What’s On Our Radar 01/30/13

Here’s what’s been on my reading list this week:

My favorite title for an article ever, Monogamy Is Like Dubstep: I Don’t Understand It – Role/Reboot

Keeping on the Monogamy tip, Forget Online Dating: Here’s Something That Might Really Hurt Monogamy, in which the argument that technology is causing us to avoid commitment is challenged somewhat – The Atlantic

The Vagina Popsicle, a very intriguing post on The Feronia Project about how putting yogurt in your vagina can help ease the symptoms of a yeast infection…seriously – The Feronia Project

The War On Sex Workers tears into the United States’ war on prostitution – Reason.com

A lady in Brazil put poison in her vagina and tried to kill her husband by getting him to go down on her…Death By Cunnilingus – Salon

No video today but I did find this infographic on The Feronia Project:

Abstinence Only Sex Education Ctd.

Love Laci Green

Wearing Socks To Bed Makes It Easier To Orgasm

You read it right, wearing socks while having sex can help you orgasm. A  study by Johns Hopkins University in which couples having sex underwent brain scanning, provided a bunch of data about how psychological states and physical stimulation affect people’s ability to orgasm but apparently the scanning room was a little bit cold. Providing couples with socks due to the draft in the room increased their ability to orgasm from 50% to 80%. I know of a few people who find it supremely unsexy to wear socks while having sex. Perhaps they need to change their attitude. The study doesn’t explain any reason why wearing socks might help people orgasm but I imagine it has something to do with being comfortable and not having your focus directed to your cold extremities. The scan was also able to tell if women were faking orgasm, even if their partners couldn’t

Abstinence Only Sex Education

This pic was floating around the internet around American election season, I saw it again today and realized that I hadn’t shared it here yet. Abstinence Only sex education doesn’t work, period. In fact it is counter productive. The places in which abstinence only sex education is taught are also the places where the highest teen pregnancy rates are. This is likely due to the fact that if you’re being taught to abstain from sex, you’re probably not being taught about wearing condoms and taking birth control because that would imply…well, having sex. The same holds true for STI rates and in fact there is a positive correlation between how much an area encourages abstinence and the rate of STIs in 15-19 year olds. Meaning, the regions that encourage at least some abstinence sex education fall right in between the AO and the Comprehensive regions in terms of STI rates. I find this to be pretty fascinating. Clearly teens are going to have sex, the question is weather or not we are going to equip them with the tools to have the safest and most informed sex possible.

 

 

Condoms Don’t Make Sex Feel Any Worse, Science Told Me So

I’ve heard a lot of guys claim that they don’t wear condoms regularly because it makes sex feel worse. They don’t experience as much pleasure during sex when they wear a condom compared to when they don’t. Wel, science has officially called bullshit! A study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine found that “sexual arousal, ease of erection, overall pleasure and orgasm weren’t much different” between people who wore condoms and who didn’t. So take your lame excuses elsewhere gents.

I have both worn condoms and had unprotected sex and in both cases it was most definitely sex. I became aroused, thrashed around a bit and then came to orgasm. If I was older than 21, my partner probably also climaxed and we went about getting back to whatever it was we were doing. In none of these cases, protected or not, did I experience any more or less pleasure as a result of wearing a condom. And the same seems to be true with pretty much everyone surveyed in this study.

Now there is one issue with this particular study…it was funded by Trojan. Yes, the condom company, Trojan. Yikes! But the head researcher (and one of my favorite sex writers) Debby Herbenick has said that the condom company didn’t influence their findings at all, some of which were not actually in favor of condom use. It turns out that men who didn’t also use lubricant in conjunction with condoms had significantly lower rates of arousal than men who didn’t wear condoms. This was especially the case for men who didn’t use lubricant on their penis before applying the condom.

So the “condoms don’t feel good” crowd were right, sort of. They were right that it didn’t feel good, but it was only because they were doing it wrong. Put some lube on your penis, put your penis in a condom, put some lube on the condom, stop complaining. I’m sorry, but “It doesn’t feel as good” is the shittiest excuse to expose you and your partner to all the risks of unprotected sex. And now we know that it’s not even a valid one.

Read more about the study here

Trans Woman Shares Her Amazing Transition On Youtube

It’s amazing how, in our society, hair is one of the primary indicators of gender. Naturally, hair isn’t the only thing she changed. She used hormone therapy and Facial Feminization Surgery to make this astonishing transition before our eyes.

‘The T in LGBT is often silent,’ was a statement I read somewhere this week. It was in reference to Barack Obama’s historic inauguration speech in which he spoke out for equality for ‘gay’ people. By ‘gay’ we hope he means Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgendered people, but I am well aware of the game that is politics and how it is difficult for a politician, perhaps more so for a president, to speak out courageously for what is right, without fear of giving fodder to the opposition. The changes in attitude that LGBT people and their allies want to see in the world will not come from the top down, but from the bottom up. It’s great that the president is acknowledging civil rights but it’s the role of the citizens to change societal atitudes and less the role of the president. Let’s not forget that presidents are elected based on how closely they adhere to the majority of citizens’ attitudes.

I implore you not to forget Trans people when talking about LGBT people and their rights. They are easily the most marginalized members of the community. And avoid using ‘gay’ as a blanket term. Gay means homosexual man and we men have enough privilege as it is already. Say LGBT, it may take a couple of seconds longer, but those couple of seconds will be used acknowledging people who are fighting everyday for acknowledgement, both from their peers and from the law.

What Is The Bechdel Test? And What Does It Have To Do With Women In Movies?

Woo! TED Talks! Who doesn’t like a TED Talk? The one above [12:57] talks about how we need more strong, smart women and girls in movies for the sake of boys and girls alike. But the point made that I want to focus on for a second is the Bechdel Test.

The Bechdel Test, when you learn what it is, will forever change how you view film and television. It is a very simple test to see how overt the gender bias in the film you are watching is. For a movie to pass the Bechdel test:

1. It has to have at least two [named] women in it

2. Who talk to each other

3. About something besides a man

Now go out and watch some movies and tv and prepare to be stunned by the dearth of contemporary fiction that actually passes this test. It’s terrible.

For a list of movies’ Bechdel test status click here.

Want To Really Participate In Sexual Science? You May Be Eligible To Take One Of These Three Scientific Surveys

It came to my attention that over at The Psychology Of Human Sexuality they are in need of participants for a number of scientific surveys about sex and relationships. I don’t know about any of you, but I’m all about this kind of thing. Naturally, with any good study or survey, the more participants there are, the more reliable the findings. So please, if you are eligible, take one or more of the surveys and share this with your friends. I’ll be sure to let you guys know if/when I hear about the results.

• Attitudes Toward Sexual Relationships – You must currently have at least one “friend with benefits” and/or be involved in some type of romantic relationship in order to participate. You will be asked a series of questions about your relationship(s) and sexual attitudes.

• Survey of Men’s Sexual Attitudes and Behaviors – This survey is open to men who have sex with other men, regardless of their sexual identity and relationship status. You will be asked questions about your sexual history and current sexual practices.

• Consensual Nonmonogamy – This study is open to persons involved in any type of consensual, nonexclusive intimate relationship(s). You will be asked questions about your relationship beliefs, practices, and desires.

Now go forth and be a part of sexual science!

My First Time At A Sex Convention (Or Any Convention For That Matter)

Saturday evening I went out to the 12th anual Vancouver Taboo Sex show. It was awesome. Before I say anything else I’ll say that I highly recommend going to this show next year, bring a friend or a partner or a group and some money because you’re going to want to buy something(s). I showed up at around 5pm to a fairly sparsely populated convention hall. My partner and I took a quick once over of the various stalls. There were toys for days in varying degrees of quality, tattoo artists and body painters, waxers and anal bleachers and a group of people handing out bright orange stickers that read “Jesus Loves Porn Stars.” Needless to say it was a bonanza of sensory stimulation.

We meandered our way slowly to the back of the hall where the main stage was by about 6. There were teams of scantily clad sports arena style dancers and a porn star who purportedly home-wrecked Sandra Bullock and Jesse James’ marriage, gyrating and doing everything but getting naked. My partner is a big pole dancing enthusiast (nerd) so, much to my chagrin, we stuck around and watched the amateur and professional heats of the pole dancing competition. Pole dancing is an amazing talent that requires so much strength, training and athleticism. I feel like this is oft forgot by strip club patrons. Once the pole dancing was over and the obligatory outrageous drag queen host had handed out her last give-away it was time for the erotic hypnotist. This was our que to go explore the convention some more. Turning around to leave I was struck by the fact that the crowd seemed to have quadrupled in the hour we spent watching the main stage.

By now the throngs of people were creating an awesome buzz in the convention center. It finally felt like saturday night at the sex show. People in costumes, people in practically nothing at all, and many more people in the muted colours of Vancouver’s casual everyday atire. The crowd was as diverse as any I had ever seen. The youngest people admitted were 19 year olds and I saw more than a handfull of 65+ people. I was delighted to see a woman in her late 20s shopping for vibrators with what I can only assume was her mother. There were young hot-bodied men wearing nothing but aprons around their exposed penises and a guy with perfect Ziggy Stardust hair and makeup. By now we’d made it to the center where there was a whole section of bongs and other weed paraphernalia adjacent to a bondage area where men and women were being tied up and hung in every shape the human body safely contorts to.

The time was passing a lot quicker than I had expected so we decided to give the toy stands a more serious perusal before leaving for a late dinner. The prices on the toys were pretty good, a lot of mark downs and wholesale pricing. If you’re the kind of person who only buys sex toys once a year or less, I’d highly recommend saving your pennies and waiting for the sex show to roll around to do your shopping. You will find what you’re looking for almost certainly. In the end we spent our whole allowance on sex toys, returning to one stall so many times they ended up giving us a bunch of stuff for free.

Surprisingly, I didn’t stop and listen to any of the informative seminars. I would have thought that these would have attracted the likes of me but I was having so much fun, I was totally uninterested in sitting down. If I had gotten a weekend pass I might have spent more time listening to the lectures but as I was only there for saturday night I went for the shiny stuff instead.

The highlight of my night may have been seeing the pregnant owner of a local pole-dancing studio do an impromptu performance at the behest of the flamboyant host. The host let slip that the pregnant woman was in fact the very woman that Ben Affleck had cheated on Jennifer Lopez with. Celebrity home-wreckers for days at the sex show! She went to lengths to ensure us that her 7 month baby bump was not Affleck’s doing.

All told, it was a lot of fun and I would recommend it to everyone, even (especially?) your mom. If you didin’t make it out this year then take my advice and don’t miss it next year. Sex.

Women Can Orgasm Just By Going To The Gym

So, it’s almost the end of January and we’ve almost forgotten about our new year’s resolutions. We’re eating rich food again and skipping the gym more than we said we would. Well here’s one more reason (for women at least) to keep going to the gym. Besides the fact that physical exercise is extremely good for you and important for your long term health, it can also give women orgasms. Seriously. In a study done last year by researcher (and amazing sex columnist) Debby Herbenick and her team at Indiana University, hundreds of respodants said that they had experienced orgasm during workouts. Almost half of them had experienced them on more than 10 occasions.

This exercise induced orgasm has been affectionately named the “coregasm,” and it’s an apt name. It appears that core exercise (exercise focusing on the abdomen) is linked most strongly to orgasm. This doesn’t surprise me, in fact I have personally experienced an orgasm like release whilst doing a lot of ab work. “These data are interesting because they suggest that orgasm is not necessarily a sexual event, and they may also teach us more about the bodily processes underlying women’s experiences of orgasm,” says Herbenick.

But this isn’t new news. The Kinsey Institute for sex research reported finding women experience exercise induced orgasms back in 1953 but little research has been done on them until now.

“Corgasms” are also associated with weight lifting, yoga and cycling. Here’s a list of the percentages of how closely various exercises are associated with orgasm:

Abdominal Exercises: 51.4%

Weight Lifting: 26.5%

Yoga: 20%

Cycling: 15.8%

Running: 13.2%

Walking/hiking :9.8%