Showing posts with label sex. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sex. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 1, 2023

Organization benefiting people with intellectual disabilities was created as a "cover" for a group practicing "spiritual direction with nudity and sexual touch"

Background from the founder's Wikipedia page:
In 1964, through [the founder's] friendship with a priest ..., he became aware of the plight of thousands of people institutionalized with developmental disabilities. [He] invited two men . . . to leave the institutions where they resided and live with him in Trosly-Breuil, France. Their time together led to the establishment of L'Arche at Trosly-Breuil, a community where people with disabilities live with those who care for them. Since that time a network of 150 L'Arche communities have been established in 38 countries
Christianity Today (the article goes into detail):
From the famous Christian community he developed in Trosly-Breuil, France, the Catholic theologian and leader perpetuated a hidden “mystical-sexual” sect. Over a nearly 70-year period, [he] violated at least 25 women—all of them adults without disabilities—during prayer and spiritual devotion.

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While the ministry brought dignity and fellowship to the vulnerable over the decades, the report suggests that [he] founded L’Arche as a cover to reunite a group who practiced contemplation and spiritual direction with nudity and sexual touch.

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Despite the founders using L’Arche as a cover for their mystical and sexual practices, the researchers concluded that “L’Arche as a project and as an organization has nothing to do with a sect” and that the beliefs of L’Eau vive hadn’t spread to L’Arche leaders elsewhere.

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They called it “astonishing” that the sectarian practices hadn’t proliferated more widely

Catholic News Agency:

Contacted by CNA, [the] chaplain of L’Arche in France for 16 years until 2020, expressed his deep pain and dismay at reading the new report and the details of the abuses committed [by the founder].

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“This warns us against the all-too-common temptation to canonize people during their lifetime by putting them on a pedestal” 

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“It would be a great shame if people who need to be welcomed by L’Arche were to suffer the double punishment of being rejected by society in principle, and now rejected a second time because of this case which concerns its founder only

*Previously: Lawsuit alleges that Panda Express workers were "forced to strip in 'cult-like' team-building seminar"

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Wednesday, November 4, 2020

The Court of Master Sommeliers has suspended seven men over reports of sexual harassment

Forbes:

The organization survived a massive cheating scandal two years ago, was criticized for its insincere handling of the Black Lives Matter crisis as relative to the wine business and now close to two dozen women have come forward accusing a hand full of male Master Sommeliers of sexual harassment.

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[One of the men] was long considered one of the most egregious offenders, but as the country’s first American to have served as president of the Court of Master Sommeliers Worldwide and a historically well respected Master Sommelier, he was long considered untouchable.

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Some attribute the last years of bad male behavior to the stream of Somm movies, three of which were released between 2012 and 2018, which glorified male sommeliers as rock stars. “The rise of ‘Somm’ culture after the documentaries made it worse because [male sommeliers] were given a cultural of permission to behave like rock stars”

Eater:

The seven men will be barred from participating in any court activities, but the organization stopped short of revoking their membership altogether, pending a California hearing process.

You can read the announcement from the Court of Master Sommeliers here.

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Wednesday, June 17, 2020

A claim that up to 15 percent of U.S. sailors assigned to Bahrain were housing prostitutes in their off-post apartments

The Military Times has a long and detailed look at the prostitution scandal involving the U.S. Navy in Bahrain:
But in 2017, this alleged partnership between [the sailor] and [prostitute] — chronicled in the text messages she provided to NCIS — helped spark a web of investigations that revealed how deeply involved some U.S. sailors had become with the commercial sex trade in Bahrain.

Throughout the next year, those probes uncovered evidence that sailors were housing prostitutes in their taxpayer-funded apartments, seizing the women’s passports and taking a cut of the women’s earnings, profiting from a sex trade that serviced shipmates who lived on the island or came ashore during port calls.

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The woman known as Lin Raiwest was far more than just another expat prostitute.

By the time her alleged scheme with Littlejohn collapsed in 2017, court records show Raiwest was a power player among some sailor circles in Bahrain.

Known for her amateur tattoo skills and a hard-partying lifestyle, the streetwise, imposing, at-times jewelry-draped young woman was a fixture in the off-duty underworld, a dolled-up socialite who lived just outside the gates of the Navy base in an upscale glass-and-concrete tower known as the Heavenly Plaza apartments.

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But likely unbeknownst to her American acquaintances on the island, Raiwest had been an NCIS informant since 2014 and is designated under the code name MEBJ-1580 in agency and court records.

So while she continued her work as a prostitute and mamasan, Raiwest could also if needed turn to NCIS Special Agent Stanley Garland, the agent whom she’d known and secretly worked with for years.

“This is a calculating individual that knows what she’s doing and knows how to play this game,” Pristera said in court in 2018. “NCIS just kind of lets her do her own thing.”

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NCIS officials declined to comment on Raiwest’s history with the agency. The agency has also denied Military Times public records requests for documents showing how much Raiwest was paid and the nature of the cases she was involved in, as well as how many other pimps and prostitutes may have similar paid-informant relationships with the NCIS office in Bahrain.
Speaking of prostitutes:



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Saturday, October 5, 2019

"The wild, disturbing saga of Robert Kraft's visit to a strip mall sex spa"

Some details from the extremely graphic, and lengthy story in Vanity Fair:
As Kraft left the spa in the white Bentley, Officer Scott Kimbark, nicknamed Bark, stopped the car for a minor traffic violation. Kraft asked the officer if he was a Miami Dolphins fan and showed him his Super Bowl ring, explaining that he was the owner of the Patriots. Kimbark, having accomplished his mission, let Kraft and Bernon go with a warning.

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Breakers Row—home to mostly Jewish residents, including Robert Kraft—is referred to by the island’s WASPs as the Gaza Strip.
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Monday, September 2, 2019

Ten funny tweets


















































*More funny posts.
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Wednesday, August 28, 2019

"Dwindling stocks of Australian sperm have fertility clinics looking overseas and couples looking online"

The Monthly:
Australia requires more from its donors than other countries: before his proverbial 15 minutes in a back room with a Styrofoam cup, a donor has to agree that offspring produced from his bequest are able to identify him once they reach adulthood. He has to perform the labour for free, although he will be reimbursed for “reasonable expenses”. He also has to sit through a counselling session to ensure that he understands the repercussions of his deposits: the email, door knock or phone call that could come in future. Once a donor is recruited, his sperm is only allowed to produce children in a maximum of 10 families

...

another factor that may be contributing to the shortage of sperm donors. She believes that rather than being the result of Australian men becoming opposed to donating, it’s that clinics are choosing to import sperm instead.

“When you talk to some clinic staff who have gone down the importation route you can see it becomes very easy for them to just import,” she says.

Most of the international sperm entering Australia is from the US and Denmark.

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Vox recently ran an account of Californian man . . . who signed a 12-month contract with a clinic and made US$12,000 from his bi-weekly deposits.

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The registry also reveals how apathetic American sperm banks are in regulating family limits – the number of related offspring permissible. Kramer identified a donor with more than 200 offspring, and is aware of a dozen donors with more than 100 children (some of whom were conceived in Australian clinics). There is evidence of sperm from the US being shipped to two clinics in Queensland and NSW that both believed they had sole access to the donor’s gametes.

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crossing paths with someone who shares half of your DNA is not as far-fetched when considering the possibility of communities with potentially high rates of reproductive assistance. There are, for example, clusters of “rainbow suburbs” with sizeable LGBTI populations. “They all send their children to the same schools – often intentionally,”

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Sperm Donation Australia is a Facebook group . . . . Its banner is an illustration of sperm encroaching towards a map of Australia, a graphic resembling a campaign against immigration – not that it’s repelled any of the group’s 5000 plus members.
Meanwhile:
South Korea’s fertility rate -- the number of expected babies per woman -- fell to 0.98 in 2018, according to data released by the statistics office Wednesday. At 1.05 in 2017, it was already the lowest among members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, far below Japan’s 1.43
*Previously: Running shoes designed for menstruating women
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Monday, July 29, 2019

"Dora seems committed to projecting a pre-sexualized version of youth, while throbbing unacknowledged beneath the surface is something a bit more real, its presence rigorously ignored"

The last paragraph of the Hollywood Reporter's review of "Dora and the Lost City of Gold":
What keeps things alive, up to a point, is the imperturbable attitude of the titular heroine, who is invested with try-and-stop-me spirit by Moner, who's actually 18 and looks it despite preventive measures. The same goes for Wahlberg, who's 19. There's a palpable gap you can't help but notice between the essentially innocent, borderline-pubescent nature of the leading characters and the film itself, and the more confident and mature vibes emanating from the leading actors. The director seems to be trying to keep the hormones at bay, but there are some things you just can't disguise, perhaps human nature first and foremost. Dora seems committed to projecting a pre-sexualized version of youth, while throbbing unacknowledged beneath the surface is something a bit more real, its presence rigorously ignored. To be believed, this story should have been set in 1955.
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Monday, June 24, 2019

Ten funny tweets





Read more »
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"The Wild Ride at Babe.Net"

The Cut:
In the spring of 2018, I visited the offices of the millennial/Gen-Z-oriented website babe.net, a sunny loft space in Williamsburg, just around the corner from Vice. Babe.net — now shuttered — was then at the frothy peak of its existence. I made sure to wear my coolest pants.

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I would find out later that most of that day had been carefully calibrated to impress me. “You know how a teacher decorates the classroom on parents’ visiting day?” [a writer] said recently, laughing. “It was like that.” The Rihanna poster, the framed enlargements of highly trafficked articles on the wall, even the “What the Fuck is babe.net” sign on the archway had all been hung just for my arrival. The U.S. tab.com staffers, who shared the office with babe.net, had been told to go work at another location for the day.

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[The] Editor [], who was in charge of all the writers, told me she gave new writers links to the old Gawker archives to read in order to nail the tone. (Rarely had the new writers, with an average age of approximately 23, heard of Gawker — much less did they know about its fall.)

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The next day, Jane went to the office. “The first thing [a female] editor does is lean on the table and goes, ‘Wow, fucking the boss on the second day? Good move,’” she said. “Everyone was looking at me like I was Monica Lewinsky.”

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[Employees] who had all been with the company for multiple years and had always operated as a unit in the office, coalesced into an even stronger clique — the last survivors of first-generation Babe. They got matching tattoos — tiny lowercase b’s for Babe — to commemorate their bond to each other and their loyalty to the site.
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Wednesday, April 10, 2019

The Consent Condom "box can only be opened if four hands simultaneously press buttons on each side of the box, unlocking the condom inside"

CBS News:
The limited edition condom packages were placed at bars and events around Buenos Aires. The company is also sharing information about the product on social media with the hashtag #PlacerConsentido, or "permitted pleasure." They will be available to purchase later this year.




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Sunday, December 23, 2018

"In South Korea, motels, condoms and the pill are in hot demand for Christmas"

LAT:
Even though South Korea is about 30% Christian, Christmas is widely celebrated as a secular lover’s holiday not unlike Valentine’s Day, especially among the younger generation.

And because it’s customary for most unmarried young adults to live with their parents, Christmas has become a cherished occasion for couples to seek some privacy.

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After initially being celebrated as a religion holiday here by a small number of Christians in the early part of the 20th century, Christmas gained popularity in the years after the Korean War truce in 1953. During those years, the typically strictly enforced nighttime curfew was lifted on Christmas Day by the U.S. forces controlling Seoul.

American-style dance halls were springing up around the same time, and while police usually cracked down on them as morally objectionable, they were given a pass on Christmas

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“The customs of the night have long been repressed by curfew,” the Joongang Ilbo editorial said, according to Kang. “And because of the freedom of the night, curfew-free Christmas Eve could never just be holy.”
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Saturday, December 8, 2018

Ten funny tweets





































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Saturday, September 15, 2018

Ten funny tweets




























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Thursday, September 6, 2018

"A favorite anecdote about the origins of the vibrator is probably a myth"

Atlantic:
It’s among the most delectably scandalous stories in the history of medicine: At the height of the Victorian era, doctors regularly treated their female patients by stimulating them to orgasm. This mass treatment—a cure for the now-defunct medical condition of “hysteria”—was made possible by a new technology: the vibrator. Vibrators allowed physicians to massage women’s clitorises quickly and efficiently, without exhausting their hands and wrists.

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“I never claimed to have evidence that this was really the case,” she said. “What I said was that this was an interesting hypothesis, and as [Lieberman] points out—correctly, I think—people fell all over it. It was ripe to be turned into mythology somehow. I didn’t intend it that way, but boy, people sure took it, ran with it.”

Maines added that she was a little surprised it took so long for other scholars to question her argument
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Wednesday, August 29, 2018

"Why Are STDs on the Rise if Americans Are Having Less Sex?"

Atlantic:
On Tuesday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that reported cases of three sexually transmitted diseases in the United States had reached an all-time high in 2017. Rates of gonorrhea rose by 67 percent, syphilis by 76 percent, and chlamydia by 21 percent, to a total of almost 2.3 million cases nationwide. According to the CDC, 2017 surpassed 2016 as the year with the most reported STD cases on record—and marked the fourth year in a row that STDs increased steeply in the U.S.

It might seem logical that higher STD rates would go hand in hand with increased sexual activity, but a flurry of recent research indicated American adults are actually having less sex on average than they have in decades.
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Friday, July 27, 2018

Ten funny tweets





















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Thursday, May 31, 2018

"N.F.L.’s Alternate ‘Cheerleaders’ Don’t Cheer or Dance"

NYT:
In interviews with a dozen women who have worked for N.F.L. teams as noncheering cheerleaders and six others who had direct knowledge of the noncheering squads, they described minimum-wage jobs in which harassment and groping were common, particularly because the women were required to be on the front lines of partying fans. The fans had no reason to believe these women were not actual cheerleaders because the women often dressed exactly like the cheerleaders dancing on the field or nearly the same.

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The Ravens don’t hide the existence of a team of women — called the Playmakers — who might look and dress like cheerleaders but are actually marketers.

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In the Redskins’ online sales video for these suites, they feature photos of suite owners posing with the team’s cheerleader ambassadors. Having close interaction with the ambassadors is a tacit perk of the elite club. As a voice-over in the video says, “membership has its privileges,” the video pans over a photo of a woman in a bikini.

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“You thought it was going to be so glamorous and glitzy, like what the Cowboys’ cheerleaders have
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Thursday, July 6, 2017

"Police Broke Up a Drug-Fueled Vatican Priest Orgy"

Vice:
The organizer of the shindig was a 50-year-old aide to Cardinal Francesco Coccopalmerio—the president of many congregations including the Pontifical Council for Legislative Texts—named Luigi Capozzi. Coccopalmerio is a heavy hitter in the church being one of the Pope's key advisors—he was appointed by Pope Benedict in 2007.

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On top of frequent pedophilia scandals, it seems the Vatican has, for lack of a better term, a little bit of an orgy problem. In 2015, a 50-year-old priest in southern Italy was suspended for gay orgies, and earlier this year a priest from Naples had been suspended for similar allegations.
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Wednesday, May 24, 2017

"Felon Turned Fake Journalist Outed a Beloved Gay Teacher"

"After being convicted of making bomb threats, Gerald Jackson reinvented himself as an online preacher and amateur reporter. Then he went after an innocent man."
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Thursday, April 6, 2017

"Late last week, Coastal Carolina suspended their entire cheerleading team, wiping them from the school’s athletics website and preventing them from going to nationals"

DS:
A trove of text messages between cheerleaders, as well as several interviews, led Pylilo to conclude that a few cheerleaders had worked as escorts through SeekingArrangement, a legal website that seeks to connect women with “sugar daddies” for dates. The cheerleaders earned between $100 and $1,500 per date.

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A 2014 investigation by the Daily Tar Heel revealed that many UNC students turned to SeekingArrangement as a way to cover the cost of tuition.

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One cheerleader admitted to working as a shot girl at Myrtle Beach strip club
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