I don’t know what the answer is.

I do know that when I found Blowfish all those years ago, I felt as if someone had finally heard how utterly off-putting the whole Xandria approach was, ie the same shitty dildos I could have bought at the local cynderblock pornshop, but rendered in pencil drawings and “classy copy”. Well guess what, pencil drawings and euphemistic copy doesn’t make a better dildo; and the disconnect makes for disappointed and angry customers.

I also can’t help but feel that the openness of the internet circa 1995 is part of what allowed a voice like Blowfish’s — honest, frank, intelligent, fun — to be heard. When I see the way our own pages are getting crushed in Google’s rankings — page 20, 40, 60 — while “safe” domains that are scraping our content get high rankings… well it’s just hard to see how we’re going to fit into the Googleverse.

As Bacchus points out in his post, Google doesn’t face an easy task. But the [clitoris] thing makes it pretty clear that their they’re not trying very hard, and not especially sensitive to sexuality, or concerned with making sure there’s a place for honest dialog. If Blowfish, or Comstock or Eros get caught in the crossfire, well isn’t that our fault for talking about sex in the first place?

What should the result be?

Is the right answer to admit defeat and bag SafeSearch? To add [penis] to the no-fly list? The current situation has, shall we say, many anomalies, but what is the right answer?