Gloria's Oversexed Mind

This story fascinates me. A transman and his wife wanted kids -- and she couldn't have them, so he decided to lend his (still in place) womb for this miraculous event. It is a reminder that anything in this life is possible, and that expanding human potential through science and technology can bring surprising blessings.

Pregnant man Thomas Beatie has given birth to a baby girl

A man has given birth to a baby girl at a hospital in the United States.

Thomas Beatie, who was born a woman but after surgery and hormone treatment lives as a man, had the child in Bend, Oregon.

Beatie, 34, kept female reproductive organs when he legally became a man 10 years ago.

The baby, conceived through artificial insemination using donor sperm and Beatie's own eggs, was born on June 29 and Beatie and the baby are "healthy and doing well," according to reports.

July 5, 2008 in Post-Modern Pop Culture, Sexual Health, Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (0)

I imagine that Concerned Chameleons for America are complaining to their congressmen right now about these filthy perverts.

...a tiny chameleon from Madagascar spends two-thirds of its life inside its egg. Once it hatches, it engages in brutal sex, then dies before its offspring see the light of day....

Karsten thinks sex might be what kills the adults off after just 4 to 5 months. In as-yet-unpublished experiments, he studied the mating behaviour of F. labordi in enclosures and discovered that courtship is a risky business for both sexes.

"These males will fight fiercely in long, rather drawn-out combats, and their courtship behaviour is also rather violent," Karsten told New Scientist.

Violent sex means chameleons die young

It isn't only the males who are violent. From the same article, a male specimen:

And one of the species' Violent Femmes attacking a male.

The only good word to describe this chameleon's sex life would be sadomasochistic. I won't call it sadomasochism (because all good pervs know that what we mean when we say sadomasochism is not only safe, sane, and consensual but a conscious choice). But the word sadomasochistic applies and is, in my view, an unfortunate omission from this article. Reporters are given to using "sadomasochistic" to describe everything from violence to emotional abuse in humans -- and consistently use terms like "sadomasochistic" and "fetishistic" to apply to non-sexual behaviors. But the truth about sadomasochism -- that such behaviors are the seexual norm for many species, and evident throughout nature - never seems to get a nod.

So I'm nodding!

Whatever the environmental reasons, including the brevity of their life-spans, environment alone does not explain why this species, and innumerable others (not just insects and reptiles, but mammals and primates) are given to mixing in pain and aggression with orgasm and reproduction. Much more important, I believe, is the role of genetics, and how genes program androgens. If an exceptionally high level of androgens can explain SM tendancies in F. labordi perhaps one day we will be able to prove that geneticsdetemine SM tendancies in Homo sapiens too.

July 2, 2008 in Pets and Animal Love, Sex and Sadomasochism, Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (0)

In case you ever doubted evolution (if you still do, well, shame on you for reading this blog! what would your pastor say? clearly you need some counseling with the glorious Dr. Brame...ahem ahem)....

Anyway, a couple of new studies hammer home how very closely human emotions are linked to our closest evolutionary relatives. Evolution is all in the details, isn't it?

Why Female Chimps Shout During Sex

Female chimps often cry out during sex to attract nearby males, but they keep quiet when other females are around so they don't alert their competition, a new study finds

Chimps also love to hug and kiss! Mmm. HUGGING. KISSING. GOOD.

Study: Chimps calm each other with hugs, kisses

For most folks, a nice hug and some sympathy can help a bit after we get pushed around. Turns out, chimpanzees use hugs and kisses the same way. And it works. Researchers studying people's closest genetic relatives found that stress was reduced in chimps that were victims of aggression if a third chimp stepped in to offer consolation.

"Consolation usually took the form of a kiss or embrace," said Dr. Orlaith N. Fraser of the Research Center in Evolutionary Anthropology and Paleoecology at Liverpool John Moores University in England.

Side note: recently I've been trying to give clients more hugs. Years ago, I'd read of some therapists who were using hug therapy and felt, well, kind of appalled. Then met someone whose therapist had invited her to sit in her lap for an entire session. SHE was appalled and never returned after that. So I have generally tried to walk a line between expressing affection with heart-felt hello and good-bye hugs v. all-out huggie-contact during therapy. But often as I'm listening to someone I realize, OMG, they SO need to be hugged. I finally decided to see what a long hug, as PART of therapy, might do and asked a particularly trusted and hug-deprived client if we could try a 10-minute hug a few weeks ago. It was a little awkward (for us both, I think) but, what do you know, it has had an amazingly positive effect. I won't say it's effected a break-through but it seemed to slice off a whole big chunk of my client's generalized anxiety. Amazing. I still won't be inviting anyone to sit in my lap, but the new research has definitely got me thinking. The simplest, most basic gesture of affection can be emotionally transformative for humans.

June 19, 2008 in Pets and Animal Love, Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (1)

Pretty fascinating study, with all kinds of interesting implications...but all I could think about when I first read this was the scene in "The Fly" where the tiny little man-head on the fly-body screams "Help me! Help meeee!"

Flies get 'mind-control sex swap'

...Researchers genetically modified the insects so that a group of brain cells that control sexual behaviour could be "switched on" by a pulse of light.

The team was able to get female fruit flies to produce a courtship song - behaviour usually only seen in males.

The study, published in the journal Cell, suggests that the wiring in male and female flies' brains is similar...

June 19, 2008 in Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (0)

While I am not a fruit fly, and do not want to be one, I must say this little bit of scientific news makes me wonder.....could 20-something boys be my Fountain of Youth?

Hmmmmmmmmmmmm...........

Hanging with the young doubles life span of fruit flies: study

Forget radical calorie restriction or human growth hormone. If it's longevity you are after, you may want to consider spending more time with members of the younger generation, according to an animal study released Monday.

The study was done in fruit flies and builds on earlier research showing that interaction with younger members of the species appears to be a factor in healthy aging, both in humans and animals....

May 28, 2008 in Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (3)

Since I can't get out into the garden today, seems like a perfect time to reflect on the things of nature -- especially their sex habits.

Was fascinated recently to find a couple of studies on the sexual behaviors of flowers. Those pretty little sex organs we take for granted are filled with mysteries and intricate systems for spreading their pollen far and wide. As these mysteries are revealed, they suggest sexual behaviors that seem nearly human. How do plants achieve these coy mechanisms, without brains? And, by the way, wouldn't it be a blast if human sex organs were as versatile in their courtship?

For example, the orchid apparently has perfected a technique that mimics female wasps -- fooling males into mating with them. Scientists weren't sure why they did this but now it seems there is an evolutionary purpose: by drawing male wasps to mate with them (instead of female wasps), the flowers get a larger pool of wasps to carry their pollen to other orchids.

Sexy orchids do more than embarrass wasps: study

Orchids that mimic female wasps may not only waste the time of the male wasps they lure into spreading their pollen -- they also seduce them into wasting valuable sperm, Australian researchers reported on Wednesday.

And the flowers benefit twice -- getting help in their own reproduction, and perhaps indirectly producing more male pollinators in the process.

Some of the most exotic orchids are known to have evolved their convoluted shapes to attract insects, who unwittingly collect and transfer pollen as they try to mate with the flowers.

Meanwhile, have you ever wondered why flowers have long stems that make them wave so freely in the slightest breeze? Me neither. But scientists decided to look into the matter and discovered that it is yet another sexual ploy to attract potential pollinators. While humans may worry about whether size matters, in the world of waving flowers it's all about the wobble.

Flowers "wave" at insects to get their attention, scientists have discovered.

This acts as a powerful signal to passing pollinators, allowing the plant to attract more insects than less mobile flowers growing atop short, thick stems.

"We found wavy flowers are more visible to insects, and thus attract more pollinators and set more seeds," said John Warren.

But flowers ultimately face an evolutionary trade-off, he believes.

"Short, fat-stalked flowers don't wobble enough and are less attractive to pollinators; yet very wobbly flowers are just too wobbly for the insects to handle, as the insects cannot land on them.

"Only flowers that wobble the right amount are successful in setting seeds."

I think people forget, when surrounded by nature, that what really surrounds them is a non-stop orgy of animal and plant lust. Every living thing we see about us diligently goes about the business of getting fucked again and again and again. No wonder I love spending time in my garden.

Here's a youtube view of some lavendar seducing bees:

May 13, 2008 in Pleasures of the Garden, Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well WOW. Fascinating. Better than stem cells! I wonder what other research doors this study will open.

The monthly discomfort many women see as a curse could pay off someday as Japanese researchers say menstrual blood can be used to repair heart damage.

Scientists obtained menstrual blood from nine women and cultivated it for about a month, focusing on a kind of cell that can act like stem cells.

Some 20 percent of the cells began beating spontaneously about three days after being put together in vitro with cells from the hearts of rats. The cells from menstrual blood eventually formed sheet-like heart-muscle tissue.

The success rate is 100 times higher than the 0.2-0.3 percent for stem cells taken from human bone marrow, according to Shunichiro Miyoshi, a cardiologist at Keio University's school of medicine.

Scientists say menstrual blood can repair hearts s

April 24, 2008 in Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (1)

I guess today's meme is "sexual civil liberties," because this is another story about a situation where what people want, and what doctors/lawyers believe is appropriate for them, clash.

It's a strange little ruling about a very peculiar case. Pervs may enjoy the nonconsensual SM medical scene twist to it, but the ethics of this case bothers me a tad.

N.Y. jury rejects lawsuit over rectal exam man didn't want

A hospital did nothing wrong when it tried to examine the rectum of a construction worker who had been hit on the head by a falling wooden beam, a jury found Monday....

Marrone said Persaud, 38, was injured while working at a construction site in midtown Manhattan on May 20, 2003. Persaud received eight stitches for a cut over his eyebrow at the hospital, but denied emergency room staffers' request to examine his rectum, the lawyer said. He said doctors told Persaud the exam could help determine whether the accident caused spinal damage.

When Persaud resisted, staffers held him down while he begged, "Please don't do that," Marrone said. Persaud hit a doctor while flailing around, so the staffers gave him a powerful sedative and performed the rectal exam, he said.

Hospital witnesses testified at trial that the exam was never completed, but Marrone said that when Persaud woke up he was handcuffed to a bed and had an oxygen tube down his throat and lubricant in his rectum.

My first reaction to this story was that it sounded like an episode of House, where a patient is forced to undergo a test or treatment s/he doesn't want because brilliant diagnostician House knows what's best and will act accordingly, in the name of science. It makes for a very entertaining premise on a TV show -- and clearly it stands up in court. But ethically? Morally? I think there are some open questions here.

I'm guessing that hospital staff saw a head injury, assumed that someone with a head injury might be raving or delusional from said injury, particularly when he started flailing and trying to stop them from saving his life, and would then knock him out and do the test anyway, knowing it was the standard medical care for anyone with a head injury. No doubt they were in line with hospital guidelines and my guess is the jury believed the docs behaved ethically as well.

BUT. Who really owns your ass? I mean, once you step into a hospital setting, do you also automatically cede your right to your ass (or balls, vagina, penis, breasts)? Should doctors sedate you to perform a test you explicitly said you didn't want? Perhaps this guy had some kind of homophobic complex. Perhaps he had horrible hemmorhoids. Or maybe he had some other, more traumatic association with anal penetration that doesn't make sense to other people but does to him. In fact -- what if he'd rather die than have anyone anally examine him?

It may sound nutty but it isn't. We all have our emotional quirks, our crosses to bear, our hidden traumas. I know from clinical experience that people do develop phobias and traumatic associations with intimate areas of their body; for some the trauma of undergoing certain tests or procedures is more frightening to them than the risk to their life if they don't. It isn't logical but that doesn't make it any less legitimate: human emotions matter. Or they should. As do individual liberties and the right to decide what happens to your body.

In the end, this guy was anally raped twice: by a medical staff which plainly needs a lot more training in bedside manner; and by the courts which apparently did not take his emotional suffering seriously. I hope the poor guy gets some sympathetic counseling and can get on with his life, without feeling too scarred by the experience. My fear is that if he's ever in an accident again, he will refuse to go to a hospital altogether.

April 24, 2008 in Post-Modern Pop Culture, Sex Laws and Crimes, Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (2)

Though the study, or at least this report about the study, doesn't go there, one logical inference is that the men are hard-wired for prostitution.

Men's brains found to link sex, money

Using brain scans, researchers from Northwestern and Stanford universities, have shown that when young men are shown erotic pictures they are more likely to make a larger financial gamble than if they were shown a picture of items like a snake or stapler.

One of my personal gripes about sex laws is how stupidly sexist it is to target prostitutes while letting johns walk free. I've always said that if you're going to make a normal consensual adult sexual behavior a crime, you should at least enforce it justly. (Ok, ok, of course, I think it's disgusting that consensual adult sexual behaviors of ANY kind are crimes: sex laws are just another way for a government to force religious ideology down the throats of the sheep-like.) BUT the reality is that we are all subject to these laws. So is it too much to ask that the government at least dispense its obligations in a fair and just manner, and not limit itself to punishing the vulnerable class (sex-workers) while giving the monied class (clients) a free pass?

This study suggests that the root of such things as prostitution -- and the whole notion of money for sex -- may well be a genetic feature of male psychology in the first place. Though Western society is wedded to the notion of the evil woman (you know, just like the chick who made Adam chomp an apple in Eden), maybe behind every evil woman is a man whispering "fuck me and I'll give you a diamond ring," because he was genetically programmed that way. And perhaps women have been reacting to the male fetish all along -- and not, as so popularly believed in our culture -- because they are, by nature, ruthless gold-diggers. Of course, now I would love to see a study showing whether women are wired to enjoy getting money for sex the way men enjoy giving it for sex. Maybe it is our biology that makes us want men to spoil us with gifts?

The study raises a bunch of interesting questions about the phenomenon of "money slavery." There are different terms for it, but in brief it's the fetish for giving dominant women money as part of your service to, or ownership by, them. Its watered-down BDSM version is to be found in the "tribute" ritual, where pro dommes ask for gifts and cash beyond the fees they already charge. Vanilla-wise you see it when girls advertise for sugar-daddies, not to mention all the ones who accept rent money in exchange for a sexual relationship. Should I even mention all the ladies who will only marry rich? Maybe not.

But in its most extreme and harmful versions, money-slaves can easily be exploited or extorted to the point of bankruptcy and self-hatred. Sometimes it's with the slave's knowing and self-destructive consent but more often through criminal manipulations on the part of the sex-worker/con artist.

Are men hard-wired, to some degree, to want or need to give women money when aroused? Apparently so. Is a hardcore money fetishist, therefore, someone who, through the luck of the draw, got a little more of this or a little less of that in the genetic roll of the dice? If so, does that make it different from other fetishes -- or is this beginning of discovering that genetic pre-disposition plays a substantial role in the development of all fetishes?

April 23, 2008 in Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (0)

Speaking of outrageously controversial subjects.

A couple of years ago the international media seized on the very sad story of a brother and sister who were raised completely apart and got married as adults (she was actually only 15 at the time, but their marriage was legal). They met and turned to one another for comfort, and as so often happens between two lonely, desperate, emotionally wounded people, one thing led to another.

LINK

....They are a loving couple, who have been together for seven years and want to be with no one else. They have had four children. Beyond these details, however, the story gets more troubling. Patrick and Susan Stübing, who live in Zwenkau, near Leipzig, are brother and sister. Two of their four children have developmental problems, and all four have been taken into care. Patrick, 30, has served more than two years of a prison sentence for incest. Asked if she felt guilty about this breach of one of the last taboos, Susan, 22, simply shook her head and said: "No, I just want us to be able to live together."

Their case is raising much prurient speculation in Germany, not least because their reaction to the threat of further imprisonment for him has not been apology and shame, but defiance - an attempt to overturn paragraph 173 of the German legal code, which forbids sex with a close relative.

Pretty fascinating case. The great tragedy that has befallen their children is the best defense of incest laws. To ignore the genetic reality that children of incest are likely to have numerous physical and psychiatric disorders directly resulting from inbreeding is or should be a crime.

Unfortunately, it appears that the couple in question are simple. As the article presents them, they seem incapable of managing their own lives, much less of grasping the medical, legal and moral ramifications of their choices. And, one might well ask, where were the social workers and doctors all this time, as they continued to bear one disabled child after another?

Meanwhile, consider this research on incest which suggests that GSA (or genetic sexual attraction) is a known physiological phenomenon.

What has been discussed less, is that the Stübings seem to be a textbook example of a phenomenon called genetic sexual attraction (GSA). It occurs between blood relatives who have been separated for most of their lives, and meet in adulthood; it has been known to happen in all sorts of permutations - father/daughter, birth mother/son, siblings - even, occasionally, same-sex relationships between people who would not otherwise identify themselves as homosexual.

I don't think Germany will change its laws regarding incest to accommodate this troubled couple, even though science proves that GSA is a known phenomonen. But this case raises yet another interesting question. The husband has recently and voluntarily undergone sterilization. If adults were willing to undergo sterilization in order to marry a sibling, cousin, or other family member, and therefore no real harm to others could come of their relationship -- should incest in such cases still be a crime?

March 31, 2008 in Sex and Relationships, Sex Laws and Crimes, Sexual Health, Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (0)

Contrary to the many hysterical rumors floating around that there are hordes of people on-line who target young children to lure them into sex, a new Study rejects the Internet sex predator stereotype. The study shows that the most likely victim of a child predator is a teen-age girl who knowingly gets involved with men who are openly seeking sex.

The typical online sexual predator is not someone posing as a teen to lure unsuspecting victims into face-to-face meetings that result in violent rapes, U.S. researchers said on Monday.

Rather, they tend to be adults who make their intentions of a sexual encounter quite plain to vulnerable young teens who often believe they are in love with the predator, they said.

Well okaaaaay.

While I think there is a value in clearing up some misapprehensions about which population is really most vulnerable - and more accurately portraying the typical predator more as a clueless SOB who goes after vulnerable teens and not the sinister baby-molester parents have nightmares about - what really is the value of such a study?

The truth is always important. Yes of course. Good to know just what we're dealing with; good to alleviate some exaggerated stereotypes. Still, this study is right on the edge of providing rationalizations to the above-mentioned clueless ones, that somehow because the girls are a little older than expected, and perhaps equally engaged in pursuing the relationship, that such predators aren't quite as "bad" as thought.

Remember the bottom line of SSC: if someone can't *legally* give consent in the first place, it doesn't matter if they are willing or even eager to have sex. It's the adult's responsibility to back off or to explain that it is an inappropriate relationship. If you don't have the moral fiber to turn down the advances of a 13, 14 or 15 year old, the problem isn't the law: the problem is your own lack of maturity and impulse control.

I've often blogged that I think the age of consent (18 in most parts of the US) is mad high. But whether a kid is 5 or 15, a kid is a kid and having sex with a kid is and should remain a crime, and for good reason. Taking advantage of a teen risks messing that kid up for life. Adolescent sexuality is VERY different from, and very fragile as compared to, adult sexuality. Tamper with the sexuality of any kid, male or female, who has not yet reached maturity, and that kid will simply never be the same person ever again. (And, despite the lies predators tell themselves, that kid is by no means "improved" or somehow bettered by the experience.) I know this not only from years of working with the adult victims of child molesters; I know it from personal experience too.

As I see it, if a man or woman can't have exciting sex with someone their own age, they need help dealing. Maybe they need to grow up themselves. Maybe, in fact, they themselves were victims of predators and are repeating the cycle. Whatever the root cause, anyone who goes after minors is in denial about what they are really doing.

Studies like this only provide additional ammo to the people who need it the LEAST: the predators who end up saying, "but, your Honor, she wanted it."

February 19, 2008 in Sex Laws and Crimes, Sex On-Line, Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (2)

xkcd - A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math, and language - By Randall Munroe

Thanks to Mike for this!

February 12, 2008 in Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (0)

We're still a long way from completely understanding how and why orgasms work but anyone interested in the science of sex should read this article from the L.A. Times, which delves into the latest understandings about the crucial neurological mechanisms that drive sexual ecstasy. It's also of special interest to anyone who has (or is partnered with someone who has) a spinal cord injury, with fascinating data about why and how orgasm remains possible even when you are paralyzed from the waist down.

Here are a couple of interesting tidbits from this in-depth, three- page article:

Science of the orgasm

-- To unlock the secrets of the climax researchers are looking behind the scenes and into the nervous system, where the true magic happens.

-- In an orgasm orchestra, the genitalia may be the instruments, but the central nervous system is the conductor.

-- About 43% of women and 31% of men in the U.S. between ages 18 and 60 meet criteria for sexual dysfunctions, according to a 1999 report on the sexual behavior of more than 3,000 U.S. adults.

February 12, 2008 in Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (0)

Today's news carried a fascinating headline,

Strange Creature Immune to Pain

For a second, I wondered if it was perchance, one of the stellar masochists I've had the depraved honor to know...but alas, nothing so exciting as that. Just some research on the itty bitty mole rat:

As vulnerable as naked mole rats seem, researchers now find the hairless, bucktoothed rodents are invulnerable to the pain of acid and the sting of chili peppers.

Some of us may remember back to the 1980s when this thumb-sized, petal-pink creature was first discovered. (If you don't, rent Erroll Morris's fantastic documentary, Fast, Cheap and Out of Control.) Since then, scientists have been poking and prodding at the little critter (not too cruelly, one hopes) trying to figure out what makes these efficient little oddballs tick.

But better than studying why a mole rat doesn't feel pain, I'd like to see more studies telling us why humans feel so much pain. It seems pretty obvious that other species have better protections against sensitivity to pain. I won't even get into the subject of mental pain, because it's so obvious that, on the whole, animals are not as depressed or crazy as people. Physically though, we've all seen animals make amazing recoveries from abuses and injuries that would kill a human. Their tolerance for discomfort is truly awesome, their ability to cope with insect bites, scratches, and other minor pains is pretty incredible compared with our own. There is no mistaking when they have serious pain. But overall, they seem to have a higher threshhold for pain than we humans can even imagine. If you live or work with animals, think how many times a particular animal gets sick in a year. Hopefully very seldom. Now think how many times in a year you're flat on your ass with a back ache, a headache, sinus problems, toothaches, a pulled muscle, a cold, etc. etc. (Or how many times you walk through the day feeling like you should be home in bed.)

Instead of pain-testing animals, I wish scientists would focus more time and energy on figuring out why humans experience more or more intense pain than other species. Is there a biological explanation? Do our bigger brains cause bigger pains?

January 29, 2008 in Pets and Animal Love, Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (2)

Or, more properly did it.

Perhaps you've been losing sleep over this question, wondering for years whether dinosaurs were as horny as people, and whether or not they waited for marriage to have sex. Your torment is over! Scientists have just proven that dinosaurs messed around in their teens. Oooh. The depraved bastards!

Dinosaurs Had Adolescent Sex, Study Finds

Adolescent pregnancy is not a modern invention — it occurred in dinosaurs millions of years ago.

Medullary bone, a type of tissue present in modern birds when they are developing eggs, has been found in three dinosaur fossils, U.S. researchers report in Monday's online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The dinosaurs were aged 8, 10 and 18, indicating they reached sexual maturity earlier than previously thought....

The medullary bones examined by Werning and Lee came from the meat-eater Allosaurus and the plant-eater Tenontosaurus. It's also been found in Tyrannosaurus rex, they said.

Image above snagged from The Straight Dope, where Cecil patiently explains to a female reader exactly how dinosaurs performed their prehistoric perfidy. To wit:

Dinosaur copulation was most likely accomplished by means of "kissing cloacae." The cloaca is the all-purpose body cavity that reptiles and birds use for copulation, urination, and defecation. You can see where this might reduce the romantic potential right off the bat. (Then again, maybe not.) One brings the cloacae of the partners into apposition; the penis or hemipenis, if any, extrudes from the male and is inserted into the female; and the generative material is translocated.

Mmmmmmmm....the translocation of generative material. *shiver* That's so much hotter than "and then the dino popped his nut."

January 16, 2008 in Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (1)

My news-clippers keep dropping the results from this new study in my mailbox, announcing that Circumcision 'does not curb sex'.

The study, undertaken in Uganda, asked men if they were less satisfied by sex after circumcision. The results showed that the men studied did not feel circumcision inhibited their sex drive or significantly impacted their performance.

Now: let's think about this for a minute. You ask a big group of men who have just had their genitalia modified, and must live with the results for the rest of their lives, if they feel any less like men. And you are asking this question of African men, raised in fiercely male-dominated, macho cultures. How many of them do you think will admit they don't feel as manly as they did before?

The single biggest problem that all sex researchers, all around the world, have to deal with, and overcome, is people lying about sex. It isn't because people intend to lie. More often than not, shyness, embarrassment, inhibition and pride lead people to fudge their genuine feelings and experiences. That's why sex studies where individuals retain anonymity can sometimes prove more honest than sex studies where people answer questions face-to-face.

Now, if you live in a culture where masculinity and sexual prowess define your social existence and are at the core of your self-image and identity -- would you admit if your penis didn't work quite as well after surgery? Or might you want to keep that shameful little secret to yourself?

But what really troubles me about this study is that it was conducted at all.

As I've blogged dozens of times, there is no solid medical evidence to support circumcision -- not in babies and certainly not in men. While circumcision *MAY* reduce the risks of AIDS infection up to 50-60%, condoms will reduce that risk by 99%.

Another wonderful thing that condoms do is they prevent pregnancies. And there is the rub.

Why would scientists undertake an expensive third world study on a method that could possibly lower infection rates by only 50% when condom use is clearly the best option? Why not educate people and, meanwhile, possibly spare new generations of AIDs infected children from being born?

I think you know the answer but I'll give it to you anyway: religious fanaticism. More precisely, Christian religious fanaticism. More precisely than that, George Bush-style Christian religious fanaticism. The same fanaticism that is making it harder in the US for women to get birth control. The same ideology that dictates that birth control is evil, and it's better for people to transmit diseases than to be able to prevent pregnancy. After all, if people didn't risk getting a disease or having an unwanted pregnancy, who knows what could happen? People might have sex for pleasure! Oh, God, no, not that! Not pleasure!

We don't really want to repair the AIDS scourge in Africa. If we really wanted to, we'd help people to take control of their sexual destinies. We'd educate them about condoms. We'd work to overcome their prejudices against condoms and birth control. We'd distribute free condoms. That's the only solution to the crisis.

As far as I'm concerned, this study is just another propaganda tool for Bush's religious jihad against science.

January 14, 2008 in Sex and Spirituality, Sexual Health, Sexual Politics, Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (1)

At last. An explanation for why men like to hear women scream in bed.

Female monkeys may shout during sex to help their male partners climax, research now reveals.

Without these yells, male Barbary macaques (Macaca sylvanus) almost never ejaculated, scientists found....

The researchers found that females yelled during 86 percent of all sexual encounters. When females shouted, males ejaculated 59 percent of the time. However, when females did not holler, males ejaculated less than 2 percent of the time.

Link

Meanwhile, here's a career opportunity that I'd never considered. I can see it now. Gloria Brame, Ph.D., MPTC (Monkey Pelvic Thrust Counter). From same article:

To see if yelling resulted from how vigorous the sex was, the scientists counted the number of pelvic thrusts males gave and timed when they happened. They found when shouting occurred, thrusting increased. In other words, hollering led to more vigorous sex.

Counting monkey pelvic thrusts is admittedly "quite weird, but it's science," researcher Dana Pfefferle, a behavioral scientist and primatologist at the German Primate Center, told LiveScience. "You get used to it."

December 20, 2007 in Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (0)

Excellent piece by Rachel Kramer Bussel in the HuffPo, which makes the important point that most diagnoses of sex addiction are sheer BS. Sex addiction has to meet the same criteria as a drug addiction or alcoholism to be a legitimate addiction. Loving sex and wanting to have a lot of it doesn't make someone an addict. Wish I could tell that to all the shrinks who poison clients' minds with this nonsense.

Am I A Sex Addict? Are You?

....To summarize, just because you think about sex, have sex, use pornography, and fantasize about people other than your partner doesn't make you a sex addict in any way. If you are truly concerned about your own sexual history and think you may need treatment, by all means, seek out a qualified therapist. In the meantime, let's separate our prudish judgments about other people's sex lives from a true problem.

November 27, 2007 in Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (0)

By Mithras Invicti

Hallelujah:

Other things being equal, ... youngsters who have consensual sex in their early-teen or even preteen years are, if anything, less likely to engage in delinquent behavior later on.

That new analysis ... is one of several recent instances in which a more precise parsing of data has begun to turn long-standing societal presumptions on their head. By bringing evidence to bear on complex social issues, these studies are forcing individuals and policymakers to rethink such hot-button topics as the benefits of breast-feeding, the risks of teen child-bearing and, in the latest example, the harms long presumed to result from teen sex.

Not for the first time, repressive, religiously-motivated anti-sex attitudes led scientists to misinterpret the data they were seeing. It took more precise techniques and an unbiased approach to find the truth:

[Another study, from Virginia,] found that identical twins, who have the same DNA, were more similar to one another in the ages at which they lost their virginity than were fraternal twins, whose DNA patterns are 50 percent the same -- an indication that genes influence the age at which a person will first have sex. Other twin studies have found the same pattern for delinquency.

Together, those findings suggest that some genes -- perhaps, for example, those that increase impulsivity and risk-taking -- may underlie both behaviors.

"You need to have some appetite for risk-taking to be a delinquent. And the same if you're 13 and going to have sex for the first time," Harden said.

This is significant because the government has focused its efforts on delaying early sexual behavior - including such extremely problematic tools such as abstinence-only education - as a means to prevent other, bad outcomes. If there is no causal link between early sex and delinquency, that approach is useless.

Efforts to prevent delinquency can hardly take aim at people's genes. But the Virginia study also indicates that social factors, as yet unidentified but perhaps involving relationships with family and friends, have an even bigger impact than genes on whether a child will become delinquent. Those are the things that should be identified and targeted by delinquency-prevention programs, said Jeanne Brooks-Gunn, co-director of Columbia University's National Center for Children and Families.

"I wouldn't be focusing on early sexuality . . . to alter rates of delinquency," she said.

That sound you hear is the gnashing of teeth by millions of anti-sex activists.

Perhaps most surprising, the Virginia study found that adolescents who had sex at younger ages were less likely to end up delinquent than those who lost their virginity later. Many factors play into a person's readiness for sex, but in at least some cases sexual relationships may offer an alternative to trouble, the researchers say.

I can see the slogans for that public service campaign now: "Do positions, not drugs."

Of course, there is still the obligatory stern warning:

Even then, there are emotional and physical risks. Young adolescents, in particular, are less likely to use condoms and so are vulnerable to sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies.

Yes, well, that's a public health problem that stems from a lack of knowledge. The answer to that, of course, is sex education for pre-teens.

-Mithras

November 16, 2007 in Caption Contest, Sex and Culture, Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (0)

Can you blame them?

From The Guardian (UK)'s just-published list of the most bizarre (and in some case, downright cruel) studies "conducted in name of scientific inquiry"

When investigating the sexual arousal of male turkeys researchers at Penn State University were impressed to see that the birds would attempt to mate with lookalike dummies. Piece by piece they removed parts of the dummy and found that the males were still highly aroused when presented with no more than a head on a stick.

story link

image from NWTF: wild turkey facts

November 15, 2007 in Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (0)

If you have a serious medical fetish, you should check out the Development of the Modern Cystoscope: An Illustrated History. It's available on MedScape, the go-to source for everything going on in the world of medicine. I do a lot of CME's (post grad training) in sexual medicine on-line with MedScape but you don't need credentials to join their free service. You'll need to sign up to see this exhibit but if you are keenly interested in medical devices, it's worth the effort to read up on how urological technology has progressed from the early days.

Here are a few photos to tease you - the article on MedScape contains many more. Now imagine being a patient in the late 19th and early 20th century, and having your doctor come at you holding this, preparing to stick it up your urethra and take a peek.

October 31, 2007 in Sex and History, Sex and Sadomasochism, Sex and Technology, Sexual Health, Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (2)

If you haven't fucked a feminist, then you've missed out on all the fun. At least, that's what a new survey claims.

Feminism boosts sexual satisfaction for both men and women, a new study suggests.

LINK

Hmmm...maybe if some of those right-wingers had feminists in their beds, they wouldn't get busted so much for going to hookers or cruising men's rooms in search of hot sex....hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

(Thanks to freddie for sending this in.)

October 31, 2007 in Sex and Relationships, Sexual Politics, Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (0)

From colleagues at Sheffield University, UK, comes this request that kinky people take part in an important new study. I've emailed with the lead researcher, reviewed their academic statement and research missions, and believe this is a VERY worthwhile project.

If you have the time, please support their work and fill out the survey. It's ANONYMOUS.

If you have a blog, please feel free to spread word of this new study. It's studies like these that can, one day, change not only how the psychiatric and psychological communities see us but can lead to positive changes in sex laws as well.

G.

Participate in an on-line SM study

We are looking for volunteers to take part in an on-line questionnaire about sexual beliefs and interests, personality and lifestyle, including sadomasochism. A major aim of the questionnaire is to contribute to awareness of BDSM among mental health professionals and work towards reducing discrimination.

The questionnaire is completely anonymous.

Go there now: www.smsurvey.co.uk

Sheffield Clinical Psychology Research Team (Sheffield University, UK)

October 31, 2007 in Sex and Sadomasochism, Sex On-Line, Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (0)

When I first moved to Georgia, and had some real land to garden, I made endless discoveries about simple things in nature that New York urban brats don't know. Like one day I saw this really interesting giant mushroom-type thing and when I nudged it gently with my foot, it exploded, showering me with weird fluff. I asked my cultured country husband what the hell just happened and he explained the magic of the puffball, a mushroom which relies on clumsy or curious animals to assist in its reproductive cycle. I promptly declared myself the stooge of fungi and have since felt somewhat cheap and used whenever opportunistic seedpods and other botanical spooge glue themselves to me. Like, whoa, I didn't consent to being the patsy in a lower life form's primitive sexual rituals. SAFE WORD.

So I was moved to read about the plight of the thrips who are tossed into a doubtless frustrating game of push-pull between the Australian cycad's male and female sex organs.

Living fossils have hot nonconsensual sex

US biologists report that the Australian cycad, a primitive tropical plant with large seed cones, uses a novel "pull-push" method to manipulate the tiny flying insects, or thrips, that it relies on for pollination.

The thrips tend to congregate in the male cones (which are much like pine cones) where they feed and make their homes -- but at a certain time of day, the plant will heat up and emit a toxic order, repelling the insects.

The pollen-laden insects then fly to the neighbouring or surrounding female cones which are emitting a more attractive odor, where they pollinate the female plant's eggs.

"The cycads are trading food for sex," said Robert Roemer, a co-author of the paper in the journal Science....

October 15, 2007 in Pleasures of the Garden, Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (1)

Perhaps I'm just in a grim mood lately, but when I saw these two articles popping up within a day of each other in some newsclippers, I had to laugh. Bleakly. Like, holy shit, women are doomed! We're doomed!

First, there's a new Australian study that claims that 45% of women are haunted by sexual abuse, a statistic comparable to the rates of abuse in the US and UK.

Meanwhile, a new US study claims that One in 7 New Mothers Depressed Before, During, and After Pregnancy.

In other words, one out of seven of us is depressed her whole life.

BUT.... I'm not sure I trust the science behind these.

For example, think about how the Aussie researchers define sexual abuse. Their definition is so broad it assumes that even seeing a naked man or watching porn is traumatic and abusive to a girl. People who survive serious physical abuse might beg to differ. There is a vast difference between being coerced into sex by an adult, and having an older friend stick porn mags in your face or you catching sight of an exhibitionist on the subway.

Y'know, I've yet to see a study that suggests it is abusive when boys encounter porn or flashers. As we all know, our culture finds it difficult to believe that an underage boy who's been molested by a sexy school-teacher is a victim. Female abusers usually get away with it, whereas a male teacher who seduced an underage girl would be sitting in jail, no question about it.

IMHO, as a grown woman, a feminist and as a therapist (though admittedly I am seeing only a small percentage of people - those who recognize they need some help), I believe that men are abused and depressed in the same shockingly high numbers as women. The main differences seem to be that researchers are more likely to (a) hear more from women about their fears and pains (men chronically, almost pathologically, resist talking about the abuse and depression issues in their lives), (b) assume that women are always frailer than men, are always the victims and always require more protection than men and (c) don't study men nearly as much as they study women when it comes to mood disorders and sexuality.

When I see men weep in my office about their relationships with their parents or confess terrible things that happened to them in boyhood, I know they feel every bit as much as any woman. Often it's the first time they've told anyone these things. They are trapped by a culture that expects men to shut up about pain.

Researchers need to realize this isn't a woman thing and invest the same effort to examining sexual abuse and depression in men, using the same criteria they use for women. Those high rates may really speak to the human condition - emotional pain, suffering, trauma our common cross to bear whether female or male. And maybe, just maybe, women wouldn't seem so doomed if scientists shifted their studies to view humans without gender bias.

October 11, 2007 in Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (1)

Of all the curious conclusions to be drawn from this study, concluding that Men like domination by women has to be the curious-est.

Did it ever occur to them that men simply feel less physically threatened by women than vice-versa?

October 6, 2007 in Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (0)

The latest and greatest tool for teaching medical/nursing students how to catheterize men (very elderly men, by the looks of it) resembles something the cops would've found on a shelf in Jeffrey Dahmer's house.

It makes me wonder if this partly explains why so many doctors treat people as a series of parts rather than whole entities.

September 10, 2007 in Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (0)

Gina Kolata does the math, and concludes that Sex surveys don't add up. Highly recommended reading for anyone seriously interested in sex surveys (and their flaws).

August 14, 2007 in Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (2)

Hot off the presses from Qatar (Qatar??), via a British magazine, comes the startling news that

The enormous difference between male and female sexual behaviour may be explained, in animals at least, by a tiny organ in the nose rather than by any gender difference in brain circuitry....

LINK.

When I was a child, my father would say "The nose knows."

I guess he was right.

August 6, 2007 in Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (0)

By Mithras Invicti

The Kinsey Institute has an online survey up that looks at what people mean when they use the term "hard had sex." It takes less than 10 minutes to complete, so do something good for science and participate.

(Via Trish Wilson.)

-Mithras

Update 5:50 p.m.: Uh, the survey about what people mean by "hard sex" will be taken at another time.

August 4, 2007 in Mithras Invicti, Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (0)

Although some scientists may be murmuring about how it's a desire to increase their reproductive chances, anyone who reads about birds abandoning their nests to get laid know it isn't about the future chicks they hope to hatch: it's about momma's orgasm RIGHT NOW.

Perhaps the discussion of the male bird's impressive equipment on Scienceblogs will help shed some light on why lady birds are so eager for avian corkscrewery.

The Johnny Wadd of Birdland

August 1, 2007 in Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (2)

The rampant decay that is the Bush2 White House is now oozing from every skanky orifice of government. The latest horror concerns an investigation by two Senators (one Democrat, one Republican) into why the FDA fired a high-ranking scientist after he spoke out against a diabetes drug made by Glaxo. (note: you'll need to register with MedScape to read the full article)

A senior Food and Drug Administration scientist has told congressional investigators that the FDA removed him or her from work on GlaxoSmithKline Plc's drug Avandia after voicing concerns about the safety of the diabetes pill, two senators said on Tuesday....

OK. So let's recap current events.

1. We're not safer from terrorists than we were before 9/11.

2. Our national food supplies are widely contaminated.

3. We can't count on the government to ensure that the drugs we take to save our lives - and the lives of our parents and our children - are reasonably safe.

In the words of George, "good job, Brownie!"

Holy crap. This is the FDA. How can they protect a potentially bad product when their job exists uniquely to protect Americans from potentially bad products? How many OTHER questionable drugs have they okayed during this Administration?

The FDA's always been a mess but the mess used to be that they were so bureaucratically meticulous it took years for drugs to be approved. In retrospect, that was a better mess. Drug companies don't benefit in the long-run either. Industry leaders like Glaxo or Pfizer risk staggering class-action lawsuits down the road if their products are rushed to market by Bush's yes-men.

August 1, 2007 in Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (3)

By Mithras Invicti

American Sexuality Magazine:

“[Planned Parenthood of Boston] said it was much too permanent and weren’t going to give it to me, plus my insurance wasn’t going to cover it,” recalls [Lauren] Green. What’s more, according to Green, “It was all and only about my age.” She was twenty-two at the time.

Green’s experience is not that unusual. Though no actual laws have ever been put into place, most OBGYNs refuse to provide women under thirty with permanent forms of contraception. Dr. Daniel Wiener, assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at McGill University in Montreal, is one such doctor.

With thirty plus years of medical practice, Dr. Wiener finds no good reason for putting otherwise healthy patients in surgery: for one, there are anesthetic risks involved. Plus, tubal ligations are considered elective surgeries (assuming the patient can use other, less invasive forms of birth control). More pressing, still, is the fear that a patient may one day change her mind. Sound familiar?

“Twenty-one to thirty, that’s a big decade. A huge decade,” says Dr. Wiener. “A woman who is twenty-five and says, ‘That’s it, I’ve made my choice,’ I would probably just have to say, ‘You’re making a twenty-five year old choice. You sure that’s going to be a thirty-eight or thirty-nine year old choice?’”

In other words, come back when you’re older.

[D]octors routinely make life decisions for other people. And with more than three decades of practice, Dr. Wiener isn’t about to question his proficiency on the subject:

“Why do we arbitrarily choose thirty? Because of the thirty years of practice in my life. Because of the number of years of experience that we, as physicians, have come to see that twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven year old women have, historically, more often than not, told you they regretted their decision to get their tubes tied.”

First of all, it's ironic that Planned Parenthood would be the agency that denied a woman the ability to get contraception. Second, Dr. Wiener, the ob/gyn, refuses to perform tubal ligations on young women because the consequences are permanent. But he presumably would have no objections to helping Lauren Green have a child, a decision which also has permanent consequences for at least two people. Green's too young to have her tubes tied, in Wiener's view, but not too young to have a kid. I see.

Ann Friedman at feministing compares Dr. Wiener's reasoning to Justice Anthony Kennedy's in the recent Carhart II decision. In that case, Kennedy said it was constitutional to ban late-term abortions - even if medically necessary - because women who have abortions may one day come to regret it. Friedman also links to a Salon post by Tracy Clark-Flory, who says:

[M]aking medical and ethical judgments like whether to tie a woman's tubes (or whether someone is prepared for a sex change) is a doctor's right and, arguably, an essential part of the job description.

And reacts pretty much as I did:

Um, what? Is it a medical professional's job to "protect" women from their own decisions?

Clearly not. I would add, the sex change analogy is a non sequitur. Gender identity disorder is a diagnosis that a doctor makes, and the treatment for the condition, transgender transition (including, sometimes, sex reassignment surgery), is managed by a physician.  Clearly, the doctor has a greater role to play in gatekeeping in that situation than in the contraception one where the only legitimate question is, "Are you sexually active or planning to be?" If the answer to that is yes, then, as Friedman says:

I think Justice Ginsburg's advice in the wake of Gonzales v. Carhart applies to this situation quite nicely: inform women of their options, the attendant risks, and the likely outcomes. Then let them make the decision for themselves.

Yes, the woman may come to regret her choice. That's a feature, not a bug, as they say. Autonomy means you live with the consequences of your actions, good or bad. In medicine as elsewhere, personal autonomy is the right of every competent adult. Any other policy treats the patient as incompetent or a child.

One last thing: For women who want their tubes tied, and who have the means but can't find an ob/gyn willing to do it, one possible solution is medical tourism. Get the procedure done safely and sit on the beach in Costa Rica for a week - sounds like a great combination to me.

-Mithras

July 30, 2007 in Mithras Invicti, Sex and Culture, Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (0)

By Mithras Invicti

Sorry about being a downer, but these stats surprised me:

A federal survey in the early 1990s found that 21 percent of American adults had the infection. Among blacks, the rate was 48 percent. A follow-up survey this decade found that the national prevalence had fallen to 17 percent, but in blacks it had not gone down significantly.

The quoted story is about the controversy surrounding advertising by GlaxoSmithKline, one of the pharmaceutical companies that makes drugs for genital herpes.

Nearly one in two African American adults has genital herpes. Could it be you? Could it be your partner? . . . A simple blood test is the best way to know if you have it.

That's the language of an advertisement that has begun running in publications and on radio stations with largely black audiences in cities including Baltimore, Detroit and Atlanta. ...

The "Say Yes to Knowing" campaign partners Glaxo with the National Medical Association, the country's main society of black physicians, and the American Social Health Association (ASHA), a nearly century-old organization devoted to fighting what used to be called "venereal disease." Each has received money from Glaxo in the past, although no donations were made in connection with this effort.

The controversy stems from the fact that most people with herpes are asymptomatic, and testing for and treating herpes in asymptomatic people is usually considered a waste of medical spending (even though asymptomatic people can transmit the disease to their sexual partners). In this case, though, researchers aren't sure whether testing a whole subgroup - like all African-Americans - is cost-effective.

I can see both sides of this. As a medical consumer, I want to know if I have a disease. And as a layman, I discount the cost-benefit analysis, so it just strikes me as crazy to treat people who develop symptoms rather than prevent transmission of the disease from asymptomatic people. But intellectually I know that herpes, like HPV, is one of those sexually-transmitted infections that cause anxiety and depression but not much medical harm. (I mean HPV strains that cause warts, not the few that cause cervical cancer, of course.) And condoms don't help very much in preventing the spread of either, so it's hard to practice "safer sex", especially if your partner is asymptomatic. So if you're sexually active, you have to realize you can catch something - 80% of all women will contract a form of HPV in their lifetime, for example - and just deal with it rationally. Being rational medically means you don't treat things that aren't causing harm. So, for example, women who develop genital warts are monitored with more frequent pap smears to look out for abnormal cervical cells, but you don't screen asymptomatic women for the HPV strains that cause cervical cancer.

And of course, there is this element to the controversy:

A physician and consultant who works part time for the Detroit health department, [Dr. Anita] Moncrease urged Glaxo to engage other city health departments and is negotiating with the company for help in paying for blood tests for uninsured people in Detroit's public clinics.

She admits there is a risk of stigma and stereotype with a message aimed at one racial group. "I am concerned about the negative connotations because this is a sexually transmitted disease," she said. "But I am concerned about the public health of the citizens of the city of Detroit more."

Right. It isn't racist to say, "Protect your health."

My intuition is that it makes sense to urge African-Americans to get tested, whether symptomatic or not. Clearly, they should study the outcomes as people get tested, and if it's not cost-effective, then stop. But I think it's worth it to try.

-Mithras

July 24, 2007 in Mithras Invicti, Sex and Culture, Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (0)

Does a person really NEED a reason to have sex?

Apparently so, since a couple of American sex scientists have discovered that people they studied came up with 237 reasons for getting it on. Wow. I guess they've seriously pondered their motivations. You don't suppose other species sit around thinking, "Boy, gathering seed is hard work, maybe a quick boink will perk me up" or "That was a really tasty dead lizard he gave me today. Maybe I should throw him a piece."

Anyway, the results are from a study titled Why Humans Have Sex. Maybe it could be a new family game around here: trying to think of reasons to have sex that did not make it into this study.

Reason #238: I can't resist the sight of a man in a chastity belt.

July 18, 2007 in Sex and Relationships, Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (1)

By Mithras Invicti

So, CBS and Fox refuse to air a commercial for Trojan condoms. CBS says that the commercial's sexual content and bar setting is inappropriate even late at night. Fox, being Fox, just says that they won't air ads for contraceptives qua contraceptives. Such marketing, they say, must "stress  health related issues."  ABC and NBC will air the ad - but only after 11:30 p.m.

Can people grow up a little, please? More to the point, can the people who have control over the publicly-owned airwaves get it through their heads that they have a duty to help spread safe-sex messages? Preventing unplanned pregnancy is a health issue, children. Yes, you'll get phone calls from idiots who are offended, but even Middle America now realizes it's the 21st century and not talking about things doesn't prevent them from happening.

-Mithras

July 16, 2007 in Mithras Invicti, Sex and Culture, Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (0)

Now here's an exciting study with shocking results. Women drawn to men with muscles.

Wow. I didn't realize there were men who didn't have them. The poor things. How do they feed themselves?

But seriously. Isn't it and hasn't it always been obvious that women like buff men? I can't stand when people study the obvious - it's almost as bad as writing an obvious headline, such as Women drawn to men with muscles.

Frankly, I'd like to see a study whose results can proudly proclaim women drawn to men with spines. But I don't expect I'll see it in my lifetime.

The study also earnestly reports that

muscles in men are akin to elaborate tail feathers in male peacocks

Well, okay. But they're not as attractive on hats.

July 11, 2007 in Sexual Beauty, Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (0)

By Mithras Invicti

Porn blogger Sam Sugar notes that Violet Blue (the writer, not the porn actress, confusingly) has a book out, The Smart Girl's Guide to the G-Spot, on how women can have better orgasms:

Beginning with an anatomical guide and incorporating suggestions for couple-play, positions, toys, and safer sex, The Smart Girl’s Guide to the G-Spot will lead to thrilling new sensations and earth-shaking, bed-breaking, gale force climaxes.

Sugar begins his review by asking:

Does the G-spot she writes about, that of “earth-shaking, bed-breaking, gale force climaxes” which “Any girl can (use to) unleash her own awesome orgasmic superpower”, exist?

Before I’m accused of being a Neanderthal misogynist I’ll clarify.

Which struck me as very odd. Why would simply asking a basic question lead to accusations of misogyny? Sugar goes on to describe history of the labeling of the G-spot in 1950:

It was immediately controversial. The G-Spot suggested there were two types of orgasm. The ‘immature’ clitoral orgasm any woman could experience and which didn’t have to involve the penis, and the ‘mature’ vaginal orgasm which could be experienced during penetration which was ‘deeper’ and more satisfying. Gynecologists refused to consider the G-Spot a fact without physical evidence, and feminists saw it as a huge step back for sexual politics for the very same reasons many men embraced it.

Fifty years on feminist orthodoxy has changed to the point where writers like Violet Blue are advocating views diametrically opposed to their forbears without a trace of irony.

"Feminist orthodoxy"? Another strange note. I seem to recall this book, "Our Bodies, Our Selves". When has female sexual self-discovery been disapproved of by "feminist orthodoxy"? (And what constitutes the orthodoxy, anyway?) Next:

There’s no credible evidence the G-Spot is the ’super-clit’ many pop-sex writers claim, and the science which supports the G-Spot also suggests not all women have the organs and tissue we think it may be made of. If, as is currently thought, about two-thirds of women only orgasm in response to oral or digital stimulation of the clitoris, and women who’ve had the G-spot area removed surgically report the same sexual sensitivity before and after the operation, how important can the G-Spot be?

Well, this is a bit of poor logic. Since men's genitals are external, guys don't have any trouble figuring out how they best like to get off. This, to put it mildly, is not the same for women. If women don't learn to stimulate their G-spots (and how to get their male partners to do so), then it would not be surprising to learn that most women get off clitorally or that removal of G-Spot tissue would not affect their sexual satisfaction.

Sugar concludes:

At best we have an area of increased sensitivity which only some women have, and which can’t be adequately explained. A lucky bonus which is capable of providing pleasure to some. Not a hidden organ every woman has and which opens the door to new avenues of sexual understanding.

On its face, this criticism is fine: If not every women can have better orgasms through manipulating the g-spot, then sex advice books which say they can are ripoffs.  But I think the illogic and vehemence of Sugar's argument and his strange, defensive allusions to sexism and feminism show that there is something else going on here. First, fear of inadequacy. For some men, the news that women can have much more satisfying orgasms means that the orgasms those men give their partners have might not be all that great. Second, straight-up male privilege: Some men don't want to have to think about what might please women more, because for them sex is about a woman taking care of the man's needs, not the other way around. The assertion that there is a better way to make a woman come means that the guy should learn what it is, when he just doesn't want that hassle.

-Mithras

July 1, 2007 in Mithras Invicti, Sex and Culture, Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (0)

And speaking of the sexual strangeness of other species....a female shark who's been living in captivity is pregnant. Mazel Tov to the proud parents. Uh. Except wait a minute. There were no males living in the tank with her. At least no male sharks, leaving scientists to ponder the possibilities. Did she mate outside her species? (Girls, you can never be too careful: watch out for those male crabs). Maybe she's a Virgin Mother and the poor shark-baby was destined to be the Jesus Christ of the seas. Or maybe one of those other girl sharks is actually wearing drag. I wait with bated breath for the paternity test.

Shark Pregnant in Aquarium With No Males

June 28, 2007 in Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (0)

Boy if I had to go without sex, I might stop eating too.

Researchers studied small gobies at Lizard Island on the Great Barrier Reef and found only the largest male and female fish were allowed to breed, while the rest of the school were forced to wait in a queue.

Dr Marion Wong from James Cook University says fish who tried to jump the queue were punished and expelled from the group.

The study also found that some fish would purposely starve themselves in order to avoid growing to a larger size ....

OK, now how many submissives (of the homo sapiens variety) think this is the beginning of an excellent alternative SM universe story?

(Spot, raise your hand!)

June 28, 2007 in Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (0)

This curious little compilation courtesy of LifeStyles(R) Brand Condoms.

I have my doubts about this list. For example, how do they know other animals don't have sex for pleasure? Has anyone asked them? I didn't think so! (And, um, what about other great apes???)

THE TOP 10 THINGS YOU PROBABLY DID NOT KNOW ABOUT ANIMALS.

Q: What are the only two species that have sex for pleasure?
A: Humans and dolphins

Q: What king of the jungle can mate more than 50 times a day?
A: A lion

Q: What circus performer can be pregnant for up to 2 years?
A: An elephant

Q: What slimy creature has reproductive organs in its head?
A: A snail

Q: What is the only bird with a penis?
A: A swan

Q: What barnyard animal can have an orgasm that can last for 30 minutes?
A: A pig

Q: What spider will usually eat the male after mating?
A: A female black widow. She only has to mate once because she can store the male's sperm, and then fertilize her own eggs as she lays them in the sac.

Q: What insect may attack and eat the father of her own children?
A: A female praying mantis

Q: What aquatic creature has the biggest penis?
A: That distinction belongs to the blue whale. The largest measured penis reached 8 feet!

Q: What furry creature has two reproductive channels?
A: A female rabbit has two vaginas.

June 21, 2007 in Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (4)

This has pretty much always been true for me: first I look at a man's face, then I look at the rest of his body. I look at his eyes, his mouth, his hair. Soulful intelligent eyes and a great smile are both big turn-ons. His body parts (legs, arms, cock) interest me too, of course and I'll LOOK, of course - but it's not going to happen if his face doesn't appeal to me somehow.

I've wondered if that's more of a woman thing than a man thing - since men are so much more likely to comment about a woman's body and, at times, almost seem uniquely fixated on this or that part (breasts, feet, ass, etc.)

Now a study out of Emory University shows that Men tend to look at faces first when shown sexy photos of women. Very very interesting.

Thanks to Spot for sending me the link. WOOF!

June 20, 2007 in Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (1)

Interesting new study from Canada shows that men and women dream about sex in equal amounts. Some other fascinating results:

* Both men and women reported experiencing an orgasm in about 4 per cent of their sexual dreams.
* Women reported that orgasms were experienced by other people who figured in their dreams, in about 4 per cent of their dreams.
* In contrast, men did not report other characters experiencing orgasms in their dreams.
* Current or past partners were identified in 20 per cent of women's sexual dreams, compared to 14 per cent for men.
* Public figures such as movie stars and politicians were twice as likely to be the object of women's sexual dreams, while men were twice as likely to report dreaming of multiple sex partners.

Seems like the biggest difference is that even in their dreams, women like to see other people come, while men are mainly focused on their own orgasms.

MEN!

June 16, 2007 in Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's been proven, ladies and gentlemen. Sexlessness can screw you up.

The bad news: the less you fuck, the less you fuck.

The good news: sexual frustration makes you work more.

Note to self: stop talking about how overworked you are. People might get the wrong idea.

A team of German researchers...is arguing that sexual frustration...can precipitate a downward spiral, pulling couples helplessly and unbeknownst into a swirling vortex of all work and no nookie.... Ragnar Beer of the University of Göttingen surveyed almost 32,000 men and women for his Theratalk Project, which has found that the less sex you have, the more work you seek.... link

May 21, 2007 in Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (0)

(Embarrassed aside: Naturally no sooner do I officially announce a mini-hiatus than I find something I NEED to share. Forgive me, readers, for, um...I love to sin.)

Anyhoooo.....I was up all night writing, working on the nth revision of a proposal for my next non-fiction book, and, well, let's just say that the mind can go to very peculiar places when you're stoked on coffee and creativity at 4:30 a.m. Engrossed as I was in my subject matter, my brainpan was an orgy of random sex facts, strange sex theories, and highly specialized questions to which I was giddily Googling answers.

While a page loaded, I glanced fondly at my little girly-girl poodle, wrapped cozily around my right foot and snoring softly. For no reason I can or particularly want to explain, I was possessed of an overwelming curiosity to know something about her I had never before even considered.

Does a poodle have a clitoris?

Time for a little digital investigation - of the Googling kind, that is.

Sure enough, there it was. Right there on Wikipedia. Female dogs have clits. A fact that seems so terribly obvious now but which never registered on my consciousness before.

All female mammals have them. Of course. They vary in size, shape and function too. And while I have not yet seen any studies on orgasmic response in other species, I assume that the clit plays as important a role in mating for animals as it does for people. (Or perhaps it plays a bigger role, as it's hard to imagine a poodle unable to climax because, oh, say, she's afraid she'll go to hell if she likes sex too much.)

But of all the female mammals in the world, surely the hyena has the most impressively multi-functional clitoris possible. Maybe that's why they laugh so much. Because, really, if there was mammalian justice in this world, getting clitoral erections and giving birth through the clitoris should grant you license to claim a special evolutionary status in the world of clits.

I probably shouldn't speculate. Maybe next week Google will tell me that dolphins can knit sweaters with theirs.

Next question: why DO all female mammals have jolly buttons? Is female orgasm the rule in other species' sex lives?

April 24, 2007 in Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (3)

A couple of very worthwhile articles for students, scholars and readers who like to keep up with the latest trends and theories in sexuality...

First, an interesting thought-piece about transmen on college campuses, the issues they deal with, and how all-female colleges are now grappling with policy on transgendered students who transition while in attendance. The big question: should transmen (female-to-male transgenderists) be allowed to stay at an all-girls' college once they start identifying as male?

Is love romantic - or is it the biological product of millions of years of evolution? Is homosexuality a choice or a genetic destiny? This informative overview of current research suggesting that our genes determine our sexual behaviors and preferences raises a slew of fascinating questions about the nature of human life itself.

April 10, 2007 in Sex and Culture, Sex and Relationships, Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (0)

Although I couldn't find anything on CD that was specific to sex, I did find a vendor who specializes in historic catalogues of medical devices. This one, OB/GYN INSTRUMENT COLLECTOR'S REFERENCE certainly caught my attention.

March 24, 2007 in Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (0)

Medical technology is now tackling one of the biggest psychological barriers to good reproductive health: the fact that many physicians avoid examining genitals and rectums and that training and instruction in performing such exams is overlooked in medical school. Often it's because doctors are as embarrassed as everyone else when it comes to touching other people's "private" parts. So they leave those kinds of exams to specialists, like gynecologists, urologists and proctologists - which, in turn, means most people never get those parts of their body checked out until something goes really wrong.

Checking your reproductive and anal organs SHOULD be a standard part of a complete physical. A peek between your legs and butt-cheeks is just as telling about your general state of health as a peek down your throat or up your nose.

In most cases, a quick exam will find the source of any discomfort and prevent further complications down the road. Although most women try to get to a gynecologist annually, a wide range of common ailments and minor problems (warts, infections, hemorrhoids, and so on) do not require a specialist and should not wait until your next annual visit either.

Dr. Carla Pugh has come up with a clever way to help medical students and their professors overcome their shyness: life-like robotic forms for doctors to play with. (Shown: robotic rectum and digital uterus.) I just hope the people at Real Doll don't get hold of her technology or no one will ever leave the house again.

(Thanks to Mike for pointing me to MedGadget's in-depth coverage of this story - from whence the photo derives. )

March 20, 2007 in Sexual Science and Medicine | Permalink | Comments (0)

It comes as no surprise that a recent British sex survey shows that women are more likely to come with direct clitoral stimulation. Digit