Cameryn Moore, the Phone Whore, in ABQ This Week!

The amazing performer Cameryn Moore is rolling into Albuquerque tonight! We have a great week lined up.

On Tuesday, October 18th, join us for Albuquerque's first ever Smut Slam! Details are:

Doors at 630pm, Slam starts at 7pm at Evolution Nightclub (formerly "Exhale"), 6132 4th St NW

$5/person, at the door

Check out full details here! Have a story to tell? Come out!

Cameryn will be performing her two incredible shows, Phone Whore and slut [r]evolution, Thursday Oct 20th thru Saturday, Oct 22nd.

You can purchase tickets here, or buy at the door. But note! If you buy early, you save $$!

Cameryn's one-woman shows have been described as "uplifting, brave, intelligent, and dark." Both plays have won awards at Fringe Fests across the country. We in Albuquerque are so fortunate to be part of Cameryn's 2011 tour! Don't miss the opportunity to see Cameryn Moore, Phone Whore, award-winning actress/writer, and sexual revolutionary!

Sex just keeps getting censored

It still ceases to amaze me. People are so very afraid of sex. Why else would there be so many censorship battles? Self Serve is just two and half years old, and we've had more than our share of brick walls, closed doors and unwanted editing. All in the name of preserving what? Some puritanical fantasy of an asexual, totally repressed world?

Why now do I bring this up? Thanks to an abundance of recent inspiration:

• A sex educator in Rhode Island is being blocked from opening the Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health due to (you guessed it...) zoning issues!

• Google Checkout, of the all-amazing (and all-powerful) Google, shut down our account after a mere 48 hours of having selfservetoys linked to their shopping results.

Rhode Island deserves sexual pleasure and health!

Seriously? I keep thinking of the SNL weekend update with Amy Poehler and ... where they just get more and more astounded by the stupidity of the actual news. Well, so am I! Megan Andelloux in Pawtucket, Rhode Island, wants to open a welcoming, safe space to learn about sexuality and improve relationships. Megan Andelloux is supported by sex educators, sex therapists, the American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors, and Therapists and all her potential business neighbors. But the city is using zoning (as usual) as an excuse to keep her from doing great work. Now she has an expensive legal battle on her hands.

What are you so afraid of, people?! I have to admit, it reminds me of the cold-hearted adult children on Grey's Anatomy last week. I was so proud of the 82-year-old character for pursuing his penile implant. Sure it's not a liver transplant, but if that man wants to enjoy his good health with a new love, that is a beautiful thing! Yet his middle-aged children were embarrassed, critical, condescending and judgmental.

Sex is healthy and pleasure is good for you. This concept is apparently still radical. What a pity.

The first time I got really mad at the all-mighty Google.

How Google felt justified closing our Checkout account is a whole other story of hypocrisy. Self Serve uses Google. We typically love Google. We use Gmail, Google Docs, Picasa, Blogger (apparently) and we were excited to start using Google Checkout. We had our web programmer lady work for hours on setting up a new Google Checkout account. I was so excited for the new visibility for our site. The account went live, and within hours we had new orders. Then within three days, Google closed our account and claim their policies do not allow the sale of adult items.

Well guess where you can find over 5 million pages of shopping results for even one vibrating item in Google Shopping results? Oh, silly me. I thought that policy was bunk since all the most gigantic online retailers seem to be selling adult toys through Google Checkout.

Hmm, how odd. Little companies like the Center for Sexual Health and Pleasure and Self Serve are fought tooth and nail for the basic right to teach healthy, happy sex education, while Amazon, Walgreens, Drugstore.com, Buy.com and others can go on undercutting prices of independent retailers and get away with ignoring Google's anti-adult policies.

Unfortunately, we're not new to this whole censorship thing...

If you are new to the world of Self Serve Sexuality Resource Center, here are a few more reasons we get fed up with censorship:

• Banks won't lend to any sex education business. Even with the economy in a slump, no SBA loans for new businesses teaching sex education. Even when we won an award for our business plan, no institutional lender would touch us. Instead, we found 9-plus amazing real people willing to help fund our start-up.
  
Four landlords in Albuquerque said no to us before we found a retail space.
Our Pornotopia independent erotic film festival is awaiting another court decision about zoning violations in 2008. We'll keep you posted as this year's festival approaches.
• We once had to fight to publish a subtle picture of a bunny when designing a $700 magazine advertisement.
Online merchant service-providers say no to adult web sites of any kind.
• After paying hundreds of dollars for insurance for over a year, our provider gave us 30 days to find a new underwriter -- because of what we sell.
• We once donated a silent auction item worth $50 to support continuing education for teen moms. The auction organizer rejected our donation. We found out only after the fundraiser.
  

So how do we cope without pulling our hair out?

Yes, of course the first obvious answer is therapeutic masturbation. But after you finish your nap- then what? The world is slowly changing, minds are opening and powers-that-be are recognizing the possibility of healthy, empowered sexuality for all. But change will not arrive without speaking out and taking action. Here are some suggestions.

• Pay attention. Speak Out. When voices are not being heard -anyone's voice- free speech is being censored. As Audre Lorde famously stated, "Your silence will not protect you."
• Support small, local and minority-owned businesses. Your money is exponentially more likely to stay in your community.
• If you believe in the right to a sex-positive life- support free speech and sex education.
• Support Megan's effort to open the Center for Sexual Pleasure and Health in Pawtucket, RI. We're getting more action steps from her soon!
• Attend Pornotopia Erotic Film Festival in Albuquerque, NM!
• Support your local ACLU!

What we want every adult to know about sex toy manufacturing...

Have you heard of phthalates?

Phtha- what? Right. It's a scary word. But toxins in sex toys are even scarier!

We are putting safety first. We want to raise public awareness about phthalates -- toxins commonly used to manufacture adult toys -- by introducing Toxic Toy Awareness Month every April. We are all about pleasure, and we don't think anyone should have to worry about the safety of their sex toys. We see April -- with Earth Day and the arrival of spring -- as the perfect time to educate all sexy people about the importance of buying body safe sex toys and green machines.

Phthalates (pronounced "thay-lates") are plastic softeners used in the manufacturing of jelly rubber toys and known to contain carcinogens. Operating in a largely unregulated industry, many adult toy manufacturers continue to use phthalates, despite incomplete data about their safety, for consumer use and in their factories. All of the toys at Self Serve are non-toxic, body safe and phthalate-free.

As part of Toxic Toy Awareness Month, we offer a free workshop in honor of Earth Day to raise customer awareness about the hazards of phthalates, sex toy toxins and the importance of buying body-safe sex toys. We also issue a call to manufacturers asking them to improve the quality of information they disclose about how their toys are produced. We at Self Serve believe there should be complete transparency about the safety of sex toys for consumers. If a sex toy is body safe and non-toxic, the manufacturer should proudly say so. Our goal is for every adult who visits our website to leave knowing more about the safety of the adult products they're playing with. It's important to buy sex toys from a company you trust.

We advise customers to seek out platinum-grade silicone, glass, and metal adult toys like toys on our site. We are highly selective about the safety and quality of our products, we test everything on the shelf, and have the disappointing sex so you don't have to!

Check out our green, eco-friendly, bodysafe sex toys and gifts...