Inside Gloria's Mind

If you follow me on FaceBook, I'll make you laugh

Did you know you can discreetly follow people on FaceBook now? I shut down my extra pages on FaceBook to streamline the Gloria Brame experience for you and ME.  Now I am back to hanging out on my personal page and owning it as an upbeat, kink-positive community of friends.

I'm maxed out on friend requests so please don't ask unless we're besties.  But if you go to http://www.facebook.com/DrGloriaBrame, and follow me, you'll see all the random stuff I put out there, from the music I listen to on Rhapsody to the updates on my Spreaker podcast, everything I add to twitter and LinkedIn,  shares and posts from my amazing and often hilarious friends, plus spontaneous comments and photos that don't show up here, including my most important duty in life, Sex Shop Teacher at the Plonsky Institute of Peculiar Merriments.

Not on FaceBook?  If you prefer Twitter, you can follow me there.

Get It From the Woman Who Studies Duck Dicks Herself #sexscience

My commentary yesterday about why I'm happy we study the sex lives of snails prompted my pal Dyadya Abdul to share this really awesome piece on Slate, affirming the value of sex study and correcting the myths and dumb-assery being spread by right-wing media sources. Highly recommended!

 

Why I Study Duck Genitalia, By Patricia Brennan

In the past few days, the Internet has been filled with commentary on whether the National Science Foundation should have paid for my study on duck genitalia, and 88.7 percent of respondents to a Fox news online poll agreed that studying duck genitalia is wasteful government spending. The commentary supporting and decrying the study continues to grow. As the lead investigator in this research, I would like to weigh in on the controversy and offer some insights into the process of research funding by the NSF....continue reading

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Snail Sex Study Funded With Your Tax Dollars FTW!

Snail Sex Study Funded With Your Tax Dollars FTW!

(CNSNews.com) –The National Science Foundation awarded a grant for $876,752 to the University of Iowa to study whether there is any benefit to sex among New Zealand mud snails and whether that explains why any organism has sex.

via www.niagarafallsreporter.com

 

I am SO happy to hear that our government is spending money on studying snails to gain insight into the biology and evolution of sex. I still wait for the day when they openly support the scientific study of human sexuality but if we have more intellectual freedom with other species for now, so be it. Drown us in weird facts PLEASE!  We need all the science on sex we can get.

But if you follow the link above, you'll realize they're trying to spin this as a waste of money! Huh?

Why does right-wing media continually jump on sex studies as if the devil himself is stealing your tax dollars?   Simple: the scientific study of sex leads to new ideas, new insights, an affirmation of evolution, and proof of sexual diversity.    That would be completely counter-productive for political agendas that want to promote ignorance, hatred, and fear.  So they try to control the minds of the zombies they wish to enslave by acting as if spending money on arguably one of the most important aspects of human life is a waste of tax dollars. 

Yes, it's true: education and knowledge cost real money.  But in the end, ignorance costs infinitely more, not just in dollar terms but in terms of human health and happiness. Read this little gem about how abstinence education contributes to the pandemic of STIs in the US for one of the many social consequences of keeping people stupid about sex.

 

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Want to know more about the science of sex and my opinions on evolutionary biology, and sexual intelligence? READ Vol. I of my trilogy -- the final section of the book is a guide to smart, ethical and evidence-based sexuality.

 

 

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Where in the world is Gloria: Hear me in SF 2nite

Getting very stoked for tonight's joyous leather event and bursting to talk about the first two volumes of The Truth About Sex (vol. 2 will be released in June!), and the long journey from Different Loving to my work today.

 

 

The Truth about THE TRUTH ABOUT SEX — Gloria Brame

Wednesday, March 27, 2013  

7:30 pm – 9:30 pm

@ Mr S. Playspace, 385A Eighth Street

Join us for a lively conversation with the distinguished, iconoclastic, pioneering sexologist and writer Gloria Brame, just completing the second volume of her three-volume summa The Truth About Sex: A Sex Primer for the 21st Century, reflecting a lifetime’s work and thought on sexuality in all its forms — conventional and not.

From Race Bannon’s review of Truth volume I, Sex and the Self:

“Everyone should read this book. I mean everyone…. Dr Gloria Brame is a friend of mine and someone I have longed admired for her sound mind and wonderful writing. She is one of the most refreshing and qualified voices in the world of sexuality today and reading anything by her is a joyful experience…. If you have anything to do with teaching or counseling about sexuality, buy and read this book. If you know professors teaching human sexuality classes, suggest this as required reading. If you know of anyone struggling with negative feelings about their own sexuality, buy and give them this book.” 

via www.sfldg.org

Hitting the Road, Boys

I'll be in San Francisco from this coming Saturday until the following Sunday and have lots of amazing plans lined up.   If you're in the Bay area, you can hear me talk about my life-work, volumes I and II of The Truth About Sex, at the Leather Discussion Group, on March 27, 7:30 to 9:30

What I don't know is if or whether I'll have much time for the blog.  So if you don't hear from me before April, 1, enjoy this last show and I'll be back before you know it.

xo,

G

 

If I'm not Here: downsizing on FB

I'm here, on Facebook, where I recently reduced my presence to ONE PAGE.  You cannot friend me (maxxed out), but please follow me.  The new FB software means followers can interact with my page almost as freely as friends.  Meanwhile "following" is more discreet than friending, for you shy lurkers.

In retrospect I'm annoyed I let myself fall into FB's tunnel vision by creating pages for all my entities (my books, my radio show, my therapy practice).   My Twitter account never liked it.  The blog had problems with it.   Really poor functionality.  One page gives me many more options and I plan to exploit them.

So going forward (and until the next big thing supplants Facebook as the go-to place for socializing) if you don't see me on the blog, it's because I'm having conversations on my facebook page, http://facebook.com/drgloriabrame

No Show Show Soon

As you may know by now I march to only one drum -- my own.  And it's beating a death march to tonight's planned Spreaker podcast.

Instead, I'm going to wait another day or two until the last page of my new book is at the publisher's  and then will just SPRING a SURPRISE PODCAST on you.  Boom.  Just like that.  I definitely want to celebrate that giddy joy joy moment with you when I will once again be FREE!

More bloggy things, whenever I take breaks from the writing, until I'm on the air.  Got some nudes coming up later to see you through the silent night.  Until then....

 

Welcome Back to My World: The Gloria Brame tonight

OMG, the technical difficulties.  Don't ask.  But here we are, at long last, and we were awfully happy to be back!

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Gloria's back and she's bolder than ever.  Listen now Dr. Brame and the inimitable Jennifer Bangs dive in to duck sex, ponder golden moles penis size preferences, tear a whole... See More through monogamy, and steamroll into human sexual diversity and Gloria's new book! (sorry 'bout the music -- we'll fix it next week)

 

Consent ALWAYS Matters: consent and #rape

From an article about the outrageous idiocy and cover-up attempts surrounding the rape of a female college sophomore in NC, some words from the outspoken victim  -

 

via jezebel.com

Gambill recently told The Daily Tar Heel and a variety of other outlets about her traumatic experience reporting her assault to the administration. From a December 5th, 2012 article:

"It's incredibly clear that those people had no idea what sexual assault is, what consent is," said Landen Gambill, a sophomore whose assault case was processed by interim procedures.

 

The issue here is CONSENT. We in the BDSM community know all about the importance of mutual consent and how consent alters BDSM from potential assault into potential bliss.

In The Truth About Sex --both volumes, in fact-- I discuss my theories about the central emotional role that consent plays not just in BDSM but in ALL TYPES OF SEX AND EROTICISM.

In a nutshell: consent always matters.  Whether it's someone touching you, kissing you, fucking you or whipping you, unless there is informed mutual consent, any and all of it may feel traumatic if you didn't want it to happen.   When violence, threats, coercion or manipulation enter into it, the growing sense of victimization can escalate to sheer terror.

I wish Gambill good luck in her battle against the ignorance displayed by those handling her case. She's fighting an entire system of bad assumptions about sex and my heart truly goes out to her.  I think she's heroic.

Study: Male circumcision tied to less sexual pleasure

via news.yahoo.com

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Men circumcised either as children or adults report less intense sexual pleasure and orgasm than their uncircumcised counterparts, according to a new study from Belgium.

"We're not saying less sexual activity or satisfaction, but sensitivity," said the study's senior researcher Dr. Piet Hoebeke, from Ghent University Hospital.

The new study surveyed 1,369 men over the age of 18, who responded to leaflets handed out in train stations across Belgium.

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Find out what Dr. Brame said about the history and risks of circumcision in The Truth About Sex, Volume I: Sex and the Self

Kooky Kellogg: fab bizarre contraptions

People who've read The Truth About Sex may remember my brief history of Kellogg of cornflake fame's dangerous kookiness on "cures" for masturbation.    Here's a must-see archive of some of Kellog's other bizarre contraptions, all designed with his two primary medical aspirations in mind: making sure people pooped a lot but only climaxed for reproductive purposes. 

 Draw your own conclusions about what kind of inner life that man led.

 

via 15 Dr Kellog Contraptions: Man in diapers on Kellogs mechanical horse / www.oobject.com

 

 

“Brilliant!” “Enlightening!”
“Should be mandatory reading!”
all 5-star reviews!
The Truth About Sex   

Revolutionary Sex: A Glimpse of IASHS Graduates

featuring the outspoken sex radicals, academics and activists who received degrees from IASHS:

 

via www.youtube.com

 

Brief explanation: regular readers may recall I participated in a film shoot while in SF last summer.  This was that shoot, for a supremely fascinating indie called Revolutionary Sex by gifted filmmaker, Robert James.  The film documents the history of the sexual revolution in San Francisco through the eyes of the IASHS's beloved founder,  Rev. Ted McIlvenna.

Who Gets to Define Normality?

What is Beautiful? What is Strange?

 

Do you fear the things that make someone different from the ordinary?   Do differences intrigue you and draw you in?

Or do you walk through life never noticing the details that make each person completely unique from another?

Every Kind of Love is Real Love

You get to define it, not others.

 

Listen to tonight's show now: Gloria Brame reveals all!

Or at least as much as I could squeeze into the second half hour.   You can listen to it right now.

 

 

Internet Privacy -- A Lawyer's Perspective

You can listen to tonight's show right here. 

 

 

TOPIC:  The Obsolescence of Privacy.  Between google, facebook, and the evil hordes of bots gobbling your info wherever you go, privacy seems to be a thing of the past. Listen to Gloria discuss your rights with our special guest, media and intellectual property attorney, David Browde.  David covered the territory in DEPTH, with practical advice for all adults.

 

I Love you Erotica, Goodbye

I love too much.  It's a chronic problem.  I love too much, too deeply, too obsessively.   I love with every fiber of my being and want to fold you up in that love too so you can feel it.

Which is why I must say goodbye to my lovely picture shows for a month.  I love digging up unique erotic imagery so much I just can't tear myself away from researching and compiling and retouching and sharing the precious results with you unless I declare a formal separation.   As I must, to finish my book.   I'm about two-thirds of the way through and it's taken me over a year to get this far because so many commitments have piled up in 2012.   

I know I can finish that last third in one mad writerly fit if  only I can  go into that magical writing mental fugue where I live in a garden with tall walls and no one is permitted in except to serve my needs.  I will be sooo happy.  Because I am deeply, obsessively in love with my new book too.

 So goodbye to all the beautiful people doing beautiful things for a few weeks.  In the interim, I'll blog the stuff I post to social media (announcements and sex news I'm following), and keep you up to date on my radio show.

Until we're naked together again, au revoir.  I am already looking forward to September, when our free love can once more bloom.

 

my August work schedule, in a nutshell:

Therapy:   as usual

Social networks: twitter, fb as usual

Radio:   as usual for now (may take 1-2 weeks hiatus at month's end)

Email:  slow to non-existent (except for current clients)

Blog:  no erotic history shows until September

 

 

 

 think of my whirling in a literary dream.....

 

 

Designer Genitals: the great snipping debate

Elective cosmetic surgery to enhance genitals are becoming fairly standard in medicine these days.  Tons of people are opting for it and tons of others are going "ewwwww."   The rest of us are in the middle, trying to keep an open mind about it.

As with all kinds of plastic surgery, I tend to lean towards the conservative position:  if it ain't broke, don't fix it.   When it comes to genitals, it's possible  that the very thing you believe to be a flaw is something your partner loves about you.   People who love us aren't just forgiving of our quirks, flaws, or even our extra nipples (many people have them).    Sometimes they love our little weirdnesses and variety precisely because it makes us unique.  Which is, in a nutshell, why I prefer the natural body overall.  For me, it's a body of truth.   Freaky labia?  Crazy anus? Supernumerary breasts? OMFG.   I want to see.   Isn't biological diversity FASCINATING?!

I support people who make physical changes through surgery that they feel will make their lives better; I still like to know, though, that they are choosing to make those changes for self-affirming reasons.   Hope you'll listen to these women discuss why they chose labiaplasty and tell me whether you think they made the right choices.

 

 

I think the results of all such cosmetic surgeries are destined to be emotionally unpredictable, because the underlying issue (of feeling ugly or flawed by nature) is not something a scalpel can fix. If you spent 20+ years of your life feeling freakish, will one surgical procedure simply erase your history of anguish?  Unlikely.  People whose belief that they are imperfect stems  from self-loathing, alienation, or complexes (such as body dysmorphia, a condition which causes people to literally hate their own looks or body aspects) are at high risk of dissatisfaction after surgery because they see their own bodies through a very dark, self-hating lens.   Case in point:  the woman who compared her post-surgical pussy to a pig snout.    An entertaining comparison, granted, but there was pain in her voice and I wonder if she will ever find happiness with the way her genitals look.  My guess is she will only find it when she can love and accept herself as she is -- something that she could have worked on before looking for medical solutions.

On the other hand, a person who genuinely believes that they are pretty cool but suffer some anomaly that sets them apart or impairs their function, is more likely to feel satisfied, even when results are not perfect.     

As one of the interviewees noted, once she felt she looked more normal, she was able to enjoy sex more and her self-confidence increased.    It could be a placebo effect; it could be that shorter labia really improved her sex life.  Either way, she was a great candidate for this kind of surgery.  (I hope she did speak to a counselor about those vaginal scarf of death dreams, though.) 

Which, oddly enough, reminds me...  I wonder if and when we'll get to see headlines about "designer balls."  Though it never gets the kind of headlines labiaplasty receives,  scrotum reductions are a relatively common procedure these days too, particularly among Baby Boomers who get surgeons to reduce their sagging ball sacs into the high and tight little baskets youth.    

Would you have surgery to improve the way your genitals look? 

If you've already had some, would you recommend it to others? 

 

 

 

 

At what point will people realize monogamy just isn't for everyone?

The subject of "cheating" always irritates me, because it is so often framed in a "decline of morality" context.   It's nothing of the sort.

 

a study out of Indiana University finds that women today cheat at about the same rate as men, and that the number of unfaithful women is growing. The study showed that 19 percent of married women and 23 percent of married men reported cheating, statistics that reflect a closing of the cheating gender gap. (Note: These numbers are probably on the conservative side because they reflect the percentage of people who admitted to cheating. Presumably, the numbers of unfaithful partners is higher.) Research from the 1990s found that only 10 percent of married women reported being unfaithful. According to these numbers, female infidelity may one day rival or even surpass male cheating. 

Another interesting fact? According to the study, the most common age for women to have an affair is 45. For men, it's 55. 

via www.huffingtonpost.com

 

One of the themes in my new book is focusing on how sex is lived and coming to psychological grips with it by looking at partnered relationships through a rational lens.

So, for example, it's only human for people to seek out sexual satisfaction with others,particularly when they can't find it at home.  For some of us, even having it at home doesn't quench the desire to have different experiences with different partners throughout our lives.   This is not a moral crisis: it's an eternal biological reality.  Why pretend otherwise?

The best way to end cheating is to stop lying.  It's only cheating when you have to conceal it from other people (and, by the way, as long as you are concealing a relationship from your significant other it is cheating;  no matter how many different ways you may rationalize it to yourself, including pretending it's just an Internet thing , it's always cheating if you have to lie about it). 

So: how can we end this ancient sexually dysfunctional cycle?  As I see it, if you can't practice what you preach, then re-examine the preaching, and considering expanding your points of a view to a more humane model (i.e., open or polyamorous) that allows you to live your truth without shame.

 

 

Why do animals masturbate? It's healthy.

Fascinating article in Slate on the subject of whether other species masturbate (they do, most enthusiastically). It's a topic I covered in Vol. I of The Truth About Sex.

But my book is more of a "least you need to know" about all the important issues and theories in human sexuality, whereas this piece goes in depth into the subject of animal behaviors, citing a range of studies and sources.

 

Despite this bestiary of autoeroticism, scientists have spent relatively little time on the question of why animals might have evolved to masturbate. At first glance, the behavior would seem to be maladaptive. First, there's all the energy that's wasted on the production of spilled seed—macaques, for example, are thought to devote between 1 percent and 6 percent of their daily metabolism to the production of ejaculate. Second, it distracts the animal from the more important work of finding food and evading predators, let alone mating. According to the literature on horses, a masturbating stallion sometimes takes on "a trance-like, glazed-eye appearance." What could be more inviting to a hungry bear?

via www.slate.com

 

Also a topic I hammer in my book, is how science writers go wrong when they assume that sex is for reproduction.   If they stood back  and examined  the scientific research on the benefits of human masturbation, perhaps the picture would be clearer to them.   

There's a reason the masturbatory impulse is instinctual in most forms of animal life:  masturbation is healthy.   Orgasms extend longevity.   If you think of an orgasm as a kind of full-body wellness exercise --which, on an organic and chemical level it is -- then you can easily understand why animals masturbate.  It easily explains why all species try to have orgasms as often as possible.

If you persist in believing the religious ideology that we were all put on the earth to procreate well, then, you end up treading into some of the muddy fuzzy places that detracts from Slate's otherwise excellent piece.

Get The Truth About Sex.  Really. 

 

 

on this Sunday's show -- male sexual rights

Gonna talk about one of my pet peeves  -- how media plays sexual violence against men for laughs. Specifically, playing down female abuse of male minors, and always publishing tales of penis stabbings and other woman-against-man sexual violence.

There's nothing amusing about adults abusing minors, and those who claim they envy the abuse victims never walked in their shoes.  No adult should get a free pass, no matter how attractive or successful they are.  Making excuses for women who commit the same crimes as men is a clear double standard.

Similarly, media abounds with stories about penis tragedies, often playing them for laughs.  We would never treat sexual crimes against women as fodder for entertainment and weird news.  And we still laugh when men get kicked in the balls and think prison rape is just rewards on top of the legal sentence!  I want to talk about some of these skewed double standards that expose a cultural hatred of male sexuality.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Gloria Brame Show for July 1, 2012

In case you didn't hear us live, listen now.

I'm getting undressed now

for a special wild day of wondrous vintage amateur erotica from the 1940s-1960s, with swingers and couples and singles who captured their sexual side in photos.

 

 

People often ask me "how do you find these images?"  The answer's simple: mostly in eBay auctions of private estate photos.

A more interesting question for me, though, is what prompts the universal impulse to document our own sexual behaviors, whether it's in photos or in writing?

It's a boon to a sexologist that since recorded history, people have gone to the effort of recording not only their behaviors but their fantasies, their sexual ideals, and their sexual satires.

Although the Internet largely disagrees and bans me all over the world, nothing I publish is pornographic.  The private histories of sex are not taboo:  they are -- and should be, in a free world -- open to scrunity.   They show us that people have always loved in non-traditional ways, and that sex has always been part of the pursuit of pleasure and happiness.

 

 

Bisexuality was a Blast

We had a strangely fantabulous conversation tonight, talking about a new study that says  the wiggle in a woman's walk means she's having orgasms, a sexual health warning about the new incurable strain of gonorrhea and its scary implications for fertility, the Oregon woman who just won $900k after suing a man she said deliberately gave her herpes, and that story in Salon about the "dangerous tops" blacklist on FetLife and John Baku's position on the controversy.

AND THEN THERE WAS BISEXUALITY!  Oh Yes.

Psst. if you couldn't listen live, just click the player and enjoy!

 

Listen to internet radio with Seriously Sexual on Blog Talk Radio

Get Seriously Sexual

and read The Truth About Sex

Get yourself some truth about sex (free!)

New Book Contest!

Have fun and win a book in my new giveaway contest for friends and fans. All you have to do to enter is "like" facebook.com/truthsex, and write a blurb for me.   The winning blurb will be announced on next week's radio show.

RULES: 1. like the bookpage
2. write a 10-15 word blurb describing Gloria Brame! Yep, I need something sexier than "author, therapist, blogger" to adorn myTwitter/LinkedIn accounts, and I want one of you to write it for me!  Yes, I know the risks!  I consent!  Haha!  So have fun with it and enter as many times as you like.  

THREE winners: top prize gets a print copy, 2 runners up get PDF version.

DEADLINE:  FRIDAY, MAY 25 7pm.  Winners announced on next week's radio show.

Post your blurbs on FB or email them to me gloriabrame@gmail.com

The DSM and me: tonight on "Seriously Sexual," @11pm (et)

To my mind, the DSM is so intellectually and scientifically outdated on matters of sex that it's almost irrelevant to sex therapists. In my private practice, I've seen way too many patients who visited psychiatrists, received bad, even insulting diagnoses or a fistful of scripts, and show up in my office feeling far worse than if they'd muddled through their sexual conflicts on their own.

This "Bible" of psychiatric diagnoses has always been flawed, sometimes to dangerous, unscientific and harmful levels (such as keeping masturbation listed as a pathological behavior until 1961, and thus offering quack cures throughout the 1950s, including the medical torture and involuntary institutionalization of hundreds if not thousands of trusting patients; and continuing to do the same to homosexuals into the 1980s).

I wrote these words a few years ago, and with recent announcements about a fifth revision to the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual (the diagnostic bible of the APA, used by all psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers), my views have not changed.   I still think the DSM's take on human sexuality is all wrong.

Join me and Jennifer tonight at 11pm et on Seriously Sexual radio as I slice and dice it all into tasty wordbytes.  Sex addiction, gender identity, and other politically-charged sex issues will be on my agenda and you're invited to listen in or call up live, (646) 716-4397 between 11pm and midnight tonight. 

Also hot tonight:  did you catch the Dateline special about "Master Bob," the Grosse Pointe MI BDSMer accused of murdering his (vanilla) wife?  We did and we are going to be talking about the story and about NBC's coverage, which prompted an outcry of foul play from the local kink community even before it aired.   (I think NBC manipulated the story in some spectacularly annoying ways that were designed to make BDSMers look crazy, and I've got plenty to say about that too.)

 

 

If You Had Kindle #gloriabramebook

for less than $8, you could be reading me right now

 

 

And if you don't,  get the paperback at a discount -

Woodstocks' Nosy Neighbors: BDSM space under scrutiny

My friend, p., pointed me to a link today which made me cringe:

50-acre BDSM sex camp disapproved of.

Wow, did they have to torture the English language too just to make their point?

A BDSM party space in Pennsylvania has drawn local ire.   According to comments on the original story, it's  a neighbors' spat and shouldn't have merited a story in the first place.  But, you know, it has BDSM in it, and nifty pix the nosy neighbors shot of the interior.   So it's news!!!  (BTW, I hope the BDSMers file a restraining order on that neighbor's ass, but maybe that's just me.)

You know, it's almost quaint that there is still a place in the US that is so fucking far behind the times -- and apparently bereft of an Internet -- that discovering there are kinky spaces in the vicinity could still come as a shock.  I'm surprised the reporter didn't include a few interviews with locals saying "we've lost our innocence" or "we never thought it could happen here," to further make the townspeople sound like rubes.   They did however manage to score this profundity: 

“What goes on up there – I wouldn’t even say on TV,” Leonard Dean said. “I mean, it’s all about sex and it’s all dirty."

 

The only thing dirty in this entire story is Mr. Leonard Dean's mind. 

The next time someone tells you sex is dirty, do what I do: feel verrrrry sorry for them.  They are missing out not just on the juice of life, but on life itself.

Meanwhile, if you identify kinky, fight the past and look towards the future: no more harassment of BDSM clubs and spaces!!  You have  LEGAL resources to combat hate crimes these days.  USE THEM.