Virgin fathers fourteen kids (25 Jan 2012)A thirty-six-year-old virgin has fathered 36 kids as a sperm donor, though FDA has asked him to stop (25 Jan 2012)
Calling for Better Care: New Recommendations for Sex and Heart HealthIn the past, if you had a stroke, a heart attack, or a more minor event that led to a diagnosis of cardiovascular disease and you asked your doctor about your options for having sex, the response wouldn't be very encouraging. Something along the lines of it being better safe than sorry, so why not wait. How long you had to wait, and exactly what you had to wait to do was never clear. But there wasn't much research to guide doctors, and in a society where sex is seen more as a perk and privilege of youth, the prudent advice was to be grateful you're alive, and not push it.
Over the past few decades that advice has changing, thanks in large part to two different but connected research agendas. On the one hand we now have a reasonable amount of data suggesting that sexual activity represents a minor risk to people with stable cardiovascular disease. On the other we have research that points to the many physical, emotional, and psychological benefits of regularly engaging in sexual activity. So doctors not only have some concrete answers about risk, but they also have very good reasons to encourage people to resume sexual activity.
Last week the American Heart Association released a scientific statement (available for free download here) which summarizes the most recent research and advises physicians on the importance of talking with patients about sexuality and supporting their overall health by supporting their sexual health. Here are a few highlights from the statement, and some of the things I most appreciated them including:
Risk of Pain, Heart Attack, and Death Is Very Low
Using a term that is sure to appear on some hipster Valentine's Day cards this year, the authors point out that experiencing coital angina (in other words pain caused by a heart problem during coitus) happens in about 5% of all reported cases of angina. In other words, if you're going to feel pain it's more likely that you'll notice it first while exercises, shoveling snow, or doing any number of other activities before you'll feel it during sex.
Looking at reports of heart attacks, less than 1% were caused by sexual activity. For people who have heart disease and are having regular sex the risk goes down even further.
Sudden death during sex is incredibly rare. Reviewing three studies of autopsy reports where the death was related to a cardiovascular event, around 1% of the deaths were reported to have occurred during intercourse. For whatever it's worth in 75% of those cases, the reported intercourse was of the "extramarital" kind (whatever that means), and was with a younger partner, immediately following "excessive food and alcohol consumption". This is taken from medical reports of course, so there are probably major details being left out. Nonetheless, take out the drinking and the Oysters Rockefeller, and better yet, be honest with your partner about your sexual desires, and your chances of dying should bo way down.
Narrow Focus of Previous Research
It was nice to see the authors highlight how most of the research we have is based on heterosexual men engaging in penile-vaginal intercourse. These men aren't the only ones who get heart disease, and there's more to sex than intercourse.
Counseling Is Needed
The statement advocates for physicians to begin counseling their patients on the general low risk of sexual activity, as well as specific information they need regarding birth control, pregnancy, the use of erectile dysfunction drugs, and more. The authors highlight depression and anxiety as two common experiences that are related to cardiovascular disease which can on the one hand make engaging in sexual activity more challenging, and on the other are experiences that can be to some extent alleviated by pleasurable sexual activity.
More About Sex and Heart Health From About.com:
Calling for Better Care: New Recommendations for Sex and Heart Health originally appeared on About.com Sexuality on Tuesday, January 24th, 2012 at 00:01:06.
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The beauty of baring allWhen I turn 30 this summer I'll be celebrating on a nudist beach in Crete wearing nothing but my birthday suit. Yet until two years ago I'd never have stripped in public. (25 Jan 2012)
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Sexual MountaintopOver the holidays I had time to catch up on my favorite podcast. It's WTF with Marc Maron, and if you haven't listened to it before, you should. Maron, a comedian and performer who among other things had a radio show on Air America, has been doing the podcast since 2009, though is new to me. It's definitely not for everyone, but you have to respect how hard Maron works and how intense he is about the things he cares about. Mostly the things he cares about are himself. But luckily he's aware of his connection to, and commonalities with, all other human beings and one way he tries to figure himself out - why he thinks, acts, and feels the ways he does - is to interview other comedians (and the occasional non-comedian) and demand the same thoughtfulness and honesty from them that he is trying to extract from himself.
As someone who cares a lot about people's feelings and who tries to have conversations that are open and inviting to lots of different people with different kinds of experience, my relationship to comedy is a bit sketchy. On the one hand there are things that a good sex educator has in common with a good comedian. And there are moments when I think that the most honest public discussion of sex (especially from straight men) is coming from comedians. On the other, so much comedy seems to be about taking the most obvious, ham-fisted, stereotypes and encouraging one group of people to laugh at another. And most of it rivals porn in it's simplistic and uncreative understanding of sexuality.
For a while I just avoided comedy unless I knew the people doing it and had a sense that they shared some of my basic values. I think that was kind of a cop-out and have more recently begun to wonder if I'm just getting good and bad comedy confused. I'm still trying to figure it out. Listening to WTF helps. It also makes me laugh a lot. And since Maron talks about everything, sex comes up. Not as often as I'd like, but when it does it's usually thought provoking.
For example last week I was listening to this episode where Maron describes how being in a long term or committed sexual relationship with one person can change the way sex happens (or doesn't) in that relationship. He's talking about his own life, but instead of going off on some rant about how commitment or marriage ruins sex, he describes a kind of everyday intimacy that can develop between partners (his examples include: farting on one another in bed and using the bathroom with the door open) and argues that intimacy, that familiarity, is setting him up to have less sex.
In his mind the problem is that once you establish this kind of intimacy it takes work to reframe your interactions and get yourself into a kind of raw sexual space, stripped of the film daily of flatulence and bowl routines (unless, of course, that's what your into). You're already exposed and vulnerable (one of those unspoken reasons most of us have sex) so to initiate sex requires you to shift what you're paying attention to; from comfort to desire, from ease to agitation. It's an insightful and really open hearted explanation of why keeping your sex life hot and active is sometimes a challenge in a long term relationship.
I was equally intrigued by the next thing he said. He said that having achieved a level of intimacy in a relationship can make sex scary because that's when it gets really deep. He said it's scary because, in his words, it has to be pure so it will be a connection that honors the depths of your intimacy. And this, perhaps surprisingly to some, is where I think he's going awry. It's not that his feelings or explanation are wrong. It's that in talking with thousands of people about their sex lives, I recognize this statement as one of the classic ways that people get sexually stuck.
I think the easiest way to ruin sex in a long term relationship, or to get yourself stuck in a sexual rut at any time is to tell yourself that each time you have sex it MUST mean something. Whatever that something is (depth, purity, or something else), putting that kind of existential weight on sex is a sure way to make you avoid it.
I think you absolutely can have meaningless, selfish sex with someone you've been with for 10, 20, or 50 years and to whom you remain deeply and lovingly connected. Having sex, being sexual with a partner, isn't a one-way ride up a mountain (or if you prefer, down a mineshaft) where you reach and end point of such height or depth that you are bestowed a sexual wisdom that you get to keep forever. Sex is much more of a roller coaster ride. Sex can be an opportunity for the two (or more) of you to connect on a deeper level. But it can also be a form of parallel play, where you're both in the same room feeling good, even if you're thinking about two completely different things.
This is one of the things that makes the idea of simultaneous orgasm such an enduring mythic goal of partnered sex; the assumption that if you come at the same time you're perfectly in sync. But two people can come at the same time and one of them could be thinking of the last time they jerked off watching porn and the other could be thinking of their first one night stand. Does it diminish the pleasure they experience? Should it?
Check it out: WTF with Marc Maron (recent episodes are available for free download, but it's worth it to pay for access to the archives!)
Related: 10 Ways to Screw Up Your Sex Life ; Lies We're Told About Sex ; Are We Sexually Compatible?
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Sexual Mountaintop originally appeared on About.com Sexuality on Monday, January 9th, 2012 at 00:01:15.
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When Moving Is Bad for SexIt may be hard to imagine sex without moving, but sometimes it's the moving that makes it hard to imagine ever having sex.
This week instead of answering one sex question in particular I took inspiration from about a half dozen questions I've received over the past year all about whether or not it's "normal" for your sex life to slow down after you move in with a partner.
Of course "normal" is code, and in this case I think it's code for a few things: predictable, okay, understandable, something to worry about.
I tried to write a response using as little code as possible, and to offer some post-moving sex tips for those who are unhappy with the situation, whether it's okay or not.
Read more: Sex After You Move In Together
Related: Sex Tips for the Rest of Us
When Moving Is Bad for Sex originally appeared on About.com Sexuality on Wednesday, January 18th, 2012 at 00:01:13.
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Are Yale guys bad at sex? (27 Jan 2012)A Yale student is getting a lot of attention for her column alleging that "guys at Yale are bad in bed (27 Jan 2012)
Why are some Republicans controlling your sex life?Republicans candidates have spouted rhetoric against premarital sex, gay sex, and even non-procreative sex within marriage. (26 Jan 2012)
Sexual Surrogacy Comes to SundanceA new film, The Surrogate, has it's first screening on Monday at the Sundance Film Festival. According to the description of the film in the festival program, it's based on the writings of Mark O'Brien. O'Brien was a journalist and poet who wrote frankly and vividly about his life, most of which was spent inside an iron lung. One of his most shared pieces of journalism was an article he wrote about seeing a sexual surrogate. That article used to be available for free online but unfortunately it seems to have disappeared. Apparently this film is about the relationship between Mark and the surrogate he hired, Cheryl Cohen Greene.
Given Hollywood's track record when it comes to representing disability on film it's hard to imagine a film could do justice to O'Brien, whose words could cut through so much bullshit while at times elevating potty talk to an art form (see for example his poem Letter to an Orange County Social Worker published in Mouth Magazine).
That the director, Ben Lewin, identifies himself as disabled, and in fact acquired his disability as a result of polio, may lead one to think the representations will be more complicated. Watching an interview with the director where he refers to O'Brien's "little journey to manhood" isn't a great sign, but it's not fair to pre-judge. It could be a tremendous dramatic feature, and having had friends who have worked as sexual surrogates, and plenty more who do other kinds of sex work**, there is no doubt that the relationships are complicated and rich.
If you're interested in seeing an actual representation of Mark's life and work before you see the fake one, I can't recommend enough the Academy Award winning documentary that Jessica Yu made with and about Mark, Breathing Lessons. And by some act of grace, the film is available for viewing online, for free!
SnagFilms.com - Watch Breathing Lessons
**I want to point out that most sexual surrogates would take exception to me connecting their work to sex work. Officially surrogates almost always distinguish what they do from sex work, and this is their right. I tend to see the distinctions as having varying degrees of legitimacy, and I see far more similarities than differences. But that is only one perspective.
Sexual Surrogacy Comes to Sundance originally appeared on About.com Sexuality on Friday, January 20th, 2012 at 00:01:23.
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XOXOSMS: Can online love work IRL?
If you haven't figured out what you're doing on Valentine's Day yet (and if you have, how are you that organized, or into Valentine's Day?) I recommend you spend part of it with Nancy Schwartzman.
Not in person. That might be weird (after all I don't know her very well and she may have plans already). But online. You should see her online.
She'll be screening her short documentary film XOXOSMS: The Internet Love Documentary several times throughout the day, and then following it up with a live panel discussion featuring with some pretty great bloggers and writers talking about 21st century dating.
I got to see a preview of the film last night. I watched it online with my partner, who is living 500 miles away, while we were both on Skype. Which seemed fitting since the film is all about online relationships, like the kind we're having.
XOXOSMS follows Gus and Jiyun, who connect, and fall in love, online without ever meeting in real life. They eventually decide to meet in person and the film takes us along for the intimate, sometimes awkward, but ultimately fascinating ride.
The film does an excellent job of conveying the kind of intimacy that builds, and builds quickly, when you are communicating with someone online. It may resonate less for those who haven't spent hours on IM, Skype, or email, finding ways to express excitement, curiosity, desire, and longing in a medium that, on the surface of it, seems to be set up for anything but emotional expression. But for anyone who has tried Internet dating, flirted online, or even spent a bit too much time on Facebook, XOXOSMS takes you there in a way that few other documentaries have.
So much exploration of online intimacy is really just code for cybersex. XOXOSMS stands out as a rare film about online relationships that isn't about sex, at least not in any obvious way. This isn't cybersex as we know it, but it is a very real story about the way millions of us are connecting online.
What's nice is that the film offers more than just theory or talking heads explaining how, yes Virginia, you can feel something when you're online. Gus and Jiyun talk about their experiences, but they also share with us a live history of their online connections, the emails, the IMs, the Skype calls, all of which, thanks to the web, are documented and archived.
Through these interactions we're able to see for ourselves how communication technologies can simultaneously extend and produce emotional intimacy. I was particularly struck by the scenes where they are communicating online using video and text but no voice. The immediacy of the interaction and what can only be described as a kind of physical chemistry they share, challenges traditional ideas of which forms of communication are most human, most valuable, most intimate.
For educators XOXOSMS provides an invaluable tool, offering a quick way into conversations about intimacy in platonic, romantic, and sexual relationships, about sexuality more broadly, about desire and identity, and finally about technology and it's role in human interactions.
Now I wasn't joking about this being a perfect Valentine's Day thing to do. While I was watching it, both my partner and I were confused at times when we would hear familiar clicks, dings, and whooshes, thinking that the sounds were coming from our computers, announcing the arrival of some new email, IM, or download. In fact they were part of the soundtrack of the film. But each time it happened it made us aware of the ways that these sounds have come to have emotional meaning for us, and how much of our relationship currently is tangled up in technology. It inspired a conversation about our relationship, about intimacy, about sex and love, that was surprising, but welcome.
It's not a bad thing to do any day, but seems particularly welcome on Valentine's Day.
Find out more about XOXOSMS.
Get a reminder about the Valentines Day screening
XOXOSMS: Can online love work IRL? originally appeared on About.com Sexuality on Friday, January 13th, 2012 at 17:26:51.
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Finally... an OrgasmI began to worry that my 83rd year might mark the end of those special nice big yowling orgasms. (25 Jan 2012)
