SITPS

Cold and dark is the end of 2009 and I am looking forward to the new year. This has been a tough year personally, and Sex In The Public Square has suffered a bit as a result. Looking toward 2010 I am guardedly optimisitc that we can improve things.

Looking back for a moment, a few very good things did occur this year.

• Privacy Policy
• Terms of Service/Acceptable Use
• Comment Policy

 If you currently use a feed reader to keep track of us we want you to know that we're making some changes. For a long time we've been using Feedburner for managing our feeds, but we've noticed lots of "page not found" errors coming from Feedburner.

We've now changed our feed links throughout the site so that they connect to the site's own RSS publishing.

While the Feedburner feeds will continue to publish, we recommend that you update your subscription using these links so that you will not run into any problems with "page not found" errors. 

Whole-site feed: http://sexinthepublicsquare.org/rss.xml

Comments-only feed: http://sexinthepublicsquare.org/crss

Comments here are moderated to eliminate spam and to make sure that conversations are on-topic and respectful.

Some basics:

If you got an email today saying that your account was deleted please disregard it. The problem came from deleting some accounts on a test site. We did not realize that the test site sends out the same kinds of system emails that the live site does. 

If you want to be extra certain that your account is fine, please try logging in, or resetting your password. We have checked our databases, though, and all accounts appear to be fine. 

Please let us know if you experience any problems using the site. 

• A new color scheme and layout
• Sections, to better organize content (see them across the top menu bar, and note we're having to catalog the site, so do be patient)
• Better use of images
• Gravatar and OpenID integration
• Other cool stuff.
  Please let us know what you think as we continue to develop the site. Use this contact form.

With the complications post-move from one host to another (and singing the praises of Elena at our new home, Host Discovery, for her incredible assistance), and with the craziness of wrapping up the semester, I've been delinquent in responding to posts, comments and emails.

Let me begin my catching up by thanking the brilliant and beautiful Caroline Shepherd of Uncool for awarding us an E for Excellence. She listed us in some pretty esteemed company, so we're flattered and honored and if a blog could blush we'd be blushing!

Caroline is also the lead organizer of the Feminist Carnival of Sexual Freedom and Autonomy, a much needed collection of feminist writing that supports exactly what it claims to support, without excluding sex worker, fetish, kink or other kinds of sexual expression. It's a monthly carnival and if you've read something or written something that you'd like to see collected there, let her know at uncool [dot] blog [at] gmail [dot] com. (The next carnival will be hosted by Chere Juliette on June 2!)

There are many blogs and sites I think are truly excellent, but let me share a short list here:

• Bound, Not Gagged, a blog by sex workers about sex work, and absolutely the first place I look when I need information about a sex work story in the news (or about one that should be in the news but isn't).
• Lux Alptraum's Boinkology - great sex ed and sex and culture podcasts!
• Debbie Nathan's blog - fantastic writing especially on immigration, but also on sex laws and moral panics.
• Chris Hall's Literate Perversions - full disclosure: Chris is co-founder of this site, but that aside his original blog is not to be missed.
• Chelsea Summers Pretty Dumb Things - because nobody does literary sexy and personal as well as she does.
• Debauchette - another very personal and very beautiful blog by a smart and beautiful woman.
• Emilie Dice - former escort, current dominatrix, very sharp writer whose blog I'm just getting to know, but can already tell is excellent.

Thanks Caroline!