Humor From Those College Days

Hegseth’s Sexism is Pushing Qualified Women Out of the Military

Everything was set for the Navy officer to take over a new role that would have capped an already distinguished career— and made her the first woman in a Naval Special Warfare command overseeing Navy SEALs.  Ranked the top officer for promotion in her cohort, she received a Purple Heart after being injured in an IED attack during a combat tour in Iraq. She then became the first woman to serve with SEAL Team Six in the role of troop commander, one of several senior positions within the squadrons that make up the elite naval unit.   A formal ceremony marking her new position was planned for July. Invitations went out two months in advance.  

But just two weeks before the ceremony, her command was abruptly canceled with little explanation (according to a new report by CNN). The decision didn’t come through formal channels but by a series of phone calls from the Pentagon, which was designed to omit a paper trail, according to multiple sources.  With no command slot to take, under the Navy’s “up or out” policy, the officer’s more than two-decade military career is now effectively over.  As the news spread through the tight-knit world of Naval Special Warfare, a consensus began to form: The command was likely yanked by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth because of the officer’s gender.  

The command she was set to take over is closely aligned with recruiting for elite operations roles, including the Navy SEALs — and the impression those in the Naval Special Warfare community got from the Pentagon was that Hegseth did not want a woman fronting that role.  

A Pentagon official familiar with the situation said the command was pulled because the Navy captain wasn’t herself a SEAL, and that Hegseth was not involved.  But multiple people familiar with the dynamics of Navy personnel matters scoffed at those explanations. A broad panel of the most elite Navy SEAL leaders selected her for the new command.  “They can [try to] justify it by saying she’s not qualified because she’s not a SEAL,” said one retired SEAL. “But the SEALs thought she was qualified.”  To this person, the revoked command was a clear symptom of Hegseth’s views about women in the military. He said he believes the commander was removed because Hegseth is sexist.  “I’m sure they would repeal the whole women in combat thing [if they could], but this is what they can do,” the retired SEAL added.  

Her story is further evidence of what many in the military now fear is a culture of misogyny permeating the armed forces under Hegseth.  Many active-duty women have said they also know of other female service members who had recently been passed over for deserved promotions. Others said they are now considering leaving the military.  

Hegseth has already removed several women from prominent leadership roles, including firing Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Lisa Franchetti, the highest-ranking officer in the US Navy and the first woman on the Joint Chiefs of Staff. That currently leaves the US without a female four-star general, the military’s highest rank.  Two years ago, there were four.  

In a speech to generals in Quantico, Virginia, in September, Hegseth announced his vision for rolling back policies aimed at promoting diversity or accommodating troops.  Among these were fitness standards that he claimed were eased in recent years to make it possible for women to serve in combat roles. In his speech, Hegseth vowed to implement fitness tests that would be judged to “the highest male standard.”  “If that means no women qualify for some combat jobs, so be it,” Hegseth said.  But the fact is that Hegseth’s claims are blatantly false—the physical standards for combat positions are already gender-neutral.  For the Navy captain whose command orders were revoked, she met every physical standard (according to multiple sources)-- including being able to perform 25-pound weighted pull-ups.  

According to a retired senior enlisted Navy SEAL who served with the Navy Captain denied a promotion, there was never any question about her qualifications for the role. “She was the best man for the job. There is absolutely no DEI ,” the retired SEAL said, adding that the captain spent her spare time competing in IRONMAN races.  She would have overseen bomb disposal technicians and divers in addition to Navy SEALs, three communities in which she had worked. “She’s a badass, and also extremely smart and capable,” the retired SEAL said.

For Hailey Gibbons, an Army veteran who was among the first women to graduate from Ranger School after it was opened to women a decade ago, the idea that women aren’t meeting the same standards as men is “laughable.” Her initial physical test at Ranger School – a grueling two-month training course – was the same as her male comrades, she said: 49 pushups, 59 sit-ups, and a five-mile run in under 40 minutes, plus six chin-ups. 

Another woman in the Army (an enlisted soldier in a combat arms unit) said that she is already feeling real-life effects of Hegseth’s September speech.  Following the secretary’s remarks, she said a male non-commissioned officer in her unit told her: “All you women are getting out now.”  “I want nothing to do with the military after this,” she said.   

For the Navy captain whose change of command was canceled she’s now unexpectedly winding down a trailblazing career in the Navy.  It makes her former SEAL Team Six teammate furious.  “It’s fuckin’ bullshit. That’s horse shit,” the former senior enlisted SEAL said.  He voted for and supports Trump, but says he thinks Secretary Hegseth’s personal views are blinding him from retaining obvious talent at the expense of some of the military’s most elite war fighters.  “I think my job is to protect women and children but occasionally there’s badass [women] out there, and we should capitalize and not limit ourselves,” he said. 

The Navy special operations source familiar with the matter lamented that one of the captain’s passions had been recruiting women to special operations roles. Now pulling the woman’s command could cut off access for other female service members, the person said.  “It pisses me off because it is clearly someone who is capable and has done extraordinary things and is being punished because of — and I hate that I have to say it this way — weak-ass men,” they said.

 

You Show Me Yours, I'll Show You Mine!

The prime minister of Armenia has vowed to prove his 'member'-ship in the Christian faith by dropping his trousers to the head of the church.  Why?  Well, it seems that Nikol Pashinyan was challenged to "prove" his penis is uncircumcised in a bitter feud played out over social media.

An Armenian priest accused Pashinyan of being snipped, implying he was not Christian in the deeply religious west Asian country.  The curious priest, Father Zareh Ashuryan, said: "I believe that our Apostolic Holy Church must immediately cleanse itself of those false “believers” who are traitors to the nation, have dishonored the memory of their ancestors, broken the vow of baptism, and replaced the seal of the Holy Cross with the sign of circumcision."

This "pissed off" the country’s leader, who shot back with a fiery Facebook post, saying he’d be willing to whip it out in front of the Church’s supreme leader Karekin II.  He addressed Karekin II by his birth name Ktrij Nersisyan, saying he was "ready to accept Ktrij Nersisyan and his spokesperson [father Ashuryan] and prove the opposite" about being circumcised.

Pashinyan also stood firm, shooting back at the church’s leader, asking:  ‘And let him finally answer the question of whether he has broken his vow of celibacy or not. Does he have a child or not?’

The extraordinary war of words comes as tensions rocket between Armenia’s PM and the powerful clergy. In late May, Pashinyan claimed that churches had become ‘storerooms’ and that priests were breaking their celibacy vows, according to OC Media.

The Armenian Church responded, saying Pashinyan’s language was "unbecoming of a statesman."  They added: "Political motives drive this anti-Church and represent an attempt to erode the standing of the Armenian Church and its clergy."  Pashinyan responded by saying law enforcement had prevented a large and sinister plan by the "criminal oligarchic clergy" to "destabilize the Republic."  

 

The Latest Dispatch From the Dating Wars

From a recent Reddit thread on what men consider the hardest part about dating:

“It’s often impossible to navigate the frequently contradictory requirements.

“You need to be strong and stable but only when appropriate, and not too much or you’re a soulless rock, but you also need to be vulnerable and emotional — but similarly, only when appropriate and not too much, otherwise you’re not worthy of respect. You need to be sensitive, but only when they want you to be, and not when it makes them uncomfortable.

“You need to be independent and put together, able to handle all of your own shit without outside help, but you also need to open up and be open to being dependent on them in exactly the idealized way they imagine you should be, but not at all beyond that capacity.

“You need to be in good shape and fit, but also not in the gym all the time.

“You need a decent social life and friends to display you’re functional and not a serial killer, but you also need to not spend that much time with them or place so much importance on them that they might ever take precedence over your relationship.

“You need to be funny and charming and entertaining and appealing and make every effort to go the extra mile, but you also need to temper how interested you appear to be — otherwise you’re coming on too strong. But also, if you don’t appear sufficiently interested, they’ll think you don’t like them at all, even if you keep making all the effort to interact with them regularly.

“You need to make the move, but only when they’re comfortable and not a second beforehand, because that will make them uncomfortable, and they won’t tell you when you’re on the right side of that line — and if you ask, there’s a decent chance that can and will ruin the moment. But also, you need to respect their autonomy and boundaries and not do anything that could be perceived as pushy, so you better thread the needle, but also, if you don’t make a move when you were supposed to, then the responsibility is entirely on you. And if things fizzle, that’s your fault and not theirs, and they will immediately assume you aren’t that interested in them if you didn’t make a move when you were supposed to, so you had better get good at reading minds.”

Back in the 60's, the CIA Mixed LSD and Sex at a San Francisco Brothel

In a shocking expose on SFGate, details have come to light about an 8-year CIA operation where (between 1955 and 1963), federal agents ran a hidden brothel in one of San Francisco’s poshest neighborhoods and tested LSD on unsuspecting Bay Area residents. The apartment building is still there, although it has been converted from a CIA brothel into a four-story mansion worth over $10 million.

At the center of this wildly unethical program was George Hunter White, a former San Francisco journalist-turned-cop who became one of the biggest crusaders of America’s early war on drugs. In public, he railed against drug use and ruthlessly investigated jazz legends like Billie Holiday. Privately, however, he drank martinis by the pitcher and even used drugs like LSD and marijuana.

White was the federal agent responsible for a top-secret CIA program called “Operation Midnight Climax.” The CIA thought it could use hallucinogenic drugs like LSD as weapons of war against its enemies. To find out, the agency got Bay Area residents high without their consent.

White outfitted rooms inside a Telegraph Hill apartment building, at 225 Chestnut St., into a safe house for testing LSD. He gave sex workers get-out-of-jail-free cards in exchange for luring unsuspecting johns to the apartment, where the men were dosed with acid while White watched from the other side of a one-way mirror.

Operation Midnight Climax is now an infamous example of government abuse, but in White’s opinion, according to a letter unearthed by John Marks in his 1979 book “The Search for the 'Manchurian Candidate,'” it was nothing but “fun, fun, fun.”  “Where else could a red-blooded American boy lie, kill, cheat, steal, rape, and pillage with the sanction and blessing of the All-Highest?” White asked.

 

New Spin on Rope-a-Dope

A 79-year-old Japanese man managed to get a 90-inch jump-rope stuck in his bladder after shoving the rope up into his penis.

Doctors wrote in a September study published in Urology Case Reports that the unidentified man inserted the rope through his urethra-- but the handle-less rope became tangled and stuck in the man’s bladder. The man was forced to seek medical help, complaining that he was suffering from a condition called dysuria — difficulty with urination — only for doctors to find the rope.

Medics unraveled the medical mystery by investigating his bladder where they found “a large object accompanied by acoustic shadows.”   It was then the man admitted what had happened — although he did not explain why he did it — and was transferred to a hospital. An X-ray then revealed this object was “a wire-like coiled foreign body.”

According to doctors, there was no way to remove the rope the way it went in, so they had to perform surgery on the patient. “Transurethral extraction was difficult considering the length of the rope and its entanglement in the bladder,” said Professor Toshiki Kijima, co-author of the study.  “Traditionally, grasping forceps and retrieval baskets are used to remove foreign bodies,” continued Kijima. “However, wires inserted into the bladder usually curl up as the bladder contracts; therefore, special consideration is required for wire-like foreign bodies.”

The medical team had to retrieve the rope through an incision made in the man’s abdomen to remove the rope in full.  The man recovered from the surgery and suffered no long-term injury.

This patient is not the first to suffer penis-related problems. Also in September, a teen somehow managed to get a USB cable stuck in his penis which was, thankfully, also able to be extracted via surgery.

 

Woke Down Under

In Australia, it seems the days of checking someone out at a bar are over.  A Sydney nightclub said it will remove people who are caught staring at someone without that person’s consent.

Club 77 in downtown Sydney included unwanted attention from strangers in its updated “zero-tolerance policy” on harassment.  The venue posted the update on its Instagram account, saying the club is “not a place to come to if your sole purpose is to 'pick up.'  As a nightclub, we encourage you to interact with strangers, however any engagement MUST begin with verbal consent,” the statement read. “This also applies if you are, for example, staring at someone from afar.”

The club has hired designated “safety officers” — who will be wearing a pink hi-visibility vest — to handle complaints and concerns.   “If we receive reports of any behavior that has made someone feel uncomfortable, the reported individual will be removed from the venue and the police will be called,” the statement said.

Club 77 said in the statement it will “encourage feedback” — which patrons were quick to provide, with comments including “RIP to social interaction” and “not allowed to look at people now.”

“Never before has the term ‘go woke, go broke’ been more appropriate,” one wrote.

“I had to make sure this wasn’t the onion,” another person quipped.

“The stupidity of these rules will guarantee that the only patrons to attend this club will be the snowflake generation,” someone said.

"WTF retarded woke shit is this? Stay ur ass home and scroll tinder if u r afraid someone might look at u from across the room," said another.

“Don’t you have to stare at someone first to see them staring?” someone asked, pointing out the potential flaws in the new policy.

Club 77 says it’s striving to provide a safe space for club goers, and is “committed to developing and nurturing a strong culture of consent.”

 

Riding the Rocket in Space

TV host and podcaster Conan O'Brien recently discussed the topic of masturbating in space on his Needs a Friend podcast, as he spoke to Smythe Mullikin – who works for a NASA contractor in Texas – alongside his co-hosts, comedian Matt Gourley and author Sona Movsesian.

“Smythe… were someone to be watching space porn up on the space station, how does that work?” Conan asked.  Gourley then interjected, saying: “Three female astronauts can be impregnated by the same man on the same session.”

“Because the semen flies around?” O’Brien asked, to which Gourley responded: “Uh-huh. And finds its way.”  Unfortunately, Gourley's comments got the group off track, and Mullikin didn't get to answer Conan's question.

Astronauts have indeed been warned against masturbating in space over fears female astronauts could get impregnated by stray fluids. There are strict guidelines over “alone-time” onboard in zero gravity. Scientists have warned even the slightest rogue droplet could cause chaos on board.   Sex and masturbation in space is a logistical nightmare, with problems ranging from floating fluids to shrinking manhoods, according to US astronomer Dr John Millis. He compared sex in space to having intercourse while “skydiving”, but added that it was “not impossible”.

Unsurprisingly, there has been very little research into the topic.  However, a proposal to study it further has been made by scientists.  Simon Dubé, one of the lead authors, said: "Research on human intimacy and sexuality in space – including their socio-cultural and psychological components – is quasi-nonexistent.   "No research has explored intimate relationships nor the human experience of sexual functions and well-being in space or space analogues, or how any of this can affect crew performance."

 

Swimming Governing Body Bans Competitors from Women's Elite Events if They Went Through Male Puberty

FINA, swimming's world governing body, has voted to stop transgender athletes from competing in women's elite races if they have gone through any part of the process of male puberty.  The new policy requires transgender competitors to have completed their transition by the age of 12 in order to be able to compete in women's competitions.  Fina will also aim to establish an 'open' category at competitions for swimmers whose gender identity is different than their birth sex.

FINA's decision follows a move by the UCI cycling's govering body to double the period of time before a rider transitioning from male to female can compete in women's races.  Swimming's new policy, which was passed with 71% of the vote from 152 Fina members, was described as "only a first step towards full inclusion" for transgender athletes.  The decision was made during an extraordinary general congress at the ongoing World Championships in Budapest.

The conversation around the inclusion of transgender women in women's sport has divided opinion both inside and outside the sporting sphere.  Many argue transgender women should not compete in women's sport because of any advantages they may retain - but others argue sport should be more inclusive.  The heart of the debate on whether transgender women athletes should compete in women's sport involves the complex balance of inclusion, sporting fairness and safety - essentially, whether trans women can compete in female categories without giving them an unfair advantage or presenting a threat of injury to competitors.  Trans women have to adhere to a number of rules to compete in specific sports, including in many cases lowering their testosterone levels to a certain amount, for a set period of time, before competing.  There are concerns, however, as highlighted in Fina's decision, that athletes retain an advantage from going through male puberty that is not addressed by lowering testosterone.

"Fina's approach in drafting [the new] policy was comprehensive, science-based and inclusive, and, importantly, Fina's approach emphasized competitive fairness," said Brent Nowicki, the governing body's executive director.  Fina president Husain Al-Musallam said the organization was trying to "protect the rights of our athletes to compete" but also "protect competitive fairness".  He added, "Fina will always welcome every athlete. The creation of an open category will mean that everybody has the opportunity to compete at an elite level. This has not been done before, so Fina will need to lead the way. I want all athletes to feel included in being able to develop ideas during this process."

Former Great Britain swimmer Sharron Davies said, "Sport by definition is exclusionary - we don't have 15-year-old boys racing in the under-12s, we don't have heavyweight boxers in with the bantamweights, the whole reason we have lots of different classes in the Paralympics is so that we can create fair opportunities for everybody.  So that is the whole point of having classifications in sports and the only people who were going to be losing out were females - they were losing their right to fair sport."

However, 'Athlete Ally' - an LGBT advocacy group which organized a letter of support for transgender American swimmer Lia Thomas in February, called the new policy "discriminatory, harmful, unscientific" and not in line with the 2021 IOC principles.  "If we truly want to protect women's sports, we must include all women," it said in a tweet.

The issue in swimming has been catapulted into the spotlight by the experiences of Lia Thomas.  In March, Thomas became the first known transgender swimmer to win the highest U.S. national college title with victory in the women's 500-yard freestyle.  Thomas swam for the Pennsylvanian men's team for three seasons before starting hormone replacement therapy in spring 2019.  She has since broken records for her university swimming team.  Some of Thomas' team-mates and their parents wrote anonymous letters supporting her right to transition, but added it was unfair for her to compete as a woman.

 

Peruvian Piece Possessing Prodigious Penis Pillaged

The newly erected statue of a grinning man with an enormous dick has prompted delight and rage in an archaeological hot spot in Trujillo, Peru, where it has been on show since the beginning of the year.

 Although not anatomically correct, the fiberglass structure is a faithful representation of a ceramic vessel from Peru’s pre-Columbian Mochica culture, whose people lived in the region between 150 and 700 AD.  The statue has already proved hugely popular with passers-by and tourists who pose beneath the 5-foot member for selfies.  But despite its historical fidelity, the 9-foot tall fertility symbol has already been attacked by vandals who penetrated a hole in the statue and reportedly fired shots in the air as they fled.

Arturo Fernández Bazán, the mayor of Moche, the district named after the ancient culture, said, “At two in the morning three hooded criminals held a knife to the security guard’s neck to keep him from reacting or calling his colleagues on the radio, and two of them damaged the phallus.”

The roadside monument to the ancient pre-Inca culture renowned for its sexually explicit ceramics has also drawn tourists, as the statue stands on the route between the imposing adobe temples of the sun and the moon (the Huacas del Sol y la Luna).   Fernández Bazán said he plans to erect up to 30 more statues representing the Mochica culture – about a third of them representing erotic acts or childbirth – along the archaeological circuit.

“In our Mochica culture, these types of ceramics vessels were not considered erotic but represented the Godhead,” Fernández Bazán, who worked as a gynecologist before entering local politics, told local media.  “The Greeks had another type of representation. We have been more aggressive and more direct with our feelings,” he added.

The statue has provoked diverse reactions posted on the Moche municipality Facebook page, some saying that they found the statue offensive or that it should not be viewed by children.  Gisela Ortiz, Peru’s culture minister, said: “The idea that children shouldn’t see it or it’s too offensive belongs to the time of obscurantism,” she told reporters. “As Peruvians, we should all feel proud of our diverse heritage, including the sexual or erotic part, which is inherent to the human being.”  She added that while “nothing justifies the violence against the security guard”, greater efforts to explain the cultural significance of the statue to the local population could help avert further controversy.

 

Can't Beat Pete for an Unusual Christmas Gift

"Stand up" comedian Pete Davidson is soon to become an obsession with horny women nationwide.  Adult entertainment website CamSoda, will be releasing a sex toy inspired by the 27-year-old comedian, adorned with colorful tats.

The Davidson dildo “will help girls get off to the latest and greatest (and supposedly biggest, wink wink) celebrity heartthrob.” CamSoda announced.  “Pete doesn’t have to be locked down with just Kim. We can all share a piece of the SNL stud and get to know him more intimately,” CamSoda Vice President Daryn Parker eloquently added.

In case you thought it couldn’t get any more bizarre, the phallic prosthetic offers synchronized sessions with Saturday Night Live. When Pete makes an appearance on the NBC comedy show, the sex toy will start “gyrating accordingly.”

“As Pete graces people’s television screens on Saturday Night Live - and is permanently plastered across their timelines on Instagram with girls fawning over him - they can sync their smart dildos (aka teledildonics) to his appearances on SNL,” they added.

From Kate Beckinsale, Maid star Margaret Qualley, Bridgerton’s Phoebe Dynevor, model Kaia Gerber and most recently Kim Kardashian, Pete has been linked to many A-listers over the years.  He was famously engaged to Ariana Grande for a few months back in 2018 – who could have been responsible for fueling a few rumors about his manhood.

On Twitter, Ariana responded to a fan who asked her how “long” Pete Davidson was, in reference to a song interlude.  “Like 10 inches? … oh fuck … I mean … like a lil over a minute,” she replied in a now-deleted reply.

Pete later addressed the comments during a stand-up set. “I don’t like that she talked all that shit for my penis,” he said. “Why would she tell everyone that I have a huge penis?  So that every girl who sees my dick for the rest of my life is disappointed,” he joked.

 

Gynecologist Refuses to Perform Hysterectomy For Ridiculous Reason

A woman took to Twitter to share a shocking experience with her gynecologist that delegitimized her sexuality.

Twitter user @RachChamp_ expressed her frustration on the platform after claiming a medical professional refused giving her a hysterectomy in case she separates from her wife in the future and decides she wants kids with a man.  “Can’t believe that today a gynecologist told me that a hysterectomy wouldn’t be considered as an option for my debilitating period pain on the off chance that I divorce my wife, my sexual orientation changes, I meet a man and decide I want children,” Rachel wrote. 

Rachel gave further context in a follow up tweet, “It’s worth adding that I’m 27 and I’ve had severe pain since I first got my period when I was 10.  I’ve had two surgeries, tried three different contraceptive pills, the mirena coil, and have tried every combination of painkillers. Nothing has helped.”

Not only is this experience extremely frustrating to read, but it also reinforces the idea that a woman’s body serves—above all else—as a means to have kids. There’s plenty of women who never want children. Not to mention, there’s tons of options for those that do want kids that doesn’t involve them being pregnant.

In the replies, many Twitter users shared their own infuriating past experience with their doctor.  “It’s ridiculous. My friend wanted tubes tied after her SEVENTH kid. Not allowed because at age 31 she is too young and might want more. SEVEN,” wrote one user.

Others used Rachel’s story to advocate for women receiving better, less intrusive, medical treatment.  “We shouldn't have to fight for medical care, if a hysterectomy is an effective treatment for a medical condition then all doctors should need is your consent. It's almost like they think women don't understand what it is! Why do we need anyone else's consent for needed treatment.”

In response to one of many Twitter replies, the original poster’s wife chimed to share her own thoughts.  “The annoying thing is I’m her wife and I have perfectly working everything, so surely if we wanted kids we could just… use mine?!”

 

Integrate My Natural Log, Baby

A Taiwanese math professor has been uploading videos of himself on Pornhub solving arithmetic equations.  Obviously, the content is a striking difference to the adult videos that live on the website.

The professor in question, Chang Hsu, reportedly goes by the username "changhsumath666"— and he has garnered 6,900 subscribers.  As of now, he is ranked 685 on the platform in terms of popularity, which is extremely impressive given that none of his clips are filmed nude.

Instead, Chang has swapped the usual PornHub birthday suit for a hoodie, and can be seen standing in front of a green blackboard teaching. He’s uploaded 226 videos onto the site with the videos typically lasting around 40 minutes, ensuring his viewers get the full math lesson experience.  His tagline on the platform is "Play Hard, Study Hard” - and the creator has received over 1.9 million views with his videos.

While speaking to Focus Taiwan, Chang revealed that he started sharing videos on Pornhub last May and that his approach to the unique marketing strategy was making "special things in special places."  His methods has proved to be effective as he told the outlet that the people who have seen his free content on the site have resulted in paying customers for his courses.

"The online-teaching market is highly competitive, and I can now attract 1,000 students each year, compared with an average of a few hundred for a calculus tutor," Chang said.  "I asked myself where to find my target students, say college boys, and the answer popped out: adult video platforms,” he added.

Visa and Mastercard Are Now the Rulers of the Internet

The decision by the creator platform OnlyFans to soon stop hosting a wide swath of sexually explicit content is sending shockwaves through the internet.

OnlyFans, a website with 130 million users and more than 2 million content creators, has become synonymous with pornography. For many, performing on the app is a lifeline: Some who lost their jobs during the pandemic turned to sharing explicit videos of themselves on OnlyFans to help pay the bills. Many of these sex workers are now expressing outrage at what they view as OnlyFans's betrayal of a community that enabled the platform's massive success. 

 

Venture capital firms are often wary of investing in platforms that host adult content. According to internal documents obtained by Axios, OnlyFans' popularity and revenue both exploded during the pandemic, yet it has struggled to secure outside investment. 

 

OnlyFans' decision is also a result of a much wider and concerted crackdown in recent years across explicit parts of the internet, one driven largely by a group of powerful and increasingly assertive companies: The payment processors who, behind the scenes, handle every swipe of your credit card whether you're paying for gas, buying groceries or tipping a performer on OnlyFans. In its announcement this week, OnlyFans said its decision was driven with a view toward building a sustainable platform for the long term. "These changes are to comply with the requests of our banking partners and payout providers," it added.  OnlyFans' decision to attribute its policy change to payment companies reflects how the financial sector has increasingly leaned against sites that share adult content. But the issue, they say, is not one of mere prudishness, but legal exposure.

 

Credit card companies are growing increasingly conscious of their own potential legal exposure if they are accused of facilitating sex trafficking or the spread of child sexual abuse material.  Last December, Discover, Mastercard and Visa all announced that they would suspend payments to Pornhub, one of the web's largest porn sites, following allegations that the site had hosted child sexual abuse material. In response, Pornhub scrubbed its site of all videos that weren't produced by verified partners and implemented a verification program that all users would need to undergo if they wanted to post adult content. Though Visa later agreed to restore service to some adult sites owned by Pornhub's parent, MindGeek, Pornhub itself remains cut off from credit card processors; the platform still only accepts payment by direct bank transfer and cryptocurrency. 

 

The financial industry's muscle-flexing has drawn criticism from digital rights advocates who argue it's throwing its weight around. "Visa and Mastercard, acting together, are currently a choke-point for online payments," wrote the digital rights advocates at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. "This means that every arbitrary policy of these two companies can translate into rules that all websites who want to process payments must follow." 

 

"The real villains here are the payment processors, the silent shadowy blacklisting cabal that dictates the kind of moral behavior we're allowed to engage in, who, without any sort of oversight, can wipe any company they wish out of existence," tweeted one San Francisco-based OnlyFans creator who goes by @Aella_Girl.  

Payment processors are well within their rights to determine what transactions they will and won't support on their networks. In that respect, they are not that different from platforms such as Facebook and Twitter, who are massively powerful in their own right, said Danielle Citron, a law professor at the University of Virginia studying online content moderation and who also helps lead the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative, a group that advocates against non-consensual porn.  "Payment processors have considerable power over sites like OnlyFans and Pornhub," she added. "They're private companies. But should we be worried about the kind of power they have?"

 

Another Moment in Incel History

Writer Natalia Antonova recently tweeted about a conversation she’d had with the unnamed suitor.  It began with him admitting he’d searched for her on social media after she rejected him on Bumble.

He confessed that he’d “swiped right” on Antonova but she “never swiped back.”

“I wondered if you’d respond if I found you on Instagram," he wrote after she accepted his message request on the platform.  “I’m not offended,” he added. “Just think it’s a little shallow of you.”

Asked to elaborate, the man continued: “You harshly judged my Bumble profile, but the second you saw that I’m funny and I can cook, you let me talk to you.”

A baffled Antonova responded: “Harshly judged? I honestly don’t remember ever coming across you on Bumble. So whatever it is you’ve just assumed, it’s weird and wrong.”

The heated conversation continued with the man asking: “Is this your way of implying that you get so many matches on Bumble that you don’t remember me? Scandalous!’

She replied that she didn’t understand how matching with plenty of people on the app could be considered “scandalous,” adding: “Maybe if I was a nun.”

“Way to make a guy feel good about himself,” he retorted.

Clearly irritated by this point, Antonova wrote back: “It’s not my job to flatter you. Especially after you called me shallow. Piece of advice: Acting insecure and rudely demanding validation is not how you get girls.”

His response?  “You’re just an aging single mom anyway, whatever.”

Their jaw-dropping dialogue ended with a stroke of pure class from Antonova:

 

 

 

If There's a Hall of Fame for Neighborly Notes, This Deserves It

In a typed letter, which was shared on Reddit’s “Trashy” forum, an anonymous scribe asked a neighbor to do everyone in the building “a favour and dump” her boyfriend.

“We don’t need to be woken up one more time at 2am because he can’t be an adult and hold his shit together,” it said.  “Not one more time woken up by slamming doors, stomping feet and the worst part – hearing his whiny ass voice yell ‘what the fuck.”

 

Posting a photo of the note online, the recipient commented: “When your neighbors are exhausted of your fighting, it’s time to reflect on some things …”  The note sparked a serious debate among fellow Redditers, racking up more than 1,300 comments in 24 hours.  Many aired their concerns for the woman and her partner, with a number sharing their own experiences of toxic relationships.

“Yeah I’m all for telling someone they should dump their dickhead partner but don’t encourage domestic violence, with or without context assaulting a partner is never a good thing to applaud.”

But another defended the note’s creator, writing: “If it starts disturbing the neighborhood then it becomes everyone’s personal matter.”

Others wrote of hearing “fighting and screaming” and instances of abuse among their own neighbors.  Another commented in response to the letter: “Why wait this long, call the police for public disturbance, 2am? Repeatedly? Fuck that, I have a life too. Get it resolved asap.”

 

Finally, Someone Who Gives a Flying Fuck

A thrill-seeking couple named William and Leslie, who decided to try and have sex while sky diving, have shared how the dangerous act left them needing to visit the emergency room.

Leslie said: “As far as sex goes, I’m very, very sexually active. William can just look at me and honey, I’m just bam. It’s gotta be on. When it comes to sex, I come up with all the ideas. I come up with a lot of different ways to try to have sex.”

“She knows better than to throw a challenge at me,” William added.  A challenge it was, as the pair soon realized just how difficult it would be to make love while plummeting back down to earth. 

Leslie continued: “Since we were both wearing really baggy shorts, I just figured we could just connect without a hassle.”

However, the couple soon ran into trouble when they rushed to open their parachutes. While Leslie was able to deploy hers, William could not.  In an attempt to do so, William suffered a broken nose, and after landing was forced to use two tampons to try and stop the bleeding.

“The very first pain is in my groin and on my left leg. So not only might I be done skydiving, I might be done pleasing my woman,” he revealed.

After a rush to the emergency room to receive medical attention, the couple went on to fully recover from the ordeal.

 

 

India Supreme Court Justice Under Fire for Comments on Rape

Calls have been growing in India for the chief justice of the Supreme Court to resign "without a moment's delay" after his remarks in two cases of alleged rape. 

In one case, Justice Bobde, asked a 23-year-old man accused of raping a girl whether he would marry her.  "If you want to marry (her) we can help you. If not, you lose your job and go to jail," he said.

His comments shocked many, especially considering the horrific accusations the girl (who was 16 at the time) had made against the man, a distant relative.  The male relative is accused of stalking, tying up, gagging, repeatedly raping a minor school-going girl, and threatening to douse her in petrol and set her alight, to hurl acid at her, and to have her brother killed.  The rape came to light when the victim attempted suicide.

The girl's family said they had agreed not to go to the police because they were promised by the accused's mother that once the girl became an adult, they would marry the two.  In a country where victims are often blamed for rape, and sexual assault carries lifelong stigma, her family agreed to the arrangement.  But after the accused backtracked from his promise and married someone else, the survivor went to the police.

The accused, who is a government employee in the western state of Maharashtra, had been granted anticipatory bail by a lower court after he pleaded that he would lose his job if arrested. But the Bombay High Court called the order "atrocious" and cancelled his bail.  The man then approached the Supreme Court - which granted him protection from arrest for four weeks and where the infamous exchange took place between his lawyer and Justice Bobde.

An open letter from more than 5,000 feminists, rights activists and concerned citizens said to Chief Justice Bobde, "Your proposal of marriage as an amicable solution to settle the case of rape of a minor girl is worse than atrocious and insensitive for it deeply erodes the right of victims to seek justice.  By suggesting that this [alleged] rapist marry the victim-survivor, you, the Chief Justice of India, sought to condemn her to a lifetime of rape at the hands of the tormentor who drove her to attempt suicide."

In a second case, the supreme court was hearing a petition filed by a man accused of rape by a woman he had been in a live-in relationship with for two years. The woman claimed that she married a man in 2014, and afterward she consented to have sex with him. The man denied marrying her and claimed that the sexual relations between them had been consensual. She accused him of rape after he married another woman.  While hearing the case, Justice Bobde agreed that "it was wrong to make false promises of marriage" but then went on to ask, "if a couple is living together as man and wife, the husband may be a brutal man, but can you call the act of sexual intercourse between a lawfully wedded man and wife as rape"? 

Campaigners say Justice Bobde's comments are "extremely problematic" in a country where women have been constantly fighting a regressive mindset that accepts and normalizes sexual violence against them, especially within the home.   "This comment not only legitimises any kind of sexual, physical and mental violence by the husband, but it normalises the torture that Indian women have been facing within marriages for years without any legal recourse."

 

 

 

A Tale of Two Rhinos

Years ago, I blogged about the deaths of Sudan and Suni, two of the last four remaining Northern White Rhinos on earth.  New York Times writer Sam Anderson recently wrote on the plight of the two remaining individuals of this species, Fatu and Najin:

 

"Although Sudan was the last male Northern White rhino, he was not, actually, the last of his kind. He still had two living descendants, both female: Najin, a daughter, and Fatu, a granddaughter.  They would live out their days in a strange existential twilight — a state of limbo that scientists call, with heartbreaking dryness, “functional extinction.”  Their subspecies was no longer viable.  Two females, all by themselves, would not be able to save it.

In his final moments, Sudan was surrounded by the men who loved him. His caretakers were veterans of the deep bush — not, on any level, strangers to death.  The men scratched Sudan’s rough skin, said goodbye, made promises, apologized for the sins of humanity.  Finally, the veterinarians euthanized him.  For a short time, he breathed heavily.  And then he died.

After he died, I could not stop thinking about the last two.  What were they like?  What did they do all day?  I found their existence strangely cheering.  Although their story was almost unbearably tragic, they themselves were not tragic — they were just rhinos.  To meet them would be a chance to look mass extinction in the face.

After months of reading and imagining, I found myself out in the field — and there they were, in the distance, grazing: the last two northern whites.  The real creatures.  They stood together on a wide, flat stretch of tussocky grasses, heads lowered to the ground, and against the horizon they looked like parts of the landscape, like geological deposits.  Comical flocks of guinea fowl scampered back and forth, twittering.  One of the rhino caretakers brought out a large white bucket and, swinging it, scattered treats in piles near our feet: carrots, horse pellets.

Suddenly the rhinos were in motion, padding over, looking simultaneously clumsy and graceful, bulky but gliding, their skin folds bouncing, huge snouts wiggling to the rhythm of their clomping steps.  Just like that, my imagination was overridden by their reality.  The animals, approaching, became the animals.

I was allowed to stand very close.   Close enough to hear their huffing breath, to see them blink their big mild eyes, to see that their ears were fringed with a rim of hairs that seemed as delicate as eyelashes, that their tails had little black tufts.  Their horns, up close, were ragged, with scraggly fibrous patches, like shafts of splintering wood.  I watched them press their great wrinkled mouths against the ground, snuffling and chomping.   Sometimes they looked up at me, expressionless.

Today the northern white rhinos seem perfectly at home in Ol Pejeta, where everyone refers to them, affectionately, as “the girls.”  They live in a state of supervised wildness, with a daily routine full of little rituals and pleasures.   At dawn, the caretakers come clanking in through a series of gates, and the girls pad out of their pens to greet them.  Rhinos have fairly weak eyes, but their noses and ears are powerful, and the girls can identify the men by scent and sound. White rhinos are surprisingly relaxed.  They could kill you if necessary, but they would prefer not to.  As Martin Booth, an English writer who spent part of his childhood in East Africa, put it: “Whenever one sees a white rhino in the wild, one cannot escape the impression of size, of incredible benign strength and of a strange inner passiveness. The creature looks peaceful, amiable and secure.  If a creature can be said to have discovered transcendental meditation, then it must be the white rhino.”

The girls, having grown up in a zoo, are especially good-natured.  Their morning often starts with a thorough scratch-down from one of the caretakers, an affectionate check-in. Najin, the older and milder of the two, particularly enjoys this — she will walk over and wait for it, then lean her big body in, exhaling softly from her nostrils as the caretaker rubs her forehead, neck, belly and ears with his hands.  After this, both girls will walk off, under the low orange ball of the dawn sun, to take care of their other duties: to wallow in the mud, solemnly sharpen their horns and rub their bodies, systematically, for minutes at a time, against the nub of an old wooden fence post.

I spent one week out in the field with the girls.  I would go to them at dawn and leave when the sun set.  It was no time at all, in the scheme of things — not even a blink of evolution’s eye, and just the tiniest fraction of the girls’ big, wrinkled lives.  But out there in the field, time hung thick like fog.    Every day felt like a sliver of eternity.

Just down the road from the girls, Ol Pejeta has a rhinoceros memorial.  It is a place of deep sadness.  One tall tree stands alone in the middle of an open field, and around it sits a score of rough stone piles, each bearing a plaque with a rhino’s name.  A few of the honored animals were famous and highly protected, and therefore able to die of natural causes: Suni and Sudan, for instance, the last two male northern whites.

But a vast majority were not famous, and their lives ended terribly, at the hands of poachers.  They were shot by guns or poison arrows, their horns cut off. I saw markers for rhinos called Carol, Mia, Shemsha, Zulu, Kaka, Batian.  Some died quickly, but others survived for weeks before succumbing to their injuries.  I saw a plaque for Ishirini, a 19-year-old black rhino: “The security team found her writhing in pain with the horns already chopped off. She was 12 months pregnant.”  A 28-year-old named Job: “Semi tame blind rhino shot dead in a rhino enclosure and both horns removed.”  The names just kept coming: Mwanzo, Kiriamiti, Muigo, Chema.  Max, a 6-year-old white rhino, had had his horns pre-emptively sawed off by rangers, to dissuade the poachers.   But the poachers shot him anyway, perhaps just out of spite.

Even on a wildlife conservancy, it is impossible to protect every animal.  Ol Pejeta is huge, and it is surrounded, on every side, by desperate poverty.  The girls, in the absence of armed guards, would probably be killed immediately.   Some billionaire would no doubt pay a fortune to own the horns of the last two northern whites.

In the face of all this gloom, and against very steep odds, there is still a last-ditch effort to save the subspecies.   Both Najin and Fatu have reproductive problems-- neither can carry a baby to term.  But their eggs, fertilized with frozen sperm and implanted into the uterus of a healthy southern white rhino, may still be able to create a viable calf.  It is a reproductive hail Mary, but it is also the best option left.

Some months later, I was trying to write about the girls, trying to bring them to life on the page.  I kept remembering, in particular, one moment.  “Have you ever heard a rhino snoring before?” [caretaker] James Mwenda asked me one afternoon.  We were sitting on the edge of a hole — an old aardvark den that had collapsed and was now used mainly by warthogs.  The girls were napping nearby.  All around us the birds were stitching their crazy quilt of songs: hooting, chipping, whirring, beeping, cooing, grinding, sliding. 

And yes, in the midst of all that noise, like a distant tractor gently idling, one of the rhinos was snoring.   It was, indeed, my first time.  And yet the sound was familiar — exactly the same kind of rhythmic rasp you would hear coming out of your stepfather or your pet dog or your best friend.  It was just a regular old snore: the universal soundtrack of a mammal deep in slumber.  The noise was coming from Najin.  Fatu was sleeping silently next to her, her big square snout mashed on the ground, her legs curled under her like a kitten’s.  The two of them looked armored but defenseless, adorable and sad.  Suddenly, in the midst of Najin’s snoring, another sound broke out over the field — a rumble even louder than the snore.  This new noise went on and on. It sounded like a trombonist warming up, feeling out the acoustics of a very large concert hall.  This was, it became clear, a rhinoceros fart.  One of the girls was breaking wind in her sleep — emphatically, sincerely, admirably, without restraint.

Once the noise died down, I asked Mwenda if he could tell which of the rhinos had done it.  He laughed.  “The two of them,” he said. “The two of them together — they did it at once.”

This struck me, in that moment, as the very definition of magic, and I laughed with crazy joy.  Life speaks to us in so many languages.  The last two northern white rhinos, mother and daughter, had passed gas together, in perfect unison, in the middle of a happy sleep.  Mwenda and I had just heard the rarest symphony in the world: one biological chord, rising, fading, dispersing, expanding."

 

Relationship Advice From Reddit During Virus Crisis

Reddit has always been a hotbed of relationship advice-- but covid-19 has introduced a new dimension to the subreddit boasting 2.8 million subscribers, raising the stakes for every lover’s quarrel. Social distancing mandates have placed extra significance on who one is isolated with—by choice or otherwise—and confined at home there are limited authorities to adjudicate any strife. So people are placing their bets on Reddit users to provide answers to their relationship woes that the CDC and WHO simply do not.

“We’ve seen a stunning number of posts describing scenarios where social distancing was deliberately ignored despite living where it’s either encouraged or enforced,” Bryant Zadegan, one of the moderators of relationship_advice, wrote in an email.  “The result is two polarized groups: one acutely affected by the stresses of isolation, another with not a care in the world about the risks of COVID-19.”

Several women have complained about the inconsiderate behavior of the men they’re romantically attached to in this pandemic. One woman lamented about her partner ignoring the social distancing suggestions and complained that he was going on bar crawls, booking a roundtrip flight on the cheap, and ignoring her precautions because he believed covid-19 was overhyped.  "He’s still visiting his family. They had a cousin get together today and he went shopping with his dad. He hung out with his brother the other day. His family is pretty big so he’s interacting with a lot of people.   What’s worse is that I was stupid enough to see him last week. He told me that he was taking it seriously and not leaving the house except for groceries or to see me. That was a lie. Now I’m sick and he potentially spread COVID-19 to his family members including his older father."

The replies were gentle, but firm: This dude sucks. “A breakup while quarantined sounds miserable, but so does resenting someone for the rest of my relationship,” one woman replied. “Good luck sis.”

In another post, a poster says his girlfriend is threatening to break up with him because he is in quarantine and won’t see her. He insists that he’s just trying to follow guidelines and stay safe upon returning home after studying abroad for the last several months. “I am not even sure if I am going to be able to see her after my quarantine period is over since the state we live in is being put on lockdown,” the poster said.  Reddit responders agreed that this girl was bad news.

In another post, a lovelorn man has a crush on his housemate, and wondered if he should let her know how he feels while they’re in lockdown, even though she has a boyfriend (the general consensus on this one: absolutely fucking not).

The relationship_advice subreddit has always offered a genuine cross-section of humanity with guidance, and it is likely to provide more with millions of people forced to stay inside. However, a professional crisis counselor and relationship_advice contributor quite frankly admitted, “I fully expect that in the coming weeks this sub will see an increase in posts about domestic violence,”