I Read The Pornography Wars and Now It's My Least Crowd-Friendly Special Interest

The Pornography Wars: The Past, Present, and Future of America's Obscene Obsession by Kelsy Burke
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

What a world we live in! The other day, I sincerely told my teenager that if I’d known, at her age, that one day I’d live in a future in which Spotify Premium* exists--nearly all the world’s music at my fingertips for just eleven bucks a month!--it would have literally been my own personal “It gets better” moment. Seriously, all. That. Music! And every day I find something new! I’m still low-key in my deep dive of comparing different versions of “The Nutcracker” as played by different professional orchestras, and yesterday, I found a cover of “Life on Mars” sung by Sophia Anne Caruso. What a world!

*This is not an ad for Spotify Premium.

Simultaneously, the fact that you can also now find nearly all the world’s porn at one’s fingertips has gone mostly unnoticed by me, but I love myself a social history, so I was interested enough to dip into this book… and now I might possibly have found myself obsessed with the history of pornography?

But to be fair, Burke drew me in right from the start with a history/analysis of the Venus of Hohle Fels, the earliest figurative depiction of a human yet discovered, and y’all KNOW how I feel about the art and artifacts of early peoples!

Just by looking at it, the Venus of Hohle Fels is pretty porny… and off we go into the history of porn!

There wasn’t as much history of bygone eras as I’d wanted--I wanted to read about Victorian porn!--but I was very interested in Burke’s analysis of a few more contemporary key historical moments that changed how we make and consume pornography. There’s the internet, of course, which made commercial porn shoots less viable because nobody really needs to rent backroom DVDs anymore, and the Pornhub monopoly, which made those shoots now nearly worthless, because why buy a website subscription when you can get raunchy clips for free? It was enlightening to see interviews in which sex workers who said that they could once upon a time earn a living filming porn on contract now have to operate more like gig workers, with porn shoots, camming, public appearances, and escorting. Apparently not even OnlyFans is a one-stop solution for most sex workers, especially when it can’t ever seem to decide if it will take major credit cards or not.

There is actually less history overall in this book than I’d been anticipating. I guess I’d expected a timeline/analysis of seminal works (lol!) and their various historical impacts, and we do get some of that, from the Venus of Hohls Fe to Deep Throat (you should read Roger Ebert’s review of that film!) to the Girls Gone Wild franchise that I remember from my own misspent 20s… but also with a lot of present-day first-person narrative of what it’s like to attend an ethical feminist porn shoot or an anti-porn convention or a sex workers conference, etc. I never could quite nail down (lol!) the author’s thesis, I guess, or even really how she wanted her analysis to flow, which often left me confused about the purpose of what I was reading and/or weirdly displaced in time--there was a very long passage about commercial shoots, for instance, that I was very interested in, but I could not for the life of me figure out if this was a contemporary shoot or something from, say, the early 00s? Based on Burke’s later discussion of the ways that MindGeek/Pornhub has made commercial shoots obsolete, I’m guessing it was the early 00s.

I was also less interested in the lengthy discussions of the various contemporary anti-porn movements. Historical anti-porn movements, sure--the California Measure B legislation in 2012-2017ish is super interesting, and to my mind has a lot of connections with ongoing legislation across the country to limit/determine what public school teachers can do--but the discussions of the contemporary stances against porn just went round and round: feminists are against porn for these reasons, religious conservatives are against porn for these reasons, etc. The feminists who are opposed to porn have a point, at least, but so do the feminists who are okay with porn, as do the sex workers involved in creating it, as do the free speech laws. I did have a fun time looking up an author’s reading of Good Pictures Bad Pictures Jr.: A Simple Plan to Protect Young Minds and snickering over it, though--my teenager, who was also watching this reading with me, kept shortening Jenson’s call to arms of “Turn, Run, and Tell” to “Turnt,” which… snicker! But what I really wanted, and didn’t get, was Burke’s final conclusion and stance; after all, she’s the one who just wrote a book about it! She must have opinions!

Instead, you are not going to BELIEVE what she does in the final paragraph of her book: she spoils the series finale of The Good Place?!?!? I mean, yes, fine, the show has been out for a few years, but still: it was a big twist! And she didn’t even give a spoiler warning first!

Although I got frustrated with the various philosophical stances since they were portrayed as, and seem to remain, unrectifiable (lol!), I was very interested in Burke’s references to a few cultural artifacts that seem like they could be more revealing, notably Rashida Jones’ documentary, Hot Girls Wanted, that seems to portray porn’s incessant acquisition of 18-year-old talent as VERY close to human trafficking, and the Twitter controversy involving August Ames, which seems to have as much to say about mental health as it does homophobia. As well, there’s a short mention of Dan Savage’s amateur porn film festival, Hump, and of a few performers who’ve done some compelling advocacy (including TEDTalks!) that I would have loved to have seen entire chapters on; this feels like the closest society has come (lol!) so far to true feminist, ethical porn.

I left the book with a lot of topics in mind that I’m still curious about: IS feminist ethical porn possible? Is there an ethical way to legitimize sex work? What do popular trends in porn say about the society that creates/consumes it? How has the takeover of “indie”/”pro-am” porn affected the marked sizeism, colorism, and racism clearly evident in most commercial porn? Burke did a little bit of semiotic analysis of a couple of commercial films that have historical resonance, primarily in her discussion of racism and pornography, but I’d love to read more about that. I mean, she barely touched (lol!) 50 Shades of Grey!!!

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Mending at the Library in Mid-December

 

Every month, my mending group volunteers at the library for one afternoon, mending whatever people bring in.

Sometimes, we do send people away--like, we can't resole shoes or anything--and sometimes we'll tell them something to buy and come back with next month, like if they need a very specific zipper or something, but the group actually has a pretty big stock of bits and bobs and notions and fabrics, so mostly people can walk in with a damaged piece and walk out with it mended. 

To be honest, I didn't attend this latest Mending Day expecting to mend anything; I'd hoped I could set up at a table in the back, just happen to let all the patrons wander over to someone else, and spend four hours sewing my Girl Scout troop's Elf Project stocking and the wool felt moveable alphabet for my niece's Christmas present.

Well, I did get the stocking sewn!

After that, I had time to take about one stitch in my next felt letter, and then I was too busy actually mending things to pick it up again.

Our group has a regular monthly clientele of older single men who bring us their mending every month, which... fair and valid! I'd totally do the same! So I mended a couple of tiny holes in a sweatshirt and a hoodie, then let the patron borrow my needle and thread and talked him through mending the rest while I sewed up a rip in a pair of fleece pants and another in a sheet. For my own mending, I like to stitch only, with no interfacing allowed to muck up my sensory experience. But for this mending, another volunteer taught me how to use tricot interfacing, which comes in both white and black for matching purposes, and stabilizing the fabric DID make the sewing go a LOT more quickly!

Then a librarian from a different branch came in to ask about the possibility of the group mentoring teen learn-to-sew programs. I am VERY interested in that, so we spoke for a while and hopefully next year, I'll find myself sewing with teenagers.

Then I sewed up a very fiddly rip in a very fiddly open-weave decorative pillowcase, using even more tricot and a bunch of stitching lines across the rip to ideally stabilize the fraying seams so that I don't see this patron again in January to mend that same rip again.

Near the end of our session, a patron came in wanting us to sew up a rip in his pocket. The only problem? He was literally wearing those pants right then...

His marching orders were to come back in January, with the pants washed, dried, and NOT on his body.

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December WIPs: Grapefruit, Cinnamon, Wool Felt, and College Application Essays

Nutcracker is finished, and Christmas is on the horizon! 

Here's what I'm currently working on, trying to finish, or at least determinedly not abandoning:

SUCCESSES

Look at that Mouse King army, all sewn and stuffed, labeled with ribbons that read "Team Mouse 2023," and ready to be wrapped and handed off to a corps of little mouselings!

I sewed these mini Mouse King stuffies from the Nutcracker stuffies fabric that my teenager designed a couple of years ago. I also sewed a complete set of the mini stuffies for the teenager so she could hang them on our Christmas tree... but it turns out that the performance casting document that the ballet department sent out to the parents omitted one kid's name from the Mouse corps, and therefore I was short exactly one Mouse King!

Obviously, the solution was to give that kid my own kid's ornament, lol.

So technically this remains a WIP, as my own teenager's set is short a Mouse King until I upload a fabric panel to Spoonflower that's all Mouse Kings, have it printed and sent to me, and then re-sew that stuffie for her. That's an AFTER Christmas project for Future Julie to enjoy...

Also in the realm of Still-But-Not-Really-A-WIP is the stocking that I sewed for my Girl Scout troop's Elf Project kid. I managed to sew it start to finish during my mending group's monthly Mending Day at our local public library--

--then the next day the troop met to wrap all the presents they'd bought for our sponsored kid and stuff this stocking. I just have to run out today and buy a couple last things, have my teenager wrap them, and then I can pack up everything and drop it off for the kid's caregiver to pick up before Christmas.

Also at that meeting, we made a pretty epic version of these gnomes, which required me to score some faux fur remnants from Joann's, dig through my fabric stash for the body and hats and noses, buy five pounds of rice, make a sample project, then walk five Girl Scouts through their own versions. We had to do some on-the-spot trouble-shooting when their bodies came out weird and none of us could figure out why, but eventually five ADORABLE gnomes are now all sitting fat and happy in five Girl Scout homes.

FAILURES

Unsurprisingly, I suppose, after all the extra holiday projects I put on my own plate, most of my November WIPs remain WIPs. I haven't even touched the skull quilt block or the weaving loom or the England travel journal since then. 

That kind of project is what the cozy, relaxed week between Christmas and New Year's Eve is for!

CURRENT WIPS

I called my teenager in to take a process photo of my hands kneading this cinnamon dough for an upcoming tutorial, and while she was at it she also took a photo of me fighting for my life to keep my fuzzy monster foot slippers (I bought these in 2019 and still wear them allll winter every winter!) out of the frame.

These grapefruit slices took a LOT longer to dehydrate than I thought they would. I think I cut them too thick?

My goal is to write tutorials for both of these projects for my next couple of freelance writing pieces, in the process making a nice winter dried grapefruit slice and cinnamon cut-out garland for my kitchen.

Y'all, I only have SIX MORE LETTERS to sew to complete my niece's hand-sewn wool felt moveable alphabet! They are turning out as cute as they can possibly be! I still need to sew a carrying bag, print and laminate some sight word cards to go with the set, write my niece a holiday letter, and then pack and mail it all off to her. Do you think a Saturday mailing is too late to get it to California by Christmas?

Other remaining tasks: finishing up one last handmade-ish Christmas present, keeping an eye out for the last of the family presents to trickle in and then wrapping them, helping/prodding the teenager to finish up college applications and her Gold Award proposal, and picking my college student up from Ohio after she finishes acing all of her final exams. 

After that, it's nothing but cookie baking, movie watching, gingerbread house decorating, and board game playing for the rest of the year. I can't wait!

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I Read Our War and I'm Pretty Sure It's Non-Fiction

Our War by Craig DiLouie
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I am so unnerved by how plausible this book seems. A second American Civil War caused by Trumpers (in this universe they probably refer to themselves as “Marsh-ans” or something, but we all know they’re Trumpers), a post-apocalyptic future in which big cities exist more like third-world countries, and a world in which the most unrealistic aspect is the fact that apparently nobody’s dropped a nuclear bomb yet? Yeah, DiLouie is basically just saying the quiet part of my constant feeling of impending doom out loud.

If you didn’t feel the same level of, like, deja vu for the future I won’t be surprised, because for me, the most unnervingly plausible part of this book is DiLouie’s street-level knowledge of Google Maps. A couple of chapters in, I actually Googled him to see if, like John Green with his Funky Bones reference that first tipped me off to his own locality, DiLouie is also a Hoosier… and he’s actually from New Jersey? Well, his Google Earth skills are marvelous, because I could mentally follow one of the main characters, Hannah, from the refugee camp to the Free Women headquarters to the Brickyard Crossing golf course--the only thing missing was a Children’s Museum of Indianapolis sighting. Imagine the pathos DiLouie could have packed into an image of the life-sized dinosaur statues bombed and broken!

But even without the reality boost of a setting that is my closest big city (and a name-drop of my own hometown… we tried, but alas, the rebels got us), I think this book would have been unsettlingly real. I mean, deep down aren’t we all surprised that January 6 didn’t end up in a full-on Civil War? Deep down, don’t we all think that Civil War was just postponed, not completely staved off?

With that realistic setting, DiLouie’s main premise--the use of child soldiers by all sides of the war, at all levels of the conflict--was vivid and disturbing. Here's the UNICEF definition of children recruited by armed groups, and one of the main characters in Our War is a UNICEF official who's come to evaluate the needs of America's children during this war. In Our War, the rebels had the more predictable, stereotypical uses for their child soldiers, terrible but nothing I’ve not read about before, but what really got me was how the “good guys” also used children. It was devious and compelling, manipulative and awful, and yeah, I totally buy how it went down. One day, you’re telling an orphaned child that everyone in the militia is her mother now and you’re feeding her and praising her and giving her a home, and the next day, you’re putting a suicide bomb in her backpack and sending her over the wall to the enemy encampment.

The only part of the book that didn’t really ring true to me was Hannah’s final chapter. DiLouie doesn’t usually pull his punches, so I kind of think that he just bummed himself out too much and was all, “Dang, I’ve got to give this kid a redemption arc or I’ll never have another good night’s sleep!” I know kids are resilient, and this kid got a LOT of therapy, but I just don’t think she’s pulling out of that level of trauma.

Speaking of deja vu for the future… if The Handmaid’s Tale didn’t already have you planning out your overland, on-foot route to Canada, this book will get you motivated to figure that out. Remember: stay off the main roads and highways!

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Make Magnets from Any Paper: My Three Favorite Methods

 

This tutorial was originally published on Crafting a Green World.

Magnets are a fun and easy way to show off your tiniest art, upcycle your favorite photographs, or display comic book panels, sweet love notes, or pretty papers of all kinds.

I am sooo glad that “cluttercore” is now a thing, because just between us, it’s always been *my* thing. A bare wall or surface is nothing but a spot that I haven’t put something cute yet!

To my endless irritation, my refrigerator isn’t magnetic, but I’ve made up for it by DIYing a giant magnetic wall in the kitchen, and a smaller one in the family room. I love displaying all the greeting cards, A+ schoolwork, concert tickets, and assorted other tchotchkes that one generally puts on a magnet board, but to be honest, my favorite things to display are the magnets, themselves!

Magnets are a great way to upcycle all kinds of cute little things that you’d love to have on display but that are too wee for mounting and framing. I love making all my special little mementos, from postcards to greeting card sentiments to Instamax photos to fortune cookie fortunes into magnets, so I can enjoy looking at them while they hold up other stuff I enjoy looking at–it’s cluttercore at its most decadent, lol!

Here are my favorite ways to DIY magnets from any paper!

Method #1: Mat Board and a Button Magnet

For this method, you will need:

• paper to display
• adhesive (archival glue or double-sided tape, AND E6000 or similar epoxy glue)
• mat board or book board
• button magnet
• ruler, craft knife, scissors

Cut roughly around your image, leaving a border that you can trim to size later. Then, use archival-quality glue or double-sided tape to adhere your image to the back side (not the pretty colored side, unless you want to chance the color being visible through the front of your art!) of mat board.

Use a ruler (a metal one is better than the beat-up plastic one I’m using in the photo below) and craft knife to trim the image and its mat board backing to size:

To seal the front of the image, I like to either laminate it in packing tape or cover it in Diamond Glaze or several coats of Mod Podge. Here, I used packing tape:

Any other fans of My Life as a Background Slytherin out there?

Use E6000 or a similar epoxy glue to adhere a button magnet to the back of the mat board. You can also add additional embellishments like gems and stickers to the front, Sharpie the edges, poke holes at the bottom and add tassels, and do whatever else you can think of to pretty up your magnet further!

Method #2: Sticker/Magnet Maker

For this method you will need:

• paper to display
• Xyron Creative Station Lite or similar machine, with a magnet+laminate cartridge installed
• scissors

If you’ve got (or can borrow!) a store-bought sticker/magnet maker, it makes creating magnets from your own papers SUPER easy.

I own this specific Xyron sticker/magnet maker, but I’ve also got teenagers and their friends who all use the snot out of it, so it gets a lot of use. If you don’t want to buy a whole entire one all for yourself, it’s worth checking out your public library’s DIY or teen space or asking your local Buy Nothing group for one to borrow.

To use a machine like this, you feed your paper into it and let it add adhesive magnet sheeting to the back and laminate the front:

The laminating is especially nice for papers that are glossy or ink that’s water-soluble. Kid art made with washable markers can be so delicate! It’s also an easy way to make a magnet out of an entire photo for display on my gigantic magnet boards.

Method #3: Adhesive Magnet Sheets

For this method, you will need:

• paper to display
• adhesive magnet sheets
• scissors

This method is best for papers that don’t need lamination, Diamond Glaze, or Mod Podge. I like it for my comic panels and my collection of vintage space-themed stamps, but basically anything commercially printed or printed on a laser printer could get away without lamination.

To make these magnets, roughly cut around your image, stick it to the adhesive side of an adhesive magnet sheet, then trim it to size.

Crafting this magnets is a fun kid project, especially for tweens and teens. Give them lots of magazines to cut from, plenty of adhesive magnet sheets, and let them have at it! The finished magnets make sweet handmade gifts for friends and family.

Pro tip: these easy magnets are awesome for the front of a college student’s mini fridge!

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Homeschool High School Chemistry: Electrolysis of Water Lab

Another day, another kitchen table chemistry lab!

I don't know what the "proper" number of hands-on labs a high school student usually conducts in a non-AP Science class is (in her year of public school Honors Biology, my own teenager conducted one), but in our homeschool high school honors science classes, I try for at least ten high-quality labs, experiments, and/or demonstrations, all written up by the student in her lab notebook for that subject. 

And they don't have to be complicated! This Electrolysis of Water lab could be conducted by an early elementary student, it's so simple. It takes just minutes, and it's easy as pie to conduct at the kitchen table.

To make it appropriate for a high school Honors Chemistry lab, just add rigor! When she completed this lab, my teenager was studying Lewis Electron-Dot Structures and calculating chemical reaction formulas, so I wrote her Post-Lab Questions to require her to practice these skills in a real-world environment.

In AP Language and Literature, she's looking deeper into the etymologies of words, so I also included a question about that to build context. 

Here's the set-up for the lab (pretend that you don't see the erasable pen that my teenagers like to use to cheat the lab notebook system of "write in pen; no erasing"):

Salting the water to the proper ratio (feel free to admire the chopstick stirring rod...):

Attaching the wires to the battery (the electrodes are currently touching, but she'll fix that as soon as she notices):

And now... observation! I always think that this is the coolest, most magical demonstration. Look at all the bubbles!

A surprise to us all: we didn't expect the aluminum to start flaking away! 

Is it an aluminum oxide coating on the foil? A manufacturing flaw resulting in improper adhesion of the aluminum that weakens it?

My favorite thing about science is the way that new information inspires new questions!

If that's not enough electrolysis for you, here are a few extension activities:

• incorporate Snap Circuits. I actually thought pretty hard about incorporating part of this demonstration, because we have sooooo many Snap Circuits. This would be an especially good extension if your focus is actually on electricity. 
• incorporate a pH indicator. This is a neat addition, especially if you've recently studied pH. Red cabbage pH indicator is another excellent homeschool DIY project!
• clean iron. The Children's Museum of Indianapolis has a giant electrolysis tank where you can observe the real-time process of rust removal from one of Captain Kidd's cannons, so you can observe this real-world bit of science in action even if you don't have your own iron to clean via electrolysis.

And here are a couple of books that include similar electrolysis experiments. The Marie Curie book is even written TO middle-grade kids!

And there you have it: excellent science using household materials in just a few minutes. With that little time spent on the actual lab, you've got plenty of room to really ramp up the rigor of the post-lab questions!

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How to Make Upcycled Embroidered Cardboard Ornaments

 

This tutorial was originally published on Crafting a Green World.

Clean out your recycling bin and your floss stash to make embroidered cardboard ornaments!

I am very drawn to patterns and geometric designs, and I’m always looking for ways to incorporate them into my favorite crafts. These embroidered cardboard ornaments are an easy winner, because although they lend themselves very well to creating spirals, mandalas, and other mathematical designs, they also lend themselves very well to… well, anything!

So whether you’re obsessed with soothing symmetry like me, or you like to make your stitching free-form or representative, you can stitch the design of your dreams onto these embroidered cardboard ornaments. Here’s how!

To make embroidered cardboard ornaments, you will need:

• upcycled cardboard. I know that I usually have a recommendation, but for this project, both corrugated cardboard and food packaging-weight cardboard work equally well. I prefer corrugated cardboard for smaller embroidered cardboard ornaments, just because I think the additional width keeps them from getting lost on a Christmas tree. Thinner cardboard is easier to work with, though, and works well, I think, with more intricate designs that require a larger diameter of cardboard. I prefer thinner cardboard for all the ornament backings, but more corrugated cardboard would work, too.
• measuring and cutting tools. You’ll want scissors, of course, and something to trace to make the ornament form (for these ornaments, I used a Mason jar lid and a saucer). For wheel designs, you may want a divided circle template; two templates that I often use are linked here and here. To poke holes in the corrugated cardboard, use a safety pin or thumbtack.
• embroidery floss and tapestry needle. A tapestry needle has a blunt tip, which will keep you from poking holes that you don’t want to poke through the cardboard. It’s also useful for stitching plastic canvas or cardstock. Even cheap cotton embroidery floss works perfectly for this project, but my favorite embroidery floss actually comes from my local thrift shop!
• tape and hot glue. You’ll use both on the backside of your ornament, so that nothing shows on the front but your beautiful stitching!
• ornament hanger. Ribbon, more embroidery floss, yarn, or anything that you have on hand!

Step 1: Trace and cut an ornament template.

Find a circle template, anything from a jar lid to a ceramic saucer, and trace it onto cardboard. Cut it out with sturdy scissors.

To make ornaments with radial symmetry, you’ll probably want to mark divisions around your cardboard circle. You can actually eyeball this up to a fairly high number! But it’s also not cheating to use a template. I use my DIY circle template to divide my cardboard circle into twelve, and I use the templates linked here to divide it into 50 or 100.

With these cardboard ornaments, you DO have to pre-punch the holes you want to stitch through. Sometimes, I just cut eensy little slits or notches around the edges of thinner cardboard. With corrugated cardboard, or in the middle of either kind, use a safety pin to poke holes where you want to stitch.

Step 2: Embroider the cardboard ornament.

Thread your needle, and either tie a knot at the end of the embroidery floss OR tape it down on the backside of the ornament.

Embroider your ornament however you’d like. When you reach the end of the floss or you want to change colors, tape the end of the floss to the back of the ornament.

The tape won’t show, and will keep the embroidery floss super snug on the front of the ornament. Nobody wants saggy embroidery!

Step 3: Add a backing to the ornament.

When your embroidery is complete, add a backing to hide the ugly side of the stitching.

But first, hot glue an ornament hanger to the backside of the ornament. I like ribbon, but yarn, twine, more embroidery floss, or anything that you have on hand is fine.

Cut another cardboard circle (I prefer thin cardboard for this) the same size as the first one. Hot glue it to the back of the ornament to hide the rough edges of the ornament hanger and the ugly side of your stitching.

You can also embroider this back piece, or write a name and date, or really just embellish it however you’d like. Or not! I personally like the look of the plain cardboard back to contrast with the fancy embroidered front.

I know I said that mathematical designs are my favorite, but any simple embroidery pattern works well for this project. Monograms are super cute, and a Google search will reveal all sorts of inspiring holiday patterns and other cute designs. Feel free to also experiment with floss weight, or even to switch to yarn for younger crafters or thread for making intricate, detailed designs.

If you prefer crafting with natural materials, get out the drill, because you can also embroider wood slices!