Resource links below for more information: http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/sexual-orientation.aspx Marriage Equality Links/Information: http://www.freedomtomarry.org/ http://www.hrc.org/resources/category/marriage To find information and resources on coming out visit: http://www.itgetsbetter.org/ http://community.pflag.org/ http://www.thetrevorproject.org/ Matthew Shepard photo copyright 1998 Gina van Hoof http://www.ginavanhoof.com Watch the Videos Featured in this Episode: Spencer's Home Depot Marriage Proposal http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4HpWQmEXrM Seattle+The Washington Bus+Jeanne+Alissa = wedding proposal https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=umdepNP5yVw Link to subscribe to our channel: http://bit.ly/TheFineBros Link to all episodes of React: http://goo.gl/4iDVa ---------------------------------------------------------------- This episode featured the following amazing children.
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in Humour Etc.
Hillary Clinton goes au naturel; people freak out.
in Attitudes, Attraction
This happened a while ago, but is pertinent to this week's class. From Jezebel:
What We’re Really Talking About When We Talk About Hillary Clinton Without Makeup
On Monday, the front and center picture on Drudge Report was Hillary Clinton's bespectacled face without makeup, because apparently we've talked about every other possible topic in the world. The picture of Clinton's face, which Matt Drudge helpfully tagged "Au Naturel," features the smiling Secretary of State's countenance naked but for black framed glasses and red lipstick. I guess we're all supposed to gasp and feel faint, to acknowledge that yes, Hillary Clinton is a real live human with monstrous, terrible flaws, and this is the pictorial proof of that. And now she should hang her head in shame and Matt Drudge wins, and he's automatically King of America forever.
Fox echoed Matt Drudge's triumphant smugness, asking in their headline if Hillary "forgot" her makeup, as though she'd been caught peeing her pants onstage or flashing her crotch at paparazzi as she got out of a limo.
A woman didn't wear makeup and this is news? I guess I thought the news cycle's kill screen would involve more animated fireworks, or decks of cards cascading in arcs rather than just a picture of the Secretary of State's face looking like it's ready for some slumber party ghost stories.
With Drudge's attempted shaming came a reciprocal backlash from fans of Hillary and what Fox News viewers might call "the liberal media." The Washington Postdefended the makeup-free look: "It's refreshing to see Hillary fresh-faced. She looked like a schoolgirl in the picture –- the Hillary from her granola college days at Wellesley." And the Atlantic Wireproclaimed that Clinton looked "good, okay!?" And of course, as a member of Team Hillary, my reflexive first reaction to the photo was to leap to the defense of her looks. She looks great! Cute glasses! There is nothing wrong with Hillary Clinton's neck, okay?! That's how a neck is supposed to look! She's totally pretty!
Read the rest here.
And a brilliant quote from from Ms. Clinton about the whole affair:
"You may not agree with a woman, but to criticize her appearance — as opposed to her ideas or actions — isn’t doing anyone any favors, least of all you. Insulting a woman’s looks when they have nothing to do with the issue at hand implies a lack of comprehension on your part, an inability to engage in high-level thinking. You may think she’s ugly, but everyone else thinks you’re an idiot."
- Hillary Clinton
Real-life Barbie girl meets real-life anime girl.
in Attraction, Body Image
A while back, Navio passed along a link to a story about a woman who has turned herself into a real-life Barbie doll (for real, real). She's gone through extensive plastic surgery to achieve her look. I posted the story on the blog with some photos and a clip of her singing (she's an aspiring musician, too). Click here to see the post. Navio sent me a recent update (thanks!). The real-life Barbie doll met up with a real-life anime girl to do a joint photo shoot.
From Rocket News 24:
Ukraine’s Anime Girl and Real Barbie Meet Face to Eerie Face!
Two girls from the Ukraine have made a splash around the world with their unusual aesthetic choices.
First we have newcomer, 19 year-old Anastasiya Shpagina, who’s industrial strength make-up job transforms her into three dimensional warm blooded anime girl. In the other corner we have 21 year-old Valeria Lukyanova, who surprised the world with her appearance of a “Real Barbie Doll” which is rumored to be the result of extensive plastic surgery.
And now for the first time these two titans of body modification collide for a photo shoot of epic disproportions.
What’s really weird about these pictures is that these two women seem to complement each other really well. By that I mean Real Barbie seems to look even more like a Barbie doll next to Anime Girl, and Shpagnia also looks especially animated next to Lukyanova.
Any rivalry you might’ve expected these two girls to have never came to be. Actually in several of the photos you can see them exchanging make-up and fashion techniques, dressing up like each other surprisingly well – in a creepy kind of way.
Original Article by Chinami Choshu on Pouch (Japanese) Photos: Acid Cow (English)
See the rest of the photos here.
On masculine stereotypes.
Sent along by one of your classmates (thanks!) with this note:
I thought it was an interesting article because the whole time I was reading it I kept thinking that he was going to talk about how he was homosexual or something (because you don't expect heterosexual males to express themselves like that) but then I realized that that's the whole point right, that it doesn't really matter what his orientation is, because there should be nothing defining how he expresses himself as a human, but we have these gender roles so engrained in us that it is difficult not to bring them up.
From Sex, Love, Liberation:
The Lie of Masculinity
(Note: This is a post from my husband, Jonathan Mead, in parallel to a piece I wrote a few months ago.)
Tears were streaming down my face. I was 10 years old, sitting in our antique Oldsmobile, outside the parking lot of an ice cream shop. My dad and I regularly had father and son nights, and on this particular one I gathered the courage to make a confession:
“I don’t know how to not cry. I wish I could stop but sometimes I just feel like crying, and I know boys aren’t supposed to do that.”
My dad consoled me and told me that it was all right. It was perfectly natural for boys to cry. “If you need to cry, just let it out, son. You have nothing to be ashamed of,” he reassured me.
I felt a little better after that, but it still didn’t shake my discomfort. I didn’t realize it then, but somewhere deep within in me I knew what a man was supposed to be, and I felt that I wasn’t it.
It was around that time that I can recall my first encounter with the lie of masculinity.
Over the course of many years, I came across many other lies that one by one began to build a skeleton of falsehoods living within my consciousness.
And being an innocent child, I accepted those lies. I knew intuitively that they were wrong, but I felt like I was being wound up with a key, predestined to follow a path set before me.
My male identity was being created, and I was slowly learning that men are supposed to be strong, not vulnerable & aren’t expected to express their emotions.
I was learning that men are considered queer if they don’t act brash and overbearing; that men are supposed to be dominant, not submissive.
I was learning that men are horny, not sensual.
Read the rest here.
Dildo Maker by Francesco Morackini.
Francesco Morackini is an industrial designer. Among his many projects is the Dildo Maker. It works much like an old-school pencil sharpener. An object that can be carved is inserted into the device. You then crank the arm shaving the object's tip until it comes out looking like a phallus.
From his website:
Invented in 1933 by the famous french designer Raymond Loewy, this pencil sharpner became an icon of the stream line mouvement. Loewy was one of the first designer to introduce sensual lines in everyday products. From a world of craftmanship and functionality we entered in a world of desire and seduction.
In this new era designers were assign a new mission. A good product is not only an object build with quality, an efficient product, a product with a good price or nor even beautiful looking . A good product has to create emotions. Marketing, advertising ...and the design itself has to communicate emotions to the customers in order to buy this product and bring him the best user experience.
In 2013 Francesco Morackini introduces the Dildomaker, from the “tools” serie. Playing around with the cliche: “Sex sales” The Dildomaker’s purpose is to provide the users what they really want: “Pleasure” and moreover “sexual pleasure”. The Dildomaker is just a tool which doesn’t give pleasure directely. The distance created here on purpose, tries to raise questions on our relationship between us and manufactured products.
See the rest his work here.
Sexed up needlepoint.
in Humour Etc.
See a bunch more at Buzzfeed (including the links to the sites where you can purchase the patterns).
The Straight Girl's Guide to Gay Sex.
And an important comment from the comment section:
The subject of this video is NOT gay sex - its gay ANAL sex. If people think anal sex is all gay men do sexually they are totally misinformed. It's not even the most dominant form of sexual intercourse among gay men. Many gay men, including myself, prefer other things. Anal intercourse is just one of the menu items, and as with any menu item some people only order that, some like it often, some like it once in a while to change things up, and some really don't like it at all.
Thursday mail - February 28.
Have any questions or comments related to sex or sexuality? If so, fire away.
Josey Vogels talks about being too busy for sex.
Josey Vogels is Canada's best known sexpert. She writes two sex advice columns, has authoured several books and is regular contributor on radio, TV and on the web. She recently sat down with Q guest host Jann Arden to discuss sex for busy couples.
From the CBC:
The start of a romantic relationship can be intense and exciting -- a time filled with an abundance of passion, desire, and a lot of times, sex. But as time passes with the same partner, the intimate connection can also fade. The focus shifts from romantic gestures to asking, "why there are socks on the floor?"
The lack of spark between long-term couples is why Canadian sex expert Josey Vogels wrote Better Sex in No Time: A Guide for Busy Couples. There are a ton of sex and relationships books on the market. With this one, Vogels wanted to address what she sees as a universal problem.
In an interview on Q with guest host Jann Arden, Vogels says her book is about getting down to the basics: What is intimacy in a relationship? What does it mean to stay connected? How do you keep intimacy in your relationship one gesture at a time?
"Romance is whatever it takes in your relationship to make your partner feel appreciated, like you're noticing them and that you still care that they're there," she says.
The way romance is portrayed in pop culture hasn't helped.
"You see in movies these huge gestures and romances like a man in tights playing a lute. It's these weird abstract ideas of romance. It's really intimidating for men because they don't know what the heck it is, and women have this weird idea about what it is because they've been fed all this garbage in movies and what it should be."
Everyone thinks everyone else is having more sex than them. Vogels tells them to stop thinking about others and to focus on their own relationship.
"It's important to reenergize the brain pattern we had at the beginning. I always tell women to start thinking with their genitals a little bit. Try to rekindle that sexual being inside yourself."
She says it's the simple things that matter and to focus on the positive. Be kind to one another. Verbalize the things you like about the partner. Hold hands and kiss each other. Dress up for dinner. If you're going to wear pyjamas, make them silk.
"Put yourself in a sexual frame of mind once in a while. You need to take care of your sexual being."
Listen to the interview here.
Drugs for relationships.
in Attitudes, Love, Relationships
This piece from The Atlantic has been getting tons of attention over the last little while. It's a long read, but fascinating (and polarizing), if you've got the time.
The Case for Using Drugs to Enhance Our Relationships (and Our Break-Ups)
George Bernard Shaw once satirized marriage as "two people under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, who are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part."
Yikes. And yet, nearly all human cultures value some version of marriage, as a nurturing emotional foundation for children, but also because marriage can give life an extra dimension of meaning. But marriage is hard, for biochemical reasons that may be beyond our control. What if we could take drugs to get better at love?
Perhaps we could design "love drugs," pharmaceutical cocktails that could boost affection between partners, whisking them back to the exquisite set of pleasures that colored their first years together. The ability to do this kind of fine-tuned emotional engineering is beyond the power of current science, but there is a growing field of research devoted to it. Some have even suggested developing "anti-love drugs" that could dissolve abusive relationships, or reduce someone's attachment to a charismatic cult leader. Others just want a pill to ease the pain of a wrenching breakup.
[...]
At first blush, love may seem like a poor prospect for pharmacological intervention. The reflexive dualist in us wants to say that romantic relationships are matters of the soul, and that souls ought to be free of medical tinkering. Oxford ethicist Brian Earp argues that we should resist these intuitions, and be open to the upswing in human well-being that successful love drugs could bring about. Over a series of several papers, Earp and his colleagues, Anders Sandberg and Julian Savulescu, make a convincing case that couples should be free to use "love drugs," and that in some cases, they may be morally obligated to do so. I recently caught up with Earp and his colleagues by email to ask them about this fascinating ethical frontier. What follows is a condensed version of our exchange.
Read the rest here.
"Saddest map in America."
From Psychology Today:
Missed Connections
Seen but not spoken to: An atlas of where we’re (almost) finding love.
Turns out Cupid has no boundaries—and he visits WalMart more frequently than you thought. So reveals Dorothy Gambrell's "Missed Connections" map, which appears in the February issue of Psychology Today.
The map, which breaks down, state-by-state, the most common hotspots for Missed Connections posted on Craigslist, has been making a stir on the web over the past couple of days. Denizens of states across country came away with their own interpretations, questions and repudiations. Some of the most common reactions:
Oklahomans crushing on Oklahomans at the state fair? Adorable!
WalMart, a leading love incubator in 15 states? How sad!
Indianans missing connections at home? Hm...
New Yorkers, Atlantans and Northwesterners commiserated about nearly meeting someone in transit.
Californians patted themselves on the backs for working out all the time.
And Andrew Sullivan summarized a common sentiment, calling it the "saddest map in America."
The map (click to make larger):
Oversharing on Facebook.
From the Huffington Post (and all over the web):
Facebook Valentines: Study Finds Oversharing On Personal Life Hurts Romantic Relationships You may want to think twice before declaring to the world your love for your "valentine" this Valentine's Day.
Through three separate studies, psychology researchers from the University of Kansas found that people in romantic relationships don't like their partner broadcasting their feelings to the Facebook world.
One of the problems with your significant other opening up on Facebook is that "you feel less special and unique," Kansas doctoral student in psychology Juwon Lee concluded. Many times you feel they're trusting you with intimate information, but then you see them sharing their feelings with everyone, Lee said.
The Kansas University researchers created mock Facebook walls as part of the studies, with various levels of opening up, and asked participants how they'd feel about the postings if each was a romantic partner.
When there was a high disclosure rate on feelings, particularly deeply personal feelings, there was a feeling of less intimacy with that person, the researchers found.
"There's an assumption that as a partner you're entitled to some kind of privileged information," Lee said.
Oversharing on sites like Facebook has been the subject of research before. One survey of 1,000 online individuals found that 32% of respondents admit having posted something online that they regretted. Some of them said it specifically ruined their marriage or relationship with someone. More than half of users under 25 said they experienced second-doubts after posting something.
Read the rest here.
TED: Esterh Perel on desire.
Another excellent talk from TED:
Dodson and Ross on vulvas.
The lovely ladies, Betty Dodson and Carlin Ross, discussing vulvas (NSFW language):
Porn-watching straight men more likely to support gay marriage.
From Instinct (and all over the web):
Study: Straight Guys Who Watch Porn Are More Likely To Support Same-Sex Marriage
Do straight men need to watch more porn? Sure, if you want them to support marriage equality, according to a new study published in the Communication Research Journal.
The study suggests that watching porn opens up the mind of men to be more accepting of "non traditional sexual situations" and therefore more accepting of the gay community.
“Our study suggests that the more heterosexual men, especially less educated heterosexual men, watch pornography, the more supportive they become of same-sex marriage,” said Indiana University Assistant Professor Paul Wright.
"Pornography adopts an individualistic, nonjudgmental stance on all kinds of nontraditional sexual behaviors and same-sex marriage attitudes are strongly linked to attitudes about same-sex sex," he added. “If people think individuals should be able to decide for themselves whether to have same-sex sex, they will also think that individuals should be able to decide for themselves whether to get married to a partner of the same-sex.”
"Since a portion of individuals’ sexual attitudes come from the media they consume, it makes sense that pornography viewers would have more positive attitudes towards same-sex marriage.”
Thursday mail - February 14.
Have any questions or comments related to sex or sexuality? If so, fire away.
DYAC Valentine's special.
in Humour Etc.
Happy Valentine's Day from Sommeecards.
in Humour Etc.
Separate prom with no gays.
This story has been making the rounds the last few days. From the Huffington Post:
Sullivan High School's Students, Staff Distance Themselves From Anti-Gay Prom Plan Frenzy
Students and staff at an Indiana-based high school are trying to quickly distance themselves from the international media frenzy over one local group's plea for an "traditional" prom that would ban gay teens.
In an interview with local NBC affiliate WTWO, Sullivan High School Principal David Springer clarified that officials had no involvement with the group calling for the gay-free prom and that all students will be welcome at the school-officiated event in May.
"Anybody can go to the prom," he said. "Of course, a girl could go out with another girl if they didn't have a date or that was their choice."
Echoing Springer's sentiments was Dale Wise, senior minister at Sullivan First Christian Church where the anti-gay prom group met. "Our church has no involvement in this whatsoever," he is quoted as saying. "It's a community thing where people have met here."
As it turns out, the teacher who caused the most controversy after she equated lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) teens to those with special needs in an earlier news report isn't even affiliated with Sullivan High School. The report notes that Diana Medley, who was among the students and parents present at a Feb. 10 meeting demanding that gay students be barred from attending the alternate dance, actually teaches special education at North Central Junior/Senior High School in nearby Farmersburg, Ind.
Among those to condemn Medley's comments was outspoken LGBT rights advocate Dan Savage, who marked that the teacher "should be fired." A petition calling for Medley's dismissal sprang up in the wake of the report and currently has over 10,000 supporters.
And the video clip to go along with the story:
And a parody: