70-Year-Old virgin seeks suitorCabaret singer "The Sexational Pam Shaw" has announced that at 70 years old, she's ready to lose her virginity (14 May 2012)
Stopping It Before It Starts: Banning Talk of Gateway Sexual ActivityIs it a sign of the apocalypse that it's harder and harder to tell the difference between so-called real news and the fake news delivered by places like The Onion or The Daily Show? It certainly makes it harder to know when to laugh and when to cry. Case in point, this item from WREG in Memphis:
Lawmakers have passed a bill changing the language of how sexual education is conducted in Tennessee.
The bill, Senate Bill 3310, focuses primarily on abstinence, but allows for comparison of contraception methods. However, contraception is no longer allowed to be distributed on school property.
The confusing part is where they prohibit instructors from encouraging "gateway sexual behaviors." The bill also allows for teachers to be disciplined, and for third-party instructors to be sued, if the rules are not followed."
Never mind that the idea of gateway sex is undefined, unproven, and unintelligible fantasy cooked up by the kind of people who say sex is bad, and then won't stop talking about it. In a television interview Rep. John Deberry, Jr. (ahem...(D) Memphis) explains that gateway sex is something most people would be able to understand if they saw it.
Except of course you provide sex education in part because it's a topic that most of us don't understand that well. At the end of the news item the Representative was paraphrased saying that the bill "would be a way to ensure that abstinence is a cornerstone of any sexual education."
It's also a way to ensure that even the best teachers won't be able to their job, and none of the students in Memphis can expect decent sex education in their public schools.
WREG Memphis: Lawmakers Pass "Gateway Sexual Activity" Ban
Stopping It Before It Starts: Banning Talk of Gateway Sexual Activity originally appeared on About.com Sexuality on Monday, April 30th, 2012 at 00:01:42.
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Why I love weird pornWeird Internet porn is accommodates all genders, and at the ends of the spectrum, people are becoming more than consumers of porn, they're becoming producers (16 May 2012)
Sexual Violence and Conjugal VisitsA paper published recently in the American Journal of Criminal Justice caught my attention. The report, titled "The Effect of Conjugal Visitation on Sexual Violence in Prison" brings attention to a topic that is seriously under studied among social scientists: sexual violence in prisons.
The authors, citing previous research, refer to prison sexual violence as "America's most ignored crime problem". It might seem like a small thing but I was thankful that the authors acknowledge sexual violence in prison as a crime in the first place. People who are incarcerated tend to be painted with one giant dehumanizing brush. All too often in conversations I hear people express the belief that if you are in prison, you must be there for doing something very bad, and whatever it is, it means you deserve the bad things that will most certainly befall you while you are incarcerated.
But if you pay even the slightest bit of attention to what is actually happening across the prison industrial complex, or if you know anyone who has ever been imprisoned, you know that prisons are full of people, not caricatures. And those peoples lives are governed at every turn by violence and injustice.
So I was glad to see the topic being discussed. And I was interested in how they might address their central question: does allowing conjugal visits reduce the amount of sexual assault that takes place in a prison.
The authors begin by contrasting two theories of sexual violence. The first identify as a feminist theory which suggests that sexual violence is primarily about power and control, and not about sexual activity or desire. The second, which they call a sexual gratification theory, argues that sexual violence is the result of sexual needs that cannot be satisfied through consensual sex. Their not entirely correct understanding of conjugal visits is that they offer inmates the opportunity to have consensual sex, and satisfy their need for sex. And so, they argue, if there is less sexual violence in prisons that allow conjugal visits, there is more support for the sexual gratification theory of sexual violence.
The authors used data gathered between 2004-2006 from all 50 U.S. states on the rates of reported inmate-on-inmate sexual violence. They compared the rates of violence in the 45 states that don't allow conjugal visits with the rates in the five states which do. They found much lower rates of reported sexual violence among inmates in states that allow conjugal visits (57 per 100,000) than in those states that do not allow conjugal visits (226 per 100,000 inmates). They conclude, among other things, that sexual violence in prisons might be better explained as a problem of sexual gratification than as a problem of power and control. If you're scratching your head at this point, I'm with you.
In and of itself I suppose this is a useful statistic to know. Certainly I'm glad that someone is even looking at these numbers. But there is so much missing from the discussion, so many voices that need to be heard, that it's hard to know what to make of the numbers.
The authors don't tell us how often prisoners in the five states that allow it, were given the right to actual have conjugal visits. It's not as if the five states which allow conjugal visits, make them available frequently or willingly (see, for example, the description of who is allowed conjugal visits in Mississippi). It would be good to know how many requests are made and how many are granted. Maybe this data isn't available, although it must be recorded somewhere. Without it, there is a kind of echo chamber right in the heart of the paper, a space where the role of the prison industrial complex would be factored in. So we have no way of knowing whether this discrepancy is actually tied at all to conjugal visits (which when they are granted are not always for sexual contact, instead they are often used to allow family to visit and simply hang out as best they can given the setting).
In the paper there is no discussion of sexual violence perpetrated by prison staff. The authors would argue that this isn't relevant because they are interested in whether giving prisoners the ability to engage in consensual sexual activity reduces non-consensual sexual activity. But sexual violence in prisons can't be so neatly parsed out. The violence that takes place takes place in a larger context of both injustice and violence done not only physically but emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, often in the name of rehabilitation.
It's this larger context, which is so much in the face of everyone who experiences prison life (regardless of which side of the bars you're on, or whether you are a family member, social service professional, activist, advocate, or sexual partner) that seems too much to leave out. But I understand that research like this is kind of built to leave this stuff out. Taking narrower and narrower slices of experience is what so much social science research does. I don't want to suggest it shouldn't be done, but what worries me is what conclusions are arrived at when one is only looking at a speck of dirt on a prison wall covered in blood.
Another head scratch-er for me is the sexual gratification theory itself. I mean how much gratification does a person need before they won't commit sexual violence in this theory? What if I have sex but it's not satisfying? Does the sex have to be good? Does it have to happen once a month? Every six weeks? I appreciate that this theory tries to engage with sexuality not as a uni-dimensional construct, and agree that the competing theories which suggest that sexual violence is never about sex are flawed as well, but I'd hate to see something like policy and procedure be guided by theories that leave so many questions unanswered.
In their conclusion the authors do recommend that more states allow conjugal visits. And they acknowledge that while they chose to look only at a reduction in sexual violence perpetrated by inmates against other inmates, there are other benefits that have been associated with allowing people to visit with partners and family in a separate space inside the prison.
More distressing, the authors say that their findings support greater use of "chemical castration" to reduce sexual violence in prisons. Since, they suggest, their findings show that sexual violence is a function of gratification and not control, taking sexual desire out of the equation (through "chemical castration") should reduce sexual violence.
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, sexual violence in prisons will never be, can never be, about one thing. The same is true, by the way, for sexual violence outside of prisons. Only we treat people outside of prison differently. We treat them, well some of them at least, like they are human.
Learn More:
Sexual Violence and Conjugal Visits originally appeared on About.com Sexuality on Wednesday, April 25th, 2012 at 00:01:36.
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The Psychology of Submission & DominationHas spanking gone mainstream? (14 May 2012)
My sexual bucket list (16 May 2012)KissinBlueKaren shares her bucket lists of sexual fantasies (16 May 2012)
Three Sexual Ways to Celebrate Earth DayType the phrase "ecosex" into your favorite search engine and pretty much all you'll get are for profit companies hawking their wares with a few coats of green washing. It's too bad because there's no question that many of the ways we express our sexuality leave a mark on the earth, and at a minimum it would be helpful (for us and for our planet) if we gave some thought to that.
With that in mind, here are a few suggestions of ways you might privately mark Earth Day, which is coming up this Sunday and is being marked all week by people around the globe.
Imagine Sex on Earth
One of the ways that we lead relatively impoverished sex lives is that we keep our sexuality separate from the rest of our lives. Sex is a "special" topic. We need an excuse to bring it up at work, in the media, at home, in schools, and in most places of workshop. But people are expressing their sexuality all the time, and people are having sex all the time (globally, not individually). If one of the goals of Earth Day is to become just a little more conscious about your individual and our social impact on the planet, I would like to suggest you take ten minutes some time this week and just imagine sex on the planet. You can think about the sex you've had or are having, and it's impact; you can imagine people around the world, at this very moment, having sex. Good sex, bad sex, sex for money, sex for fun, sex for procreation. Where are they? What is their relationship to the planet and what is our relationship to each other as humans? This might seem a bit flaky but just try it, and see where your mind wanders.
Inspire Yourself to Think About the Planet, Sex, and You
You might be someone who already thinks about yourself sexually in relation to other people and the planet. But since few of us are ever encouraged to think about it, you probably don't. Most of us need help, inspiration, to let our minds go, and that's the second Earth Day sex task I'd like to give you. Watching a documentary about the planet may teach you a lot and inspire you too, but since documentary filmmakers tend to compartmentalize sex like the rest of us, you'll probably find sexuality is left out. So you may have to dig around a little more. Whether it's poetry, film, music, or fiction, take something in this week that will get you thinking differently about the planet, yourself, and sex. If you haven't seen it before, you could start with Isabella Rossellini's award-winning Green Porno series. It will absolutely make you think of the sexual habits of various earth inhabitants in a different way. You might also enjoy photographer and sex educator Heather Firth's Earth Erotica series.
Learn More About What You Don't Know
There are plenty of concrete ways that you can reduce the impact of your sex life on the environment, and reduce the negative impact of various sexual products on your sex life. Make one of your tasks this week to be doing a little homework. Here are some places to start:
Three Sexual Ways to Celebrate Earth Day originally appeared on About.com Sexuality on Friday, April 20th, 2012 at 00:01:46.
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Harmless: an anti-porn propaganda filmHarmless is a Christian horror movie about a husband who opens a box of porn, and his family is terrorized by a porn-poltergeist. (16 May 2012)
Right-wing sexual pathosAttempts to ban talk of birth control and homosexuality from classrooms reveal conservatives' deepest sexual fears (14 May 2012)
Making Meaning Out of a G-SpotThere's yet another article claiming to prove the existence of the g-spot. This one comes from a gynecologic surgeon whose website encourages patients to "regain" their "self-confidence with genetalia rejuvenation". Whether you want it thinner, thicker, plumper, or otherwise plasty-er Dr. Ostrzenski has the procedure for you.
He also managed to get access to an 83-year-old dead woman's body in Poland, and performed a "stratum-by-stratum vaginal wall dissection" on her. The results, he says, proves the existence of the g-spot. In this woman's body the g-spot he found was 8.1 mm long, 3.6 mm wide, and .4 mm high. He describes three parts, and a bluish grape like color. There are color photos embedded in the article.
I can think of no better example of the process by which we make meaning of the world around us, than this on again off again search for the g-spot. Through the Science Media Centre, Petra Boynton offered an excellent comment on this latest paper, and she's expanded on it here on her own blog. It's worth reading in it's entirety (it isn't posted yet, but I'll add a link once it is, but I particularly appreciate that she highlights how, on the one hand, researchers, journals, pharmaceutical companies, and retailers all benefit for the production of a "debate" about the g-spot, and, the other, the people who all this information is being targeted to, lose.
There's nothing wrong with the slow and steady development of a body of knowledge. And in and of itself I'd like to say there's nothing wrong with this paper. Only then I read the discussion. In it the author offers a framing for the "controversy" surrounding the g-spot. Have a read:
"The absence of the identification of the G-spot as an anatomic structure created considerable controversies and a biased interpretation of the scientific results worldwide, leading to a monolithic clitoral model of female sexual response. However, women have held the unwavering position that there are distinct areas in the anterior vagina which are responsible for a sensation of great sexual pleasure. "
So first, in case you missed it, what he's describing, among other things, is the impact of the women's movement on public discourse and personal experience of sexuality. When he says it it sounds a bit different. If I read this correctly his understanding of what's happened is men and the media have been pushing some "monolithic clitoral model" while women have all along said that vaginal penetration is where it's at.
It's a great story. But it deserves a great big "What?!?" What monolithic clitoral model? Which unwavering women? I know that surgeons think they can do everything (and when they are operating on me I guess I'm grateful for their hubris), but maybe they should leave political, cultural, and historical analysis to folks with some context.
Again, there's no reason this guy can't cut up a body and make a case, but along with a handful of other white male researchers, it's the undercurrent of aggression in the writing that gives me pause. It reminds me a lot of those men's groups that claim to be fighting for father's rights when they really seem to be about eliminating mother's rights. Some of those father's are being discriminated against, for sure. And there may very well be an anatomical structure that can be called a g-spot. Why not. But it doesn't have to be one or the other. Lots of fathers are actually trying to screw their exes out of spite. And even if there is some sac of purplish tissue on the superior surface of the dorsal perineal membrane, that doesn't actually say much of anything about sexual pleasure (which is what ultimately this article and most of the others make claims about.
It doesn't have to be one or the other. I know it's more complicated when you think that way but that's why debating is only one way of advancing knowledge, and not a particularly good way at that. But it does make for a good show.
Read more:
GlobalNews.com:American gynecologist claims to have found the mythical G-spot
Petra Boynton: G-spot discovery, medicalization and media hype
Making Meaning Out of a G-Spot originally appeared on About.com Sexuality on Wednesday, April 25th, 2012 at 13:38:03.
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