New Skype features boost your productivity and enrich your chat experience
We recently introduced several features that help you boost your productivity when sending messages in Skype* and enrich your overall chat experience. New features include draft messages, the ability to bookmark messages and preview media and files before sending, as well as a new approach to display multiple photos or videos. We also launched split window, so you never mix up conversations again!
Message drafts
Now you’ll never forget about messages that didn’t get sent. Any message that you typed, but didn’t send, is saved in the corresponding conversation and marked with the [draft] tag—so you can easily recognize, finish, and send it later. Messages saved as drafts are even available when you leave and come back to your Skype app.
Message bookmarks
You can now bookmark any message in Skype—whether it’s work related or family photos—and come back to it with one click or tap anytime! Just right click or long press the message and click or tap Add bookmark. The message is added to the Bookmarks screen and is saved with your other bookmarked messages.
Preview media and files before sending
You can now preview photos, videos, and files that you’ve selected to share before sending. Once you select media and files to share, they’re displayed in the message panel, so you can ensure they’re the ones you want to share with your contact. You can also remove ones added by mistake or add new ones right from the panel. In addition, should you want to write an explanation or description for what you’re sending, you can add a message that will be sent along with the files.
New approach for displaying multiple photos or videos sent at once
If you want to share a bunch of photos with your friends or family after great vacation or nice event—just do it and Skype will make sure they’re nicely presented in a conversation. You’ll see a nice album in the chat history with all the photos combined. And you can see each one by navigating and clicking between the photos or videos in an album.
Never mix up conversations in Skype again with split window
A few months back, we announced the launch of split window for Windows 10, which lets you put your contact list in one window, and each conversation you open in separate windows. We’re pleased to say that this feature is now available for all versions of Windows, Mac, and Linux on the latest version of Skype.* To learn more about how to use the split window view, visit our FAQs.
Let us know what you think
At Skype we’re driven by the opportunity to connect our global community of hundreds of millions, empowering them to feel closer and achieve more together. As we pursue these goals, we’re always looking for new ways to enhance the experience and improve quality and reliability. We listen to your feedback and are wholly committed to improving the Skype experience based on what you tell us. We’re passionate about bringing you closer to the people in your life—so if we can do that better, please let us know.
*These new features are available on the latest version of Skype across all platforms, except for split window, which is currently only available on desktop.
Kentucky principal who banned books for “homosexual content” arrested for child smut
Todd Wilson (image via Clark County Detention Center)
In 2009, Todd Wilson — the now 54-year-old former-principal of the Clark County Area Technology Center in Winchester, Kentucky — banned several books from his school because of their “homosexual content.” Now, 10 years later, color us shocked, Wilson has been arrested for allegedly sharing kiddie smut.
Kentucky state troopers claim that Wilson “had about 15 images of child pornography, which resulted in 15 counts of distribution of matter portraying sexual performance by a minor, and another 15 counts of possessing matter portraying sexual performance by a minor,” according to Newsweek.
He’s now being held on $25,000 bail in the Clark County Detention Center.
Back in 2009, Wilson banned books like “Lessons From a Dead Girl by Jo Knowles (which features two young girls who kiss and touch each other while playing an abusive game of “House”) and Twisted by Laurie Halse Anderson (in which a newly buff high school student gets accused of being gay for not wanting to sleep with a girl)” as optional selections offered by one of the English teachers to her students, according to Kentucky School News and Commentary.
Admittedly, Wilson also banned a few other books which didn’t delve into LGBTQ themes, but that doesn’t make his actions any less hostile to LGBTQ kids who could’ve benefit from reading any depictions of same-sex attraction, even complicated ones.
The books he banned also delved into other important topics like alcoholism, hypocrisy, suicide and manipulation by adults — all important themes that you won’t always find in classics like Beowulf.
While the banned books remained available in the school library and the school’s Moo Moo Book Club, far fewer students found them there than they would have had they been suggested for class reading.
The Montgomery County High School administration, the local school board and district superintendent supported the banning and are now working with authorities in their case against Wilson.
Trump Rages at Lawrence O’Donnell After MSNBC Journo Retracts Russia Loans Story
Donald Trump launched an attack on MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell on Twitter Thursday morning after O’Donnell retracted a story Wednesday night in which he said Russian oligarchs co-signed on Trump loans.
Tweeted Trump: “Crazy Lawrence O’Donnell, who has been calling me wrong from even before I announced my run for the Presidency, even being previously forced by NBC to apologize, which he did while crying, for things he said about me & The Apprentice, was again forced to apologize, this time………for the most ridiculous claim of all, that Russia, Russia, Russia, or Russian oligarchs, co-signed loan documents for me, a guarantee. Totally false, as is virtually everything else he, and much of the rest of the LameStream Media, has said about me for years. ALL APOLOGIZE! The totally inaccurate reporting by Lawrence O’Donnell, for which he has been forced by NBC to apologize, is NO DIFFERENT than the horrible, corrupt and fraudulent Fake News that I (and many millions of GREAT supporters) have had to put up with for years. So bad for the USA!”
….for the most ridiculous claim of all, that Russia, Russia, Russia, or Russian oligarchs, co-signed loan documents for me, a guarantee. Totally false, as is virtually everything else he, and much of the rest of the LameStream Media, has said about me for years. ALL APOLOGIZE!
The totally inaccurate reporting by Lawrence O’Donnell, for which he has been forced by NBC to apologize, is NO DIFFERENT than the horrible, corrupt and fraudulent Fake News that I (and many millions of GREAT supporters) have had to put up with for years. So bad for the USA!
There is no evidence that O’Donnell was “forced” to apologize. MSNBC has not commented on O’Donnell’s report.
The Hill reports: “The on-air statements from O’Donnell came just hours after an attorney for Trump sent a letter to NBC Universal demanding an apology and retraction. Charles Harder said in the letter that O’Donnell’s report about Trump’s alleged banking ties were false and defamatory. The previous night, O’Donnell had presented potentially significant information regarding the president’s tax returns and his alleged ties to Russia.”
Said O’Donnell to Maddow on his show the previous night: “I stress ‘if true,’ because this is a single source who has told me that Deutsche Bank obtained tax returns. This single source close to Deutsche Bank has told me that Donald Trump’s loan documents there show that he has co-signers. That’s how he was able to obtain those loans and that the co-signers are Russian oligarchs. That would explain every kind word Donald Trump has ever said about Russia and Vladimir Putin. I stress the ‘if true.’”
GLENDALE, WI. CITY COUNCIL UNANIMOUSLY VOTES TO PROTECT LGBTQ YOUTH FROM SO-CALLED “CONVERSION THERAPY”: More from NBC15.
.@HRC_WI commends the @GlendaleWI Common Council on its unanimous vote to protect LGBTQ youth against the dangerous and debunked practice of so-called “conversion therapy.”
It’s time Wisconsin’s state legislature follows suit and passes these important protections statewide. t.co/Y3jL5pyFZV
HRC MARKS THE 56TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON FOR JOBS AND FREEDOM: More from HRC.
As we celebrate the 56th anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, we continue our work to ensure economic justice, opportunity and a level playing field free of inequality and discrimination for all people. pic.twitter.com/0UdelnPeZs
THANKFUL THURSDAY — TEACHING LGBTQ RIGHTS GAIN MOMENTUM IN UNITED STATES: “Having recognition of milestones in the movement toward equality (gives) LGBTQ students affirmation and a sense of belonging,” said HRC Director of HRC Foundation’s Children, Youth and Families Program Ellen Kahn (@ellenbkahn). “For non-LGBTQ students, it’s real history, it’s a real representation of the breath of diversity and better prepares them to live in an increasingly diverse world.” More from Openly.
POLICE LAUNCH HATE CRIME INVESTIGATION AFTER TRANS WOMEN FORCIBLY REMOVED FROM L.A. BAR: More from NewNowNext.
ATLANTA, G.A. FACES CHALLENGES AND ISSUES TO PROVIDE HOUSING FOR PEOPLE LIVING WITH HIV: “[There is] a need for cities like Atlanta to diversify their funding portfolio to house people living with HIV if they believe and recognize that homelessness is both a driver of our epidemic, and health care for people living with HIV,” said Emily Halden Brown (@emilyhbrown), a housing advocate with the Atlanta mayor’s LGBTQ Advisory Board. More from The Body.
TRANSGENDER CUSTOMER SERVICE EMPLOYEES AT RISK OF FACING DAILY DISCRIMINATION: More from Colorado Springs Independent.
CONGRATS TO ALL LGBTQ AND ALLIED ARTISTS ON THEIR COUNTRY MUSIC ASSOCIATION AWARDS: The nominees include Kacey Musgraves (@KaceyMusgraves), Lil Nas X (@LilNasX) and Maren Morris (@MarenMorris).
Lil Nas X makes history as the first openly gayman to be nominated at the CMAs. More from Advocate.
TASMANIAN LGBTQ ADVOCATES PREPARE TO DEFEND STATE’S NON-DISCRIMINATION LAWS: More from Out In Perth.
TRANS EQUALITY CAMPAIGN MOVES FORWARD IN AUSTRALIA: Advocates look toward New South Wales, Western Australia and Queensland after Victoria recently passed a law to allow transgender and gender-expansive people to change their gender markers on their personal identification documents. More from The Guardian.
READING RAINBOW – Bookmark now to read on your lunch break!
Vice spotlights Spice Girls’ Melanie C’s (@MelanieCmusic) push for trans inclusion and acceptance
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⚪️Support@MelanieCmusic is telling you what she wants, what she really really wants: for all of us to come together for our trans and non-binary family. t.co/boGTvkzM9x
OP-ED: Why Hannah Gadsby’s ‘Nanette’ deserves an Emmy
Credit: Netflix
By Rich Kiamco
Hannah Gadsby begins her special Nanette as one of “the quiet gays,” secretly seating the audience on a surprise rollercoaster ride that removes the seatbelt to gender norms, sexuality, politics, straight white male privilege, and misogyny. With a grip of clarity and wit fueled with anger, Gadsby skewers Trump, and other prominent men that have abused their power, and reveals horrific moments of such violence against herself. Her battle cry not only speaks to the LGBTQ community, but to anyone of difference and without social status. An Emmy for Gadsby would not just be recognition of her brilliant craft, but of the aspirational paradigm of which she ushers: social responsibility in comedy.
By tossing aside the traditional comedy format for her own storytelling technique, Gadsby does not rescue the audience from every moment of the world’s darkness and pain with a punchline. It’s a calculated risk, consciously using the very jokes she claims “[she has] to quit” to escape the trap that comedy perpetuates and move the audience deeper into this non-comedy dimension. Her investment in storytelling yields dividends unseen in a traditional comedy club.
As a queer survivor of sexual assault as an adult and molestation as a child, watching Gadsby confront rape, assault and shame was an incredible opportunity for me and millions of abuse survivors to see a triumph that many have dreamed, and few have achieved in such a vast public arena. She reveals her wounds; and although she petitions to “help me take care of my story,” she actually frees herself and the viewers by expressing her vulnerable truth and reclaiming her power.
Instead of being victims, we are invited to be heroes of our own story as she charges, “you all know there is nothing stronger than a broken woman who has rebuilt herself.” It’s an unexpected fusion of comedy, psychodrama and art history used as evidence in her litigation against toxic masculinity and its legacy.
As we witness her emerge from her heroin’s journey, she not only challenges straight white men to “pull up their socks,” but challenges us all to look at the stories we carry that we cannot quit. She is not only building a bridge between the LGBTQ+ community and the mainstream, but she has built a container for us all to confront if we too are trapped in repeat. It’s a glorious magic trick – she reaches to pull a rabbit out of a hat and instead pulls us out.
As a gay comedian and survivor, the Emmy would not only be an award for her talent, but a monument to all who dare to rise up and face brokenness. It’s a covenant to Gadsby’s mission with her alchemist’s finesse, combining elements of comedy, sadness, and a TED talk that is both therapeutic and a protest to the very pollution that wounds our collective psyche.
When she claims she has to quit comedy, it is actually a device to get us to scream “encore, encore,” and it works beautifully. It’s not that the audience does not want her to quit – it’s that we don’t want to quit on ourselves. As a queer non-confirming Filipino comedian, it is spectacular to witness her skill to metabolize trauma while squarely using the very shortcomings of stand-up comedy to escape its own trap. Nanette not only entertains and inspires – it ignites the very evolution Gadsby fears comedy prevents.
***
Rich Kiamco is a comedian and motivational speaker based in New York City. He is a member of The ManKind Project, an international nonprofit organization promoting healthy masculinity and supporting men’s emotional growth, accountability, and service.
Gay director Joel Schumacher has schtupped 10,000 or 20,000 dudes
Joel Schumacher — the 79-year-old gay director behind the gay-ish 1987 vampire flick The Lost Boys and the 1997 nipples-on-the-Batsuit camp-fest Batman & Robin — recently spoke to Vulture about how “making movies is not all blowjobs and sunglasses.”
The interview covers a lot of topics, but those regarding his gaysex life have caught people’s eyes because the internet runs on outrage and lust. In particular, his claim that he has slept with 10,000 to 20,000 guys over his lifetime.
Schumacher often jokes, “I’m overpaid, I’m overprivileged, and I’m oversexed,” but he in this interview, he adds, “Most gaymen have many partners because it’s not a very ‘no’ culture. I started drinking at 9, smoking at 10, and fooling around sexually when I was 11.”
In high school, he openly dated women while secretly sleeping with men, but he says he’d been interested in older men since his younger years.
“There was a married man in our neighborhood, but we weren’t having missionary-style sex,” Schumacher says. “We were, as we would say now, messing around.” He adds that a lack of education about gaysex gave him no preset expectations of what to do.
Schumacher says he never did sex work nor does he feel as if he was raped, molested or otherwise abused by the older men he slept with.
“There are very seductive children,” he says. “I was one of them. I was very seductive at a very young age. That doesn’t mean that anybody who was older should’ve said yes or just complied, but I feel in my lifetime I’ve always been a very results-oriented person.”
Then, when the interviewer asks Schumacher, “Have you ever guessed the number of partners you’ve had?” Schumacher answers, “It would be in the double-digit thousands, but that is not unusual. 10 or 20 (thousand).”
If that sounds like a lot, remember that in his 1991 book, A View From Above, heterosexual pro-basketball player Wilt Chamberlain claimed to have slept with over 20,000 women by age 55, so Schumacher’s actually an underachiever by that standard.
But let’s do some quick math on that for fun: If Schumacher has been schlepping dudes since age 11 and he’s 79 now, that’s 68 years — 20,000 dudes divided by 68 years equals about 294 dudes a year or roughly six dudes a week … every week … for 68 years.
It seems like a lot of that sluttery likely occurred during Schumacher’s “lost summer” in the Pines of Fire Island when he spent most of his time stoned, on speed and wearing a Speedo.
Schumacher says:
Oh my God, you’re horny all the time. And fortunately, it was quite available. You’re just starving for sex all the time. Every drug, in my mind, was a pathway to sex. So was alcohol. There was an adventure going on, and sex would be the cherry on that sundae.
Now, a lot of gay people are getting married, they’re adopting, or they’re having children. There wasn’t any of that when I was young. If you went into a gay bar and there were 200 men in there, and you said, ‘Okay, who wants to have a little house with a white picket fence, and a dog, and a child, raise your hands,’ or ‘Who wants to get laid tonight?’ The concept of a lovely suburban life or raising children was not a high concept.
While the nuclear family is a fine goal, some of us prefer to stay mutants.
As trauma psychologists, we’re leading a team to help alleviate psychiatric distress in gay, bi and transmales who have been sexually abused or assaulted. In collaboration with two nonprofit organizations, MaleSurvivor and Men Healing, we recruited and trained 20 men who have experienced sexual abuse to deliver evidence-based online mental health interventions for sexual and gender minority males – an umbrella term for individuals whose sexual identity, orientation or practices differ from the majority of society.
This study should help men in this group who have been sexually assaulted know that they are not alone, that they are not to blame for their abuse, and that healing is possible.
But, there are some things that trauma psychologists already know about these men, such as how prevalent sexual abuse of men is and ways to help men recover.
All too common, all too traumatic
At least 1 in 6boys are sexually abused before their 18th birthday. This number rises to 1 in 4 men across their lifespan.
Sexual violation in gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex individuals often complicates their sense of self, and how they fit, or don’t fit, into LGBTQ+ culture and communities. Such abuse may even impact their reaching out for help or reporting traumatic events as they fear stigmatization or victim-blaming.
Men and women who have experienced sexual abuse and assault are at risk for a wide range of medical, behavioral and sexual disorders. They have high rates of several psychiatric disorders, including post-traumatic stress disorder, substance abuse and dependence, depression and anxiety, as well as greater risk for suicide. They also have more educational, occupational and interpersonal difficulties than non-abused men. Further, sexual trauma is linked to medical illnesses, increased health care utilization and poor quality of life.
But, sexual minority males who have experienced sexual trauma face even greater health disparities. Gay and bisexualmen with histories of childhood and adult sexual victimization are more likely to report greater numbers of sexually transmitted infections, increased sexual risk for human immunodeficiency virus, and higher sexual compulsivity than men with no history of sexual assault. In addition, sexual minority male survivors exhibit more negative psychological outcomes related to their sexual identities, such as lower self-esteem, distorted sense of self and difficulties forming healthy adult intimate relationships.
The cumulative impact of sexual abuse, in conjunction with individuals’ sexual minority status, also can result in higher rates of sexual re-victimization, as well as anti-gay violence and discrimination.
Discrimination galore
Gay and bisexualmen are also exposed to significant minority stress, a term used to describe the sociopolitical stressors placed on individuals as a result of their minority status. Sexual orientation disparities start relatively early in development. LGBTQ+ individuals are disproportionately exposed to day-to-day discrimination, peer and parental rejection, unsupportive or hostile work or social environments, and unequal access to opportunities afforded to heterosexuals, including marriage, adoption and employment nondiscrimination.
Chronic expectations of rejection, internalized homophobia, alienation and lack of integration with the community can understandably lead to problems with self-acceptance. As a result, a sexual minority male who has experienced sexual abuse may feel deficient, inferior or impaired. Further, they may view themselves as shameful, undesirable, undeserving, or incapable of forming a loving relationship.
Many sexual minority males who have experienced sexual abuse internalize harmful beliefs that make it harder for them to heal. These myths include the false belief that men cannot be forced to have sex against their will; that men who become sexually aroused or have an erection when assaulted must have wanted or enjoyed it; and that real men should welcome any opportunity to have sex.
These men often bottle up additional detrimental myths, such as men become gay or bisexual because they were sexually abused, and sexual minority men are obsessed with sex, and that they molest children at higher rates than straight men. Sexual minority males who have been abused are not born with these beliefs. They learn them from their families, religion, society and the media. But, the more men hold these beliefs to be true, the harder it is for them to move forward in their psychological recovery.
There are many hurdles to male sexual abuse survivors receiving needed mental health care. When encountering perceived authority figures, such as health care providers, these men sometimes experience harsh judgment and distrust. In addition, when initiating psychological services, they may have difficulty finding knowledgeable and experienced health care providers who understand the nuances specific to male sexual abuse and, consequently, won’t disclose their sexual trauma.
Nondisclosure of sexual abuse may also be due to a male’s own lack of understanding of what abuse is. This is in line with research that found that the majority of men who endorsed survey items or behaviors indicating sexual abuse did not actually label themselves as sexual abuse survivors. Not disclosing one’s sexual trauma history is associated with increased emotional distress, while self-disclosure and seeking mental health services are related to psychological well-being.
