#sexting — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #sexting, aggregated by home.social.
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DATE: August 8, 2026 at 06:00AM
SOURCE: PSYPOST.ORG** Research quality varies widely from fantastic to small exploratory studies. Please check research methods when conclusions are very important to you. **
-------------------------------------------------TITLE: Is sexting good for your relationship? Psychological research points to one important factor
Engaging in digital sexual activities like sexting with a romantic partner can be a positive or negative experience depending on the underlying reasons for doing so. New research published in The Journal of Sex Research indicates that seeking intimacy and pleasure through digital sexual exchanges is linked to higher relationship and sexual satisfaction. Participating simply to avoid negative outcomes is associated with lower satisfaction across multiple areas of a person’s life.
Technology-mediated sexual interactions refer to sharing self-created sexual material through digital communication devices. This broad category includes activities like sending sexually explicit text messages, exchanging intimate photographs or videos, and engaging in phone sex. Many people in committed romantic relationships use these digital tools to connect with their partners. For some couples, these interactions function as a way to maintain intimacy across long physical distances.
Previous studies on the outcomes of these digital sexual behaviors have yielded mixed findings. Some research suggests that sexting boosts relationship happiness and individual well-being. Other studies link it to increased relationship conflict and negative emotional states.
“This research was motivated both by a debate in the existing research on technology-mediated sexual interactions (TMSIs),” said study author Erin Leigh Courtice, a postdoctoral research associate working with the CARE Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University. “The literature in this area has been contradictory. Our interpretation was that these inconsistencies were because researchers hadn’t examined the motivations that underlie people’s TMSI use with a romantic partner.”
To understand these conflicting findings, Courtice and her colleagues applied a psychological concept known as the approach-avoidance motivational framework. “Basically, what this theory states is that people can engage in a behavior, including a sexual behavior, with approach or avoidance motives,” Courtice said.
“Approach motives drive people towards a specific outcome, e.g., engaging in sexual activity to gain sexual pleasure, or a closer connection with someone,” Courtice detailed. “Avoidance motives drive people away from a specific outcome, e.g., engaging in a sexual activity to try and prevent a relational conflict or a breakup.”
Typically, seeking positive outcomes builds satisfaction, but acting out of fear damages it. Courtice noted that this framework is well-established for physical intimacy, but “this theory hasn’t been tested with technology-mediated sexual contexts, so we also wanted to see if this pattern that we see for in-person sexual behaviors would hold in a new context.”
In the first phase of their research, the scientists recruited 269 university students who were in committed romantic relationships. The participants were mostly young adults, with an average age of 19, and the group included roughly 55 percent women and 41 percent men. About 40 percent of these participants were currently in a long-distance relationship. The participants completed a detailed survey about their digital sexual behaviors and motivations.
Because no standard questionnaire existed for this specific purpose, the researchers created a new scale to measure why people participate in digital sexual interactions. They adapted questions from previous surveys used for in-person sexual behaviors and added new questions specific to technology. The initial phase suggested that motivations for digital sexual interactions generally fall into three separate categories: approach motives, avoidance motives, and affirmation motives.
Affirmation motives specifically involve seeking reassurance or validation about one’s physical desirability. “We found that some people also reported TMSI motives related to seeking affirmation, specifically, seeking validation about one’s body and desirability,” Courtice noted. “We didn’t examine this too closely, but I think there would be some interesting things to unpack about whether those motives relate to higher vs. lower sexual and relationship satisfaction.”
The statistical analysis also indicated that participants viewed their satisfaction with digital sexual activities as distinct from their satisfaction with in-person sexual activities. This finding suggests that digital and physical sexual experiences are processed differently by individuals in romantic relationships. Similarly, the participants’ desire for digital sexual interactions was mathematically distinct from their desire for physical intimacy.
To test how these different motivations relate to overall well-being, the scientists conducted a second study with 459 adults in committed relationships. This group was older and more diverse, with an average age of 30, and was recruited from online survey platforms alongside university pools. Participants completed the refined motivation questionnaire from the first study, as well as measures assessing their overall life satisfaction, relationship satisfaction, and the specific frequency of their digital sexual interactions.
The researchers initially guessed that individuals using avoidance motives would engage in digital sexual activities less often. “We predicted that people who engaged in TMSI less often would report more avoidance motives,” Courtice told PsyPost. “We thought that this kind of reluctant, defensive engagement would suppress frequency.”
The data told a different story. “But we actually saw the opposite: TMSI frequency was positively associated with avoidance motives,” Courtice explained. Frequent digital sex was not tied to just one type of goal, as individuals seemed to use technology for various reasons throughout their relationship.
This counterintuitive finding indicates that using avoidance strategies can still reinforce a behavior if it successfully averts the feared outcome. “This might suggest that someone who sexts, for example, to prevent a break-up often does get the outcome they were trying to avoid, which reinforces both the behavior and the motive, even while the broader satisfaction picture is worse,” Courtice added.
Despite happening frequently, these two types of motivations were associated with entirely different emotional and relational outcomes. “The honest answer to ‘is sexting good or bad for a relationship?’ is that the question is misspecified,” Courtice summarized. “What predicted outcomes in our data weren’t whether or how often couples engaged, but the motivation behind it.”
“In our research, people who more often engaged in TMSI with their partners for approach reasons, e.g., pursuing intimacy, pleasure, enhancement, building toward in-person sex, reported higher satisfaction with their technology-mediated sexual life, their in-person sexual life, and their relationship,” Courtice said.
The opposite was true for those seeking to avoid a negative result. “People who more often engaged in TMSI with their partners for avoidance reasons, e.g., appeasing a partner, coping with negative feelings, trying to prevent conflict or rejection, or sidestepping in-person sex, reported lower in-person sexual satisfaction and lower relationship satisfaction,” Courtice explained.
“For both of these, the pathway ran largely through desire for one’s partner,” Courtice noted. “Approach motives predicted stronger dyadic sexual desire, which in turn predicted higher satisfaction across sexual, relationship, and life domains. Conversely, avoidance motives predicted weaker desire, which in turn predicted lower satisfaction across those same domains.”
To understand the real-world impact of these psychological dynamics, the researchers calculated how much these motivations actually explain variations in couples’ overall happiness. “The associations were importantly moderate, and not the same for every outcome that we measured,” Courtice said. “The largest effect sizes were on technology-specific outcomes: approach motives and technology-mediated sexual satisfaction, and approach motives and desire for technology-mediated sex with one’s partner.”
As the outcomes moved further away from specific digital interactions, the statistical associations weakened. “The amount of variance explained drops off sharply as you move away from the sexual domain,” Courtice pointed out.
“We saw that motives and desire together accounted for about 35% of the variance in in-person sexual satisfaction and 27% in relationship satisfaction, but only 8% in life satisfaction,” Courtice elaborated. “So these approach and avoidance motives for TMSI were meaningfully related to how people feel about their sex lives and relationships, but only faintly related to how they feel about their lives overall.”
The study relied on data collected at a single point in time, meaning it cannot establish a strict chain of cause and effect. “This was also a cross-sectional study, so we can’t say for sure that there is a causal relationship here, just that these different motivational styles are correlated with different levels of sexual, relationship, and life satisfaction,” Courtice explained. It is highly possible that existing relationship dissatisfaction causes people to rely on avoidance motives, rather than the motives causing the relationship issues.
The research also focused exclusively on couples who were already exchanging digital sexual material. “Study eligibility required that our participants were in a committed relationship with someone they had engaged in TMSI with, so our findings describe variation among people already doing this, and don’t adjudicate whether someone should start sexting with their partner if they aren’t already,” Courtice said.
Sending an intimate digital message is not a guaranteed fix for relationship problems, nor is it inherently destructive. “One big one: we didn’t necessarily find that sexting is either wholly good or wholly bad for relationships,” Courtice clarified. “We found that ‘it depends on the motives behind sexting’.”
By paying attention to underlying goals, partners can better navigate digital communication. “So, for anyone in a relationship: if you’re thinking about sexting with your partner, it’s useful to question why you want to,” Courtice advised. “If it’s for those more ‘approach’ motives, it might be beneficial, but if it’s because you’re trying to avoid or prevent something negative, it may be less beneficial.”
The study, “It’s Not What You Do, it’s Why: Motives and Outcomes of Technology-Mediated Sexual Interactions in Romantic Relationships,” was authored by Erin Leigh Courtice, Vesna Beljo, and Krystelle Shaughnessy.
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#psychology #counseling #socialwork #psychotherapy @psychotherapist @psychotherapists @psychology @socialpsych @socialwork @psychiatry #mentalhealth #psychiatry #healthcare #depression #psychotherapist #sexting #technologymediatedsex #relationshipresearch #approachmotives #avoidancemotives #TMSI #digitalintimacy #sexresearch #relationshipsatisfaction #intimacymotivation
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CW: nsfw 18+ nude
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Bei Jugendpornografie richten sich 53% der Ermittlungen gegen Minderjährige (>12.000 Jugendliche kriminalisiert).
Das BKA erklärt: Die Erkundung der sexuellen Identität findet online statt, inkl. Erstellung & Versand eigener/fremder Dateien (#Sexting). 3/6 -
In cases of "youth pornography", 53% of investigations targeted minors, criminalizing >12,000 teenagers. The BKA notes: Exploring sexual identity now happens online, regularly involving the creation & sharing of intimate files of themselves or peers (#Sexting). 3/6
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Young Australian men and boys are being targeted for sexual extortion on social media platforms, the country's online watchdog says, with Instagram and WhatsApp most often named in complaints. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2026/07/15/asia-pacific/crime-legal/australia-men-online-sexual-extortion/?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=mastodon #asiapacific #crimelegal #australia #sexcrimes #sexualharassment #sexting
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Wednesday Reads: Graham Platner, Just Because
Graham Platner
I’m going to write about Graham Platner today, because I am pissed off.
I have to believe that most women with any experience of abusive men could see right away that Platner was not going to be a good candidate for Democrats. I don’t live in Maine, so I haven’t even followed the stories about him that closely. Yet I could see this mess coming.
Frankly, I thought the Nazi tattoo was bad enough, but when I heard a about the racist, sexist, ableist social media messages and the sexting with other women soon after getting married, I thought this guy is a loser. I even hated his facial hair. The last thing we needed was another Eric Swalwell. I didn’t even know until yesterday that Platner served as a mercenary in Iraq. That would have been a red flag for me too. But Maine Democrats liked Platner, so nothing I could do about it.
Later I read the NYT article about women who found his behavior threatening and talked about his heavy drinking. I was not at all surprised to learn that a woman accused Platner of rape. The signs were all there. I don’t understand why so many people were supposedly shocked.
Maria Kabas had misgivings similar to mine. She writes at The Handbasket: We didn’t need a rape accusation to know Graham Platner was unfit.
Since we learned last fall about the Maine Democratic senate candidate’s Nazi insignia tattoo, the personal revelations about the Marine veteran and oyster farmer have only gone downhill from there. But an initial instinct told me not to weigh in. Let the people of Maine decide for themselves, I thought. I watched from New York as the public learned about shitty stuff he’d posted online, his previous work for the private military contractor Blackwater, and the sexually explicit texts he sent to other women while married to his current wife (which were flagged by her to his campaign as a concern.) And when the New York Times published a story just a few days before the June primary detailing “unsettling” behavior alleged by three women Platner had dated in the past, while I weighed in on social media, I shied away from opportunities to explicitly spell out how dangerous I believed him to be. He went on to win the primary.
It turns out the instinct that kept me from vocalizing my opinion on Platner was the same as the one that prevented Jenny Racicot from coming forward with allegations of a 2021 rape—that is, until this week. “One of the reasons I didn’t come forward sooner was the huge moral conflict that I had between supporting his politics, but not supporting him as a person,” Racicot, who had dated Platner a few years back, told Politico. My position is in no way analogous with Racicot’s, but I, too, had a latent feeling that turning on Platner was in some way turning on an opportunity to kick Republican Susan Collins out of the senate, and possibly regain control of the entire chamber.
While Racicot was one of the women in the NYT story, the stomach-churning details of her sexual assault were for whatever reason not reported then. But on Monday, she said it all: “I remember him grabbing my pelvis and being really forceful of me. I remember the specific moment where I thought to myself, like, ‘This is no longer my choice.’” She describes Platner letting himself into her home while “almost blackout drunk” and having sex with her against her will. Now that we have a fuller picture of Platner’s malfeasance, there is finally consensus around what has long been clear to many of us: he’s a dangerous man. If only the earlier evidence was enough.
Marisa Kabbas
When the NYT story dropped on June 4th describing “unsettling” behavior alleged by three women Platner had dated in the past, people who I considered political heroes insisted continuing their support. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders stuck by Platner, even when there was already more than enough evidence that he was not fit to be the Democratic candidate. Both Warren and Sanders finally pulled their support this week after the rape allegations were published, but it shouldn’t take a woman sharing details about a grotesque intimate experience to knock a man off his pedestal.
Meanwhile, men (and some women) who I nominally considered allies not only defended Platner at the time, but disparaged anyone concerned by the allegations.
Read more at the link. The men Kabbas names as allies are people I can’t stand, like Ryan Grim and John Favreau, but even so, she had no problem seeing that Platner was trouble. Her “progressive” male examples:
Ryan Grim, a progressive journalist and co-founder of Drop Site News, tried to undermine the allegations because one of the women from the story, Lyndsey Fifield, is a Republican. He then went on the progressive podcast Breaking Points and said the Platner situation was good because it was forcing Democrats to confront bigotry against white men. “The current cultural divorce between progressives and white men is so, like, stark that it is—it’s just culturally, morally, ethically wrong,” Grim said. “But also just pragmatically, from a political perspective, you can’t build a national party if you assume every white guy or every white guy with a deep voice who is a combat vet or whatever is, like, out to get you.”
Jon Favreau of Pod Save America defended Platner at every turn and mega-streamer Hasan Piker vocally stood by him. The Substack journalist Ken Klippenstein wrote that continuing to defend Platner showed that “People are done with the clean-cut types who’ve harbored ambitions for political office since they were on high school student council and have lived every waking moment accordingly. I call them smoothgroins: real-life barbie dolls with smooth plastic where a sexual organ should be.”
Read more at the link.
Here’s the Politico article by Jessica Piper and Adam Wren in which Jenny Raciot described her rape: Exclusive: Woman who dated Graham Platner says he sexually assaulted her.
A woman who dated Maine U.S. Senate candidate Graham Platner says he forced her to have sex with him nearly five years ago despite her repeated objections, an allegation Platner denies.
The woman, a 41-year-old Maine resident named Jenny Racicot, detailed the alleged incident to POLITICO in three interviews over the past two weeks. POLITICO also spoke with a man Racicot dated and confided in the years after the alleged incident, and reviewed documents, including emails between Racicot and her therapist and messages between Racicot and an acquaintance whom she warned against getting involved with Platner years before he ran for office.
Jenny Racicot
Racicot said she had an on-and-off relationship with Platner, who is now the Democratic Senate nominee in Maine, for more than two years before he entered her rural Maine home uninvited one night in late 2021, deeply intoxicated, and forced himself on her while she repeatedly told him to stop. She said she cut off contact with him after telling him the encounter was not consensual.
“I remember him grabbing my pelvis and being really forceful of me,” she said. “I remember the specific moment where I thought to myself, like, ‘This is no longer my choice.’”
Racicot previously described “reckless” and “unsettling” behavior by Platner to The New York Times, but says she didn’t go public with the specific assault claim because she didn’t want to be known as a rape victim.
Racicot said she later felt compelled to go public about her experience because the reaction to the Times story was dominated by controversy about another woman, Lyndsey Fifield, who alleged Platner mistreated her and faced attacks because of her ties to the Republican Party. (Contacted by POLITICO, Fifield stood by the allegations she made to the Times and declined to comment further.)
“My part of the story was just a read-over,” Racicot said in an interview. “And the story was Lyndsey, and the accusations of her being politically motivated.”
For many Platner supporters, that report crossed a line. But why was anyone surprised?
Here are some of the “red flags” from the June 4 article by Katie Glueck and Lisa Lerer in The New York Times, headlined (gift article): Several Women Who Dated Graham Platner Recall ‘Unsettling’ Behavior.
In interviews with The New York Times on Wednesday, several women [described] Mr. Platner as a fun and caring partner…saying they felt safe with him. Some remain friends with him to this day, years after their relationships ended.
But in extensive conversations over the past two months, three other women who had been romantically involved with Mr. Platner offered a far more complicated assessment, describing volatile and “toxic” relationships that were unsettling and at times emotionally wrenching.
Mr. Platner could be charming and charismatic, they recalled in interviews, but also demeaning to women and, in at least one case, even physically threatening. He drank heavily and was regularly unfaithful….
Lyndsey Fifield
Lyndsey Fifield, 40, a Virginia conservative who has worked for right-leaning groups and Republican campaigns, recalled him as “cavalierly contemptuous of women’s emotions, of our ‘weakness.’” Ms. Fifield, who dated Mr. Platner from roughly 2013 to 2015, said that his offensive online posts “reminded me of just how much he hated women.”
Jenny Racicot, 41, a Maine Democrat, who said she dated him casually off and on between 2019 and 2021, said the posts deepened her belief that he did not respect women. “When I saw the old comments that he made online,” she said, “I recognized a version of him that I had experiences with.” […]
The women who described difficult relationships with Mr. Platner knew him at different points of his life. Ms. Fifield said she dated him starting when they were both in their late 20s in Washington, during a time Mr. Platner has described as challenging. Ms. Racicot knew him in Maine when they were in their mid-30s and he was living in Sullivan, Maine, and working on his oyster farm.
The third woman, a Democrat from Maine who spoke on the condition of anonymity, had a long-distance relationship with Mr. Platner on and off for years, as recently as 2016.’
The three described him in similar terms. Spending time with him could be exhilarating, they said. But they also recounted patterns of heavy drinking and womanizing. Asked to sum up how he treated her, the third woman said she felt like “collateral damage to the world that is his.”
It’s too bad that Racicot didn’t describe the rape for this earlier article–perhaps Platner would have lost the primary. But to me, Fifield’s experiences should have been enough.
Mr. Platner could be rough with her, Ms. Fifield said, particularly when they were drinking, leaving her shaken and sometimes afraid. In the interviews, Ms. Fifield grappled with how to process her experiences. She was quick to note that he “never hit me, he never punched me.”
But she said he regularly grabbed her by the shoulders — sometimes hard enough to leave marks — and, on one occasion, yanked her out of a cab by her wrist after an argument when she wanted to stay in the car.
During one argument, she recalled, he twisted her arm behind her back, shoved her into a bedroom and held the door closed from the other side so she couldn’t get out, telling her to remain there until she was “calm.” Eventually, Ms. Fifield said, she fell asleep and left the next morning.
“It hurt,” she said. But she added: “It didn’t cause an injury, it didn’t break my arm.”
Ms. Fifield also recalled that Mr. Platner’s displays of weaponry and discussions of violence sometimes left her uneasy.
Apparently, some people dismissed her story because she is a Republican. I thought it sounded authentic.
Yesterday, The Washington Post published this story by Amy Brittain, Liz Goodwin, and Amy B. Wang: Ex-girlfriend of Graham Platner says he removed condoms without consent during sex.
An ex-girlfriend of embattled Senate candidate Graham Platner told The Washington Post that he repeatedly removed protection without her consent when they were having sex.
Lyndsey Fifield, who said she dated Platner from 2013 to 2015 in D.C. and has previously accused him of physical abuse, said that she told Platner on multiple occasions that he had to wear condoms during sex because she was not on birth control.
“He would pull condoms off,” she said in an interview. “He would do it in a sneaky way. He wouldn’t tell me.”
Fifield, 41, is the second woman to allege this week that Platner engaged in nonconsensual sexual conduct. Jenny Racicot, 41, who said she previously dated Platner, told The Post and other outlets on Monday that he sexually assaulted her in late 2021, leading a growing number of allies to drop their endorsements and call on him to withdraw from the race for a Maine seat in the U.S. Senate….
Fifield initially told The Post about the alleged condom removal during a June 20 interview that was off the record. She said she decided to speak publicly about it Tuesday in part because, she said, she wanted to show that Racicot was not alone in experiencing issues with Platner involving sexual consent.
Removing a condom during sex without consent, known as “stealthing,” is classified as a form of sexual assault in several countries, including Britain, Canada and parts of Australia. In the United States, Maine, California and Washington state have laws that address the nonconsensual removal of condoms during sex. The alleged incidents involving Platner took place in D.C., Fifield said.
She estimated that Platner removed condoms without her consent at least six times when they had sex at both of their residences in D.C. during their two-year, on-and-off relationship. She said she told him that she was upset about it but that he would make light of the situation.
“I confronted him both during and after [sex] because he knew that I was not on birth control and how dangerous that was,” she told The Post in one interview. In another, she said: “He would act like cute about it, like ‘Oh sneaky me.’”
The guy is a complete asshole. I just can’t understand why Democrats supported him for so long.
Graham Platner
This piece at MSNOW is by Michael A. Cohen, who opposed Platner’s candidacy from the beginning: Why Graham Platner’s progressive supporters ignored glaring warning signs.
For nine months, Graham Platner’s supporters have insisted that Democrats should ignore the mounting evidence of his personal foibles and political vulnerabilities — and support his bid for the Senate in Maine.
They argued that his Nazi “Totenkopf” tattoo was a youthful indiscretion and parroted his ludicrous argument that he didn’t know the origins of the Nazi insignia that was on his chest for 18 years before he covered it up with more ink. They waved away his dozens of racist, misogynistic and, frankly, creepy Reddit posts. They said his sexting with as many as a dozen women soon after his wedding was between him and his wife. They insisted that he was the best candidate to unseat incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins, even as polling showed him badly underperforming other Maine Democrats.
On Monday, they ran out of excuses and rationalizations.
Jenny Racicot’s story of Platner’s alleged assault is stomach-turning, and while some Democrats will seemingly excuse antisemitism, a Nazi tattoo and persistently bad behavior toward women, sexual assault is the line the party won’t cross.
Now Democrats are abandoning Platner in droves, but the signs were there all along. Cohen:
The first lesson is don’t fall in love with an unvetted political outsider — or, for that matter, any politician. When he announced his candidacy, Platner told a compelling story. He was a political outsider with no experience in electoral politics, a Marine combat veteran and an oyster fisherman in a state where working on the water is a badge of honor.
But as quickly as Platner emerged, so too did the stories of his past deeds — his controversial Reddit posts, his Nazi tattoo and an actual life story that didn’t quite match up with his campaign narrative.
Platner’s supporters claimed he’d grown and matured and that his bad behavior was the result of post-traumatic stress disorder suffered in Iraq….
Redemption and maturity are certainly attributes to be celebrated, but perhaps it would have been better for Platner to work out his personal issues in private, not under the harsh klieg lights of one of the most competitive Senate races in the country….
Second, where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire.
With Platner, it wasn’t just one news cycle of bad stories. It was a constant drumbeat — and many of these allegations shared the same theme: Platner disassembling and distracting.
It turned out that, far from being a successful oyster fisherman, his biggest customer was his mother, who runs a restaurant. Platner’s claims of a hardscrabble youth were contradicted by stories of living off his parents’ generosity and stints at an elite private school.
When the New York Times published on-the-record accounts of him allegedly physically assaulting a former girlfriend, Lyndsey Fifield, Platner and his allies dismissed the claim by arguing that Fifield is a Republican and thus can’t be trusted.
There’s more at the link. Again, the simple truth is the signs were there all along.
Graham Platner shows the tattoo he got to cover up the Nazi one.
Get this: Platner is demanding that his replacement share his progressive politics as a condition for his dropping out! Andrew Howard and Jessica Piper at Politico: Graham Platner’s campaign says it contacted state party to discuss process if he drops out.
Graham Platner’s campaign said it had reached out to the Maine Democratic Party to discuss the process for replacing him if he were to drop out of the state’s U.S. Senate race.
The acknowledgment came after the state party accused the campaign of improperly trying to influence that succession process, and it’s the clearest indication yet Platner is considering leaving the race after saying Monday he was “taking the time to reflect” on his bid for Senate.
Devon Murphy-Anderson, the party’s executive director, said in a Tuesday night press release and social media video that Platner’s campaign staff had repeatedly reached out to the state party in an attempt to “put their thumb on the scale” in selecting his replacement.
“We’ve repeatedly reiterated to Graham Platner’s team that they have no role in determining our next Democratic nominee for the U.S. Senate, nor in determining what this process looks like,” Murphy-Anderson said. “We have also reiterated that Graham Platner must drop out of this race so that Democrats in Maine can focus on defeating Susan Collins this November.”
Read the rest at Politico.
Two more speculative posts on what comes after Platner:
Christa Dutton at NOTUS: Ties to Graham Platner Could ‘Haunt’ a Replacement.
Democrats are coming to realize Graham Platner will be a specter in Maine’s Senate race even if he ends his campaign.
Platner has denied the allegations of sexual assault and misconduct from former girlfriends that have ratcheted up pressure on him to drop his bid for the seat. Still, Democrats who anticipate he will be forced to end his run told NOTUS their party has a unique challenge: Democrats need a replacement candidate who is distant enough from Platner to avoid his toxicity, but not so far from his politics that they would undermine the Democratic primary voters who nominated Platner.
Given that this is playing out in one of the most competitive Senate contests in the country, any ties to Platner could become an issue for a potential alternative candidate — and the rest of the Democratic Party, they said.
Nate Cohn at The New York Times: Why Democrats Would Probably Come Out Ahead if Platner Dropped Out.
It may be only a matter of time before Graham Platner drops out of the Maine Senate race.
If he does, it’s too soon to say who might replace him, but it’s not too early to suggest that his replacement would probably be a modest favorite against Susan Collins, the longtime Republican incumbent. The same couldn’t be said for Mr. Platner, even before he faced a rape accusation on Monday.
If the race does get a reset, it will be an enormous break for Democrats. Without a victory in Maine, their path to control of the Senate is extremely challenging — not just in 2026, but potentially even if they secure the tiebreaking vice presidency in 2028. It would be an exaggeration to say Mr. Platner was doomed before the latest allegation, but his candidacy was already in a lot of trouble.
To take one example from last week’s New York Times/Siena poll of Maine: Thirty percent of Mr. Platner’s own supporters said his various controversies were making them question whether they could support him. Although he led Ms. Collins in the poll by two percentage points, it was an open question whether he would be able to withstand another round of controversy — and another round seemed all but inevitable. The extraordinary speed with which Mr. Platner’s loyalists pushed him to withdraw after the allegation Monday is partly a reflection of how badly he was wounded. He was already near the breaking point….
If he drops out by next Monday, the Maine Democratic Party will get to choose his replacement. It would have until July 27 to select a new nominee, and my colleague Reid Epstein reports that Maine Democrats are considering several means of doing so, from a pop-up convention to a statewide caucus. Most of the likeliest Democratic replacements aren’t especially well known statewide or nationally, but in this political environment Ms. Collins would be in jeopardy against any one of them.
On paper, this is a race Democrats should win. Yes, Ms. Collins has won many times before, despite Maine’s Democratic lean, but that does not mean she should be expected to defy political gravity forever.
I think Platner should drop out today, and certainly before the weekend. Maine Democrats need to make sure it happens.
Sorry this isn’t a news post, but this is an important issue. Women need to pay attention to and call out the red flags that men just don’t seem to notice. Platner was poison from day one. Women in politics need to pay attention to the signs and speak out loudly.
#EricSwalwell #GrahamPlatner #JennyRacicot #LyndseyFifield #MaineSenateRace #MariaKabbas #NaziTotenkopfTatoo #rape #sexting #sexualAssault #SusanCollins -
Go follow me on NiteFlirt and catch me available weekday afternoons (EST) post camshow for sexting :)
I'm very friendly and laid back, no judgment, straightforward, open-minded, and love to chat. The price is set one cent over minimum, because I *love to chat.* Lmaooo
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Intime Bilder teilen – unter Jugendlichen ist #Sexting heute oft Teil des digitalen Alltags. Doch die Gefahr von Missbrauch und Erpressung (#Sextortion) steigt rasant. Was Expert*innen raten, warum Betroffene niemals die Schuld tragen und wo Jugendliche sowie Eltern bundesweit Hilfe und Beratung finden:
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Sexting y cuidados digitales
El próximo jueves 28 de mayo a las 17:00 hs se realizará un conversatorio sobre sexting en el Aula Magna de la FADA, en el campus de la UNA.
La actividad se desarrolla en el marco de la tesina de grado de la estudiante Patricia Arbo y propone abrir un espacio de diálogo sobre el sexting desde una mirada integral: entendiéndolo tanto como una práctica vi
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CW: nsfw porn 18+
fucked up the color-gradient.. still learning.. hope you like it anyways. want to see more? come play with me.
#nsfw #porn #amateur #amateurporn #sexy #onlyfans #fancentro #fansly #sexting #dmme #amateurs #homemade #onlyfansmodel
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CW: Old Blog: Sexting dirty talk, tease, underboob pic
From this time in 2024
Dirty-Talk: Sexting you at the office -
And now, you’re gone. And I’m desperate.
I have a choice here, do I wank, or do I wait and edge myself on all day long, until you get home?
I sent you a text at work:
I’m so fucking horny.
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CW: Proposta de sexting +18
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Survey suggests sexting is changing modern relationships
https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://nerds.xyz/2026/05/sexting-modern-relationships-survey/
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ChatGPT’s ‘Adult Mode’ Could Spark a New Era of #Intimate #Surveillance
#OpenAI plans to allow #sexting with #ChatGPT. A human-AI interaction expert warns of a #privacy nightmare.
#ai #artificialintelligence #chathttps://www.wired.com/story/chatgpt-adult-mode-new-era-of-intimate-surveillance/
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PsyPost: New sexting study reveals an “alarming” reality for teens who share explicit images. “A new study published in the Journal of Adolescent Health indicates that while most American teenagers do not engage in sexting, those who do face a high probability of negative consequences. The findings suggest that nearly half of adolescents who send sexually explicit images experience […]
https://rbfirehose.com/2026/02/18/psypost-new-sexting-study-reveals-an-alarming-reality-for-teens-who-share-explicit-images/
