March 22, 2007

Masturbate-a-Thon May 26, 2007

I love the folks from the Center For Sex and Culture, so I will plan to help out with their big event of the year, the Live Masturbate-a-Thon. I'm not sure how I will participate, but you can be assured that I will have my clothes on when I help them out. Here is a blurb from their website:

You are invited to volunteer your very life essence, the most valuable thing you have, to the most inane, insane benefit the world has ever seen. Come help a group of people masturbate in public to raise funds for a legally organized non-profit. Watch as they pleasure themselves toward a legal letter to the IRS which tells the IRS that they masturbated to raise money! A wank off which is a complete write off!

See the noodlers wander and peer. Experience base beauty and earthy wonders. Stand and soak in the marvel of a group grope. No standing and modeling here, hang with the jiggiling flesh of the masses. Leave the pretty parties behind and experience the flesh of the ages.

This year is going to be very busy indeed. We have booked the Porn Palace at 415 Jessie Street, behind the Old Mint. We have on line needs for directors and production crew, administrative and office manager, models, security and traffic control, on line ad sales, tshirt and poster producer, floor monitors/orgasm counters, cleaning fairies, 2257 release staff, clothes checkers, old and young gaffers, best bois and good hearted sex workers and strippers of all catagories.

We need sexually oriented acts and content, sex esthetes, nude performers, exhibitionists, jack off artists, jill off artists, vibrator riders and fucking machine exhibitionists who wish to be seen by a lot of people on line and would love to show the world that they will be willing to: Come Save the World - Come for a Cause

The 2007 official Live Masturbate-a-Thon will be held on Saturday, May 26th at 415 Jessie Street in San Francisco and is sponsored by The Center for Sex and Culture.

CSC’s National Masturbation Month plans climax with the Live Masturbate-a-Thon in San Francisco. Founder and director Carol Queen, Ph.D. announced that the Center for Sex & Culture will hold its sixth annual fund-raising Masturbate-a-Thon on May 26, 2007, doors open at 4:00 pm for regular participants and at 2:00 pm for those attempting to set this year's time/orgasm records. CSC's Masturbate-a-Thon is a live group event at which participants will raise funds by getting others to sponsor them for each minute they masturbate or each orgasm they claim.

Founded by San Francisco's own Good Vibrations, National Masturbation Month seeks to raise awareness and dispel shame about this most common and natural of sexual activities. GV acted in the wake of then-Surgeon General Dr. Joycelyn Elders' firing in 1994 for stating that masturbation "is perhaps something that should be taught" about when discussing young people’s sexual options. Good Vibrations and its sister sex toy stores, as well as sex-positive nonprofits, have been celebrating National Masturbation Month across the US and Canada since 1995. More information about Good Vibrations' role in NMM will be available on GV's website, www.goodvibes.com, in early May. The Masturbate-a-Thon became the centerpiece of National Masturbation Month when it was added to Good Vibrations' slate of activities a few years later. GV sponsors the Masturbate-a-Thon as a private event, as most masturbation is; the Center for Sex & Culture celebrates it as a live group activity.

The most recent Masturbate-a-Thon was held in August, 2006 in London, England. With 154 participants and produced for the benefit of Marie Stopes International, the UK’s premier sexual health nonprofit, that event was filmed for British television and set several new world records, including Most Orgasms for both women (49) and men (6). Last year's Center for Sex & Culture Masturbate-a-Thon raised close to $3000 from participants and their sponsors, who pledge a variable amount per minute to support their friends' efforts. One female and one male participant won trophies for Longest Time Spent Masturbating (the longest, a man, spent nearly eight and a half hours), and one person received the trophy for Most Orgasms (CSC director Carol Queen had predicted a woman was likely to win this particular award, and was proved correct). A reporter from Reuters was on hand, as were representatives from several Bay Area publications. The entire event was webcast by bondage.com and so was available for interested supporters outside the region.


Who participates in a live Masturbate-a-Thon? Not surprisingly, representatives from various sexual communities attend to come for a cause; the Center for Sex & Culture is arranging this year's co-sponsorships among gay men's clubs, erotica producers, and other sexual adventurers. Separate areas of the Masturbate-a-Thon site spaces will be set aside for both mixed- and single-gender groups. Only part of the room will be set aside for the webcast cameras, so less exhibitionistic attendees can participate somewhat more privately. Participants have also been drawn to past Masturbate-a-Thons to publicly acknowledge the importance of solo sexuality in their lives, so not everyone handing in a pledge sheet will be a committed erotic adventurer; many will never have done anything like this before. Tony, a 2004 first-time participant from Los Angeles, emailed CSC afterwards to thank them for setting up a space where he could feel comfortable and let go of the shame that had been instilled in him about masturbation. CSC director Queen comments: "People like Tony are everywhere; most of us engage in self-pleasure, but there is so little support for doing so that it can become a source of distress. This is exactly why National Masturbation Month is needed; people need to understand that self-stimulation is common, pleasurable, healthful, and nothing to worry about."

Word of the Masturbate-a-Thon has spread around the globe. Last year our best-treaveled competitor (and winner of the “Longest Distance Come to Come” award) arrived from Hong Kong. We expect participants to come from as far away as Australia this year; in past years press hits have come in from Spain, Ireland, Austria, Britain, Germany, China, South Africa, France, Brazil, Ireland, India, and elsewhere. In fact, international press has paid more attention to the Masturbate-a-Thon than has US media, particularly during the London event in 2006, when CSC Director Carol Queen spent seven and a half hours talking to the press.

Pledge sheets and co-sponsorship links are available at the Masturbate-a-Thon's website. Participants can download a pledge sheet and begin collecting pledges right away; after the Masturbate-a-Thon they will let their pledgers know how much to remit. Pledges can be paid by check and sent to CSC; they can also be remitted via the event website. All monies raised will be used to support the Center for Sex & Culture's educational and sex-positive cultural programming. People who wish to participate but who can't find pledgers may pledge themselves at any amount plus pay a $20.00 entry fee. Online supporters who live too far away to attend can tune in to the webcast that evening (May 26); interested parties who prefer a private Masturbate-a-Thon can download the pledge sheet, stay home and participate, and remit by mail, or they can participate in Good Vibrations's private Masturbate-a-Thon. 

Good Vibrations's site is www.goodvibes.com. Visitors to these sites and Masturbate-a-Thon participants should be 18 and over only.

The Center for Sex & Culture (CSC) received its nonprofit status in late 2002 and was declared "Best Emerging Sex Nonprofit" in the San Francisco Bay Guardian's Best of the Bay issue in June 2004. It is open by appointment and for events. The Center for Sex & Culture is a largely-volunteer organization that subsists on donations from the public, including donations of books, art, videos, archival materials, etc. CSC's mailing address (where donations can be sent) is 2215-R Market Street, #455, San Francisco, CA 94114. Website donations can be made at www.sexandculture.org. Telephone: (415) 255-1155. Masturbate-a-Thon™ Open Enterprises Inc.; used by permission.

Facts in Brief:
What: 2007 Live Masturbate-a-Thon fundraiser
Sponsored by: The Center for Sex & Culture, www.sexandculture.org
When: Saturday, May 26, 2007, 2 pm – midnight
Where: 415 Jessie, San Francisco
More info: www.masturbate-a-thon.com
Press contact: press@masturbate-a-thon.com; (415) 255-1155

Posted by lavenderlounge at 3:39 PM

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