For those of you who don't follow American politics, the Republican party is in the process of selecting its candidate for the presidential election next year. The selection process (i.e., the debates) has been a bit of a gong show, mostly because the candidates are all...how to say this without sounding like a jerk...rather eccentric. The Republican party is almost universally opposed to abortion - many would like to see a constitutional amendment declaring that life begins at conception, making any sort of interference after that point murder. Mitt Romney, the main contender as the Republican candidate, made himself look like an ignoramus this week when asked about this change to the constitution, and how it would affect women who take hormonal birth control. Rachel Maddow (who I have total crush on), of MSNBC, had this to say to him (and a lesson for the dudes - the lesson starts just after the 4:00 mark):
UK sex work data.
Via Violet Blue. Data collection, analysis, and report by John Millward:
Dirty Words: A Probing Analysis of 5000 Call Girl Reviews
There is an online subculture of men who review their encounters with escorts using a frank, exhaustive style you’d associate more with reviews of hotels than sex. I analyzed five thousand of these ‘field reports’ to see what I could find out about the punters, their use of language and their outlook on sex for cash.
Punternet.com is, according to the London Evening Standard, “…the most successful of the prostitute-reviewing Internet sites” – and that’s an accolade the site proudly boasts at the top of its front page, right underneath the garish red logo and two fluttering Union Jack animated GIFs, which look like they’re right out of 1999 (the year PunterNet was established). I was 12 years old in ‘99 and don’t think I’d even heard of escorts, much less spent two weeks sorting through 5000 meticulously written reviews of their bodies and bedrooms. That’s the challenge I recently set myself though. My original intention was to find out what words punters most often use to describe the women they sleep with and the places they go to do it. Are they sweet and romantic (sometimes) or boorish, with the air of misogyny you might expect? (Not that I saw.) At some point through the scraping, stripping and analyzing of the million words I got from the 5000 reviews, I decided it would be worth getting a bit more from whole thing than just word choice, like how much men pay, what they do with the women and how long they’re allowed to do it before they get kicked out. I’ll tip the hat a little now by revealing that the ‘girlfriend experience’ is more popular than the ‘pornstar experience’ and that foreplay is ranked 16 out of 20 in the list I compiled of most mentioned sex acts. But that’s just scratching the surface. Let’s rewind a little and start at the beginning: how the data was collected. The thing is, statistics can be boring—so every now and then I’ll throw in an excerpt from a review. Also, if you’re gagging for the juicy details, you can skip straight to the conclusions and the infographic I made to accompany this article.
Go read the rest of it on his blog: link here. The blog includes all the data, infographics, and piles of quotes from sex workers and punters. It's brilliant non-academic work.
Here are a couple of the infographics to spark your interest (click to make larger):
He also started a thread over at Reddit: read it here.
Sex at Dawn's authours speaking in Vancouver on October 28th.
in Monogamy
Katie West on self-confidence.
in Attitudes, Body Image
Katie West, blogger, photographer, teacher, model, and all-around renaissance woman, was sent the following question on her blog:
what advice would you give someone who is self concious about their body? how do you overcome insecurites? you just exude confidence & always inspire me :)
She posted a long response, which is worth a read, especially for those feeling a little down on themselves. It's broken down into 6 specific sections:
1. Have a mother who tells you how beautiful you are every single hour of every single day. 2. When someone tells you you’re beautiful say thank you. 3. Stop comparing yourself to other women. 4. Give no fucks. 5. Don’t neglect the other parts of you. 6. Masturbate.
Go read the whole thing here.
The Tug Toner.
Poor economy could lead to more male infidelity.
From Science Daily:
Grim economic times could cause men to seek more sexual partners, giving them more chances to reproduce, according to research by Omri Gillath, a social psychology professor at the University of Kansas.
Men are likely to pursue short-term mating strategies when faced with a threatening environment, according to sexual selection theory based on evolutionary psychology.
When made to think about their own death, which mimics conditions of "low survivability," Gillath and his colleagues found that men responded more vigorously to sexual pictures and had increased heart rates when viewing them, compared to when they thought about dental pain.
"We're biologically wired to reproduce, and the environment tells us the best strategy to use to make sure our genes are passed on," said Gillath. "If you think you might die soon, there's a huge advantage for a man to use short-term mating strategies -- to make sure there are a bunch of offspring and hope that some of them survive -- but women can't do the same thing."
"The ultimate sign of low chances of surviving is death," Gillath added. "After threatening them with their own death, we asked them to look at a computer with sexual and nonsexual images, to see if death makes men more interested in sex."
People primed with death triggered a lever faster when they saw sexual images, compared to those primed with dental pain. The two groups exhibited no difference in response times for nonsexual images.
"In low survivability conditions, we think that men would be more apt to pursue sex outside of a monogamous relationship, looking for ways to spread their genes," Gillath said.
Read the rest of the article here.
More PostSecrets.
in Humour Etc.
Religious people more likely to marry young.
This would seem obvious, given that many religions (and denominations/groups/sects within those religions) forbid sex before marriage.
From the Journal of Social, Evolutionary, and Cultural Psychology (thanks for passing it along, Amy!):
Unbuckling in the Bible Belt: Conservative sexual norms lower age at marriage.
Abstract Sociosexual norms, as well as marital patterns, vary widely across human history and culture. Yet, humans share an evolved psychobiology of sexual motivation that reliably leads to procreation through incentivizing sexual activity. We predicted that in socially monogamous societies with conservative norms for sexual behavior, the interaction of sexual motivation and strong discouragement of non-marital sex would lead to relatively earlier marriages on average, as young adults seek a socially sanctioned way of expressing their sexuality. We examined this hypothesis with United States Census data from the year 2000. We found that cities in the “Bible Belt,” a region characterized by strong evangelical Christian sentiment, had significantly lower mean and median marital ages for both men and women, supporting our prediction. These relationships held when controlling for median household income, median family income, and even the operational sex ratio. We discuss our findings in terms of individuals minimizing discourse discrepancies and cognitive dissonance, to ultimately coincide with regional cultural norms.
Read the paper here.
Prison sex.
This is Jeff Smith. He was a Democratic member of the Missouri Senate until 2009, when he pled guilty to two counts of obstruction of justice and resigned his seat. He spent a couple of eye-opening years in US federal prison, and has written extensively about his experiences. The following are some snippets from an article about prison sex published at The Recovering Politcian:
A few weeks after you get to federal prison, you go through orientation. The first thing they do is take you down into the visiting room to show you a mandatory sexual assault video featuring a 40-ish white guy warning you not to eat the Snickers bar that may be waiting on your bed when you return to your cell. (He ate his, unwittingly signaling the predator who left it for him that he was ready and willing.) All the guys in the visiting room laughed. So did I. But at 117 lbs, I reminded myself not to accept any sweets during my tenure, lest I “get my windows tinted,” in the parlance of Federal Correctional Institution, Manchester.
[...]
When it came to women, there was really no limit to inmates’ imagination. The quickest way to get into a fight was by switching the channel during a women’s softball game or track meet, events that are watched with as much whooping and hollering as homemade porn at a frat house.
[...]
Only then did he realize that I didn’t understand his slang. He explained that “gunslingers” were men who ran strings from their toes up their leg to lubed up toilet paper tubes fitted around their penises. To “gun her down” would’ve been to wire himself and go to the chow hall at mealtime, position himself at a table near her post, and toe-tap away until he…well, I won’t extend the gun metaphor any further.
[...]
And then one day, as I walked down to the bathroom late one night, I saw it. They were in bed together, snuggling and talking quietly. I saw a newbie snicker, and then a prison old-head ice-grilled him. “It ain’t none o’ yo muthafuckin bidness,” said the look, and the newbie scurried back to his cell. After that, no one said a word about it. And it remained that way every night for the next few months until I left.
Go read the whole amazing account here.
Engrish.
in Humour Etc.
Thursday mail - October 19.
Have any questions or comments related to sex or sexuality? If so, fire away.
Sexy Girls Have It Easy.
in Attitudes, Attraction
A short documentary by Brighthand Pictures:
The results of her experiment aren't at all surprising: changing one's appearance to be more sexually inviting clearly has an effect on the way one is treated by others, particularly for women. We all know it - this isn't rocket science.
However, the woman in the documentary (intentionally, or more likely unintentionally) exhibited a subtle change in her interpersonal style when dressed differently that may also have influenced the way she was treated (although I'm sure the change in her physical appearance accounted for the majority of the effect).
When she dressed up more sexy, she became more outgoing/gregarious. This phenomenon - i.e., dressing sexy to feel sexy - appears to be largely universal. When people dress up, and make an effort to make themselves appear attractive (or what they believe makes them appear attractive), they generally report feeling a boost in self-esteem and confidence, and are more outgoing. This, in turn, increases their attractiveness, as perceived by others. Physical attractiveness becomes interpersonal attractiveness.
More on gay marriage.
Cautionary tale: swallow.
From Datingish:
Like many men, Dr. Richard O. Phillips was surprised to receive a paternity lawsuit from Dr. Sharon Irons, a former lover, two years after having shared the pleasures of oral sex. Confused, he went for the tried-and-true DNA test, which revealed that he was in fact the father of the child, except it was delivered with sub-Maury Povich charisma and significantly less fanfare.
"How could this be?" he thought to himself, as any rational man would. As it turns out, Dr. Irons had preserved Dr. Phillips' sperm and used it to impregnate herself; an act so creepy and vile that even some of the world's masters of prolific breeding had to shake their furry little heads (rabbits, for the uninformed). But a simple question stood erect: Was she legally entitled to the sperm?
Read the rest of the article here.
Thursday mail - October 13.
Have any questions or comments related to class or otherwise? If so, fire away.
New research: Felching.
Felching, or the oral extraction (i.e., sucking) of semen from a partner's vagina or rectum (usually), is, not surprisingly, an extremely understudied type of sexual behaviour. A new paper, published online, has finally shed some light on the practice:
Abstract
Felching (sucking or eating semen out of someone’s anus) is a sexual behavior about which virtually nothing has been written in the scholarly literature, despite the fact that it appears to be a not-uncommon practice among certain subpopulations of men who have sex with men (MSM). This study examined three broad research questions: (1) How common is felching? (2) How does a desire for felching relate to other HIV risk practices and risk behavior preferences? (3) What factors are associated with the desire to engage in felching? The data were from a content analysis study of one of the largest Internet websites specifically targeting MSM looking for partners for unprotected sex. A total of 1,316 profiles on the site were analyzed and selected randomly based on users’ ZIP codes. Felching was mentioned as a sought-after practice in approximately one-sixth of the men’s profiles. Men who wanted to find felching partners were significantly more likely than those not searching for felching partners to seek other types of risky sex, including unprotected oral and unprotected anal sex, and various enhanced risk preferences (e.g., having sex while high, multiple-partner sex, unwillingness to withdraw the penis prior to internal ejaculation). Multivariate analysis revealed several factors that were related to an interest in identifying partners online for felching, including race/ethnicity, indifference to sex partners’ HIV serostatus, several sensation-seeking measures (e.g., wanting “wild” or “uninhibited” sex, self-identification as a “bug chaser”), and eroticizing ejaculatory fluids.
Klein, H. (2011). Felching among men who engage in barebacking (unprotected anal sex). Archives of Sexual Behavior. Doi: 10.1007/s10508-011-9770-0.
Men as pin-ups.
in Gender, Humour Etc.
From Peta Pixel:
“Men-ups!” is a humorous project by photographer Rion Sabean featuring men doing pin-up-style poses. It’s interesting how much more absurd some poses instantly look when they’re being done by men.
See the rest of the photos here.
Sex ed made simple.
in Sex Ed, Humour Etc.
Source unknown.
Betty White.
Why do people say “grow some balls”? Balls are weak and sensitive. If you wanna get tough, grow a vagina. Those things take a pounding… - Betty White
New breast examination app.
in Breasts, Humour Etc.
Rethink Breast Cancer has launched a smartphone app that encourages women to conduct regular breast self-examinations. As part of the launch, they've released a rather humourous new promo:
Visit their site here.