How Many Americans Actually Engage In BDSM Play

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How Many Americans Actually Engage In BDSM Play

BDSM is the acronym for “bondage, discipline, submission, masochism,” and it’s a practice that’s ancient. According to research by sex toy retailers, Adam & Eve, there’s evidence of BDSM sex practices in ancient Greek art, and the Kama Sutra, which was written in 300 A.D., publicized erotic spanking as a way to add a little something extra to people’s sex lives. Although, as for how many actually did will remain a mystery, I like to believe it was a lot.

I think we can all agree that BDSM has been pulled out of the darkness and is now out in the open. People aren’t just talking about it with mind far more open minds than they did in the past, but they’re also practicing BDSM in their own sex lives. According to OkCupid’s 2015 Hangover report, 58 percent of users have a desire to participate in bondage. But how many actually do?

While to what extent people are exploring the realms of BDSM varies from couple to couple, even some of the “vanilla” sex people have probably picked up a blindfold and at least considered integrating it into their sex lives. You can never go wrong by experimenting with other corners of your sexuality and uncovering new ways to enjoy yourself.

Because BDSM is finally getting its day in the sun, Adam & Eve researched not just the history behind it, but just how many Americans are practicing it and who these Americans are. Here are 10 facts about BDSM according to that research.

1. The Art Of The Dominatrix Goes Way Back

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According to the research, as far back as the 18th century, there were brothels all over Europe that specialized in providing the service of dominating men through the use of vigorous “punishment.” Submissive men knew exactly what they were getting when they went to these brothels, and it included being restrained, whipped, and whatever other forms of punishment the dominatrix deemed necessary.

2. BDSM Participants Are More Open Than ‘Vanilla’ Participants

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The study found that those who engage in BDSM sex are more extroverted and open to new things. These are basically the people who like to jump out of planes or jet off to New Zealand at the last minute, because why the hell not? They’re also more sexually adventurous, not that that should be a major surprise.

3. Those Who Practice BDSM Are Mentally Healthier

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While this isn’t to suggest that those who prefer “vanilla” sex are somehow not healthy in the head, the research did find that those who practice BDSM are less stressed and more secure in their relationships, which, let’s be honest, are pretty big selling points. They’re also more conscientious and aware of those around them, and less likely to be concerned about the opinions of others.

4. BDSM Requires A Particular Set Of Skills

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If you didn’t read that in Liam Neeson’s voice a la the movie Taken, it’s OK. Seriously though, it does require a set of skills that “vanilla” sex does not. For example, trust and communication are paramount in BDSM. One also needs to be accepting of both themselves and their partner, especially if they’re to really enjoy the experience.

5. The Majority Of People Communicate Their Desires With Their Partner5

According to the result of the study, 71 percent of people tell their partner what they want in bed. Such good news! How are you supposed to get the most out of sex, if you don’t? For the 29 percent who don’t, they’re just doing themselves, more than anyone, an extreme disservice. Communication is key for great sex, people! (I know I’ve written that sentence 500 times probably in the last year alone.)

6. Over 50 Percent Of People Share Their Sexual Fantasies With Their Partner

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Although ideally this should be closer to 100 percent, I guess we should be happy that at least 56 percent of people share their fantasies with their partners. Depending on what those fantasies are, it might feel like a difficult thing to do, but remember EVERYONE has sexual fantasies. It’s normal, it’s healthy, and if you want to give them a whirl, you can’t expect your partner to read your mind.

7. Most People Actually Haven’t Engaged In BDSM

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When Adam & Eve asked the respondents who had played with blindfolds, paddles, or restraints in the bedroom, a whopping 73 percent said no. Although this doesn’t mean these people are experimenting with BDSM in other ways, these accessories always lead to a good time, when consensual of course.

8. Not Enough People Are Using Safe Words

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For those who do practice BDSM, only 17 percent use a safe word. WHAT? Safe words are really important! A safe word lets your partner know that you need them to slow down or stop. Depending on whatever game you’re playing “stop” might not cut it, so consider a safe word. Please!

9. More Women Than Men Love To Be Bitten

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Ah, yes, the animalistic act of erotic biting… fun, isn’t it? According to Adam & Eve, although most people do enjoy being bitten, women, at 55 percent, enjoy it more than men, at 50 percent.

10. Less Than 10 Percent Of Women Like to Dominate

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Complete Article HERE!

Gay Sex Questions, Answered by Davey Wavey’s Doctor: WATCH

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There is a lot of misinformation out there about gay sex. In an attempt to separate the myths from the facts, blogger Davey Wavey made an appointment with his physician, Dr. Jay Gladstein, to get to the bottom of things.

Among the things that you’ll find out in this check-up with Dr. Gladstein:

Does having anal sex stretch out your anus? … Can a dick ever be too big? … Is frequent douching bad for your body, and what should you douche with? … Why are some guys physically able to bottom and some aren’t? …. Is it important to tell your doctor you’re gay? … Why can’t gay men give blood? … Does bottoming cause hemorrhoids? … Does bottoming increase risk of prostate cancer? … Is the stigma of having many sexual partners justified? … Can you get STDs from swallowing semen? … If you are undetectable what are the chances of transmitting HIV? … Why is gay sex so fun?

Watch:

A Real Wanker (Male Masturbation)

Name: Roy
Gender: Male
Age: 25
Location: Germany
Sir, I’m started masturbating for 11yrs. Sometimes I’ll masturbate twice a day I can’t stop this habit. Will it ill affect me in future?

Well Roy, I don’t think you have anything to worry about. Even beating off twice a day will not cause you harm. On the contrary, researchers are now saying that regular masturbation may ward off prostate cancer. They tell us that cancer-causing chemicals build up in the prostate, and if men do not ejaculate regularly the build-up can cause problems.wanker

Don’t you just love this? I mean, how does one write a grant for government funding to study the positive effects of self-abuse?

Curiously, researchers also note that sexual intercourse may not have the same protective effect because of the possibility of contracting a sexually transmitted infection, which could increase men’s cancer risk.

Say, I wonder if all of those “Abstinence only” programs out there, ya know the ones that tell our young people they’d be better off with little to no clear and unambiguous information about human sexuality. Do you suppose they encourage masturbation? Doubt it.

Australian researchers questioned over 1,000 men who had developed prostate cancer and 1,250 men who had not about their sexual habits. They found those who had ejaculated the most between the ages of 20 and 50 were the least likely to develop prostate cancer.

wanker1The protective effect was greatest while the men were in their 20s. You go guys in your twenties! Just jerk off like crazy. …yeah, like you really need me to be tellin’ you to choke the chicken any more than you are already doing!

Get this, men who ejaculated more than five times a week were a third less likely to develop prostate cancer later in life.

Previously the scientific wisdom suggested that a high level of sexual activity and a high number of sexual partners actually increased a man’s risk of developing prostate cancer. But earlier studies missed the beneficial effects of squeezing one out on one’s own, because it focused on sexual intercourse, with its associated risk of STIs (sexually transmitted infections).

Say, I wonder if anyone is doing similar research on the positive effects of masturbation for women? If I had to guess, I’d say that, if jackin’ off is good for men, then it stands to reason that jillin’ off is equally good for women.you're a wanker

The researchers tell us that ejaculating prevents the buildup of carcinogens in the prostate gland. It’s the “prostatic stagnation hypothesis.” How fun is that? You certainly don’t want a stagnant prostate now, do ya? I know I don’t. The more you flush out your ducts, the fewer carcinogens there will be to hang around and damage the cells that line your ducts.”

This is not a terribly new concept. A similar connection has been found between breast cancer and breastfeeding. Lactating flushes out carcinogens, thus reducing a woman’s risk of breast cancer.

Everyone here are Dr Dick’s Sex Advice believes that masturbation should be a big part of everyone’s sexual repertoire. And we always practice what we preach! We wholehearted encourage everybody to join us and masturbate till your heart’s content.

Check out: menstoyshub.com/male-masturbators/

Good luck ya’ll

REVIEW — Time on Two Crosses: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin

In celebration of black history month.

The proof that one believes is in action. — Bayard Rustin
The proof that one believes is in action. — Bayard Rustin

The best way to destroy a culture is to deny, suppress, or appropriate that people’s history. A culture without its art, without its myths, without its heroes will soon wither and die. For millennia indigenous peoples all over the world have suffered this kind of cultural rape at the hands of more powerful invaders. In America, slavery and segregation did its worst for African culture. And, in a rather different way, homophobia robbed LGBT people of their sense of self.

Do you know who Bayard Rustin is? I’m gonna guess not. That’s no surprise really, because his life exemplifies the impact that both segregation and homophobia has had on our culture. Despite being pivotal to in the struggle for civil and sexual rights for well over 50 years, he is all but forgotten now. His memory has been whitewashed, if not totally wiped out, and our culture is the poorer because of it. But thanks to Time On Two Crosses this American patriot is reinstated to his rightful place in the American pantheon.

Time On Two Crosses showcases the extraordinary career of this black, gay civil rights pioneer. The book combines classic texts ranging in topic from Gandhi’s impact on African Americans, white supremacists in congress, the antiwar movement, and the assassination of Malcolm X, with never-before published selections on the call for gay rights, Louis Farrakhan, affirmative action, AIDS, and women’s rights.Time on Two Crosses

Bayard Rustin was a key civil rights strategist and humanitarian whose staunch advocacy of nonviolent resistance shaped the course of social protests from the 1950’s through the close of the twentieth century. And he was also openly gay at a time when that simply didn’t happen, especially among people of color.

Perhaps because of his unique position at the crux of the struggle for civil rights and sexual rights, Rustin insisted on the interconnectedness of all human rights and justice movements. He focuses not only on overturning racism and prejudice but also the systemic causes of injustice and disparity in the US and around the world. And his message on many issues is as relevant today as it was in his lifetime. He writes of himself:

“I am Bayard Rustin, Chairman of the Randolph Institute and Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, which is composed of over 150 national groups dedicated to human rights for all. As one who has been active in the struggle to extend democracy to all Americans for over fifty years I am opposed to any attempt to amend the recently enacted law banning discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation.

I have been arrested twenty-four times in the struggle for civil and human rights. My first arrest was in 1928 merely for distributing leaflets on behalf of Al Smith’s candidacy for President in a climate of anti-Catholic hysteria. Since that time I have fought against religious intolerance, political harassment, and racism both here and abroad. I have fought against untouchability in India, against tribalism in Africa, and have sought to ensure that refugees coming to our shores are not subject to the same types of bigotry and intolerance from which they fled. As a member of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council I have fought anti-Semitism not only in the United States but around the world.”

But Rustin’s sexual openness and his controversial political positions came at a great personal cost. He wound up behind bars for practicing his nonviolent Quaker faith (from 1944 to 1946 in a Pennsylvania prison for conscientiously objecting to serving in World War II) and for practicing homosexuality (60 days in a California jail for “sex perversion” in 1953). And his many achievements — like pioneering one of the first Freedom Rides, refusing to give up his seat on a segregated bus in 1942, more than a dozen years before Rosa Parks did, and helping found the Southern Christian Leadership Coalition to support the efforts of a then young, largely unknown minister named Martin Luther King Jr. — often were tainted under the threat of exposure for his unpopular behavior and criminal convictions.

Bayard Rustin introduced Martin Luther King, Jr. to the precepts of nonviolence during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, thereby launching the birth of the Civil Rights Movement in 1955. When that movement needed a man who could get things done, even his detractors acknowledged he was the best organizer in the country. He was the man who was able to turn out 200,000 people on the Capitol Mall in an orderly fashion when no one else had ever done such a thing. He singlehandedly created the blueprint for the modern American mass political rally. The 1963 March on Washington was the pinnacle of his notoriety.

cover of LIFEFew African Americans engaged in as broad a protest agenda as did Rustin; fewer still enjoyed his breadth of influence in virtually every political sector, working with world leaders like Kwame Nkrumah, President Lyndon Johnson, and Golda Meir. Yet, for all his influence and all his tireless efforts, Rustin remained an outsider in black civil rights circles because they refused to accept his homosexuality, which remained a point of contention among black church leaders, a controversy that sometimes even embroiled Dr. King himself.

The very people who he was fighting for shunned him. He was indeed the proverbial prophet “not without honor, but in his own country, and among his own kin, and in his own house”. (Mark 6:4)

For example, in 1960, Rustin and MLK were preparing to lead a protest of African Americans outside the Democratic National Convention. This would have deeply embarrassed the leading elected black politician of the day, Rep. Adam Clayton Powell. Powell threatened to spread a rumor that Rustin was having a sexual relationship with King. King canceled the protest, and Rustin resigned from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, an organization he helped found. Bayard Rustin felt that his homosexuality, which he never tried to hide, put him in a unique position, a minority within a minority, as it were.

That year was not the first time Rustin was forced to negotiate how much sex could be a part of his life. After his 1953 arrest, in which he’d been picked up with two men in the back seat of a car in Pasadena, California, he wrote, “Sex must be sublimated if I am to live in this world longer.”

Though marginalized by the Civil Rights movement he helped found he was not embittered by the experience. Yet, when one lives in a society in which they’re constantly being told that they’re less than or that they’re not as good as, because of being black, or a Jew, or gay, or anything else deemed less than, a certain amount of the negation is bound to get internalized. That can’t be helped.

Despite it all, Rustin remained upbeat. In 1986, just a year before he died, Rustin gave a speech at the University of Pennsylvania in which he exhorted gay people to “recognize that we cannot fight for the rights of gays unless we are ready to fight for a new mood in the United States, unless we are ready to fight for a radicalization of this society.”

Veering into the economics of poverty, Rustin said, “You will not feed people à la the philosophy of the Reagan administration. Imagine a society that takes lunches from school children. Do you really think it’s possible for gays to get civil rights in that kind of society?”

His thoughtful writing ennobles us all. Rustin never fails to come down on the proper side of a moral or ethical question, no matter whom it may offend or support. He was willing to stand up for people — even though they had mistreated him — if it was a matter of principle.

Rustin’s legacy doesn’t live in the past, but in the present and future of America. His work linking sexual, racial, and economic rights was not only forward-thinking in 1963, but it is also forward-thinking today.

“We need, in every community, a group of angelic troublemakers,” Rustin said in one of his most famous quotes.

Time On Two Crosses is the first comprehensive collection of Bayard Rustin’s writings ever published, comprising forty-eight essays, speeches, and interviews, many of which were never widely available. From the birth of nonviolent direct action to the rise of Black Power, Rustin’s writings function as a road map for the meandering course of the black protest movement over the past century.

As a gay man, I found Bayard Rustin’s writing fascinating and uplifting. They give an unvarnished look into the civil rights movement through the ‘50s and ‘60s, and also a view into the heart and mind of one of the most remarkable men of our time. The book also includes twenty-five photos from the Rustin estate and a foreword by Barack Obama, and an afterword by Barney Frank.

Bayard Rustin is a true hero for the ages. And Time On Two Crosses is a marvelous and edifying read.

Full Review HERE!

How to Do Kegels Without Getting a Bulky, Manly Vagina

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How to Do Kegels Without Getting a Bulky, Manly Vagina

Unless you’re living under an unfuckable rock, you’ve obviously heard of your Kegels. You might even already be doing them a few times a week in the hopes of toning your pelvic floor, keeping your bladder in check, or turning your otter pocket into a delicate vise that firmly grips anything that dares to lovingly enter it. If you aren’t yet doing Kegels, it might be because you have the same fear that many women do before starting an exercise regimen: Will it make me look mannish? While some doctors might dismiss your deeply held concern as “ridiculous” or even “what are you talking about”, experts confirm that improperly-done Kegels can make your muscles become bulky, beefcake-y, and super manly. No thanks! Here are the best ways to use kegels to keep your snatch sexy, slim, and ultra-feminine:

1. Use the right pussy weight.
They look like hella fancy jade tampons and you can find them pretty much anywhere: Amazon, Craigslist, Goodwill. No matter your budget or sanitation standards, you can find something weighted and sphericonical to shove into the ol’ love canal. Just be sure that no matter what you do, you get the pink, purple, or glittery ones. The last thing you need is to end up with a pelvic floor that purposely wipes wing sauce on your shirt during football games all because you popped some navy blue or slate-gray eggs into your lady hole. Yikes!

2. Don’t add liquid calories with sugary lube.
When you insert your weights, be sure to use a low carb, high-protein lube. If you can afford to splurge on the gluten-free variety, even better. Choosing a lubricant that has too much sugar and fat is just gonna pack on the pussy pounds and before you know it your once-demure munchbox will be shopping for Gold’s Gym posing tank tops and challenging strangers to arm-wrestling matches on the street.

3. Low weight + High reps = Tight, feminine poon.
For a lean vagina, high reps with a low weight is key. Aim for five sets of 1,000 reps; 50–75 times a week. You can literally do them from the time you wake up until the time you pass out from exhaustion and loneliness, as long as you’re using something that weighs less than a dwarf hamster. If you go for low reps and a higher weight, say, something in the guinea pig range, you run the serious risk of developing a rippling, meaty eight-pack of a punani; the kind that rips off its TapOut shirt in public while screaming, “YOU WANNA GO THEN?!? LET’S GO!! COME AT ME, BRO!!”

4. Remember to breathe, but not too hard.
You might have heard that slow, even, deep breaths are best while Kegeling. This is a really common misconception; one that will lead you down the road of an aggressively full-bodied and overly aggressive vagina. You want to keep your breaths airy, shallow, and helpless-sounding. Restricting the flow of oxygen to your pelvic walls will help them stay sexy, trim, and delicately taut. Remember: This exercise is for you and also him!

5. Do it right, do it tight.
Nothing is more important than proper form. You NEVER want to perform Kegels in street clothes, old gym shorts, or comfy sweatpants. If you don’t have access to a full line of Lululemon apparel, lacy Victoria Secret underwear will do. Another option is to squeeze out your reps while completely nude and covered in rose petals that have been misted with vanilla oil. Again, that’s optional, but remember: Your pussy shouldn’t look like it’s killed a man with its bare hands before!

Now that you’ve got the basics down, it’s time to get to work—just don’t work too hard or you could get a bodybuilder of a salami-hider! Remember, if you feel the burn, you’re doing wayyy too much! Or you should call your doc; could be the clap. Happy sweating!

Complete Article HERE!

Bullshitness of Rabbit Vibrators

By Emily Nagoski

I promised myself to do a post about the bullshitness of rabbit vibrators, so here it is.

To begin with, what I mean by a rabbit is a dual vibrator – most commonly a vibrator with a large shaft for penetration and a bullet for external, clitoral stimulation. It gets called a rabbit because one particular brand has molded the jelly sheath over the bullet to have little bunny ears. There are also dolphins and thumbs and lots of other things. It’s cute.

350__1_ivibe-rabbit-vibrator-grape.jpgSo wherein lies the bullshit? Well it’s not that they’re not effective – but anything with an off-center motor that you can put between your legs can be effective; I know someone whose engineer boyfriend built a vibrator out of an ibuprophen bottle, and pubescent girls worldwide discovered the glories of a vibrating Harry Potter broomstick.

Instead, the bullshit lies in the rabbit’s position in culture.

First of all, the rabbit became famous as a result of a Sex in the City episode where one of the characters gets “addicted” to it.

The episode was basically a commercial. It was a product placement of the crassest, most cynical kind.

So the first reason the rabbit is bullshit is that its popularity is the result of a television commercial, not as a result of its ability to get women off.

Which brings me to reason number two that the rabbit is bullshit.

LILY 2
LILY 2

Had LELO offered SitC more money than the rabbit did to promote the Lily, this would be a different post because the Lily is a small, beautiful, powerful, rechargeable, nearly silent clitoral vibrator with infinitely adjustable speed and I will forever sing its praises to the heavens. Even its shape, to me, has a grace and elegance that echoes the flexing of a woman’s body at orgasm.

But if you walk into a sex toy store and you see the Lily on a shelf, and then you see the rabbit in its foot-long glory, which will you think is better? The rabbit with its size, its many functions, and its cultural import, is surely the more impressive there on the shelf. And if you haven’t looked too closely at cultural myths about women’s sexuality, you might think that it’s a better design for meeting a women’s orgasmic needs.

But it’s not. It’s designed to meet CULTURAL EXPECTATIONS around a woman’s needs.

It’s a big, colorful, rotating, oscillating SHAFT… with a bullet vibe attached. What does that say? It says that what a woman really needs and wants is a giant dick that does fucking magic tricks, and maybe some clitoral stimulation too.

That’s the second bullshitness about rabbits. It tells women what they need is a cock. It feeds wrongheaded cultural expectations around women’s sexuality, rather than nourishing women’s sexuality as it truly is.

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When most women see even just a traditional slimline vibrator, they assume that they’re using the shaft for penetration. And mainstream porn certainly represents women’s masturbation as a largely penetration-oriented activity. The rabbit is part of this cultural discourse, this myth; the SitC character can only be satisfied by a giant, buzzing, candy-colored cock.

In fact more than 90% of women masturbate with NO VAGINAL PENETRATION. (The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality.)

The third, related, bullshitness: it tells women what they need is a cock, thus failing to tell women that really the vast majority of them would be better served with a clit-centric toy; the cultural phenomenon of the rabbit makes people think otherwise.

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We-Vibe II

If you really want a dual vibrator designed genuinely to meet a woman’s orgasmic needs, have a look at the We-Vibe II, whose proportions accurately reflect where and how stimulation is effective for most (not all, of course) women.

I’ll move toward a conclusion here, though there’s lots more to say. This is hardly a comprehensive analysis of the rabbit in particular or sex toys in general. I just want to register a tiny squeak of frustrated rage that popular culture is failing us so very, very badly by repeating the myths that make women feel broken, subordinate, and conflicted.

If men are learning about sex from porn – and my college health ed colleagues recently did a survey that suggests that 1 in 4 college men thinks porn accurately portrays how sex works – then, I think, women learn about sex from the popular culture,  things like SitC. I believe that cultural representations of sexuality have a responsibility to participate in a healthy, factual, and feminist construction of women’s sexuality. Promoting something like the rabbit, with its phallocentric implications, does everyone on the planet a disservice.

If SitC were written by sex educators, the toy would more likely have been, for example, the Cadillac of vibrators, the Hitachi Magic Wand) – it’s big, it’s loud, it plugs into the wall, and it does the job.

But instead it was written by writers who don’t necessarily know anything about sex outside the mainstream nonsense, and so the mainstream nonsense is recapitulated.

Complete Article HERE!

For more on this timely topic look HERE!

Naughty Doreen needs a spanking

Name: Doreen
Gender: female
Age: 30
Location: Memphis
I think I have a spanking fetish. I say I think I do, because I never tried it. But I want to. I think my partner would be up for it, but I have yet to ask her. I thought I’d ask you first. What are your thoughts about spanking?

If you’ve been a bad girl, Doreen, then I think you definitely need a spanking. Have you been naughty, Doreen? Precisely how naughty have you been, Doreen? Everyone here at Dr Dick Sex Advice wants to know!ballerina spank

Spanking is a very popular fetish, one that can be enjoyed with or without sex. At the same time, spanking can be risky if you entrust the task to someone who doesn’t know what they are doing. Of course, it’s not particularly difficult to learn the basics. So just for you, wayward Doreen, I’m gonna offer a brief sexual enrichment tutorial on erotic spanking. YEAH!

Usually one’s hand or a paddle of some sort is used for spanking. This is different from whipping and flogging, which are much more advanced techniques than your garden-variety spanking. We’ll leave these techniques for another time.

There are two musts in this kind of power play: 1) The spanker must always inquire about the health of the spankee before the play begins. 2) Both participants must always agree on a safe word before the play begins. A safe word is a code word that the spankee will use as she is reaching a physical, emotional or moral boundary, or for when she wants the spanker to stop the play.

spanked.jpegThe safe word will be a word that spankee would not ordinarily use during the play, like “pickles.” This extraordinary word allows the spankee to scream “no, stop”, “please, don’t” etc. as much as they want without really meaning it, and still have a way to stop the play when necessary.

If you actually get around to enticing your partner to join you for a little spanking entertainment, make sure the first adventure is fun for all. I suggest that the spanking be part of a role-play scenario that you and your GF develop together. Your partner may need lots of positive reinforcement, particularly if she reluctant to join you in your kink. Keep telling her how much fun you’ll both have in the role-play. For example, you could be the naughty schoolgirl and your partner could be the stern headmistress. Really get into your roles; you’ll both need to dress the part, of course. You — sexy short pleated Catholic schoolgirl skirt, anklets and trashy high-heels. She — the domineering dyke teacher in a drab, no-nonsense grey suit and sensible shoes. Get the picture?

The headmistress calls you into her office for a corrective interview. She needs to teach you a nurse spanklesson. She puts you over her knee. She’ll do lots of bottom rubbing first, while she’s lecturing you on your bad behavior. As she gets into it, you know she’ll be getting turned on too. “It will be a shame to spank this beautiful bottom of yours,” she’ll coo. “This is going to hurt me as much as it hurts you!”…sort of deal. She’ll finger your pretty panties, but won’t remove them. She’ll start spanking very gently at first. Light taps on the fleshy part of your ass cheeks. If you want more, start wiggling into the spanking. Remember to stay in character. “No, Miss. Diesel, that hurts, please don’t touch me there! Grind into her lap. Your body language will communicate your desire for her to continue and possibly intensify the spanking.

Xcite six spanking stories coverTo insure the comfort of your partner, set some ground rules for your first play session. Don’t ask her for bare-bottom spanking until she readily indicates her willingness to do so. If your partner is a feminist dyke, this whole spanking thing may go against the grain for her. Remind her this is fantasy role-playing; not real life.

The more you get into your roles, the more likely she’ll get into her roles — Catholic schoolgirl/Sr. Mary Holywater, slutty patient/naughty nurse — you get the idea. The more you please her, the better she’ll please you.

You’ll want to reward your partner for her participation. After the first session take her to dinner. Ask her for her for her reactions. What could you have done to make the scenario more pleasurable for her? Talk about your reactions. Tell her how much you appreciated her participation. Talk about the scenario and how well she did. Tell her what you liked most about the spanking itself. If you sense that she’s content with events thus far, you could plan for more.

Set aside a couple of role-play evenings in the coming weeks. If she continues to be open and receptive, you can add more and more spanking, different implements, a ruler, a hairbrush, a paddle. If you want spankings on other parts of your body, tits, pussy and the like introduce those slowly. The intensity of the spanking needs to be adjusted to more sensitive parts of the anatomy. Make sure there’s lots of feedback happening before and after each play session.teacher_girl

Spanking is a full-fledged fetish with loads of spanking associated erotica. It goes from mild to wild. Do some exploring together your GF. Check out some erotica, magazines, or videos. You’d probably do well to stick to the girl-on-girl stuff at first. Some, if not all, of the boy-on-girl stuff may be off-putting to your partner’s lesbiterian sensibilities. Always talk about spanking in a positive way as something that is fun and enjoyable for both of you. Remember to also attend to your partner’s fantasies and the things that turn her on too.

Like I said at the beginning, spanking is a stand-alone fetish, it may be a part of full-on sex, or it may be just a bonding thing between you two naughty bitches.

In the end, introducing your partner to your kink is one of those — “Give To Get” things. Be attentive to her. Make sure she knows she’s the most special person in your life. The more satisfied she is; the more she’ll be open to pleasing you.

Good luck

Why Does He Need Porn When He Has ME?

By Amy Jo Goddard

If you are threatened because your partner or lover watches porn, you need to ask yourself why.

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Porn has become the ubiquitous other woman. The porn debate is intense and complex for many people. I hear people talk about the role they think porn is playing in their sexual lives and I’ve noticed a big pattern where many women feel like it gets in the way of their being able to be intimate with their partners. Maybe that’s true, but I think there are other factors going on that I want to address in this article.

We could debate all day long about how pornography depicts unrealistic images of women’s bodies, men’s penises and sex itself, and how that creates all sorts of unrealistic expectations for many people when they actually have a real sexual relationship. Porn is there for entertainment and arousal and it fulfills something in people who watch, otherwise it wouldn’t be a multi-billion dollar industry. But let’s talk about the ideas that many people are attaching to their partner’s love of porn.

If you are threatened because your partner or lover watches porn, you need to ask yourself why. When women profess that their partners shouldn’t watch porn because they should just be enough, or because it makes them feel insecure, or because they are now questioning their partner’s integrity or even their attraction, big red flags go up for me because I know that the issue isn’t the porn.

The issue is insecurity, an unstable relationship, or unrealistic expectations. Let’s break each one down.

Insecurity

You need to be your best self and show up as your best self in your relationship. If you are destabilized because your partner watches porn, you are not at home in yourself, you are projecting your own insecurity and you are not being your best self. So, your partner enjoys porn. Why do you want to put the kibosh on that because you don’t like it?porn.jpg

You need to deal with your insecurity. No amount of porn can replace a loving, sensual, playful, adventurous, real-life sexual partner. Porn doesn’t caress your partner and give him or her human touch. You do. Why are you comparing yourself to porn?

If your insecurity is flaring up, ask yourself if you are insecure about yourself or the relationship. It’s one or the other.

If the insecurity is about yourself then your complaints about your lover’s porn watching are a projection. How does it serve you to do that? Your insecurity is your issue to deal with. Don’t project it onto your partner or you will seriously douse the flame of the relationship. Total relationship killer.

Unstable Relationship

If you are insecure in the relationship, then the two of you had better talk and figure out how you are going to address and get help with that. It will NOT fix itself. You must deal with the insecurity because it means there is not trust and that’s an awful place to be. Why be in a relationship where you can’t trust your partner? If you are not working on mending the insecurity, then the relationship is dying and you need to get real about that.

If your relationship is unstable and you are feeling insecure about it, then that will show up everywhere. Again, the porn is not the problem, the issues in the relationship are. The porn watching could be a symptom of what’s going on if your lover uses the porn to escape and not deal with the real things that are going on for you in the relationship. Or, it might just be something your lover likes to do. In that case, why are you judging it?

Unrealistic Expectations

free_online_pornYou may also have totally unrealistic and unfair expectations of your sexual partner. If you expect that YOU will be the SOLE source of your partner’s erotic excitement you are not only kidding yourself, you are expecting that your lover will just put away his or her sexuality and bring it out only for you. Is that what attracted you to them in the first place? I bet not.

If you need to be the center of your lover’s universe, and that’s how you feel your own self-worth, you have work to do. People are sexual by nature. Our sexuality is. We don’t turn it on or off at will because it makes someone feel uncomfortable. And no one should expect us to. You don’t decide not to wear your sexuality today because you have a business meeting or a doctor’s appointment, or lunch with a friend that might make your partner jealous. You are always sexual and if you or your partner is putting your sexuality away to “protect” the other from feeling bad, insecure, jealous, hurt, threatened or even angry, that’s problematic. You are squashing the most powerful energy you have and that doesn’t serve you or your relationship.

Can I coexist with porn in my relationship?

Your partner can love you, desire you and want to have mind-blowing sex with you AND enjoy watching porn. The porn itself takes nothing away from you. It’s another means of sexual expression that your partner likes. You don’t have to like it the same way, but why do you need to zip their lid and guilt them into feeling bad because sexy images turn them on? That will do more damage than any amount of porn watching ever will. They’ll just learn to hide things from you and they’ll be clandestine about it – they won’t stop watching porn. You are just creating future trust issues.

If this is an issue for you there are some patterns you’ve got to look at. You are enough. You are not competing in a pageant with pornography. (Get another take on pornography in Porn: Love It or Leave It?)

Complete Article HERE!

Becoming a Power Bottom 101

By Jace Payne

Power bottoms are guys who aggressively enjoy being the receiving partner in anal sex. A true power bottom doesn’t just on their back and get penetrated; a good power bottom can assume the dominant role while being fucked. Porn stars like Jessie Colter and Brandon Jones are great examples of true power bottoms.

Bottoms-upThere are many benefits of learning how to be a power bottom. First, preparing your body for this kind of role will make the act of bottoming more pleasurable; it’s not a skill most guys possess naturally—not every bottom is a power bottom. Tops, who especially like long and rough sessions, enjoy it when their partner can enjoy a pounding without becoming tired or sore.

The first step to becoming a power bottom is to learn the basics of how to bottom. Before you start engaging in any kind of play, you need to start with a hot shower. Learning how to properly cleanse your ass is key. It’s called douching. Douching is a requirement if you’re going to be bottoming. There are many types of anal douches you can choose from; the most popular are a small enema bulb or a more elaborate hose system that connects to your shower head. Fort Troff has a spectacular selection of anal douching kits designed for bottoms that are serious about having a good time, and they are made to be hygienic and user-friendly.proud bottom

Next you must learn to relax. Being topped aggressively can be overwhelming, and it’s important you learn proper techniques to keep yourself calm so you can enjoy the experience. Practice deep breathing to ease your mind and to relax your body. Being a good power bottom is learning how to maintain the proper mindset. If you’re tense up, then you aren’t going to enjoy yourself as much as you could be and it’s going to become painful and uncomfortable. It’s just as important as breathing. If you start to tense up, just take a couple of deep breaths. Communicating with your partner will let each other know what’s working, not working, what would make it more comfortable or pleasurable.

Becoming a power bottom doesn’t happen overnight, and you have to work towards it with a top that understands how to listen, and is willing to work with you as you progress. When selecting sex slingsomeone to help you become a true power bottom, find someone that is not only a skilled top, but patient, and well-versed in foreplay.

Foreplay should be fun and help you relax. A great way to get started is with some light finger play with some lubricant. Once you start to loosen up and are comfortable, rimming is a great way to have some more fun before getting to the more serious action. Rimming does wonders for helping to relax your hole.

When it’s finally time for get to the point where you are going to attempt to be penetrated, use plenty of lubricant. There are various types of personal lubricant to choose from including, water-based, silicone, and hybrid. Never use baby oil, Vaseline, hair conditioner, soap or other types of products not intended for this use because they can hurt and damage your sensitive skin. Learning how to be a power bottom will take much longer if you’re constantly damaging your asshole. You’re dealing with sensitive equipment, so treat it as such. Even when you are advanced, there is no reason to go balls to the wall without lube.

When first getting started with bottoming, it’s totally acceptable to take breaks. All-too-often people get too excited and want to do too much too quickly. Give your body time to adjust and becoming accustomed to what’s being done to it. Being able to get fucked relentlessly is a skill that has to be developed over time. If you are bottoming and it starts to hurt, then stop immediately. That’s your body telling you it’s time to take a break. You can either stop until the pain subsides and try again, or stop and try again the next day. If there are any signs of blood, stop right away and do not continue.toe curl

There are a few things you must not do in the beginning. Bottoming is a skilled art. It takes time. Rushing is a big no-no. Your top shouldn’t escalate to big thrusts before you’re ready to take them comfortably. If he does then things will come to a crashing halt fairly quick. The saying “Go Big or Go Home” only applies to advanced bottoms, not those who are still learning the ropes. Start small and work your way up gradually. Pay attention to what you’re feeling and take not of what hurts and what’s pleasurable.

Lastly, do not turn to drugs, alcohol or poppers to become a better bottom. This can lead to unpleasant, physically damaging, and possibly dangerous scenarios. You can become a power bottom without being under the influence.

Trust that if you take the appropriate steps and respect your body, you will be able to achieve great sexual feats in no-time.

Bottoms Up!

Complete Article HERE!

Macho Gazpacho

Name: Tom
Gender: Male
Age: 18
Location: Olongapo City, Philippines
I want to know if I am a gay or not. I don’t know if I’m a straight man because every time I see a nude pictures or videos of a guy my penis is erecting. It makes me feel horny too when I saw a pictures or videos of girls but most of the time I enjoyed looking naked men. I am always comparing myself to what I am watching, like the size and the look of my penis, the abs and muscles, etc. Does that mean I am a gay? And if I am a gay what should I do to remove it. I don’t want to become a gay for a lifetime. I want to have a family and how will my dream girl love me if I am a gay? So please help me.

Whoa, pup! You got it bad and that ain’t good. And I’m not referring to your latent homosexuality.leloir_-_jacob_wrestling_with_the_angel

Yeah, I’m gonna go way out on a limb and guess that you are indeed gay, or at least bi. But I think you know this already, right? The thing that concerns me is your terror about being gay. And what are you doing asking a big fat flamer, like me, how you might rid yourself of something that is authentically you?

I think you already know that there is no getting rid of “it”. You can deny it, you can disown your own feelings, you can persecute yourself for what you find lacking in yourself, you can even pray and whimper and cry and call out to your god. But you are who you are. And I believe that who you and what you feel is god-given. So maybe you don’t want to piss off the god that made you by suggesting that your god makes defectives, right? Get it? Got it? GOOD!

Here’s what I know for sure; it will be much easier to heal yourself of your self-inflicted and internalized homophobia that it is to try and alter a totally natural aspect of your personhood. And listen, no one “becomes” gay. You either are or aren’t. And if you are, there’s no reason that you and your male partner can’t raise a family. Loads of us gay folks are doing a fine job in the parenting department, thank you very much.

Lose the self-pity, get the sex-positive help you need to learn how to embrace yourself and your eroticism and grow up to be a happy, healthy and integrated person so that you can be an effective role model for all the frightened and ashamed young men that will come after you.

Good luck

Price of Intimacy: The Time I Hired a Sex Worker

“Though I’d been learning to embrace my life in a wheelchair—a result of cerebral palsy—going without touch, or even access to my own body, was taking a toll.”

By Andrew Gurza

learning to embrace my life in a wheelchair

I’d never considered the price of intimacy until I hired a sex worker. Though I’d been learning to embrace my life in a wheelchair—a result of cerebral palsy—going without touch, or even access to my own body, was taking a toll. Even so, I didn’t come to my decision lightly. I was worried about shame, stigma, and fear, and concerned I’d pay for time and still not get what I needed. I spent weeks quieting the voices in my head telling me that using the services of a sex worker was not a good idea. Would this be the only way I could find intimacy? Would someone even want to do this with me, or would he only view it as a charitable opportunity to help a cripple? Despite all these questions, I sat in my apartment reflecting on my nearly year-long celibacy. It was time to take care of myself.

After scouring site after site with rows and rows of horny men holding their hard-ons, I found David. His smile was warm, inviting, and intriguingly devious all at once. He was older than me, in his mid-40s, and his photos showed off a powerful body, a strong charisma, and an undeniable charm. I’d often felt physically invisible within the mainstream LGBT community, but David possessed everything I longed for.

I sent David a cursory email, telling him that I was interested in using his services, but that I had never done this before, that I was nervous. I also casually explained as best I could that I lived with a disability and used a chair. He emailed back some hours later, letting me know that he had experience working with clients with disabilities. David wrote bluntly: “If I’m unsure of something, I’ll just ask.” It was a refreshing change from all the guys who tripped and tumbled over their discomfort.

We ironed out the logistics—a time, a location, a fee. Knowing that my sexuality would be broken down into a succinct session was daunting, and it took away from the fantasy and spontaneity I had dreamed of. But this, perhaps, was the cost of getting what I wanted, what I needed. David gently reminded me that I was paying for his time, and whatever happened happened. On our very last exchange, just a day before we’d meet, he called and asked me a simple question, though one I have never been asked before: “What do you want?”

Shyly and nervously I outlined my likes and dislikes as well as my abilities. I wanted kissing. I craved body contact. I couldn’t bottom for him because of my spasticity and tight muscles. I’d need help undressing and being put in bed. I paused, smiled. My needs were at the forefront.

On a rainy, blustery Saturday afternoon, my iPhone blinked with the message that David was in my lobby. I looked at myself in the mirror: a long-sleeve shirt, cozy winter sweats, a baseball cap. I headed downstairs in the elevator. When the door opened, I recognized him immediately. “Hey there! How are you?” he said, giving me a big hug as if we were long-lost friends. I kept watching him, in part because I still couldn’t believe this was happening, and because he looked really good in those tight blue jeans and that leather jacket.

A sexy man was in my house. We made small talk, waiting for someone to strike. He led himself into my bedroom and asked me about the transfer device I use to get into bed. I told him he would have to lift my legs while I held on to two gymnastic rings fastened to a hydraulic lift in my ceiling. I continued babbling, watching him get closer to me, taking off his coat, revealing a tank top and thick, muscled arms. He then straddled my chair, bent down, and kissed me. As I reached and pawed at him—my limbs flailing, not wanting to miss an inch—he stopped me. He looked into my eyes, past the rejection and pain caused by other lovers, and spoke with a firm honesty. “It’s OK.”

David drank in my disability and I dared not stop him. He lifted me out of my chair and held me in his arms. He grabbed me, cradled me, and kissed me. I curled up into him so he could feel the scars, curves, rods, and contractures that inform my disability. I felt sexy. He took off my shirt, and together we revealed my skin. As he moved down my body, and took off my pants and shoes, I worried what he would do when he saw my leg bag and my toes, which curled into each other. But David made this act of care exciting and real for me. When I was finally naked with him on the bed—my body going into spastic fits as a result of CP—I started to tense even more as I neared climax. In a piercing moment of release, I felt my two identities collide: queer and crippled came together in a surge of pure, uncomplicated pleasure.

The afterglow was setting in as David lay beside me. He held me tight and kissed my forehead. He told me that I was handsome, and as I looked at his arms wrapped around my spindly legs, I felt he meant it. Moments passed and he placed me in my chair, planting one last soft kiss on my lips before ending our session and saying goodbye. As I sat alone, my adrenaline became diluted by a calming bliss. I could not shame this experience because it marked a passage greater than a fleeting carnal exchange. It was the start of my own physical assertion. I would not settle for an affectionless existence, and I had to strive to honor what I wanted as a seated, but sexually alive, man. I finally had someone see me, and regardless of the cost, I finally showed myself to someone else.

Complete Article HERE!

There’s No Such Thing as Everlasting Love (According to Science)

Just in time for Valentine’s day!

A new book argues that the emotion happens in “micro-moments of positivity resonance.”

love story

By Emily Esfahani Smith

In her new book Love 2.0: How Our Supreme Emotion Affects Everything We Feel, Think, Do, and Become, the psychologist Barbara Fredrickson offers a radically new conception of love.

Fredrickson, a leading researcher of positive emotions at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, presents scientific evidence to argue that love is not what we think it is. It is not a long-lasting, continually present emotion that sustains a marriage; it is not the yearning and passion that characterizes young love; and it is not the blood-tie of kinship.

Rather, it is what she calls a “micro-moment of positivity resonance.” She means that love is a connection, characterized by a flood of positive emotions, which you share with another person—any other person—whom you happen to connect with in the course of your day. You can experience these micro-moments with your romantic partner, child, or close friend. But you can also fall in love, however momentarily, with less likely candidates, like a stranger on the street, a colleague at work, or an attendant at a grocery store. Louis Armstrong put it best in “It’s a Wonderful World” when he sang, “I see friends shaking hands, sayin ‘how do you do?’ / They’re really sayin’, ‘I love you.'”

sad on valentine's day

Fredrickson’s unconventional ideas are important to think about at this time of year. With Valentine’s Day around the corner, many Americans are facing a grim reality: They are love-starved. Rates of loneliness are on the rise as social supports are disintegrating. In 1985, when the General Social Survey polled Americans on the number of confidants they have in their lives, the most common response was three. In 2004, when the survey was given again, the most common response was zero.

According to the University of Chicago’s John Cacioppo, an expert on loneliness, and his co-author William Patrick, “at any given time, roughly 20 percent of individuals—that would be 60 million people in the U.S. alone—feel sufficiently isolated for it to be a major source of unhappiness in their lives.” For older Americans, that number is closer to 35 percent. At the same time, rates of depression have been on the rise. In his 2011 book Flourish, the psychologist Martin Seligman notes that according to some estimates, depression is 10 times more prevalent now than it was five decades ago. Depression affects about 10 percent of the American population, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

A global poll taken last Valentine’s Day showed that most married people—or those with a significant other—list their romantic partner as the greatest source of happiness in their lives. According to the same poll, nearly half of all single people are looking for a romantic partner, saying that finding a special person to love would contribute greatly to their happiness.

But to Fredrickson, these numbers reveal a “worldwide collapse of imagination,” as she writes in her book. “Thinking of love purely as romance or commitment that you share with one special person—as it appears most on earth do—surely limits the health and happiness you derive” from love.

“My conception of love,” she tells me, “gives hope to people who are single or divorced or widowed this Valentine’s Day to find smaller ways to experience love.”

Vincent Valentine RIDEHARD

You have to physically be with the person to experience the micro-moment. For example, if you and your significant other are not physically together—if you are reading this at work alone in your office—then you two are not in love. You may feel connected or bonded to your partner—you may long to be in his company—but your body is completely loveless.

To understand why, it’s important to see how love works biologically. Like all emotions, love has a biochemical and physiological component. But unlike some of the other positive emotions, like joy or happiness, love cannot be kindled individually—it only exists in the physical connection between two people. Specifically, there are three players in the biological love system—mirror neurons, oxytocin, and vagal tone. Each involves connection and each contributes to those micro-moment of positivity resonance that Fredrickson calls love.

When you experience love, your brain mirrors the person’s you are connecting with in a special way. Pioneering research by Princeton University’s Uri Hasson shows what happens inside the brains of two people who connect in conversation. Because brains are scanned inside of noisy fMRI machines, where carrying on a conversation is nearly impossible, Hasson’s team had his subjects mimic a natural conversation in an ingenious way. They recorded a young woman telling a lively, long, and circuitous story about her high school prom. Then, they played the recording for the participants in the study, who were listening to it as their brains were being scanned. Next, the researchers asked each participant to recreate the story so they, the researchers, could determine who was listening well and who was not. Good listeners, the logic goes, would probably be the ones who clicked in a natural conversation with the story-teller.

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What they found was remarkable. In some cases, the brain patterns of the listener mirrored those of the storyteller after a short time gap. The listener needed time to process the story after all. In other cases, the brain activity was almost perfectly synchronized; there was no time lag at all between the speaker and the listener. But in some rare cases, if the listener was particularly tuned in to the story—if he was hanging on to every word of the story and really got it—his brain activity actually anticipated the story-teller’s in some cortical areas.

The mutual understanding and shared emotions, especially in that third category of listener, generated a micro-moment of love, which “is a single act, performed by two brains,” as Fredrickson writes in her book.

valentine

Oxytocin, the so-called love and cuddle hormone, facilitates these moments of shared intimacy and is part of the mammalian “calm-and-connect” system (as opposed to the more stressful “fight-or-flight” system that closes us off to others). The hormone, which is released in huge quantities during sex, and in lesser amounts during other moments of intimate connection, works by making people feel more trusting and open to connection. This is the hormone of attachment and bonding that spikes during micro-moments of love. Researchers have found, for instance, that when a parent acts affectionately with his or her infant—through micro-moments of love like making eye contact, smiling, hugging, and playing—oxytocin levels in both the parent and the child rise in sync.

The final player is the vagus nerve, which connects your brain to your heart and subtly but sophisticatedly allows you to meaningfully experience love. As Fredrickson explains in her book, “Your vagus nerve stimulates tiny facial muscles that better enable you to make eye contact and synchronize your facial expressions with another person. It even adjusts the miniscule muscles of your middle ear so you can better track her voice against any background noise.”

The vagus nerve’s potential for love can actually be measured by examining a person’s heart rate in association with his breathing rate, what’s called “vagal tone.” Having a high vagal tone is good: People who have a high “vagal tone” can regulate their biological processes like their glucose levels better; they have more control over their emotions, behavior, and attention; they are socially adept and can kindle more positive connections with others; and, most importantly, they are more loving. In research from her lab, Fredrickson found that people with high vagal tone report more experiences of love in their days than those with a lower vagal tone.

Historically, vagal tone was considered stable from person to person. You either had a high one or you didn’t; you either had a high potential for love or you didn’t. Fredrickson’s recent research has debunked that notion.valentine's_pose

In a 2010 study from her lab, Fredrickson randomly assigned half of her participants to a “love” condition and half to a control condition. In the love condition, participants devoted about one hour of their weeks for several months to the ancient Buddhist practice of loving-kindness meditation. In loving-kindness meditation, you sit in silence for a period of time and cultivate feelings of tenderness, warmth, and compassion for another person by repeating a series of phrases to yourself wishing them love, peace, strength, and general well-being. Ultimately, the practice helps people step outside of themselves and become more aware of other people and their needs, desires, and struggles—something that can be difficult to do in our hyper individualistic culture.

Fredrickson measured the participants’ vagal tone before and after the intervention. The results were so powerful that she was invited to present them before the Dalai Lama himself in 2010. Fredrickson and her team found that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, people could significantly increase their vagal tone by self-generating love through loving-kindness meditation. Since vagal tone mediates social connections and bonds, people whose vagal tones increased were suddenly capable of experiencing more micro-moments of love in their days. Beyond that, their growing capacity to love more will translate into health benefits given that high vagal tone is associated with lowered risk of inflammation, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and stroke.

Fredrickson likes to call love a nutrient. If you are getting enough of the nutrient, then the health benefits of love can dramatically alter your biochemistry in ways that perpetuate more micro-moments of love in your life, and which ultimately contribute to your health, well-being, and longevity.

Fredrickson’s ideas about love are not exactly the stuff of romantic comedies. Describing love as a “micro-moment of positivity resonance” seems like a buzz-kill. But if love now seems less glamorous and mysterious then you thought it was, then good. Part of Fredrickson’s project is to lower cultural expectations about love—expectations that are so misguidedly high today that they have inflated love into something that it isn’t, and into something that no sane person could actually experience.

Jonathan Haidt, another psychologist, calls these unrealistic expectations “the love myth” in his 2006 book The Happiness Hypothesis:

True love is passionate love that never fades; if you are in true love, you should marry that person; if love ends, you should leave that person because it was not true love; and if you can find the right person, you will have true love forever. You might not believe this myth yourself, particularly if you are older than thirty; but many young people in Western nations are raised on it, and it acts as an ideal that they unconsciously carry with them even if they scoff at it… But if true love is defined as eternal passion, it is biologically impossible.

Love 2.0 is, by contrast, far humbler. Fredrickson tells me, “I love the idea that it lowers the bar of love. If you don’t have a Valentine, that doesn’t mean that you don’t have love. It puts love much more in our reach everyday regardless of our relationship status.”

Lonely people who are looking for love are making a mistake if they are sitting around and waiting for love in the form of the “love myth” to take hold of them. If they instead sought out love in little moments of connection that we all experience many times a day, perhaps their loneliness would begin to subside.

Complete Article HERE!

“I’m spying on my husband!”

Name: Janet
Gender: Female
Age: 32
Location: Sacramento
Recently I accidentally discovered that my husband is downloading porn onto his computer from the internet. There’s a lot of it and it all features teenage girls. I feel sick at the discovery. Why in the world would he hide something like this? I don’t get it, and I don’t know what to do about it.

Let’s see, why would your husband hide his sexual fantasies from you? Ahhh, maybe it’s because he knows that if he did share this private little part of his life with you, you’d pitch a fit just like you are doing now.

cheerleaderSo your husband has a harmless fantasy life. Big deal! Get over it, darling. You want honesty in your marriage, Janet? Then stop being such a prig.

Fact is, most straight men groove on young female flesh. (Gay men on young male flesh.) Where’s the surprise in that? The male brain is hot-wired to find youth attractive and alluring. It has something to do with the original purpose of sex — procreation. Youthfulness equals fertility; it’s as simple and genetically programmed as that. Your husband is just bein’ a guy. Why would berate him for that?

Not to mention, our entire culture is obsessed with youthful (particularly female) sexuality and sexiness.  Have you ever seen a cheerleader?  You don’t think it’s accidental that we dress young women that way, do you?

Even though most mature straight males want to gawk at teenage titties, they are rarely stupid enough to think that they can compete with hot and hunky younger men for the affections of these nubile vixens. Despite their rich fantasy life, they are more likely to stick with the adult females they’ve married. The guys who are to dense to figure this out, are likely to be absolutely miserable in the pursuit of what will constantly elude them. So give your old man a break, and let him enjoy a little virtual thrill.

Oh and Janet, and all you other people out there who are snooping around in other people’s private affairs — stop it. Do you honestly think that I fell for that “oh, I accidentally discovered downloaded porn on my husband’s computer” bullshit? Shame on you for prying into his private life without his permission. You have no right to do that. Even in a marriage an individual has a right to privacy and you, my dear, violated that trust. If anyone ought to be upset at this discovery it ought to be him.

But maybe he needs to tell you all this himself. Why not tell hubby what you’ve told me and see what happens.

Good luck

Trust a Scientist: Sex Addiction Is a Myth

By Jim Pfaus

A psychologist explains why sex addiction therapy is more about faith than facts, as told to Tierney Finster

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Self-labeled sex addicts often speak about their identities very clinically, as if they’re paralyzed by a scientific condition that functions the same way as drug and alcohol addiction. But sex and porn “addiction” are NOT the same as alcoholism or a cocaine habit. In fact, hypersexuality and porn obsessions are not addictions at all. They’re not included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), and by definition, they don’t constitute what most researchers understand to be addiction.

Here’s why: addicts withdraw. When you lock a dope fiend in a room without any dope, the lack of drugs will cause an immediate physiological response — some of which is visible, some of which we can only track from within the body. During withdrawal, the brains of addicts create junctions between nerve cells containing the neurotransmitter GABA. This process more or less inhibits the brain systems usually excited by drug-related cues — something we never see in the brains of so-called sex and porn addicts.

A sex addict without sex is much more like a teenager without their smartphone. Imagine a kid playing Angry Birds. He seems obsessed, but once the game is off and it’s time for dinner, he unplugs. He might wish he was still playing, but he doesn’t get the shakes at the dinner table. There’s nothing going on in his brain that creates an uncontrollable imbalance.

The same goes for a guy obsessed with watching porn. He might prefer to endlessly watch porn, but when he’s unable to, no withdrawal indicative of addiction occurs. He’ll never be physically addicted. He’ll just be horny, which for many of us, is merely a sign we’re alive.

There haven’t been any studies that speak to this directly. As such, the anti-fapper narrative is usually the only point discussed: Guys stop masturbating after they stop downloading porn, and after a few days, they say they’re able to get normal erections again. This coincides with the somewhat popular idea that watching porn leads to erectile dysfunction, a position that porn-addiction advocates such as Marnia Robinson and Gary Wilson state emphatically. (Robinson wrote a book on the subject, though her degree is in law, not science, and Wilson, a retired physiology teacher, presented a TED Talk about hyperstimulation in Glasgow.) These types of advocates are wedded to the idea that porn is an uncontrolled stimulus the brain gets addicted to because of the dopamine release it causes. According to their thinking, anything that causes dopamine release is addictive.

But there’s a difference between compulsion and addiction. Addiction can’t be stopped without major consequence, including new brain activity. Compulsive behavior can be stopped; it’s just difficult to do so. In other words, being “out of control” isn’t a universal symptom of addiction.

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Then what, exactly, does it mean when Tiger Woods and Josh Duggar go to rehab for sex addiction? Or when Dr. Drew offers it up on TV for washed-up celebrities? The answer is simple: They’re giving free marketing to the new American industry of sex addiction therapy. Reformers Unanimous, the faith-based treatment program chosen by Duggar, is likely to gain a number of new patients thanks to the media frenzy surrounding his admission to their facilities after the Ashley Madison hack exposed the affairs Duggar blamed on porn addiction.

These programs are similar to traditional 12-step models, except even more informed by faith. By misdiagnosing patients from the start, they gloss over the underlying issues that might make someone more prone to compulsive sexual behaviors, including Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and depression. Plenty of compulsive and ritualistic sexual behaviors aren’t addictions; they’re symptomatic of other issues.

Unfortunately, that’s just scratching the surface of the faulty science practiced by these recovery centers. For instance, according to proponents of the sex addiction industry, the more porn someone watches, the more they’ll experience erectile dysfunction. However, my recent study with Nicole Prause, a psychophysiologist and neuroscientist at UCLA, showed that’s absurd. While advocates of sex and porn addiction are quick to correlate the amount of porn a guy looks at to how desensitized his penis is, our study showed that watching immense amounts of porn made men more sensitive to less explicit stimuli. Simply put, men who regularly watched porn at home were more aroused while watching porn in the lab than the men in the control group. They were able to get erections quicker and had no trouble maintaining them, even when the porn being watched was “vanilla” (i.e., free of hardcore sex acts like bondage).

There is, of course, other evidence that porn isn’t a slippery slope to physical or mental dysfunction. A paper just came out in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy from German researchers that looked at both the amount of porn consumed by German and Polish men and women and their sexual attitudes and behaviors. It found that more porn watched meant more variety of sexual activity — for both sexes.

Despite these results, there’s still an entire publication, Sex Addiction & Compulsivity, committed to demonstrating that porn creates erectile dysfunction. Its very existence suggests sex addiction and its treatments are real, yet the journal doesn’t take a stance on any particular treatments. And while its resolutions come from peer-reviewed articles, these articles only get reviewed by people who already believe in the notion of sex addiction.

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Which is why the journal has zero impact. The number of times a scientific journal gets used in other scholarly work is measured by something called the Journal Citation Reports (JCR). That number determines a journal’s official impact factor. So far, Sex Addiction & Compulsivity has a JCR impact factor of 0.00. Nobody cites anything from it, except maybe their own cult of followers who publish on blogs and personal websites.

The journal benefits from a very 21st century way of creating a veneer of objectivity. As long as there are papers in it, people can cite them as “scientific.” Even if the work — and the people who oversee it — are anything but. An influential associate editor there is David Delmonico, a professor who runs an “internet behavior consulting company” that offers “intervention for problematic Internet behaviors.” He believes sex addiction is real because he’s wary of the supposedly horrible effects the internet (and all the porn there) can have on human behavior.

Such porn-shaming isn’t all that different from the guilt conservatives attach to sex, even though conditioning men to feel bad about their sexual behaviors only leads to the kind of secretive, damaging behaviors evidenced in the Duggar story. What’s worse: when sexuality is labeled a “disease” like addiction, guys no longer have to own their sexuality — or their actions. It’s unnecessary to explain why they cheated because it’s beyond their control. And so, the “addict” stigma is preferable because it’s one they can check into rehab and recover from. Being considered an “adulterer,” on the other hand, is harder to shake.

Complete Article HERE!

Gags & Nipple Clamps 101

Lookin’ to spice up your Valentine? When roses and chocolates just ain’t gonna cut it…

Nipple clamps

Gripper Nipple Suckers by Atomic Jock
Gripper Nipple Suckers by Atomic Jock

First up are the infamous nipple clips or clamps. They are a favorite in sensation play. Whether it’s sucking, pinching, prodding, or pulling the nipples, clamps are meant to flirt with the painful side of pleasure. Don’t let the discomfort angle scare you off . Nipple clips can be perfectly harmless, especially for beginners, when used correctly.

Also, remember, both genders have nipples, so this needn’t be for women only. When picking out a tit torture product, you can test the strength on your finger or even better, the flesh of your arm, which is fairly sensitive. A good rule of thumb is that if it hurts your finger, your nipple is not going to be happy. Definitely work up to a stronger clamp if that’s your goal.

3-Speed Vibrating Nipple Clamps
3-Speed Vibrating Nipple Clamps

For beginners, I suggest a sucking type of clamp like Gripper Nipple Suckers by Atomic Jock to stimulate your nipples to full attention. They are easy to use (simply squeeze and let go on the nipple). If you are up for something a bit more edgy, try the 3-Speed Vibrating Nipple Clamps.

They vibrate wirelessly (which can help intensify the pressure in a good way), are waterproof, and, best of all, fully adjustable for whichever kind of level you are at. Pairing some trusty nipple clamps with restraints (and heck, throw in a blindfold!) will work superbly as torture play. Tease, tease, and tease your partner some more with the exquisite pressure of nipple clamps. They will definitely bring out your naughtier side.

Blind folds

Institutional Fleece Lined Blindfold
Institutional Fleece Lined Blindfold

Next, is the realm of sensory deprivation.

It may sound like an insignificant and simple item, but a blindfold can make a world of difference. Covering your or your lover’s eyes creates a vulnerability that can be quite thrilling.

If you don’t know when or where the next caress, pat, or lick will go you can be sure that this will create a whole new level of sensual tension. Plus, with a good quality blind fold impeding your sight, other sensations will take charge with a vengeance.

Try covering your lovers eyes while whispering something suggestive into his/her ear. Or, even better, both strip to the buff, make sure the blind is secure, and surprise them by ravishing different parts of their body, or rubbing parts of yours all over them. Especially paired with your favorite restraint, blindfolds can be a surprisingly new way to spice up your sex life.

Most any cloth material will work as a makeshift blindfold, but I suggest something like the Institutional Fleece Lined Blindfold as a starter product. It’s soft, dark, and molds to your face making each wear comfy with all the sexy benefits of sensory deprivation.

Restraints

Cotton Bondage RopeRestraints also heighten sexual tension. Whether it’s the cool metal of handcuffs (please, make sure you have the key!), the flexibility of rope, or the simplicity of scarves and ties, whatever you use to restrain your lover will provide a whole new dimension to sex play.

But first things first, some safety tips.

Have an exit: Make sure you both are comfortable with untying the knot or unlocking the cuff. Have a pair of scissors near to hand just in case.

Too tight is not right: This is a biggie: watch how tightly you knot the material or cuff. Cutting off circulation will get unsexy in a hurry. So if you or your partner feels any numbness, pain, or strain in their tied limb, speak up so the restraint can be adjusted. Having a mutual safe word as well as trying a few practice knots on yourself so you can be up to par and ready for the real session.

Once you’re a-OK with ropes, cuffs, or whatever you’re using, get ready to tease your partner KinkLab BedSpread Under Bed Bondage Strapsuntil they beg for more! For beginners, I would suggest using either Cotton Bondage Rope or the KinkLab BedSpread Under Bed Bondage Straps. Both are very user friendly (the bed bindings doesn’t even need a post or headboard!) and will ease you into your bondage fantasies.

Once you or your partner is successfully restrained, tease your way up and down their body, varying the pressure and consistency of your touch, pats or (even better) licks. Incorporate other sensations  (cold or hot, silky or rough, etc.) or other toys. Even your most steadfast vibrator can turn into a whole new experience once you’re no longer in control.

Gags

Tantus Beginner Ball GagThough there is very real potential for drool with this torture device, I say go for it! You will also be depriving your partner of speech. When they can’t tell you what they want, you must rely on moans, groans, and body language. The gag can be a major prop in role playing too.

Try some rougher play, with restraints and even a blindfold. The gag is meant to be power play, so maybe a game of sex slave for the afternoon with your lover on hands and knees with the ball gag and nothing else. Or the classic break-in situation, with a burglar restraining and gagging the unsuspecting victim before ravaging their body. It’s completely up to you.

As for products, try the Silicone Ball Gag w/ Garment Leather Strap to see if you like the feel. Those looking for more might consider stepping up to the Tantus Beginner Ball Gag. Just make sure you maintain proper hygiene in safely washing these toys, since they are going in your mouth. Many are silicone, rubber, latex, or metal, so easily washable, or even bleachable.Silicone Ball Gag w: Garment Leather Strap

Simply insert the gag into your/your partner’s mouth, adjust the strap, and there you go. Some more complicated gags have different parts, metal bits, or can be adjusted in multiple fashions. Also, since a safe word will be harder understand, be sensitive to each others body language, as it will indicate what they’re feeling. Overall, make sure you’re comfortable with the gag and then unleash your wilder fantasies.

My final tip is to keep your experimentation playful. Have a sense of humor about the whole blasted thing. If this play becomes a chore or a bore, shut it down and go back to your former alleged life.

Good luck