Inside Gloria's Mind

Gloria Brame is SERIOUSLY SEXUAL

Check me out and turn me on! My all-new radio show is now available on BlogTalkRadio! Just click the button and listen now as Dr. Brame and co-host Danny O'Neill cover all the hottest stories and subjects in 21st, plus tackle one juicy main topic each week.   Sex politics!  Controversies!  Stories in the news!  Plus tonight, I have a few STRONG statements about femdoms  - what we are and what we are not -- that you'll definitely want to hear.

 

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Seriously Sexual

on Blog Talk Radio

 

 

10 Questions With Gloria Brame: FemDom magazine

Almost forgot! An in-depth interview I gave to FemDom magazine recently. Check out the ten juicy answers to their intriguing questions!

 

1.  You went from an MA in English to a Ph.D. in Human Sexuality.  How and why did you make that leap?

I started up a BDSM group online in 1987 on Compuserve, and by 1990, was all too aware that there were no really good books for people like us, at least not in the USA.   In my offline life, I was a writer and English professor so naturally I began to think about writing such a book myself.  Once Different Loving was published in 1993 there was no turning back.  I became too notorious for  straight academia and media.  So I decided  to return to grad school again and embrace my destiny as a kinky sexologist.

 

 

via femdommag.com

 

Sex questions answered in the Eastern Echo (interview)

I love being interviewed by college newspapers, and this one was extra special sweet to do. Follow the link to East Michigan's sex columnist for answers to some students' pressing sex questions.

 

This week I have a special treat for you wonderful readers. I’d like to introduce you to Dr. Gloria Brame, Ph. D., one of the world’s foremost sexologists and the author of several books on the topic of human sexuality. Those books include “Different Loving” (An Exploration of Sexual Dominance & Submission, a Groundbreaking Study on BDSM/Fetish Subcultures), “Come Hither” (A Commonsense Guide to Kinky Sex, for Novices and Experienced Alike) and, her most recent book, “The Truth About Sex Volume 1: Sex and the Self” (A Sex Primer for the 21st Century).

 

via www.easternecho.com

Suffering Slavegirl in Bondage (explicit)

Thought I'd switch it up with this amazing image from ca. 1890s.  120 years later, and BDSMers are still turned on by the exact same stuff.   In fact, this looks more contemporary than the ones from the 1920s.

 

 

Dr. Oz should update his penis technology

One of my biggest pet peeves is sex experts giving bad or misleading sex advice. Just caught an article by Dr. Oz about male menopause, which was interesting to a point -- the point where he recommends an outdated self-test for erectile function...

 

“So how do you know if you may be going through male menopause? Dr. Oz asks. “We’ll give you two really simple tests that you can do at home. The first is the erection overnight stamp test.”

via www.emaxhealth.com

 

OK.  As a dominatrix, the notion of thousands of men across America wrapping roles of stamps around their dicks and waking up with paper cuts fascinates me.  As a sex therapist, though, I can't recommend his advice. First, the test is not an overnight procedure but requires three days of restful (i.e., normal) sleep with your dick wrapped in stiff postage stamps.  If that turns you on, have fun.  But don't expect more than cheap thrills:  the test doesn't provide accurate assessments of testosterone or blood flow.   Which is why most doctors don't give it anymore.

Get the facts on postal stamp penis bondage from the National Institute of Health at Medline Plus 

Geography may be more relevant than sexual behavior in HIV infection rates

A South African doctor ponders his clinical experience and the growing data to support the idea that HIV infects different populations differently.

 

HIV is spread through promiscuity. So goes the popular wisdom. What if this is wrong?

....I sit in my HIV clinic with my frightened, bewildered patients who have to endure the headlines screaming for their punishment.

These people look pretty normal to me. When I ask about their sex histories, it doesn’t feature the rampant sexuality conjured up in the fevered brains of politicians, letter writers and corridor conversationalists I have to endure.

Their sexual history is of a couple of boyfriends or girlfriends, a marriage, children, pretty mundane-sounding sex lives, and a shocking and unexpectedly positive test....

There is accumulating evidence that people in our region are more vulnerable to HIV per sex act than our European, Asian or American counterparts.

No one disputes that people can modify their HIV risk, but the devil seems to be in the geography, rather than sex behaviour. Studies suggest that in places like Thailand and the US, men with three times more sex partners have one-tenth of the risk of acquiring HIV compared with Uganda.

 

via www.iol.co.za

 

Poly/swing is the new wave in India

Ignore the negative spin suggesting that open marriages are on the rise because of boredom -- the reality is that Indians are liberating themselves from models that don't work, and exploring the potential for happier, sexier lives.

 

Wife swapping, one-night stands and threesomes are not just happening in Bollywood, but also entering the sex lives of urban Indians....

 

Sixty-six per cent [of] husbands watch porn, 28 per cent of them are open to one-night stands, 23 per cent admit having extramarital affairs and 16 per cent say they wouldn't mind swapping their wives. Also, 10 per cent men admit to having had threesomes.

Women are not far behind, as 34 per cent regularly watch porn, 24 per cent have had one-night stands, orgies and even paid sex, and three per cent have had threesomes.

"People are experimenting with their love lives like never before," Dr Bir Singh, professor of community medicine at AIIMS, said.

 

via indiatoday.intoday.in

 

Mississippi votes on "personhood" (reproductive rights)

This vote is all about ideology, and yet another depressing example of how religion continues to subvert the law. 

Why Mississippi's 'Personhood' Law Could Outlaw Birth Control

news.yahoo.com

On Tuesday (Nov. 8), Mississippi voters will decide whether fertilized eggs qualify as "persons" under the law from the moment when sperm and egg meet. But while the law is designed to challenge Roe v. Wade and outlaw abortion, doctors say that the wording is also likely to outlaw common methods of birth control.

It isn't casual sex, it's unprotected sex

Just found this typical assessment of how viruses spread: it's the fault of those pervs who have casual sex, of course. At least that's how the UK's Telegraph reports it in Casual Sex Fuelling Cervical Cancer Rise.   Really?   Grrrr! I had to comment.

 

It isn't casual sex fueling the problem. It is UNPROTECTED sex. No one will ever succeed in preventing people from having sex. All the focus should be on teaching everyone, from an early age, how to prevent disease transmission.

By distorting the study into a moral statement about sex, you only add to general terror and ignorance about sex. What is needed is universal sex education so that easily preventable diseases may, in fact, be prevented.

Dr. Gloria Brame

Ph.D. in Human Sexuality, American College of Sexologists

Author, The Truth About Sex

What's the Buzz? Vibrators are what's happening

Women who seldom or never come during intercourse should put some buzz into their partnered lives. The idea that the vagina is key to female orgasm has been disproven a thousand times: it's the clit that needs the stim. If you find it hard to get over the top, add a vibrator to the mix and let the pleasure flow.

 

According to a new national survey of more than 3,000 Americans, most people feel positively about women using vibrators. What's more, the study associated positive beliefs about vibrators, and recent use of them, with high levels of sexual satisfaction and other measures of sexual function.

via www.livescience.com

Biology isn't Destiny

Great read. that touches on points I raised in the section on biological determinism in the Truth About Sex. Biology does not rule human destiny -- culture, circumstances, and constantly fluctating psycho-social forces also shape human sexuality.

 

Paleolithic penises can tell us about the origins of genital piercing, and also about ourselves  -  io9.com

 

At what point does sex cease to function as a purely practical means of reproduction? In other words, by what process does sex become something more than just a biological imperative.

 

What's better than Jesus pizza? Ball Face

Facing cancer bravely, this little ball gave doctors something to marvel about.

 

 

 

Doctors at Queen's University said they were stunned to see the image of a face in the ultrasound scan of a testicular tumour.  via www.thestar.com

 

Adding Another Missing Piece to Human History: the Denisovans

In case you haven't been following the news in human evolutionary history, this past September scientists added an all-new member to the human ancestry tree, a homonid group labeled "Denisovans." Now a new study backs up that finding by showing a definite genetic link between homo sapiens (us) and Denisovans, who appear to have primarily migrated to and mated in Asia.

 

Humans frequently mated with a mysterious 'third species' of early man whose descendants can be found in present-day East Asian populations, a study has confirmed.

....The Denisovans likely split off from the Neanderthal branch of the hominin family tree about 300,000 years ago, but little else is known about their appearance, behaviour or dress.

via The Daily Mail, Mysterious 'third species' of caveman had sex with our Asian ancestors

Consider the barnacle's penis

Yes, I really know how to find 'em.

 

Barnacles are known as one of the more ‘hung’ of the invertebrate world with penises reaching up to 10 times their body size. Not all barnacles are equally endowed though. To make the situation more complicated, barnacles are simultaneous hermaphrodites

via Gloria FanPage

 

Shocking Development for ED

Israeli doctors say that shock therapy to the penis successfully treats ED. Who wants to go first?

Shock Waves: New Solution to Sex Problem in Men, Say Researchers | French Tribune

frenchtribune.com

If you are among those men who are tired of trying many conventional therapies to get rid of their sexual problems and still do not see any hope then here comes good news for you.

via www.facebook.com

Three Great Reasons to Buy My New Book

1.  You'll learn the weird and hilarious history of female hysteria and the evolution of the dildo.  The hit new movie, Hysteria, with Maggie Gyllenhaal is covering the very same subject!  Read about the true history of Victorian sex crazes in The Truth About Sex.

2.  You'll find out why I call masturbation "the fundamental building block of adult sexual performance." (p. 9), and learn the difference between sex addicts and people who just like a lot of sex.

3.  The Truth About Sex will make you laugh.  It will make you think.  It will make you go "nooooo!"  And it will definitely make you go, "I never thought of sex that way!"

Buy it now.  You'll feel soooo much better.

 

     

 

Things you're missing The Truth About Sex

In case I haven't pimped it adequately, my FaceBook fanpage is a rollicking little den of sex news, views, and other delicious oddness. (if you don't do FB, you can follow my page's feed on Twitter or connect with me on LinkedIn). Current topic:

The Truth About Sex

Is Obama's economic policy doomed by his penis size?

What Penis Size Reveals About Economic Growth

www.ibtimes.com

It pays to be average.

LikeUnlike · ·

via www.facebook.com

An Announcement About Announcements

I've decided to do my usual blog thing today all day but I have some juicy announcements in store for you TONIGHT!  Tonight, as in LATE NIGHT.   Around MIDNIGHT (eastern).  Maybe even later.  You know, right around the time when an SM club starts to get really interesting....Hmmmmmmmmmm.

First:  the winner of the Masturbation Poetry Slam book giveaway contest will be announced.  With much fanfare!  I am also choosing 1 runner up who may request a free PDF version of the book. 

Second:  I am appearing on TWO (count 'em, TWO) radio shows next week.   I'll be talking to Tiffany Grantham on Playboy Radio (Sirius) on Monday, and to Bonnie Kaye on BlogTalkRadio this Sunday, about my new book, The Truth About Sex, Volume I: SEX AND THE SELF. Each show discusses sexuality from different points of view.  Tiffany's a well-known Playboy tv/radio personality with mainstream appeal; Bonnie's focused on the trials and tribulations faced by straight women who are married to gay men.   As in WOW, I can't wait to talk to them both!

Anyway, back to the regular photo extravaganza for now, but come back later tonight for all the news and details!  The excitement just never stops around here, does it?

 

 

 

Sexploration with Monika: turn me on tonight

We had a major fail last time around so we're trying it all over again.  Tune in tonight to FCC FREE RADIO and hear me talk to Monika Thomas, the hostesss of Sexploration, about my new book.

 

Do you think size matters? Learn how this film tackles the issue & raises money for an AIDS orphanage in Africa. Friday on Sexploration with Monika we'll learn about new penis-stretching devices from Nicholas Sher of "Inches for Charity," then Dr. Gloria Brame will tell us about her new book, "The Truth About Sex." With Token Straight Guy, Jim Stone.

9 pm eastern/6pm pacific in Studio 1a on FCC Free Radio.  Listen live or download podcasts of your favorite shows - hosting 80+ hours of live programing!

Pull My Trigger!

Coming after Labor Day! Coming weekly!  Coming to you! And just plain coming! A whole month of give-away contests!  Ooooh.  That's four chances to win an autographed copy of my new book.  AHHHHHH.  And get a gorgeous free bookmark too! Oh, God, yes, yes, yesssssssss.

What's the catch?  Why, all you'll have to do is...oh, yeah, I can't tell you that yet. 

Can't wait to find out?  Must enter a contest NOW?  You have the power to TRIGGER the fun!   Help me reach my September goal of 500 "likes" for my My FaceBook bookpage and, like magic, the first contest will appear here within 12 hours!  Amazing.  Don't forget to poke around the page for photos, stories, news headlines and chat you won't see anyplace else. 

 

CLICK THE MAGIC BANNER

and LIKE my page

 

 

When I get to 500 likes, or after Labor Day, whichever comes first...

The first contest's rules will be published here AND on my bookpage.  Early birds don't necessarily catch the bookworm, but at least they don't go hungry.  Truth FTW!

Mother Nature

via  Hans van der Kamp

 

 

Did you know that biological males can lactate?

 

The Exquisite Moment of Female Orgasm (1960s nude photo set)

Don't be shy.  She wants you to watch her masturbate.

She wants to share the beauty of sex with you.

 

Sexual pleasure is paradise on earth.

 

And makes us feel fully alive.

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find out why masturbation is so good for you

Bookmark Me. I'm Going Communitarian

Starting Monday (tomorrow, August 15, 2011), I'm going to shift all writing/commentary and sex news over to my book page on FaceBook. I have a craving to create community around the book's themes.  Please join me there.

Since I've closed my old message boards, I'm also going to take advantage of FB's discussion app.  At The Truth About Sex Discussions, I will be doing old-style community chat, with fromal conversation topics and free-flowing chit-chat.

THIS WEEK'S TOPIC: Your Personal Attitudes About Sex

 

NO BIG CHANGES TO THE BLOG. I will continue to post pix as usual.  Have some wondrously rare photos to share over the next couple of days.

 

Bisexual Pulp: the myths, the misconceptions, the merriment

Double deviates? Really?  Why?  As compared to the repressed freaks who fuck in the exact same position every time they have sex?  Euw!  Give me deviation or give me complete boredom.

 

 

Women can start coming now

Yep, they finally went ahead and did it. They did what they have avoided doing for over 100 years: they proved that women do not need a penis to have an orgasm. 

Finally scientists are telling us what we've been telling men forever. Namely, that clitoral and vaginal stimulation actually provide different sensations. Scientists have used MRI brain scans to determine that these two types of stimulation differ because they actually activate different parts of the brain.

via www.nerve.com

Read more about the study at New Scientist

 

I note they do not specifically address orgasm.  Too bad, because it would be relevant to document whether the clitoral stimuli were more likely to produce orgasm than the vaginal stimuli.  I, for one, would love to know if the average female brain said "ohhhhhh" at vaginal stim, and  "OOOHHH-AAAHHH-OOOOOOHHHHHH" at clit stim (as I'll bravely conjecture it does).  IMO, when you want to produce a female orgasm, go to the clit (or, better still, buy a great buzzy toy). Fuck the vagina.  I mean, if you want to.  Otherwise, don't worry, be happy, and get busy in front.

IMO, the study of female sexuality -- from a medical and psychiatric stand-point -- has long been thwarted by doctrinal assumptions about what women are, or, more precisely, what women are SUPPOSED to be (i.e., asexual, designed by God as vessels for men).  Evidence that women have strong sex drives, experience intense sexual frustration, and so on, have largely been suppressed or unexamined.  The growing scientific data will, I believe, prove out a rational model of female sexuality that will jive with sex as women live it, not as they've been told they are supposed to live it.

 

 

New book reviews for my Truth

My publicity goddesses (Three Girls Media), just sent me links to and jpg's of all the reviews they've gotten for my book. You can see 'em all at the FB page for The Truth About Sex.  So far, they've all been very positive, so yay!

Now this one (below) is SPECIAL.   See, I tried to write the book for EVERYONE but generally expect that its biggest audience would be kink/queer/LGBT-identified people because of its progressive, anti-hetero-normative ideas.  I totally was not expecting a glowing review from a self-identified Conservative Christian.  Very glad, though, as I have worked quite successfully with many religious (Christian, Catholic, Jewish) clients and hoped it would be relevant to all people interested in having better orgasms.

 

 

via You Brew My Tea

If you listened to Da Vinci

 

You'd believe that semen traveled from the brain to the penis. 

 

“I expose to men the origin of their first, and perhaps second, reason for existing.”1 Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) wrote these words above his drawing “The Copulation” in about 1493 (fig 1).2 The Renaissance sketch shows a transparent view of the anatomy of sexual intercourse as envisaged by the anatomists of his time. The semen was supposed to come down from the brain through a channel which can be seen in the spine of the man.

via bmj.com

 

DaVinci's theory, as the reporter points out, was distorted by ideology.  Though brain sperm didn't gain a foothold in science, hundreds of equally flawed theories did.   (You've got to read the story of female hysteria for insight into the surrealistic view of women that persisted for almost 1500 years). 

 

 

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Gloria's truth is 100% ideology-free

when the scalpel slips: why I oppose circumcision

DID YOU KNOW that circumcision entered 19th century American sex history because prominent Christian doctors believed that genital mutilation of infants prevented them from masturbating later in life?  (You'd know that if you'd read my new book.)

The American Pediatric Association announced that circumcision served no clear medical purpose in the 1970s and discouraged doctors from performing the procedure.  But it was lucrative for doctors.  And parents wanted junior to look like daddy.  So insurance companies list it as elective surgery and people keep paying for it, in the belief that circumcision makes men healthier and happier. Neither. It just makes their dicks look more alike.  I'm sorry to put it so bluntly but there it is.

Meanwhile, although circumcision USUALLY does work out successfully for men (meaning they have normal function in adulthood), tiny imprecisions in cuts may alter adult function (from peeing funny to feeling tightness or oversensitivity in the glans). And every once in a great and tragic while, something gets totally fucked up.

 

A US judge on Monday approved a $4.6 million compensation payment for a boy who had the end of his penis removed in a botched circumcision shortly after birth.

The boy, who is now eight, underwent the operation when he was week-old baby in January 2003 at the Maternity Center of Vermont in Los Angeles, and still needs counseling to deal with the trauma, court papers said.

via Google News

 

One lesson learned from my SM life is that the way to play and stay healthy is by reducing risks and aiming for predictable outcomes.  One lesson learned in the cradle:  Don't fix what ain't broken.  And one lesson I teach in my book:  don't make decisions about your (and your children's) sexual health based on bullshit!  Get the facts.  Read the truth and learn how to make the sexually healthiest choices for yourself and those you love.

 

The Truth About That Gay Penis Study: media lied

Speaking of sticking to FACTS and not anti-sex booool-poopie, thank you Salon!

The Traditional Values Coalition's mission this week is to alert poor, beleaguered American taxpayers that they paid scientists to measure gay men's junk. You will surely be shocked to hear that this news has sparked a firestorm among staunch conservatives; the only problem is that none of it's true. Not only was the research paid for without government funds, but the study's findings could help save lives, and taxpayers' money.

Bloggers were quick to churn out the tabloid headlines that just write themselves: "Your Tax Dollars Going to Study Gay Men's Penis Size." Right-wing news sources like Fox and the Daily Caller got in on this orgy of outrage too. Naturally, the Daily Mail was not far behind.

But contrary to all of these reports, the NIH did not pay researchers to measure gay men's penis size. The data for the study -- "The Association Between Penis Size and Sexual Health Among Men Who Have Sex with Men" -- were "collected as part of a larger survey of the sexual health of gay men," says researcher Jeffrey Parsons, a psychology professor at Hunter College. That survey was funded by the college's Center for HIV/AIDS Educational Studies and Training -- not the NIH. What's more, they didn't even measure men's penises

"'Junk Science' that could save lives," Salon

Crank Up the Orgasms: early medical vibrators

The hand-crank was soon replaced by much more ambitious devices, like this pneumatic beauty, ca. 1880-1890, which doctors probably applied towards the relief of various conditions.  It'd be a lot funnier if it wasn't so sad to think of the fraud perpetrated on the public. 

 

 

By the early 1900s, devices were smaller, more powerful, powered by electricity, and -- most interestingly -- began to be sold more broadly to health and wellness professionals. 

This 1913 device had more bits than a Dremel.  Do I see a wire brush?

 

By the 1920s, vibrators moved from offices to homes, and  ladies no longer had to visit their doctors for relief from...ummm...poor complexions. Wha? Not even a tiny mention of the quack theory of "hysterical paroxysms" that could only be relieved by pelvic massage? Oh dear.  I guess Science Marched On!

 

 

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(you'd already know all this if you'd read The Truth About Sex)