Adult World News

Bangkok's first erotic book festival aims to break taboos and seeks to pave the way for an open conversation about sexual freedom in Thailand.

According to Vicky Wichta, one of the organizers of the event:

Talking openly about sex is very difficult for Thais so we created the festival to address these issues in a safe environment, mixing literature, exhibitions, talks and movies.

It is the first festival of its kind in Thailand, which many foreigners consider an open and tolerant country regarding sex work, but in fact the state is very uptight about porn and sex toys..

Viewers will be immersed in a multi-sensory journey of (no doubt very soft) titillating art, passionate books, sensual movies and provocative debates with experts, historians and sexual content creators

According to Economist, In 2006, the cost for one hour of sex with a female sex worker averaged $340 worldwide. Nowadays, the average rate is down to $260. But how does this billion-dollar industry trickle down to the workers who make it possible?

\the Havocscope team analyzed thousands of profiles of female sex workers on 200 websites, covering 55 countries, from escort directories to agencies and some of the most recognized international sites. The prices obtained for the visualization aren't the standard, rather the approximate average of prices published in 2019 by the many escorts on the web.

All costs are converted to U.S. dollars and reflect only the costs for 1 hour of escort service. Here are a few examples:

Australia	350
Germany	350
Singapore	350
United Kingdom	350
Poland	320
Belgium	300
Japan	300
New Zealand	300
South Africa	300
United States	250
Ireland	230
Netherlands	180
Thailand	150
Philippines	140
Colombia	50

For years campaigners, including Labour councillors, police and feminist groups, - have urged Bristol Council to ban strip clubs. The only problem for this miserable coalition was that the strippers themselves wanted to carry on stripping to earn a living.

Adult performers were celebrating on Thursday after persuading a majority of the city's council to reject the proposed ban on strip clubs and other sex entertainment venues.

One self-described exotic dancer told the council's licensing committee:

Stripping has allowed me to have a flexible enough schedule to pursue my dream career while simultaneously enabling me to live a comfortable life - not living in constant stress due to living from paycheck to paycheck.

Such was the strength of feeling among the female dancers and performers that Guy Poultney, a Green Party councillor, received a round of applause when he accused women's rights groups of arguing that we should discount the voices of some women in order to empower them and to restrict their choices in the name of equality and take away their jobs for their own good. He also said they were acting as if some women can't be trusted to make choices for themselves.

 

A government spokeswoman for the DES or Digital Economy and Society Ministry that censors the internet in Thailand said that everything was being done to protect young people from online pornography.

Noppawan Huajaiman said that this was a concern of Thai PM Prayuth Chan-ocha. So the DES were monitoring the situation closely, following up on parental complaints, giving advice and ensuring that the law was followed to the letter.

She said that court orders can be obtained to remove obscene content and offenders can be jailed for five years and get 100,000 baht (£2300) fines under 2007 legislation. But she also said that parents can and should complain to platforms when they see obscene material.

Thai ISPs routinely block major porn websites but the blocks can be readily evaded using VPNs or TOR

Researchers in China claim to be able to detect porn watching brain waves for the purpose of censorship. The helmet-like device can detect spikes in human brainwave patters when the watcher is presented with pornographic imagery.

In order to extend and automate the porn censorship that is already going on, Beijing Jiaotong University researchers developed the mind-reading helmet, which looks more like a shower cap covered in wires, to maximise the efficiency of it's current efforts. It's able to detect pornographic imagery with high accuracy, and is even able to filter through potentially detracting brain waves caused by emotional states, low energy levels, and random thoughts.

Researchers note that the technology worked almost every single time participants were presented with explicit imagery. However, it did trigger some false alarms leading to accuracy claims of 80%.

It's assumed that these will be tools to help porn appraisers do their jobs more effectively; rather than clicking through hundreds of images a day, assigning them either a pass or fail on the horny scale, they can be shown a bulk of images in quick succession, and the computer will use their brainwave data to do the rest.

Ukrainian activists have reportedly started buying ad space on adult sites accessible in Russia to bypass Vladimir Putin's ramped-up censorship efforts and provide accurate information about the invasion.

Jemimah Steinfeld, editor-in-chief of Index on Censorship explained that adult sites are perfect conduits for disseminating information to counteract state propaganda.

Steinfeld cited Ukrainian digital marketing expert Anastasiya Baydachenko as saying that adult sites offer huge audiences whose operators prioritize profits over politics and are therefore quite willing to take her money.

Baydachenko first tried buying ads on Google, YouTube, Facebook and other high-traffic sites, but Russia's fake news law undermined that effort -- whereas the ads on adult sites have reached hundreds of millions of internet users in Russia.