original will win the prize. The winner will have to send me an email with his/her name and address to erikalust@lustfilms.com and I'll send the vinyl right away, just in time to put it under the tree.
Timing
The contest starts today Wednesday, December 8th and it'll last for a week, until Wednesday, December 15th.



If you have any questions, you can comment this entry.
Can't wait to read your answers!
xoxo

Biscuits and sales at Lust Store Barcelona

Hey everyone,

On December 16th I will personally welcome you at Lust Store in Barcelona for an exclusive sale! (physical shop, not online).

All products will have a 10% discount and if you spend more than 30€ you'll get the Life Love Lust DVD for free.

There will also be hot wine and ginger biscuits (Swedish tradition).

The event will take place on Thursday, December 16th at

Lust Store

C/ Pujades 74-80

2o 2a B

08005 BARCELONA

(Metro Bogatell)

from 5pm to 10pm

If you would like to come, please RSVP on Facebook

I'll see you there! And Merry XxXmas!

Here's a little sample…

GPG's design contest

Geeky Porny Girl's design contest

Maybe you've already been able to appreciate all the erotic and aesthetic content on Geeky Porny Girl… a tumblr web that its author, Amber, aka Lady Porny, updates with lots of quality pictures far from sexual taboos.

To celebrate Geeky Porny Girl's one-year-birthday, Amber decided to organize a special design contest which I'm happy to support and spread.

GPG's Tees Graphic Contest is a design contest which aims at celebrating the creative human spirit through unique designs around sex, glamour, eroticism, joigning design and textile together. Another goal is also to participate in the upcoming opening of an online shop..

So basically everyone can send his/her design until December 25th at midnight. There will be three winners whose names will be announced on January 14th, 2011. Each winner gets one free t-shirt with their own design.

So if you want to know more and participate in this cool initiative, you can visit the official website, Geeky Porny Girl and also follow GPG on Twitter and Facebook.

Here's a preview of all the pics from GeekyPornyGirl

New collection of erotic vinyls by Lust

I'm happy to announce that Lust's new collection or erotic vinyls is out! It's called Lujuria de Barcelona

What's a vinyl?

It's a kind of wall sticker which you can apply on every flat surface like windows, walls, metal, woods, floor…You can remove them when you want without leaving a trace and replace them with a new one according to your inspiration.

These last years people have started to use them at home but at Lust we decided to spice them up and give them a sexy design so that every room of your house, office… get a special atmosphere.

Here are some of the first designs of Lujuria de Barcelona. Under the pictures you'll also see a video about the whole simple process of applying the vinyls.

The vinyls are already available on Lust Store

All the info + all designs on the official website

Suit Supply – The debate

Today I'd like to give my opinion and participate in the debate around SuitSupply's new series of print ads

Yesterday, the Spanish blog El Divan Rojo mentioned that Facebook censored the ad because of its "inapropriate" images and activated the debate about the legitimacy and meaning of the ad.

I'm really fed up with Facebook's censorship policy. Facebook is becoming a new puritanic Inquisition and it's reinforcing taboos we should erradicate: sex is bad – we should'nt talk about sex nor watch sex.

Another topic raised in the debate: sex sells.

Of course it does. And why? because it's completely inherent to our human nature. Si advertising manages to put sex out there and fight against sexual taboo then fine! However, the way advertizing uses sex often reinforces these cliches of sexual roles in our society (you know, warrior men and passive and anorexic women). This is the reason why I don't like the Suit Supply ad.

Violet Blue points out: "We have stripped the power-over dynamic from even the days of Mad Men and have taken the eroticism as our own", and I totally agree with that, however, she adds: "If they find the concept of female sexual submission so offensive — if that is what you read into Suit Supply's scenarios — they could read Women Who Like to Be Dominated in Bed: Talking to BDSM Submissives and be a little less judgmental about fantasies that might belong to those who would be their allies. Female sexual submission does not mean what it did 20 years ago."

And I'm not sure this ad is about female fantasies. I think they just used sex as a quick and cheap way to call for people's attention. If they want to talk about sex, why not create something original, something daring?! Because guys touching boobs is really not original.

To sum it up, I don't agree with Facebook's censorship but I don't want to praise this ad since it doesn't bring anything new.

It's like this video:

What does it bring us? It's just ridiculous and not even funny!

Howerver I love how this ad makes us rethink our mental schemes.

Unsa Haus / Our House – a new children's book

Children's books are not only one of the first media contacts of a human being in life nowadays, but it's also one of the first advocates of social norms in society. Children's books explain norms of class, race and gender, how to handle inner- or interpersonal conflicts and feelings, and they do it appropriately for children.

But primarily: they already convey and suggest proper family concepts. That's good, it's supposed to help the child understanding what's going on in its social sphere, but the way many of them present families, and therefore romantic relationships, gender roles and desires, maybe used to be standard in the 50s, and some seem to pretend that there hasn't been much innovation since.

Artifacts of antiquated concepts, for our children that will have to cope with the nowadays world – you see the gap? Don't flap! There's people working on it…

Sometimes it's not that something innovative inspires you for your work, sometimes it's that something is so bad that you can't wait for anybody else to change it: you have to do it yourself, and you need it to happen right now! That's my story, and it seems to be the same with the authors of "Unsa Haus"/ "Our House"/ "A Nossa Casa", a project initiated by Rita Macedo and Ben Böttger, one of the first non-normative children's books, that I bumped into because I was hinted by an article in the Austrian feminist magazine an.schläge.In the article the authors explain how it all started with questioning why always Mamma Bunny has to bring the tea for the sick Baby Bunny. Cool down ladies and gentlemen, women are allowed to do so, but men are as well, and more and more wish to participate more actively in raising children and do so – and yes, even though they are guys, they do a good job!

Our old-fashioned children's books don't even realize the ideas of caring fathers and therefore completely lost touch with social progression. And once and for all: nobody wants to forbid you to live your life traditionally if that's your choice. But not everybody lives a straight streamlined life like that, and that's ok – in fact, less and less people decide to live the very traditional roles. Parents get divorced, or maybe never were married, some people have same-sex parents, and not all people, and neither our kids, feel like choosing exclusively from a pool of possible behavioral acts exclusively according to traditional concepts of gender. They not only want to be represented, but it gets more and more necessary to develop concepts to accompany those kids and help them understand and cope with their surroundings and problems.

The family in common children's books is always the monogamous native-white middle class man-woman relationship with one or two kids, and let me stress that the problem is the ultra-traditional rules that they show between women and men in relationships. It's less about what you actually live, it's more about letting live– and still I'd guess that most men and women nowadays already think and live something else than shown in those books. But even beyond gender-roles: if my kids one day find out that traditional coupling or family concept doesn't feel right for them, or some other concept suits them better, I want them to go for it and not struggle with social condemnation. The authors asked why not make a children's book where Papa Bunny brings the tea?

Why not a children's book with two Papa Bunnies?

So within a team they realized a whole children's book, and NoNo-Verlag published it in German, English and Portuguese. Their children's book shows another reality of families that you, and our children will come across sooner or later in the world out there, you like it or not! Maybe it's their own family that it helps them reflect; maybe it's the neighbors, friends' families, or ones they see on the street. The experience of the publishers show that usually the kids have no problem at all with the concepts shown in the book, like the same-sex couples – but some of the kids parents have (article in German).  And I'd guess they just mask their ideological view and their ignorance with the excuse of just worrying about the children.

This book is a very good sign about the progress in our societies. And it's only one piece in the line of the publishers of NoNo, one example of their aim to represent marginalized groups and their anti-discrimination project.  They also published the "transmasculinities"-calendar, a portrait-calendar for adults showing the diversity of gendered identities beyond the male mainstream, published in English and German.

The next children's book, "Cäpt'n_Cosmo" will be published in December, but for the present only in German. "Unsa Haus"/"Our House"/ "A Nossa Casa" is available as a free download in German, English and Portuguese. But if you can afford it, consider ordering a printed version. First: it's easier to read it to your kids. Second: it's a small contribution to keep non-commercial projects like those running. It's about perfect appreciation of alternative concepts of families, and about accepting their reality.

It's a story of peaceful social coexistence. We may not be at that point already…but it gets better!

Insignia – new pleasure line by Lelo

Lelo, founded in Sweden, is the world's leading designer brand for intimate lifestyle products. You might have already spotted Lelo sextoys on Lust Store like Iris, Lily, Luna or Ina… But starting today you will be able to discover Lelo's brand new luxury erotic toyline – Insignia.

With Alia, Isla and Soraya, Insignia reflects really well the high standards of the brand unifying elegant designs and the best techniques and materials.

Here's a sneak peak…

Alia

An elegantly playful intimate massager which silently vibrates. It's couple-friendly, waterproof and ultra smoothe…

Isla

A sublimely-crafted mid-size vibrator whose flowing silhouette is contoured to the female form with functions to match, always ensuring the most deeply satisfying sensations.

Soraya

Beautiful dual-action vibrator, offering multiple pleasures in a sleek and seductive package. Her smooth exterior features individual motors in each pleasure point, and a flexible stimulator that adapts freely for the most luxurious feelings of pleasure.

Personnally I think the designs are really intuitive and adapt perfectly to women's and men's desires.

Check for yourself