Fridae

600 expected to attend HK's floatilla party
Almost 20 boats and some 600 gay men and lesbians are expected to docked at Turtle Bay off Lamma Island this Sunday for Hong Kong's Pride on the Water.

Held for the first time in Hong Kong, Floatilla - which has been in the works since February - is a not profit and community driven event. Interested participants are responsible for chartering their own boats and fill it up themselves.

"The idea is that this is to be low maintenance, everyone just grabs their boats and hits the same location. I thought since Hong Kong's so into junk boats all summer, why not just take our junk boat concept and everyone meet at the same place, pull out a DJ and do it Hong Kong Style!" Said organiser Sharkbait who was inspired by a similar event held in Texas.

Gay groups who have chartered boats for the event are LGBT professional networking group Fruits and Suits, party organiser HX Production, Dim Sum Magazine, G Magazine, three lesbian boats as well as the Fridae boat (limited tickets for the Fridae boat are available online). The organiser has also revealed that two other themed boats Drag-On and Love Boat have been confirmed while Hunk Sauna is rumoured to be considering a boat for the event. The mothership will host the DJ and sound equipment. Partygoers can look forward to popular Hong Kong-based Belgian DJ Christof Van der Stichele who has played played at well-known clubs in Hong Kong including Drop, Kee Club, Club Nu, Propaganda, Jewl, Alibi and Homebase.

Attendees are encouraged to swim from boat to boat and meet new people and to welcome others onto their boats as they are anchored off Lamma Island which is a half-hour boat ride from Central.

Over the same weekend, Spring Fling - which was formerly known as Gay Day HK - is set for Saturday, May 13, where hundreds of "red-shirted" gay men and lesbians are expected to descend on the gayest place on earth - Disneyland.

Patterned after Gay Days in Tokyo, Anaheim and Orlando which is now in its 16th year and drawing 100,000 people annually, Spring Fling attendees are encouraged to wear red in a bid to increase gay visibility and to identify themselves among other park visitors

The US$1.8 billion theme park which is the fifth Disneyland in the world opened last September and features four themed lands similar to those found in the other Disneyland parks around the world. They are Main Street, U.S.A., Fantasyland, Tomorrowland and Adventureland which is the biggest one among all the Disneyland parks.

Attendees are reminded to purchase their tickets in advance online or at Hong Kong Disneyland Ticket Express located at the MTR Hong Kong Station (Tung Chung Line Concourse) and meet at 11am at the entrance of the park.

For more info, please click to read Fridae article, Floatilla and Disney.

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Lesbians brains respond differently than straight women
Lesbian and heterosexual women respond differently to specific human odours, a brain-scanning study has found. An earlier study of gay men conducted a year ago also showed their brain response was different from straight men � an even stronger difference than has now been found in lesbians.

While lesbians' brains reacted somewhat, though not completely, like those of heterosexual men, lead researcher Ivanka Savic at the Stockholm Brain Institute, Sweden cautions that their "study can't answer questions of cause and effect."

"We can't say whether the differences are because of pre-existing differences in their brains, or if past sexual experiences have conditioned their brains to respond differently." Dr Savic said in the May 9, 2006, edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

In the study, three groups of 12 volunteers, including women who identified as strongly homosexual, heterosexual women and men, were asked to sniff a variety of odours. They included odourless air, four common scents and a chemical, known as androstadienone (AND) that is found in human sweat and 10 times more abundant in male than female sweat and is suspected of acting as a male pheromone.

After smelling the odours, the volunteers were given brain scans that revealed which regions of their brains had the greatest increase in blood flow, a measure of how much they had been stimulated.

According to an Associated Press report, the study found that heterosexual women found the male and female pheromones about equally pleasant, while straight men and lesbians liked the female pheromone more than the male one. Heterosexual men and lesbians also found the male hormone more irritating than the female one, while straight women were more likely to be irritated by the female hormone than the male one.

All three groups rated the male hormone more familiar than the female one. Straight women found both hormones about equal in intensity, while lesbians and straight men found the male hormone more intense than the female one.

Sandra Witelson, a neuroscientist at the Michael G. DeGroote School of Medicine at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, who has studied links between sexual preference and left-handedness, said that while the Sweden study was significant, she highlighted that lesbian brain responses weren't just a female version of male heterosexuality, and nor were lesbian brains just a mirror image of the gay male brain.

"Sexual orientation may well have a different basis in women than in men," Witelson said.

"It's not as simple as gay men being more like women, and lesbians being more like men. There are two sexes, which we know are biologically different in some respects, and variation in sexual behavior within each sex is not necessarily the same as in the other sex."

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Cannibalism is murder: German Cannibal gets life sentence in retrial
A cannibal who killed and ate an apparently willing male victim has been convicted of murder and jailed for life after a German court overturned a conviction of manslaughter on the grounds it was too lenient.

Armin Meiwes, who killed his victim in 2001 and ate parts of his body, was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison after a trial in Frankfurt. The victim responded to a posting placed by Meiwes on the Internet seeking a person willing to be killed and eaten.

The 44-year-old self-admitted cannibal was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to eight and a half years in prison in a trial that shocked and fascinated Germany two years ago, but that verdict was overturned on the ground that the sentence was too light, and the second trial was ordered.

Judges at the first trial said they based their verdict of manslaughter on defence evidence which suggested Meiwes' victim had volunteered to be eaten and killed. Meiwes however maintained that he would "never have touched" his victim had he not wanted to be killed.

But an appeal court in Frankfurt overturned the original verdict on Tuesday, arguing that at his first trial, judges had overlooked key prosecution evidence which showed that Meiwes killed for sexual pleasure.

"Meiwes slaughtered his victim like a piece of livestock and treated him as an object of his fancy," the state prosecutor said.