How a woman walks.

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An interesting study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, and passed along by Haley (thanks!):

A woman's history of vaginal orgasm is discernible from her walk.

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: Research has demonstrated the association between vaginal orgasm and better mental health. Some theories of psychotherapy assert a link between muscle blocks and disturbances of both character and sexual function. In Functional-Sexological therapy, one focus of treatment is amelioration of voluntary movement. The present study examines the association of general everyday body movement with history of vaginal orgasm.

AIM: The objective was to determine if appropriately trained sexologists could infer women's history of vaginal orgasm from observing only their gait.

METHODS: Women with known histories of either vaginal orgasm or vaginal anorgasmia were videotaped walking on the street, and their orgasmic status was judged by sexologists blind to their history.

MAIN OUTCOME MEASURE: The concordance between having had orgasms triggered by penile-vaginal intercourse (not orgasm from direct clitoral stimulation) and raters' inferences of vaginal orgasm history based on observation of the woman's walk was the main outcome measure.

RESULTS: In the sample of healthy young Belgian women (half of whom were vaginally orgasmic), history of vaginal orgasm (triggered solely by penile-vaginal intercourse) was diagnosable at far better than chance level (81.25% correct, Fisher's Exact Test P < 0.05) by appropriately trained sexologists. Clitoral orgasm history was unrelated to both ratings and to vaginal orgasm history. Exploratory analyses suggest that greater pelvic and vertebral rotation and stride length might be characteristic of the gait of women who have experienced vaginal orgasm (r = 0.51, P < 0.05).

CONCLUSIONS: The discerning observer may infer women's experience of vaginal orgasm from a gait that comprises fluidity, energy, sensuality, freedom, and absence of both flaccid and locked muscles. Results are discussed with regard to previous research on gait, the effect of the musculature on sexual function, the special nature of vaginal orgasm, and implications for sexual therapy.

Full reference and paper can be found here: link.

The older generations and STIs.

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From Time Magazine:

Sex and older generations: it's not a topic that gets discussed much, not even in the doctor's office. But some physicians say that needs to change, because older patients are leading active sex lives — and their rates of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) may be on the rise.

Whatever the cause — Viagra, midlife divorce, online dating or simple ignorance — studies suggest that STDs are no longer just an affliction of the young. A study published online last week by the journal Sexually Transmitted Infections adds to that growing body of evidence. Researchers at England's West Midlands Health Protection Agency found that in less than a decade, STD rates had more than doubled among people ages 45 and older. And Dr. Babatunde Olowokure, an author of the study, thinks that figure may be low. "These observations are based on a small proportion of people who actually attend clinics," he says. While that proportion of the population has increased overall over the past decade, Olowokure points out that middle-aged and older people tend to delay visiting a doctor for treatment of an STD, or they avoid it altogether, in large part due to the stigma associated with sexually transmitted infections.

Read the rest of the article here.

Last Night.

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Last Night, which addresses a topic covered in class, comes recommended by Ksenia (thanks!):

This is a nice movie on the topic of emotional versus sexual cheating.

The trailer: 

Last Night centers on a married couple apart for an evening when the husband takes a business trip with a colleague to whom he's attracted. While he's resisting temptation, his wife encounters her past love.

So much for progress.

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From the CBC:

B.C. Mountie alleges years of sexual harassment

CBC News has learned that one of B.C.'s highest profile Mounties says she's suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after years of sexual harassment.

Cpl. Catherine Galliford was the face of the B.C. RCMP for years. During her tenure as the RCMP's spokesperson, Galliford announced the arrest of Robert William Pickton and revealed charges had been laid in the Air India bombing.

But in an internal RCMP complaint, Galliford makes serious allegations about misconduct inside the RCMP. She shared the complaint with CBC News and spoke with reporter Natalie Clancy about her claims.

"Everything that came out of his [a supervisor's] mouth was sexual," Galliford said. "If I had a dime for every time one of my bosses asked me to sit on his knee, I'd be on a yacht in the Bahamas right now."

Galliford says she faced constant sexual advances from several senior officers from the moment she graduated from the RCMP Academy in 1991.

Read the rest of the article here.

Abortion protection laws on the chopping block.

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Sent to me last week by Maggie to post on the blog (thanks!):

Mississippi might be the first US state to rule abortions ILLEGAL! The Personhood Amendment would make it a crime to abort any child as soon as the embryo begins to divide (or something to that degree) and even though the Supreme Court has ruled in favor of abortion, it is still so scary that there could be a precedent so close to Canada. Certain forms of birth control might also become illegal! Like certain pills or Morning After. This is also in complete disregard to rape and incest.

This an extremely scary prospect, and represents a trend that's sweeping conservative parts of the states. As noted in a previous post, Mitt Romney, who'll probably be the Republican nomination for next year's American election, supports this sort of legislation. The man pictured above is Les Riley, the sponsor of the bill.

The vote on the amendment will happen tomorrow. Keep posted for the results.

To read more about the amendment, and the sort of unintended nasty consequences it would have, read the following links: here, here and here.

More robot love.

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Davecat is a visionary in the robot-human intimacy world. He is a "doll husband", probably the first ever. His relationship with Sidore, a Real Doll, is going on ten years plus, although she's recently worn out and has been reincarnated (i.e., replaced with the same model).

From an Asylum article about Dave and Sidore:

Let's pretend, for a second, you're a lonesome guy who has bad luck with women. You buy an upscale silicone love doll and grow attached to "her"; but, after a decade of lovin', she starts to fall apart.

What's a man to do?

If you're 37-year-old Michigan telemarketer Dave Cat, you have the $6,500 rubber lady "reincarnated." Which is to say, you commission an exact replica of her to be stripped, molded and painted. And you bring her back from the freakin' dead.

Dave considers himself a "doll husband" and hasn't dated a flesh-and-blood woman since he bought his Real Doll -- a synthetic female with a skeletal frame, joints, and rubber sex organs -- in July 2000.

So imagine his sense of horror when, a few months ago, he noticed an 8-inch tear in her lower back, where her plastic hips connect to a spine. "She was literally bed-ridden," he tells Asylum. "I couldn't take her downstairs, and the sex was very limited."

Worried, he called Real Doll founder Matt McMullen, who is the mad scientist of the sex-doll industry. "He asked us to save her,'" McMullen says. "To me it was really touching."

Dave spent years conceiving his doll's personality and back story. He'll tell you her name is Sidore -- "friends call her Si-Chan" -- and that she was born near Tokyo, but later moved to England. She's a Goth and is "partial to Joy Division, Mecha-based video games and foot rubs."

The rest of the article is here.

Dave has blogged extensively about his relationship, and it's fascinating on many levels. From his bio:

Long-term partner to Synthetik Goth girl Sidore Kuroneko, Davecat spends his days sleeping, (barely) restraining his contempt for popular culture, researching developments in Gynoid and high-end dutch wife production, listening to Power-electronics and Sixties yé-yé in equal measure, pretending he’s a bon vivant, overshooting his spending limit, and writing about himself in the third person. He lives in a city on a land mass, somewhere in the Northern Hemisphere.

His blog can be found here.

The idea of human-robot relationships is nothing new. For example, in the 1982 film Blade Runner (which rules, and you should see it if you haven't), Harrison Ford's character falls in love with a female replicant. The trailer:

Original theatrical trailer for the 1982 film "Blade Runner." Starring Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Edward James Olmos, M. Emmet Walsh, Daryl Hannah, William Sanderson, & Brion James. Directed by Ridley Scott.

Is this what the future holds for us?

Meet Roxxxy.

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According to experts in the field, we're not far off from full-on robot-human intimate relationships. From a LiveScience interview with Dr. David Levy, one of the pioneers:

"My forecast is that around 2050, the state of Massachusetts will be the first jurisdiction to legalize marriages with robots," artificial intelligence researcher David Levy at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands told LiveScience. Levy recently completed his Ph.D. work on the subject of human-robot relationships, covering many of the privileges and practices that generally come with marriage as well as outside of it.

At first, sex with robots might be considered geeky, "but once you have a story like 'I had sex with a robot, and it was great!' appear someplace like Cosmo magazine, I'd expect many people to jump on the bandwagon," Levy said.

The rest of the article, including discussion of robot love, ethics, and more pragmatic issues, can be found here.

The idea of having sex with life-sized dolls is nothing new. As a matter of fact, there are already piles of sex dolls on the market, most of which are inflatable. For the DIYers out there, you can also make your own like these:

Instructions and more images can be found here.

But Roxxxy is different. She has five different personalities to choose from, and rudimentary artificial intelligence. Roxxxy doesn't come cheap, though, at $7000 US.

From an article on gizmag.com:

When it comes to technology, the sex industry is no laggard, and as robotics become more human-like in their appearance and abilities, US-based company TrueCompany is poised to launch Roxxxy – the world’s first "sex robot" that has many more capabilities than your average sex doll. Apart from having better defined physical features than previous dolls, Roxxxy has been programmed with her own personality and her manufacturers say she can listen, talk, carry on a conversation, feel your touch and respond to it, as well as move her private areas inside when she is being “utilized” to deliver an unforgettable erotic experience. There are even plans for a male version - Rocky the Robot.

The full article, with image gallery, is here.

Roxxxy made her debut at last year's AVN expo:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2MeQcI77dTQ

Roxxxy's webpage is here.

Fisting.

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From an interview with Deborah Addington in Vice Magazine:

A few months ago we featured some photos from a young lady who takes pictures of all the weird things she finds while working at a thrift store. One of the gems she discovered was a book by Deborah Addington, called A Hand In the Bush - The Fine Art of Vaginal Fisting. Needless to say, I was intrigued, so I ordered the book from Amazon the next day. Part of me thought the book was a joke. I imagined it to be some sort of satirical, voyeuristic look at a black belt-level sex move most people don't have the gusto to try for themselves. I couldn't have been more wrong.

A Hand In the Bush is an excruciatingly didactic field manual for anyone who has ever considered getting wrist-deep in a vagina. After reading this book, an arthritic virgin could navigate their hand into a woman with the confidence of a seasoned pilot easing a 747 into its hangar. The book includes graphic illustrations of everything from regular old vaginal fisting to mutual fisting to the mind-boggling double fist (pretend you're applauding, only don't pull your hands apart).

VICE: Your book is called The Fine Art of Vaginal Fisting. Do you really consider fisting vaginas an art form? Deborah Addington: I do. We all have fingers at the end of our hands, but a lot of people don't organically look at their hands and go, "Gee, I could put that in a bodily orifice!" So you're taking something that preexists, reconfiguring it, applying creativity, and producing a spectacular result.

How many and what type of doctors did you consult during your research for this book? I talked to three doctors. I also spoke with a registered nurse practitioner who dealt with a lot of sexuality issues. All but one of them were OBGYNs, and the one who wasn't is a kink-friendly physician out of the BDSM community who specializes in dealing with what a lot of other people might be balked by.

Had any of the doctors tried vaginal fisting? I know two of them did for sure. The other one was a clinician who was dealing with getting all of the anatomical information, and they might not have been into fisting. I'm not sure.

Read the rest of the interview, and lots about fisting, here.

Funny nerds.

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The real headline for an article at The Cosmos News explaining why Uranus' axis has shifted substantially:

Uranus takes a pounding more frequently than thought

And the equally funny first paragraph of the article:

Uranus isn't just gassy, it's also tilted completely sideways, such that instead of rotating like a spinning top, it rolls around the plane of the solar system more like a giant ball. Now astronomers think they know how this happened, and it means that Uranus has been pounded really, really hard not once, but twice.

Read the rest of the article here.

And yes, I'm still 13.

Currently the oddest video on the web?

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Via Violet Blue: 

Watch the Official Video for Big Bad Wolf by Duck Sauce Download now on iTunes: http://cot.ag/uyPiKL Follow Big Beat: Site: http://wearebigbeat.com Like: http://fb.com/wearebigbeat Follow: http://twitter.com/wearebigbeat Listen: https://soundcloud.com/wearebigbeat Follow Duck Sauce: https://www.facebook.com/ducksaucenyc

Perhaps studying delirium will help with interpreting this masterpiece of weirdness.

Trends in men's body hair removal.

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From a 2008 study:

Abstract Although hairlessness is rapidly becoming a component of the ideal male body, little research has examined men’s concerns about their body hair or their hair removal practices. Samples of gay and heterosexual men completed questionnaires that assessed whether they had ever removed their back, buttock or pubic hair, the frequency with which they did so, the methods used and their self-reported reasons for removing this hair, as well as their level of appearance investment. Results indicated that many gay and heterosexual men remove their back, buttock and pubic hair regularly and that their primary reason for doing so is to maintain or improve their appearance. The frequency of hair removal was also associated with the motivational salience component of appearance investment. The findings offer further support to the premise that gay and heterosexual men exhibit similar body image concerns.

Download the entire paper here.

Rick Mercer on gay bullying.

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This past month, James Hubley (pictured below with his dad), an out gay high school student, committed suicide after being mercilessly and persistently bullied. He is one of many such cases - it seems like there's a new case of gay teen suicide due to bullying every week.

In the States, Dan Savage, of Savage Love, started a project called It Gets Better due to the rash of gay teen suicides. I've posted about it before on the blog (here, here and here). The intention of the project is to give gay kids hope. But, as some have noted, these gay teens still need to make it through high school before things may improve. Kids can be extremely cruel.

In response to the case of James Hubley, Rick Mercer, a Canadian comedy icon and political commentator, had this to say on his show, The Mercer Report:

Rick's Rant for October 25, 2011