Women’s sex lives were a mystery to men. Then along came Shere Hite

— A new documentary celebrates the life of the feminist pioneer who shocked the world – and about time too

‘Clever, spikey, ethereal’: Shere Hite in 2006.

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In a society in which nine-year-olds watch pornography and song lyrics are more explicit than The Kama Sutra, the revolution that Shere Hite helped to bring about in the 1970s, employing the words vagina, clitoris and masturbation, on primetime television for a start, is easily forgotten – which is exactly what has happened.

The Disappearance of Shere Hite, a documentary made by Nicole Newnham and produced by Dakota Johnson, and released in the UK this weekend, charts Hite’s rise in the 70s and her decline by the 1990s. “It’s just as simple as know yourself, not your role,” she says as advice to herself. “It’s hellish hard.”

In 1976, The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study of Female Sexuality was published. By the time of the author’s death in 2020, it had sold 48m copies in many countries and was banned in almost a dozen.

The documentary charts how, over a period of four years, Hite had sent out thousands of questionnaires asking detailed questions that probably hadn’t even been asked at the consciousness raising sessions then emerging in the second wave of the women’s movement and at the gatherings in which participants equipped with mirrors took at a look at their own vulvas, aghast or overjoyed with what they spied. It was a fun time to be alive.

“Does your partner realise you come when you come?” Hite asked her anonymous respondents. She received thousands of replies to dozens of detailed questions. One woman was in her 10th week as a cook with an all-male crew on a freighter in the North Sea. “I enjoy sex,” she wrote, in itself a challenge to the prevailing stereotype that nice girls thought it an unpleasant but necessary business. “I enjoy sex… but never have I experienced a more concentrated dose of chauvinism than being the only woman on a freighter with young men I am unwilling to fuck.”

In the documentary, Shere (pronounced “share”, born Shirley Diana Gregory) Hite talks coolly about the shocking revelation (at least to many men) that women had orgasms easily when they masturbated and that they preferred clitoral stimulaton to vaginal penetrative sex, a challenge to what the sexologists Masters and Johnson had asserted.

Whether you agreed with her or not – and plenty of feminists such as the redoubtable Lynne Segal in Straight Sex rightly took her to task for her oversimplification – Hite was trying to point out that the lack of words to portray the female sexual experience was an example of the patriarchy in action. The clitoris, whose only role is to provide pleasure, might have been discovered and illustrated in medical journals in the 17th century but by the early 20th century its value had been eroded.

In 1987, Hite published Women and Love: A Cultural Revolution in Progress. Her responses this time told her that women were fed up, they wanted intimacy and emotional connectedness with men. I interviewed her at the time. As the documentary portrays very accurately, Hite was unique: clever, spikey, ethereal with almost see-through alabaster skin, a cloud of curls, white eyelashes and a soft, baby voice. As an interviewee in the documentary says, Hite had made herself a brand. In the 1970s and 80s, it still wasn’t acceptable to be female with a brain, beauty, wit and a publicly viewed vulva (Hite had hers photographed often by the German photographer Iris Brosch in later years); a scholar and a slut.

The joy of the documentary is that it provides a history of the women’s movement in which Hite felt at home. Bisexual, she was an advocate for gay rights at a time when it was dangerous to do so. She had featured in Playboy, and, as a model, in an ad for Olivetti typewriters: ”The typewriter that’s so smart she doesn’t have to be.” Sexism was that bad, and worse.

Hite confessed to her modelling past and the liberationists took her to their heart. On one occasion, she asked those in the room to raise their hands if they masturbated; nobody moved. The idea for the first Hite report was born.

Hite, whose 16-year-old mother dumped her with her grandparents, had two history degrees. When she and her fellow activists picketed Washington’s National Museum of Natural History – “the Unnatural History Museum – women were only portrayed stirring a pot and holding a baby. I was studying the past,” Hite says in the documentary. “Because I couldn’t understand the present… why couldn’t everyone have an equal chance?”

Hite wrote half a dozen books; her report on women’s sex lives was followed by The Hite Report on Male Sexuality, published in 1981 and drawn from 7,239 questionnaires. Reading some, her editor, Bob Gottlieb, said: “I haven’t had many sadder experiences as an editor in my life.” Men said they were lonely, some were afraid. Other men reacted angrily. The backlash had already begun because Hite called herself a social scientist.

In a letter to the New York Times in 1981, she noted that “science” comes from the Latin root “to know”. Hite had employed percentages in her books – but percentages of what, her critics asked? Seventy per cent of 10 or 1,000? Regardless of the numbers, as Oprah Winfrey says in the documentary, “Nobody can deny there’s a problem.”

By the 1990s, Hite was in financial trouble and couldn’t get her books published in the US. In 1996, she became a German citizen, having married Friedrich Höricke, a couple of decades her junior in 1985. She developed Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s and died aged 77. In her New York Times review of The Hite Report, Erica Jong quotes a character in Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook (1962): “Women of any sense know better, after all these centuries, than to interrupt when men start telling them how they feel about sex.” Shere Hite deserves to be remembered.

Complete Article HERE!

Provocative Sex Is Back at the Movies.

But Are We Ready for It?

Alden Ehrenreich and Phoebe Dynevor in “Fair Play.”

After an awkward MeToo hiatus, ‘May December’ and other films are showing​ intimacy in messy, complicated ​ways again.

By Alexandra Kleeman

In Todd Haynes’s newest film, “May December,” Joe Yoo (Charles Melton) is a 30-something man in a marriage with an unconventional back story. He met his wife, Gracie Atherton-Yoo (Julianne Moore), the summer after seventh grade — but she was 36 at the time. She went to prison, but they stayed together, and the two eventually married and had three children. The couple are being shadowed by a famous actress, Elizabeth Berry (Natalie Portman), who will be portraying Gracie in a movie about the first years of their relationship. As Elizabeth enmeshes herself in their world, Joe opens himself up to her, and one evening, after she invites him to her hotel room, Elizabeth initiates a tentative kiss. “You’re so young,” she says. “Believe me, you could start over.” The two have sex, and we watch Joe thrusting briefly from a bird’s-eye view — a position of surveillance rather than intimacy.

It’s an explicit sex scene, but it is not wholly sexy. Elizabeth and Joe have two distinct sets of feelings and perspectives, and the film’s visual approach captures this sense of dissonance. There’s something concrete, even thrilling, about the fleshly realism of Joe’s slight paunch and the texture of their labored breathing, something beautiful and tragic about the way their interlocking fantasies converge and decouple. It’s an encounter thick with layers of lust, pleasure, self-deception and disappointment. Though the sex is consensual, the viewer’s experience of it is uneasy. It slips from steamy to disconcerting to alienating in a way that, though not uncommon in lived experience, has become less familiar on the screen. After it’s over, Elizabeth presses him on his relationship with Gracie. Joe draws back, wounded: For him, the sex was a way of regaining some of the agency he lost in entering a relationship with an adult as a child. In his eyes, Elizabeth is suggesting that he has no agency at all. We’re observing the discordant, syncopated elements a single sexual encounter can encompass.

Over the last several years, the matter of onscreen sex in the movies has been a continuing source of anxiety for audiences, critics and filmmakers who feel that desire has been shunted offscreen in favor of more chaste fare. In a 2021 interview, the director Paul Verhoeven lamented “a movement toward Puritanism” in Hollywood. Over the summer, buzz around Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” hinged in part on the fact that it was the director’s first film to feature either sex or nudity. As some on X dissected the extent to which Florence Pugh appeared naked onscreen, a repost of an anti-porn TikToker’s reaction to those scenes (“Have a plan and talk about it before you go,” she advised potential viewers who might feel “triggered”) caused a stir among some commentators, who saw it as proof that viewing audiences were caught up in an anti-sex fervor. Whether or not there has actually been a widespread puritanical shift, the portrayal of sex has certainly been complicated by heightened scrutiny in the wake of the MeToo movement.

That cultural moment inspired films that, today, read as artifacts of their time: stories of girlbossed Fox News personalities standing up to misogynist superiors, tragic narratives of sexual violence and recovery, journalism procedurals about the birth of the movement itself. These films reinforced a newly prevailing narrative that sex and systemic injustice often go hand in hand and promised just resolutions wherein abusers and harassers were exposed and punished. Emerald Fennell’s 2020 directorial debut, “Promising Young Woman,” crystallized both tendencies: After protagonist Cassie’s (Carey Mulligan) friend Nina is sexually assaulted during medical school, leading her to commit suicide, she feigns intoxication in bars so she can ensnare would-be assailants. She graduates to enacting her revenge on those she holds responsible for Nina’s death, but the film glosses over some of her crueler stunts. Things end tidily with Cassie’s engineering her own murder at the hands of Nina’s rapist and his subsequent arrest. The film had a slick social-justice message but elided the complex public discourse around accountability in favor of crowd-pleasing turns.

“May December” is part of a wave of movies and television shows that cut against this impulse to use sex as a warning or a cudgel and attempts to bring back sex as sex — as something titillating, seductive, gratifying, provocative and, at base, erotic. This year there are raucous throwbacks to raunchy comedies like “Bottoms” and “No Hard Feelings,” sexual bildungsromans like “Poor Things” and HBO’s lurid “The Idol” and a film adaptation of “Cat Person,” a New Yorker short story that went viral in the first months of MeToo, to name just a few. These films want to depict sex in a broadly appealing way while retaining an awareness of recent shifts in the cultural conversation.

“Bottoms,” for example, resituates the teenage sex comedy in the world of queer adolescent girls. “The Idol” utilizes the recent cultural redemption of maligned women celebrities like Britney Spears as the staging ground for the comeback of its own troubled pop star. Fennell’s new film, “Saltburn” and Chloe Domont’s “Fair Play” serve up salacious scenes alongside social critique, underlining the role of sex in gender- and class-based power struggles. “May December” examines the long aftermath of sexual abuse and the way it can haunt desire decades later.

A movie still of Lily-Rose Depp in a sheer dress in “The Idol.”
Lily-Rose Depp in “The Idol.”

The influence of MeToo, which forced a re-evaluation of sexual mores throughout our culture, is unmistakably present. But these films push beyond, asking what it means to treat sexual relations as a phenomenon that is related to, but distinct from, power. In her book “The Right to Sex,” the philosopher Amia Srinivasan asked whether a focus on issues of consent obscured a deeper consideration of the weird forms that sexual desire can take. To Srinivasan, desire itself is shaped by the conditions of power and is potentially complicit in its perpetuation: To prefer thin white bodies over brown or disabled ones, to take one example, can be a matter of intimate personal preference at the same time as it reflects the influence of the societal norms that shape us. Sexual desire encompasses desires for power, belonging, advantage and disruption that we would not typically think of as erotic.

“For better or worse, we must find a way to take sex on its own terms,” Srinivasan writes. “On its own terms” means sex that matters in multiple senses, that has sensual weight but does not ignore how politics lends it some of that weight. This new crop of movies is wrestling with what that could look like, interrogating inherited desires and struggling to reinvent them for a new moment. They don’t all succeed, but the failures are revealing.

In “Saltburn,” Barry Keoghan plays Oliver Quick, a poor Oxford student whose peers make fun of him for his “Oxfam” clothes and awkward affect. When the aristocratic Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi) takes pity on him, Oliver’s fortunes change. Soon he’s spending a summer at Saltburn, the Catton family’s estate. Felix’s sister, Venetia, lusts after him, while his parents approach him as if he is an alien species. Farleigh, Felix’s queer Black American cousin, a fellow dependent, tries unsuccessfully to get Oliver ejected from Saltburn. Oliver has a trump card, though: When he joins the younger family members in a field for nude sunbathing, he reveals his own sizable member, making himself an object of desire and sexual power. The movie brims with erotic excess as Oliver seduces his hosts one by one.

“Saltburn” is a jumbled, cockeyed update of many genres and stories (“The Talented Mr. Ripley” comes readily to mind), but the genre it’s most interested in revising is the 1980s and ’90s erotic thriller. This tendency to adapt older genres is common among this year’s sex-obsessed films — unsurprising, given that genre itself is a way of revisiting and amending inherited ideas. The erotic thriller was practically invented to hold together audiences’s ugly, contradictory feelings about sex, bringing the craving for erotic encounter into conflict with the looming specter of AIDs and the perceived threat of empowered women. This year’s films find their contradictions among contemporary social issues while embracing more inclusive understandings of desire. Thus even though Fennell is again considering sex as domination — this time a queer weapon of class war — she also wants audiences to think of Oliver’s seductions as sexy.

A movie still of Alison Oliver chewing on a pen in “Saltburn.”
Alison Oliver as Venetia in “Saltburn”

“Saltburn” deprioritizes the social message of “Promising Young Woman” in favor of tantalizing images. At one point, Oliver propositions Venetia after catching her beneath his window in a see-through nightgown. She protests on account of her period, but Oliver goes ahead and sticks his head under her gown. “It’s lucky for you I’m a vampire,” he quips. Oliver’s sexual aggression is treated as a tool that breaks down barriers of breeding and wealth, a sign of personal strength and cunning. Venetia’s period and Oliver’s transgression against her demurral (along with, perhaps, the disingenuous nature of that refusal) also accentuates the act’s erotic charge — a familiar formula for titillation. In another scene, Oliver forces himself onto Farleigh, who protests and then accepts his enemy’s advances. It’s sex as a disturbing assertion of power over a foe, but it’s also meant to be thrilling for each of the characters and, we assume, the audience.

Oliver’s sexual coercions clash with the film’s crude attempts to refashion the erotic thriller as queer, feminist and class-conscious. Fennell doesn’t seem interested in whether these acts are morally acceptable. Instead, by depicting Oliver’s victims as privileged brats, she gives us permission to take pleasure in his misdeeds. In place of any serious engagement with the strange ways that class, consent, violation and the erotic are messily entangled, Fennell turns to the thriller as a kind of escape hatch. Oliver’s schemes allow her and her protagonist to indulge in dark seduction while evading its repercussions.

This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the erotic thriller, which if anything is obsessed with sex’s consequences and how desire and vulnerability go hand in hand. A similar misunderstanding happens in “Fair Play.” Phoebe Dynevor and Alden Ehrenreich star as Emily and Luke, two financial analysts at a hedge fund who are in a relationship they must hide from their colleagues. Their relationship is robust — they have period sex (there it is again!) in a restroom at a wedding before Luke proposes marriage — but things sour when Emily is promoted to a position of authority over Luke, who grows jealous. Their sex life cools. As Emily embraces her male colleagues’ chauvinistic work culture and flaunts her new wealth, Luke takes on beta male tendencies, like spending his time and money on a business self-help course. Emily’s promotion plays on his gender-related insecurities, uncovering the misogynist assumptions lurking below their relationship’s surface. They never have a real conversation about what’s going on. Instead, straddling a reluctant Luke, Emily insists that they need to have sex. The performance of a healthy heterosexual order seems more urgent to these characters than grappling with the dissonances between them or the confusing presence of sexist gender norms within their relationship.

Though the premiere of “Fair Play” at Sundance earlier this year was heralded by some press and critics as a contemporary take on the erotic thriller, the little sex it features illustrates underlying conditions rather than posing questions that need to be negotiated or explored. The first sequence leaps from an interrupted quickie to a marriage proposal to a shot of the postcoital couple — less an erotic encounter than a relationship-goals checklist. The second happens during a nightmarish engagement party thrown by Emily’s oblivious family. After a furious shouting match, Emily and Luke begin to have angry sex, but when she tells him to stop, he doesn’t. Rather than staying with the choice the characters have made and exploring the frustrated intimacy that might have motivated it, Luke rapes Emily because, the film seems to say, violence is the only domain in which men can still have the upper hand. We find ourselves in familiar territory: Sex cannot be separated from the malignancy of the social structures that surround it.

“Fair Play” is capable of striking more provocative notes. After Luke assaults her, Emily finds a morally discordant way to reconcile her trauma with the demands of the workplace. She goes to her boss and disingenuously explains Luke’s disruptive office behavior as the culmination of a long period of stalking. This scene puts questions of gender-based violence in queasy juxtaposition with professional ambition. Rather than resting there, though, the movie ends on a shallow note of empowerment: When Emily returns to her apartment and finds Luke waiting for her, she picks up a knife and forces him to apologize for raping her. The ending frames Emily as a victim, asking the audience to take satisfaction in a ready-made trope when the outcome is much more fraught.

A photo illustration of Julianne Moore and Charles Melton in “May December.”
Julianne Moore and Charles Melton in “May December.”

Fennell and Domont have produced interesting failures that illustrate the inherent difficulty of returning sex to the screen: Older forms can’t always give shape to the strange eddies that sex inserts into the flow of our lives. This problem animates Todd Haynes’s “May December.” Haynes’s approach suggests that rehabbing the erotic will require a formal invention more rigorous — and far weirder — than what Domont and Fennell attempt.

When we meet Joe and Gracie and Elizabeth (the film is set in 2015, a couple years before MeToo), most see Joe as Gracie’s victim, but for her purposes, Elizabeth is more concerned with what motivated Gracie’s choice and how the couple see themselves. Gracie, whose outward presentation of white feminine fragility and naïveté enables the control she exerts over her mixed-race family, fiercely resists Elizabeth’s attempts to understand her. Joe, on the other hand, seems to be an open book. As he re-examines his relationship through an outsider’s gaze, long-suppressed questions and dissatisfactions come to the surface.

Like “Saltburn,” sexual desire saturates “May December,” though not always in the ways we expect. In one scene, we see Gracie teaching Elizabeth how to apply her favorite makeup, patting the lipstick onto Elizabeth’s open mouth with her fingertip while the two discuss their mothers. In another, Joe sits alone in front of the TV at night, watching a videotaped face-wash commercial featuring Elizabeth on a loop. As she splashes water on her face, rivulets drip endlessly from her eyelashes and open mouth. The camera zooms in each time before cutting to Joe’s rapt gaze. The interplay of the two images is like a dialogue between lovers — the formation of a relation, or fantasy of a relation, in real time. We can’t know why Joe has chosen this image at this moment, what is going through his mind, but we feel the emergence of a consequential desire that will encourage him to question all the other desires that his life with Gracie has stunted.

Haynes is interested in the way the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves buckle under the weight of retrospection and how central the erotic is to that process. The title gestures toward one of the grand cultural narratives that Gracie and Joe use to understand their relationship. Seen through the eyes of a public that has rejected that narrative, though, Gracie’s attempts to frame their relationship as a meet-cute story are chilling. “You know Joe’s been with more women than I have men,” she tries to explain to Elizabeth at one point. Joe tries to tell Elizabeth the same story, beginning with how different he was from other kids his age. “She saw me,” he says, insisting, “I wanted it.” But the insistence rings false. He is hunky yet has the hunch of an older man mingled with a boy’s soft, awkward bulk — a body in arrested development indicating a static mind.

The film’s score and script collude to resist psychological revelations about the characters. The score combines original compositions and an adapted score from the 1971 period drama “The Go-Between,” laying melodramatic music over scenes that contradict their emotional sway. As the movie introduces us to Gracie and Joe’s family, we peer in on a seemingly normal family anticipating a celebrity’s arrival. Then Gracie opens the fridge door to retrieve wieners for a barbecue. Ominous chords sound, and the score’s effect is bizarre, almost comic. What does Gracie feel here? What are we meant to feel, and what are these feelings’ objects? It’s a moment of misdirection, an analogue for the complex, prickly reticence of Elizabeth and Gracie, two characters who refuse vulnerability and self-revelation at every step, but also for the way that we, as spectators of the sexual lives of others (and sometimes our own) rely on defunct tropes that have nothing to do with our own direct experience. If, upon opening the fridge door in anticipation of Elizabeth’s invasion, Gracie sees herself as the besieged heroine of a romantic melodrama, the score pushes us into feeling that way as well. Eventually the score comes to seem like a tool of manipulation similar to the ones Gracie wields against Joe and Elizabeth.

Abuse is at the very center of “May December,” but it is not the only force at work: Joe is bound by a genuine love for and attachment to his children and wife, but he grapples with the contradictions of his situation and is not simply their product. Gracie, in turn, is not only an abuser but a complicated, opaque figure of barbed frailty. The film offers up narratives that might unlock her motivations: child sexual abuse and a subsequent early marriage to an older man — but they cannot fully illuminate Gracie’s desire or her behavior. “May December” is more concerned with repercussions, and perhaps its biggest accomplishment is the way it dwells in the afterlife of abuse with keen attention to emotional weather. In one scene, Joe smokes weed with his son — his first time getting high. He gets caught in a spasm of unacknowledged grief. “Bad things, they happen,” he warns. “And we do bad things also. And we have to think about those things. If we try not to think about it, there’s this. …” He trails off.

Where “Saltburn” and “Fair Play” dismiss sex’s complications in spectacular ways, “May December” stays with the difficulty, avoiding the glib treatment of harm as something that can be resolved through either punishment or self-empowerment. For Joe, Gracie and even Elizabeth, desires of the past haunt their presents, trapping them in harmful situations from which they might never recover — the stakes are scarier than anything Fennell and Domont can conceive. But perhaps most important, as we think through what sexual desire means in complicated times, Haynes’s view of sexuality is multidimensional, taking it seriously as a force that unmakes and remakes us. If there is hope for Joe, a chance for him to make a life of his own, then it is due in part to his ability to desire something new, something other than what he has been handed.

Complete Article HERE!

Queer Reading

— SF State prof sees reasons for rethinking LGBTQ history

San Francisco State University professor Marc Stein holds a copy of his new book, a second edition of “Rethinking the Gay and Lesbian Movement.”

by Brian Bromberger

For Marc Stein, professor of history at San Francisco State University, queer history is a calling, realizing he is part of a network and a community of gay intellectuals. Many U.S. college history departments don’t even define queer history as a bona fide field or it’s been ghettoized to a few classes, despite the fact courses in the subject are very popular with students. Even Stein is technically a historian of constitutional law and politics at SF State.

Stein has become an evangelist for the promotion of gay and lesbian history, rooted in his orientation as an activist. His passion for the field is exhibited in his newest book, a totally revised second edition of his 2012 classic, “Rethinking the Gay and Lesbian Movement,” (Routledge, $42.95) including a new chapter, “LGBT and Queer Activism Beyond 1990.” When he wrote the first edition his aim was to provide an up-to-date account of the movement that was “national in scope, comprehensive in chronology, and synthetic in ambition,” he noted.

In his book’s introduction, Stein lists the reason why gay and lesbian history needs to be rethought: to help address the widespread lack of knowledge about that history; to serve the needs of today’s gender and sexual dissidents, along with everyone who identifies with the movement’s agendas and aspirations; and to teach people about some of the major political and philosophical questions that have absorbed the U.S., such as what is meant when referring to freedom, liberty, equality, and democracy, especially pertinent in these politically partisan and divisive times.

Stein mentions that studying this history can help readers reflect on why some people become activists, why movements develop when and where they do, why they adopt particular strategies and goals, and why they rise and fall. He notes in the introduction that the book also underscores the historicity and variability of sex, gender, and sexuality, especially how these forces changed the movement and vice versa; shows how people can support those who are working to promote equality, freedom and justice in the 21st century; and finally, to show the interrelationship between political and cultural activism, which has promoted social change.

Stein, 59, discussed the new second edition with the Bay Area Reporter in an email interview, and explained why he decided to add the new chapter.

“As a gay man who was born in the 1960s and came of age in the 1980s, I’ve long been fascinated by the history of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, the decades that most directly shaped the world I came to know in the 1980s,” Stein wrote. “I don’t think historians are particularly good at analyzing the present or the very recent past. Other types of scholars, including sociologists and political scientists, tend to focus on the present. But many publishers and many members of the public commonly want historians to include a ‘bring the story up to the present’ chapter or conclusion. I often teach my students that those chapters are commonly the weakest in historical studies. As I say in both editions of my ‘Rethinking’ book, that perspective haunted the writing of the book’s final chapter.

“In any case, I was pleased when Routledge informed me that my volume was one of the most successful in its social movements series and commissioned me to write a second edition. Since the original version was published before the U.S. Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage decisions and before the Trump era, the 2012 edition was outdated,” he added, referring to the high court’s Obergefell v. Hodges ruling in 2015 that legalized same-sex marriage nationwide and Donald Trump’s election as president in 2016.

“I originally was only going to substantially revise the final chapter, but because there’s been such great LGBT history scholarship about the pre-1990 era published in the last decade, I ended up revising the whole book. Because the post-1990 period now includes the Trump era, I was able to strengthen my arguments against historical narratives that assume that progress is linear and inevitable,” Stein stated.

Stein writes that the gay and lesbian movement has been replaced or superseded by LGBTQ and other movements in the post-1990s era. There’s even been controversy in the title of his book.

“My book’s title has been misunderstood as implying that I am anti-queer or that I don’t appreciate the broader coalition that we invoke when we refer to the LGBTQ+ movement,” he wrote in the email. “Nothing could be further from the truth. I helped found an early queer activist group, Queer Action, in Philadelphia in the early 1990s. My first book, published in 2000, offers critically queer perspectives on the history of gay and lesbian politics in Philadelphia. I have commonly used LGBT, LGBTQ, and queer as key terms in other projects. But as a historian, I believe it’s important to be true to the historical evidence of the periods we’re studying.”

Stein doesn’t think there was an LGBTQ+ movement before the 1990s, but rather a gay and lesbian movement.

“For most of the period from 1950 to 1990, the gay and lesbian movement functioned largely as just that; it was commonly anti-bisexual and anti-trans, even as bisexuals and trans people argued for the gay and lesbian movement to change,” Stein explained. “Bisexual and trans people were part of the gay and lesbian movement, but that doesn’t mean the movement prioritized their issues. People with disabilities were part of the movement, but we don’t talk about the [lesbian, gay, disabled] movement because the movement did not organize or understand itself that way.”

Stein stated that a largely autonomous trans movement started in the 1950s and 1960s, which he discusses in the book.

“Starting in the 1970s, there was a largely autonomous bisexual movement and I discuss that,” he stated. “We know of key episodes in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s when bisexual and trans activists pushed the gay and lesbian movement to be more inclusive; they commonly failed in those efforts until the 1990s. ‘Rethinking the Gay and Lesbian Movement’ devotes lots of attention to these issues, in some cases more so than other books that purport to cover LGBTQ+ history, but I try to avoid the problem of projecting today’s favored terms and concepts onto historical periods when they don’t work particularly well.”

People filled the Castro to celebrate the U.S. Supreme Court’s same-sex marriage decision on June 26, 2015.

Political coalitions
Stein is interested in the ways in which political coalitions come together and fall apart.

“I think the LGBTQ+ political coalition is a remarkable achievement; we should pay attention to how, why, and when it happened (and how, why, and when it did not include other groups that might have become part of the coalition but didn’t),” he wrote in the email. “I’m glad that since the 1990s we’ve developed a stronger LGBTQ+ political coalition; I just don’t believe that we should minimize the efforts that it required to make that happen. As for the future, movements come, go, change, adapt, and reconfigure themselves. It would be arrogant for anyone to assume that today’s language and today’s way of thinking will be embraced by future generations; haven’t we learned enough from the past to know better?”

Queer activism today
In characterizing the new queer activism of today, Stein stated that he resists the tendency to consign the pre-1990 movement to the dustbin of history.

“It shows that much of what queer activism values — celebration of gender and sexual dissidence; rejection of gender and sexual privilege; critiques of racism, sexism, capitalism, colonialism, and ableism; intersectional multiculturalism — existed in nascent form in the pre-1990 era,” Stein stated. “But something happened in the 1990s, when radically queer tendencies within larger LGBTQ+ worlds became more influential and powerful. This had happened before — in the immediate aftermath of Stonewall, for example, and in the second half of the 1980s, when radical AIDS activism emerged — but in the early 1990s there was a more sustained transformation, one that was significant enough that we now find it difficult to talk about the ‘gay and lesbian’ movement when we’re talking about post-1990 developments.”

Stein also talked about the gay and lesbian movement’s biggest success and failure.

“If we’re talking about the period from 1950 to 1990, I would say that the movement’s biggest success was changing mainstream and lesbian/gay ideas about lesbian/gay people,” he wrote in the email. “We could talk about concrete policy successes, including the 1973 declassification of homosexuality as a mental illness; the decriminalization of sodomy in half of the states in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s; the passage of sexual orientation anti-discrimination laws in many local and state jurisdictions in the 1970s and 1980s; and the emergence of lesbian/gay people as an important part of the Democratic Party’s electoral coalition in the same period. But underlying all of those policy successes was lesbian/gay political mobilization, which transformed mainstream and lesbian/gay consciousness about gender and sexuality.

“As for the biggest failure, I think the movement was more successful at combating anti-homosexual bias, discrimination, and prejudice than it was in challenging heteronormative privilege,” Stein stated. “The movement succeeded to some extent at convincing many straight people to adopt ‘live and let live’ philosophies, but not at forcing straight people to renounce their special rights and privileges or encouraging everyone to come out. More concretely, I think the movement of 1950 to 1990 failed at transforming the country’s educational system, which continues to relentlessly reproduce heterosexuality, heteronormativity, and gender normativity.”

Current backlash
Stein was asked how to interpret the rash of anti-trans legislation sweeping across the country and whether it’s a backlash to the queer movement’s successes.

“I think in part we can see the rise of anti-trans legislation as an example of backlash politics, and the particular type of backlash politics that bullies some of the most vulnerable components of a disenfranchised community,” Stein stated. “Without the trans-affirmative reforms that occurred in the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s, I don’t think we would be seeing the anti-trans backlash that we are seeing in the 2020s. But, there’s also something else going on that relates to the politics of conservatism, populist conservatism, and fascism, in and beyond the United States.

“In the 1960s and 1970s, key conservative leaders in the United States made critical decisions about the future of their electoral coalition,” he explained. “Faced with the prospects of permanent political marginalization, foreign policy and economic conservatives formed coalitions with religious and social conservatives, most notably in the Christian right. By the Trump era, the culturally reactionary tail was wagging the economically conservative dog. Anti-trans politics, like anti-Black and Brown, anti-abortion, and anti-immigrant politics, works by deluding working-class and middle-class white people into thinking that their interests are aligned with corporate America, traditional values, and strong-man authoritarianism rather than with broad-based democratic coalitions of the dispossessed.”

Stein also discussed the current effort on the right to ban books in schools and libraries, including many on LGBTQ topics.

“I think this is all about so-called child protection. For centuries, we’ve seen gender and sexual conservatives weaponize ideas of “child protection” to further their aims,” Stein wrote in the email. “We’ve also seen them instigate ‘moral panics,’ where popular sentiment is mobilized to address problems that are exaggerated far beyond empirically valid foundations.

“In the past, cultural discourses about sexual ‘perverts’ and gender ‘deviants’ played up the innocence of youth, who were seen as vulnerable to enticement, grooming, recruitment, and seduction,” Stein stated. “This led, for example, to the passage of ‘sexual psychopath’ laws in many states in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. In the 1970s, similar dynamics led to Anita Bryant’s ‘Save Our Children’ campaign against sexual orientation anti-discrimination laws and to California’s Briggs initiative, which targeted LGBT teachers and their allies.”

Stein talked about work he has done.

“In one of my recent research projects, published this spring in the journal Law and Social Inquiry, I showed that in the 1970s, students at 14 U.S. colleges and universities, including two California State Universities, had to go to court when their institutions denied formal recognition to newly established lesbian/gay student groups; one of the common justifications offered by school administrators was that vulnerable young people might be tempted to try out homosexuality if there were officially recognized lesbian/gay student groups,” he explained.

Parallels
Stein sees many parallels between what is occurring today with what happened in the 1970s.

“In both cases, social and cultural conservatives responded to gender and sexual liberalization by attempting to freak people out with moral panics,” he stated. “Unfortunately, many media outlets play into conservative hands by reporting relentlessly on issues that are framed in reactionary terms. Today, for example, we rarely hear about the seven states that have mandated LGBT history education in public education [including California]; we rarely hear empowering stories about drag queen story hours; we rarely hear about the joys of athletic competition from the perspectives of young trans people and their allies.

“We also don’t hear about the ways in which social and cultural conservatives want our children to be taught rigid and inflexible ways of thinking about gender and sexuality — we don’t hear, for example, about the ways in which traditional educational practices offer up narrow and propagandistic lessons about gender identities and sexual orientation,” he added. “It would be fascinating to see what would happen if the states that are banning public school lessons about gender identity and sexual orientation actually were true to that notion — imagine a future world in which ‘boys’ were not taught to be ‘boys,’ ‘girls’ were not taught to be ‘girls,’ and children were not taught to be straight!

“As for book banning in particular, this arises in all of the contexts I’ve just mentioned, but it also arises in the context of declining support for public education in the United States, attacks on colleges and universities, and anti-intellectualism in public discourse,” Stein stated. “LGBTQ+ liberals and leftists should be mobilizing to support public education, not just to defend LGBTQ+ interests. Beyond that, I would just add that it’s a little bizarre to be focusing on banning books at this particular historical moment, when information is increasingly shared in forms other than books.”

Effort to silence queer history
Stein is concerned about the silencing of queer history in school curriculums.

“First, I would encourage us not to ignore the seven states that have mandated LGBT history education in public schools. When’s the last time we read a mainstream media report (or even a queer media report) about how that’s going or how things are going in the next set of states that will do likewise?”

Stein mentioned Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” law, which Republican Governor and presidential candidate Ron DeSantis signed last year that bans discussion of homosexuality or gender identity in schools through the third grade. Recently, DeSantis signed a law extending the ban through eighth grade — and the Florida Board of Education expanded the limiting of classroom instruction through 12th grade.

“As for what’s going on in more conservative states, I wrote a satirical piece recently for the History News Network that praised “R. DeSantis” for banning lessons about gender and sexuality in public schools. I was trying to get at what I hope will prove to be a legal fatal flaw in these policy initiatives,” Stein wrote. “We commonly refer to these laws as ‘don’t say gay,’ but they’re more than that: they ban lessons about gender identity and sexual orientation, which presumably means that public schools should no longer be teaching boys to be boys, girls to be girls, or all people to be straight. Imagine a second grader who asks which bathroom to use; under Florida’s new laws, the teacher should be prohibited from answering. And the laws have to be framed in theoretically neutral ways, or they would be vulnerable to First and 14th Amendment challenges based on free speech and equal protection. If interpreted literally, these laws ban teaching youth about gender and sexual normativity, just as they ban teaching youth about LGBTQ+ identities and orientations.”

Stein stated that as a college professor, the bans don’t really affect him. But he has other concerns.

“As someone who teaches in the post-secondary education sector in California, I’m not concerned about those types of bans,” he stated. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t have ongoing concerns about how we teach LGBTQ+ history in colleges and universities. My university seems to be happy to have a set of specialized courses on LGBTQ+ topics. But do colleges and universities have ways to encourage faculty who teach courses on other topics to be more inclusive of LGBTQ+ issues? Do my colleagues who teach introductory history courses incorporate LGBTQ+ history into their classes? I honestly don’t know.”

The future
Stein discussed the future of the queer movement.

“I’ll say that asking a historian to talk about the future is like asking a doctor to draw up architectural plans for a new house,” he stated. “I know this: there’s much more work to be done. My book’s new conclusion references a whole series of recent commentators who contend that the LGBTQ+ movement is finished, having succeeded in accomplishing all of its major goals. And these are not comedians. I’d like to see the movement broaden out, forming effective coalitions with other gender and sexual dissidents. I’d like to see the movement more effectively utilize creative direct action protests and mass grassroots mobilization. I’d like to see the movement focus more on education.”

Last year, Stein authored his “Queer Public History: Essays on Scholarly Activism” (University of California Press, $29.95). He defines himself as a queer scholarly activist. He explained that role.

“My ‘Queer Public History’ book reprints more than 30 essays that I’ve written for general rather than scholarly audiences, some for LGBTQ+ newspapers such as the B.A.R.,” he stated. “It also reflects on how queer publics nourished LGBTQ+ history projects, long before there was a place for LGBTQ+ history in college and university history departments. I use the notion of scholarly activism in a few different ways. It refers to the use of research for activist purposes; it refers to the activism that was necessary to make a place for LGBTQ+ studies within higher education, academic disciplines, and scholarly associations. I’ve been engaging in that work for decades and I used ‘Queer Public History’ to reflect on that.”

Accolades
Stein recently has received two accolades recognizing his role and contribution to both academic and public history.

“In January, gay public historian Jonathan Ned Katz selected me to replace him as the director of the OutHistory website,” he stated. “One of my first major exhibits on OutHistory, since becoming its director, is a study I completed with my students that documents more than 600 LGBT direct action protests from 1965 to 1973; we’re now working on expanding the study to cover 1974-76.”

The B.A.R. reported on the direct action history study when it was released in March.

“Then in April, the Organization of American Historians, which represents thousands of U.S. historians, nominated me to become its president in several years,” Stein stated. “If elected this fall (and I’m the only candidate, so I’ll be very embarrassed if I lose!), I’ll be the first president whose work has focused primarily on LGBTQ+ history and the first to come from the California State University system. I see the nomination as a statement about an entire generation of us who succeeded in using scholarly activism to make a place for LGBTQ+ history in primary, secondary, and post-secondary education.”

Ultimately, Stein believes that rethinking the history of the U.S. gay and lesbian and LGBTQ movements should lead to a more general rethinking of U.S. history.

“This will likely only occur if more students, teachers, and scholars engage in political activism to change the ways in which history is learned and taught in primary, secondary, and postsecondary educational institutions,” Stein stated. “It might mean trying to convince LGBT, queer, gender, and sexuality studies programs to make the history of political activism more central in their courses and curricula. And it might mean developing new ways to promote critical thinking about LGBT and queer history outside the classroom: in libraries and museums, on television and the internet, in film and video, and in various other venues. In other words, we need a new movement to rethink history.”

Complete Article HERE!

In Indiana, the culture wars aim at Kinsey

— The heart of sex research

Alfred C. Kinsey is questioned by Hazel Markel, left, president of the Women’s National Press Club, and Cornelia Otis Skinner, actress and writer, in Washington on Sept. 2, 1953.

By Justin R. Garcia

At the entrance to the Kinsey Institute, at Indiana University, there’s a plaque with a famous quote from its founder, Alfred C. Kinsey: “We are the recorders and reporters of facts — not the judges of the behaviors we describe.”

That ethos is at the heart of all the institute’s research.

For generations, the Kinsey Institute has shined a light on diverse aspects of sex and sexuality, in pursuit of answers that bring us closer to understanding fundamental questions of human existence. In a time of divisive politics and disinformation, it is more imperative than ever to preserve and defend the right of such academic institutions to illuminate the unfolding frontiers of science — even, and especially, research that might challenge us as it advances our understanding of ourselves.

Thus it is tremendously disappointing that Indiana lawmakers voted late last month to approve a budget that specifically blocks Indiana University from using state funding to support the Kinsey Institute, and that last week Gov. Eric Holcomb signed it into state law. This is an unprecedented action that takes aim at the very foundation of academic freedom.

The Kinsey Institute, where I serve as the executive director and a senior scientist, is the leading sex research institute in the world. We publish dozens of scientific and academic articles each year, across multiple disciplines. Our faculty are internationally renowned biologists, psychologists, anthropologists, health scientists and demographers. We house the world’s largest library and research collection of sexuality-related materials, and scholars from across the globe visit us to study these materials and to train in our research theories and methods.

Our unbiased, apolitical, scientific approach to human sexuality makes the Kinsey Institute unique. It is also what makes the work we do so controversial.

Since its founding in 1947, the institute has been the target of disinformation and attacks. The original “Kinsey reports” (“Sexual Behavior in the Human Male” in 1948, “Sexual Behavior in the Human Female” in 1953) drew data from the most thorough sexological study ever conducted. Both books were instant bestsellers, and Kinsey went from scientist to celebrity.

Yet the reports were also met with shock and moral panic — especially following the second volume, which documented the real sexual lives of America’s wives, sisters, mothers and daughters. So much controversy ensued that the Rockefeller Foundation withdrew its sex research funding for the institute in 1954

In 1950, a U.S. customs officer seized a shipment of sexually explicit images and other materials being mailed to the institute’s research collection on the basis of their being “obscene.” The federal court case that followed, United States v. 31 Photographs, resulted in a historic ruling in favor of the institute’s right to collect materials and data for sex research, which has profoundly shaped our understanding of academic freedom from censorship.

Another wave of attacks came in the 1980s, whipped up by conspiracy theories that Kinsey’s research had unleashed the sexual revolution and, with it, a moral decay on America.

As Kinsey wrote in 1956: “It is incomprehensible that we should know so little about such an important subject as sex, unless you realize the multiplicity of forces which have operated to dissuade the scientist, to intimidate the scientist, and to force him to cease research in these areas.”

Yet, Kinsey and his researchers persisted. And three-quarters of a century after the institute’s founding, the contribution of sex research to our understanding of sexuality, relationships and well-being is clear.

We know that one of the biggest predictors of relationship satisfaction is sexual satisfaction, and that one’s sex life affects the trajectory of relationships and marriages. That comprehensive sex education, including understanding consent and identifying interpersonal abuse, is associated with positive psychological and health outcomes — from prevention of unintended pregnancy to protecting against sexually transmitted infections.

We also know many questions still need to be answered. The complex associations between sexual activity and fertility outcomes. The long-term effects of covid-19 on people’s relationships and sexual lives. How the loneliness epidemic is affecting mental health across demographics. How new social technologies are changing the concept of intimacy and redefining sexual behavior. Why 1 in 4 women in the United States still experience attempted or completed rape.

Given these major unknowns, why do attacks on our research continue? The state representative who first proposed this recent legislation parroted false allegations of sexual predation in the institute’s historical research and ongoing work, which the institute, the university and outside experts have repeatedly refuted. Indiana state Rep. Matt Pierce described these conspiracy theories as “warmed-over internet memes that keep coming back.” The legislature still acted on this disturbing, easily debunked misinformation.

Indiana is not alone. Across the country, legislation is being passed that affects millions of lives, restricting reproductive health care, discussions of gender identity and basic sex education. The people passing this legislation are fundamentally failing to leverage scientific evidence as a guide through these complex issues

I am optimistic that this latest culture war will pass. And the Kinsey Institute will carry on. While this recently passed legislation stings, the majority of the institute’s funding comes from outside the university, from research grants and contracts, as well as philanthropic donations. But I worry what the future will look like, for our institute and others — and for the students and researchers who rely on us — should state legislatures continue to act on misinformation around sexuality.

Some years ago, an Indiana University alum shared with me why the Kinsey Institute was so important to him. He was a gay man in his late 60s, and he recalled how as a student in the 1970s he was struggling to come to terms with his sexuality. At times, he felt so confused and isolated, he wasn’t sure he would ever find his way through that dark time. He was too afraid, he told me, to set foot inside the Kinsey Institute back then, but “just knowing it existed, that someone was out there searching for answers, saved my life.”

His words took on new resonance last week. I think about this story often, and I’m reminded what’s at stake when we limit the right to even ask questions.

Complete Article HERE!

How I Get Strangers to Talk About Their Sex Lives

— I stop people on the bus, ask my cashier at CVS, or even beg my next-door neighbors.

By

My boyfriend held a cigarette in one hand and a Diet Coke in the other and said, “Are you fucking serious, Lys?” A few moments earlier, while lounging around a wicker table in his flowery backyard, I had flipped open my laptop and instructed him to tell me about all the women he’d slept with that week — or hooked up with, flirted with, even jerked off to. I told him to talk fast. My Sex Diaries column was due by EOD.

We were in an open relationship, insofar that I was pregnant via an anonymous sperm donor and he was a sexpot who could not be tamed. It was the only open relationship I’ve ever been in, and for that period of my life, it worked for me.

We banged out his diary together. I filed it. My editor had very few notes. The readers actually liked him, and all was good. It may sound strange, but I was happier producing such a vivid — and frankly, hot — diary than I was unsettled hearing about the multitudes of beautiful women my guy was going down on when I wasn’t around.

All this is to say that for the last eight years, Sex Diaries has come first. I mean, my children come first. My partner, Sam, whom I’ve been with ever since that guy, comes first. My parents and sister come first. But beyond all that, the weekly column always takes priority.

Normally, I don’t need to recruit friends or lovers for the column, but sometimes I do. The copy is due every Wednesday night — which sometimes means Thursday morning — so if I haven’t found a diarist by early in the week, I have to hustle.

Most of the time, I’m already engaging with a handful of potential diarists who’ve emailed me at sexdiaries@nymag.com with some info about themselves, hoping I’ll invite them to actually write one (which I almost always do). After that, I have to hope that they won’t flake or wind up being fraudulent or scary and that they’ll deliver something interesting, or at least coherent, for me to shape into a column. The diaries don’t pay, so there’s only so much pushing and probing I can do in good conscience. After all, no one owes me anything. In the end, about two in every five emails leads to an actual, publishable diary.

On the weeks when no one has emailed in or a diarist gets cold feet at the last minute, I stop strangers on the bus, at a local bar, or on the street — if they seem like passionate, horny, or simply authentic human beings — and ask them to sit with me for a half hour and entrust me with their stories.

“Hi. Sorry to bother you. I know this sounds ridiculous, but I write this column for New York Magazine called Sex Diaries — it’s pretty popular, honestly — where I profile someone’s love and sex life, or lack thereof, for a week. You can write it yourself, and I’ll clean it up for you. Or you can tell me everything here or later on the phone, and I’ll do the rest. We can disguise whatever you want in order for you to feel comfortable. But you have to remember that once it’s out there, I can’t take it offline, so you need to be okay with that … are you in?”

Occasionally, it works. Most people say that they have nothing remotely interesting going on — which, I’d argue, is still interesting! Other people are just too busy or private. Recently, a salesperson at CVS whom I approached thought I was hitting on him, and being a religious man and married, he was so offended and freaked out that he demanded I leave the store immediately. As I rushed out of there, pushing my son in his stroller, I actually started to cry.

Sometimes, I have to beg my neighbors, mom friends, or old high-school pals from my Facebook page to anonymously dish with me about their marriages, divorces, or affairs. And almost every week, I post something somewhere on social media, searching for random humans who will document their love and sex lives for me — for no good reason at all other than, perhaps, creative catharsis.

However it plays out, I try to make the experience as easy as possible for the diarists and to handle them with care. I make sure to protect their trust, and above all else, I never judge anything they tell me. When you tell me you’re having an affair, I will assure you that you’re not evil. When you tell me you’re hurting, I will share that I’ve been there too. When you tell me you’re weird, I will tell you that you’re cool as hell. And I will mean it all. Our relationships last only a few days and are driven by very direct questions and blind faith that we won’t lie to each other, then they’re over.

To understand my devotion to this column is to understand how it came to be mine and the freedom it has afforded me over the last eight years. In 2015, I decided to have a baby on my own for a lifetime of reasons you’ll have to buy my book to understand. I had always managed to make a decent living as a freelance writer, but at this point, there was no dependable work coming in, as I’d spent years trying to “break into Hollywood,” which wasn’t happening and slowly crushed me one disappointment after another. But I was pregnant, a marvelous thing, and I had faith that work would take care of itself somehow.

Out of the blue, an editor at The Cut asked me if I wanted to revive the column, which I had never heard of, explaining that it would be a weekly assignment with a steady paycheck. The work didn’t sound easy, but it didn’t sound hard either. Mostly, I saw the column as a gift. From New York, the media crowd, karma, or whatever. And I never stopped looking at it through that prism. Sex Diaries sustained me as I began life as a single mom. It solidified my role at The Cut, where I loved the people. And it gave me some writerly empowerment when I was feeling otherwise unwanted.

Sure, the column stresses me out sometimes. It’s a grind finding diarists every single week. I’ve only skipped two deadlines in all these years, and both were because I had preeclampsia with my pregnancies and was too out of it from the magnesium drip to resume work right away.

In the fall of 2019, we learned that HBO wanted to turn the Sex Diaries column into a docuseries, in which we’d document a week or two in someone’s sex life on film in the same spirit as we do in the column. This was fabulous news. I’d been chasing the TV scene for years, and it felt like this opportunity was another cosmic gift that I would never take for granted. But I knew that in the entertainment business, you had to fight every single day for a seat at the table. I had no reason to believe I’d be pushed out of the project, but I knew that I had to emphasize my value to the docuseries. To anybody who would listen, I said, “Let me handle the casting. You will never be able to cast this without me. No one knows how to find a Sex Diarist like I do.” Did I come across as too aggressive? Who cares! It was true.

So at 44 years old, my work life became unbelievably exciting and excruciatingly hard. My second child was still a baby, still breastfeeding, when we started casting and filming. A month later, COVID hit. Around this time, I got a book deal with a tight deadline and absolutely nowhere to write or think in peace. Politically, the world was burning down. My amazing kids, never amazing sleepers, kept us awake every single night. One of my best friends, the woman who taught me to advocate for myself, died of cancer — I cried for her all night, every night for many months. The weekly column was always due. The Zoom calls for the docuseries took up hours of my day despite the fact that no one even knew when we’d come out of this pandemic let alone feel romantic, sexual, or adventurous again.

Like all working moms, I was tired. But I had to cast this series, as promised. I revisited thousands of diarists I’d worked with throughout the years and asked if they’d be open to doing a diary without any anonymity and with cameras following them. Of course, the response was often “um, yeah, no.” I frantically called friends of friends who had cousins with roommates who were polyamorous, slut-positive, or simply lovestruck. I roamed the city, double-masked and desperate, sleuthing around for anybody who might be interested in talking about the sex they weren’t having with the lovers they weren’t seeing and the lives they weren’t living. I must have slipped into a thousand random DM’s per day, hunting for anybody who would indulge me. Instagram kept blocking my account, which would last only a few hours, thank God. I tracked down New Yorkers who belonged to sex clubs, posted provocative hashtags, or showed any sign that they were creative souls or open books. Our dream was for the cast to mirror an NYC subway car in terms of diversity. Eventually, with the help of the show’s amazing director and producers, we found our stars. Eight New Yorkers agreed to let us film their sex lives. None of them needed any convincing. They were all born for this moment. I did nothing, and they did everything.

Every week for what feels like forever, I’ve buckled down to “do a Sex Diary.” And because of that continuity — the ritual of it all — the column has unintentionally grounded me through the good and the bad. My tears are in those diaries. My hormones are in those diaries. A miscarriage is in those diaries. My childbirths are in those diaries. When I met Sam, my love, I was on deadline. When Biden won or our kids had COVID or we closed on our first house, I always had a diary to tend to.

My diarists have ranged from artists to engineers, sex workers, CEOs, and soccer moms, but they’ve all shared part of their lives with me, and through them, I’ve been afforded a healthy and effervescent work life that defies the drudgery of almost every other job I can imagine. To my mistresses, fuckboys, cougars, pillow princesses, and everyone in between, thank you. And to anyone curious about the column, email me, please.

Complete Article HERE!

Exploring the ornate and provocative at NYC’s Museum of Sex

The entrance to Super Funland, an erotically themed amusement carnival at the NYC Museum of Sex. The museum describes its mission as intending to “preserve and present the history, evolution and cultural significance of human sexuality.”

By

“I hope you leave feeling different than when you came in!” a cheery museum attendant calls to a group of people as they exit a small theater labeled “Tunnel of Love,” having just finished experiencing a “four-dimensional, abstract, artistic rendition of an orgy.”

Equal parts education, art and entertainment, the Museum of Sex draws attendees in with its playful advertising and taboo subject nature, with an interior that sparks thoughtful conversation about a wide range of topics. Queer identities and inclusion, the entertainment industry, pregnancy, abortion and sexual exploitation are all explored through historical artifacts, film and art. The museum describes its mission as intending to “preserve and present the history, evolution and cultural significance of human sexuality.”

The museum spans four floors and is cyclical in nature, both beginning and ending in a large gift shop. After entering through the store, there is a staircase that leads to the first floor, which is made up of a large room full of historical paraphernalia housed behind little windows. There seems to be no categorical order to the items, which include adult toys and clothing, anatomical models, OBGYN tools and explicit “how-to” guides. Many of these items were donated to the museum from personal collections of important activists in queer and sexual liberation scenes. All items are accompanied by notecards that not only explain the inventions and functions of the artifacts themselves, but also the historical and political context of the time they were made and any controversies that may have arisen due to their creation.

NYC’s sex museum invites you to take a risqué ride through history!

The second floor is an art gallery currently showing an exhibit titled “F*ck Art: The Body and its Absence.” The exhibit showcases pieces of art that explore themes of sexuality and identity from artists of many different cultural backgrounds, including works by Native American 2Spirit, Latinx, African American, Asian, Caribbean and Queer and Disabled artists. Many of these artists are also native New Yorkers. The gallery includes sculpture, painting, photography, mixed media and film pieces that display a variety of attitudes towards sex and sexual liberation.

The third floor currently houses an exhibit called “Porno Chic to Sex Positivity: Erotic Content & the Mainstream.” This exhibit explores the history of sex and sexual exploitation in American media starting from the 1960s, all the way up to that of the current day. The room begins with walls of magazine advertisements and props from television commercials with notecards that detail the sexual controversy that followed their airing. The tales of outrage were spurred by anything from the sexual exploitation of women to the placement of women in traditionally male positions of sexual power.

Past these artifacts there is a theater proudly displaying a banner with the words “Scandalous Scenes of Cinema” printed across it. Inside the theater, visitors are welcome to sit and watch both implicitly and explicitly sexual clips from mainstream movies that have scandalized audiences since their airing. Along the back wall of the room, behind the cinema, is a series of tall stalls labeled respectively with a decade. Aiming to present the evolution of sex as heard in music, visitors can step inside a stall to listen to music and watch the accompanying music video from each decade. The final wall of the room is dedicated to artifacts, much like the first floor, but relating to sexuality specifically within the music industry.

The third floor serves not only as the final floor of the museum, but the first floor of “Super Funland,” the accompanying amusement to the museum and the reason so many bachelorette parties frequent the building. Super Funland echoes the three-floor nature of the museum, but flowing down the stairs instead of up. To enter Super Funland, visitors are guided down a hallway featuring old carnival pictures and mirrored dioramas depicting the underground, risqué history of carnivals while they wait to be seated for the next showing of a six minute film about the history of the carnival, starting from ancient Greek times all the way up to today. After the film, the museum’s very own “Erotic Carnival” begins.

After exiting the film there is a large hallway with kaleidoscopic video footage from Coney Island that leads to a room of traditional carnival games — with a rather provocative twist. In Skee-ball visitors are assigned a different “God of Sex” as their icon, claw machines contain sperm and eggplant shaped pillows, the bounce house is fashioned out of balloons shaped like female breasts, and the entrance to the “Tunnel of Love” promises viewers an incredibly unique, four dimensional experience.

Going down the stairs to the second floor, one will immediately be welcomed by a spinning sign that says “Pornamatic,” where budding stars can step into a photo booth to see their faces on the — X-rated — silver screen. This room is perfect for couples, with a machine that dispenses wedding vows and rings, as well as a game where couples who kiss for at least thirty seconds can spin a wheel to win prizes. Most of the room is dominated by a collection of pink posts that you can climb up to reach a slide, with the entrance fashioned to look like a red-painted mouth.

The slide is long, winding and contains rainbow multicolored lights that blink wildly as you slip down to the first floor. The first floor contains the museum’s bar, as well as several themed photo booths and a few more carnival games. Exiting will bring you back into the same gift shop that houses the entrance, though with a renewed sense of wonder at all of the items within.

Overall, the Museum of Sex does a wonderful job of balancing “business and pleasure,” ensuring an educational, but never dull, experience for its attendees. Tickets include both museum and Superfunland admission, as well as one round of each carnival ride and game. It’s easy to win little knick-knacks for free as souvenirs, in case a friend asks you what you were up to this weekend. The elevator is currently non-operational due to ongoing repairs, so anybody in need of accessible accommodation is encouraged to call ahead to ensure a smooth experience. Admission is solely for those 18 and up.

Complete Article HERE!

The Gay Asian Activist Whose Theories on Sexuality Were Decades Ahead of Their Time

In the 1930s, Li Shiu Tong’s boyfriend, Magnus Hirschfeld, was a prominent defender of gay people. But Li’s own research has long been overlooked

Li Shiu Tong and Magnus Hirschfeld at the 1932 conference for the World League for Sexual Reform

By Nation World News Desk

Historians are rediscovering one of the most important LGBTQ activists of the early 20th century—an Asian Canadian named Li Shiu Tong. You probably don’t know the name, but he was at the center of the first wave of gay politics.

Much has been written about Li’s older boyfriend, Magnus Hirschfeld. He was a closeted German doctor and sexologist who became famous in the 1930s as a defender of gay people. In books on Hirschfeld, Li is usually just a footnote.

But as I found in my research, Li was a sexologist and activist in his own right. And in my view, his ideas about sexuality speak to our moment better than his much more well-known boyfriend’s do.

When Li died in Vancouver in 1993, his unpublished manuscript about sexuality was thrown in the trash. Luckily, it was rescued by a curious neighbor and eventually ended up in an archive. Since then, only a handful of people, myself included, have read it.

In its pages is a theory of LGBTQ people as the majority that would resonate with a lot of young people today.

Student and mentor

Born in 1907 in Hong Kong, Li was a 24-year-old studying medicine at a university in Shanghai when he met Hirschfeld. Then 63 years old, Hirschfeld had come to China to give public lectures about the science of sex. The year was 1931.

The Shanghai newspapers billed Hirschfeld as the world’s foremost expert on sexuality. Li must have seen the papers, because he made sure to catch Hirschfeld’s very first lecture. In medical school, Li had read all he could about homosexuality, then a very controversial topic. He had often encountered Hirschfeld’s name, and he knew his reputation as a defender of homosexuals. Whether he suspected that the famous sexologist was gay is a mystery. Almost no one in the 1930s could afford to be out—the revelation would have destroyed either man’s career.

Magnus Hirschfeld and Li Shiu Tong on the cover of a 1933 issue of a French magazine
Magnus Hirschfeld and Li Shiu Tong on the cover of a 1933 issue of a French magazine

The lecture that afternoon was hosted by a Chinese feminist club at a fancy, modern apartment building. When Hirschfeld finished speaking, Li came up and introduced himself. He offered to be his assistant. It was the beginning of a relationship that would profoundly shape gay history, as well as the rest of both of their lives.

With Li by his side, Hirschfeld spoke all over China. Li then accompanied Hirschfeld on a lecture tour around the world, traveling first class on ships to Indonesia, the Philippines, South Asia, Egypt and beyond.

In his lectures, Hirschfeld explained his influential model of homosexuality: It was a character trait that people were born with, a part of their nature. It was neither an illness nor a sin, and the persecution of homosexuality was unjust. He gave 178 lectures, plus radio interviews. His ideas reached hundreds of thousands of people.

This was the first time in world history that anyone told so many people that being gay was not a bad thing and was, in fact, an inborn and natural condition.

A love affair and professional collaboration

On the world tour, the two fell in love, though to everyone else, they passed as teacher and student. Hirschfeld decided to make Li his successor. The plan was for Li to return to Berlin with him, train at his Institute for Sexual Science and carry on his research after his death.

Their shared dream was not to be. When they reached Europe, Hirschfeld realized he could never go back to his home in Berlin. Adolf Hitler was chancellor. The Nazis were after Hirschfeld because he was Jewish and because of his left-wing views on sexuality. He went into exile in France.

Li stayed by his side and helped him write a memoir of their travels. It is a stunning departure from Hirschfeld’s earlier work, which trades in racist thinking—containing, for example, the claim that Black Americans had stunted brains.

Nazis select books for burning at the Magnus Hirschfeld Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin.
Nazis select books for burning at the Magnus Hirschfeld Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin.

In the book he wrote with Li’s help, a different Hirschfeld emerges. The text denounces imperialism—for example, calling British rule in South Asia “one of the greatest political injustices in all of the world.” Hirschfeld even saw a link between gay rights and the struggle against imperialism: Both grew out of an undeniable human yearning for freedom.

After Hirschfeld died in France in 1935, his will named Li, then a student at the University of Zurich, his intellectual heir.

Hirschfeld was the most famous defender of gay people the world had yet known. But when Li died in Vancouver in 1993, it seems no one realized his connection to gay rights.

Li’s vision of sexuality reemerges

Yet Li’s rediscovered manuscript shows he did become a sexologist, even though he never published his findings.

In his manuscript, Li tells how after Hirschfeld died, he spent decades traveling the world, carrying on the research and taking detailed notes while living in Zurich, Hong Kong and then Vancouver.

The data he gathered would have startled Hirschfeld. Forty percent of people were bisexual, he wrote, 20 percent were homosexual and only 30 percent percent were heterosexual. (The last 10 percent were “other.”) Being trans was an important, beneficial part of the human experience, he added.

Hirschfeld thought bisexuals were scarce and that even homosexuals were only a minor slice of the population—a “sexual minority.” To Li, bisexuals plus homosexuals were the majority. It was lifelong heterosexuals who were rare—so rare, he wrote, that they “should be classified as an endangered species.” Li found same-sex desire to be even more common than had sexologist Alfred Kinsey, whose studies identified widespread bisexuality.

L to R: Bernhard Schapiro, Magnus Hirschfeld and Li Shiu Tong, circa 1930
L to R: Bernhard Schapiro, Magnus Hirschfeld and Li Shiu Tong, circa 1930

Recent polling finds LGBTQ-identifying people at lower percentages, but it also points to the numbers rising. According to a Feburary 2022 Gallup poll, they’ve doubled over the last ten years. That same poll found that almost 21 percent of Gen Z Americans (people born between 1997 and 2003) identify as LGBTQ.

Some critics have suggested that these numbers reflect a fad. That’s the explanation given by the pollster whose very small survey found that about 40 percent of Gen Z respondents were LGBTQ.

Li’s vision conveys a more likely explanation: Same-sex desire is a very common part of human experience across history. Like Hirschfeld argued, it is natural. Unlike what he thought, however, it is not unusual. When Li was a young man in the 1930s, there was a very strong pressure not to act on same-sex desires. As that pressure lessened across the 20th century, more and more people seem to have embraced LGBTQ identities.

Why didn’t Li publish his work? I’m not sure. Perhaps he hesitated because his findings were so different from his mentor’s. In my book, I investigate another possibility: how the racism in Hirschfeld’s earlier work may have dissuaded Li from carrying on his legacy.

Yet Li’s theory was ahead of his time. A queer Asian Canadian at the heart of early gay politics, a sexologist with an expansive view of queerness and transness, he is a gay hero worth rediscovering.

Complete Article HERE!

Consent is not enough. We need a new sexual ethic.

By Christine Emba

Rachel, 25, has the open face and friendly demeanor of a born-and-bred Midwesterner. She’s lively and opinionated, and feels in control of most areas of her life. But when it comes to sex, something isn’t right.

“I don’t know,” she sighed over coffee as we spoke in downtown D.C. “I’ve never been in a situation where I felt pushed into something, exactly, but…”

Rachel (a pseudonym) reeled off a list of unhappy encounters with would-be romantic partners: sex consented to out of a misguided sense of politeness, extreme acts requested and occasionally allowed, degrading insults as things unfolded — and regrets later. “It’s not like I was being forced into anything or that I feel unsafe, but it’s not … good. And I don’t like how I feel afterwards.”

Young Americans are engaging in sexual encounters they don’t really want for reasons they don’t fully agree with. It’s a depressing state of affairs — turbocharged by pornography, which has mainstreamed ever more extreme sexual acts, and the proliferation of dating apps, which can make it seem as though new options are around every corner.

The results are widely felt. Many of my contemporaries are discouraged by the romantic landscape, its lack of trust, emotion and commitment, but they also believe that safer options and smoother avenues aren’t possible. Instead, they assume that this is how things go and that it would be unreasonable to ask for more — and rude not to go along with whatever has been requested.

In our post-sexual-revolution culture, there seems to be wide agreement among young adults that sex is good and the more of it we have, the better. That assumption includes the idea that we don’t need to be tied to a relationship or marriage; that our proclivities are personal and that they are not to be judged by others — not even by participants. In this landscape, there is only one rule: Get consent from your partner beforehand.

But the outcome is a world in which young people are both liberated and miserable. While college scandals and the #MeToo moment may have cemented a baseline rule for how to get into bed with someone without crossing legal lines, that hasn’t made the experience of dating and finding a partner simple or satisfying. Instead, the experience is often sad, unsettling, even traumatic.

As Rachel told me: “Every single person I know — every woman I know — has had some questionable encounter, whether it was, like, really violent or really forceful or just kind of like, ‘Oh, I hated that. That was not fun.’”

These are typically encounters that adults have entered into willingly, in part because consent alone is the standard for good and ethical sex. But the experiences that many young people described to me sound neither ethical nor particularly good.

When the covid-19 pandemic briefly pressed pause on our overheated social lives, many young adults suddenly had time to reflect on their experiences and desires: what we really want from dating, sex and relationships, and what we want and expect from each other. Today, as we make our way back into the world, we need a new ethic — because consent is not enough.

Even when it goes well, sex is complicated. It involves our bodies, minds and emotions, our connections to each other and our deepest selves. Despite the (many, and popular) arguments that it’s only a physical act, it is clear to almost anyone who has had it that sex has vast consequences, some of which can last long after an encounter ends. Over the past several decades, our society has come to believe that consent — as a legal standard and a moral requirement — could somehow make our most unruly activity more manageable. But it was never going to be that easy.

To be fair, it’s taken a great deal of effort even to get to the place where consent is considered a baseline requirement for ethical sex.< The earliest rape laws reflected the historically common view that women were the property of a father or husband whose honor might be harmed. Even as laws were slowly rewritten to recognize rape as a crime against the woman herself, the burden remained on the woman to prove her truthfulness, chastity and resistance to attack — making cases extraordinarily difficult to prosecute in the minority of cases when women came forward. In the 1970s, second-wave feminists organized speak-outs, hosted forums and established rape crisis centers, drawing attention to the pervasiveness of sexual assault and violence against women. Still, change came slowly. Laws that protected husbands from being prosecuted for sexual violence against their wives remained on the books in 2019. Donald Trump won the presidential election in 2016 even after audio emerged of him bragging about grabbing women by their genitals.

“No means no” was a radical slogan when it was first popularized in the 1990s. And the idea of affirmative consent — getting verbal permission clearly and often during a sexual encounter — was considered even more radical when it was implemented in 1991 at Antioch College, a tiny liberal arts school in Ohio. In 1993, “Saturday Night Live” mocked it with a game-show skit featuring sex-hating “victimization studies” majors; comedian Dave Chappelle was still roasting the idea of a “love contract” in 2004.

And yet, by the 2010s, the preferred consensus had moved away from “no means no” and coalesced around “yes means yes.” California enacted a law of the same name in 2014. This phrase, and the accompanying idea of “affirmative consent,” made clear that the absence of a “no” didn’t constitute agreement to anything; an active “yes” was needed, too. “Yes” as the standard would ideally make the act of giving consent an informed, empowering exchange. Or at least, that was the idea.

More recently, sex educators have moved toward the “enthusiastic” formulation of consent. This approach, which has become received wisdom on college campuses, tries to distinguish between wanted and unwanted sex, and encompasses both agency and desire. Again, the goal is to remove ambiguity, but it sets the bar higher. “If it’s not a f— yes,” as social media influencer Serena Kerrigan proclaims to her 150,000 Instagram followers, mostly young women in their 20s, “it’s a f— no.”

But even this more modern definition does not seem to have substantially reduced the unhappiness among many sexually active men and women. The same complaints and confusions abound. What if one party hopes for a future together and the other does not? What counts as a relationship, and what is “casual,” if the definition isn’t mutually shared? If men and women have different fertility timelines, does that affect the power dynamic? Where does money play in, or status?

Even the qualified versions of consent — the “affirmative,” the “enthusiastic” — have the lowest possible standard as their working assumption: “Did I get permission, so that my actions are not statedly against this person’s will?” The new adjectives are often understood as simply shifting the goal posts — rather than stopping when your partner says “no,” you just have to get them to say “yes” in the right way.

The problem with all this is that consent is a legal criterion, not an ethical one. It doesn’t tell us how we should treat each other as an interaction continues. It doesn’t provide a good road map should something go off the rails. And it suggests that individual actions — “ask for consent,” “speak your mind,” “be more forceful in saying yes or no” — are enough to preempt the misunderstandings and hurt that can come with physical intimacy.

Too often, they’re just not. And setting consent as the highest bar for any encounter effectively takes a pass on the harder questions: whether that consent was fairly obtained; whether it can ever fully convey what our partners really, ultimately want; whether we should be doing what we’ve gotten consent to do

More clarifications of consent — or ever-more-technical breakdowns of its different forms — won’t rebalance power differentials, explain intimacy or teach us how to care. Making the standard of consent our sole criterion for good sex punts on the question of how to conduct a relationship that affirms our fundamental personhood and human dignity.

>And an overreliance on consent as the sole solution might actually worsen the malaise that so many people feel: If you’re playing by the rules and everything still feels awful, what are you supposed to conclude?

The forced isolation of the pandemic, and the attempts that many people made to work around it, put an unexpected lens on modern-day intimacy. The vast array of dating apps has skewed our sense of what is acceptable and what is not by dangling the prospect of another, better match merely a swipe away

Meanwhile, millennials and Gen Z are the first generations to have entered puberty with easy access to pornography via the Internet — often easier access than they had to genuine sex education. By 2019, Pornhub — which had launched only a dozen years earlier — averaged 115 million visits per day, nearly the equivalent of the combined populations of Australia, Canada, the Netherlands and Poland. The most readily accessible kind of pornography — aggressive and hardcore, shot from the male perspective, with women existing to give men pleasure and not much else — has mainstreamed acts (choking, anal sex and outright violence) that used to be rarer. The ubiquity of pornography also means that growing numbers of women are interacting with porn-addled men who either disregard their desires or who don’t understand how to interact with a fellow human being as opposed to an avatar on a screen.

Consider what Kaitlin, 30, told me at a party.

“I’ve been going on dates with this guy who I really like.” It’s the winter of 2019 — the pre-pandemic era, when single urbanites still crushed up against each other in crowded apartments, trading complaints and advice over mediocre beers. “But he chokes me during sex

Kaitlin (also a pseudonym) wasn’t sure whether to say anything, or even if it could be considered a valid problem. After all, moments like this had happened to lots of her friends. And in the moment, she had said yes.

She then asked me — a complete stranger — to tell her how she was supposed to feel.

“I mean, what do you think? Is that okay?”

My immediate thought was that of course it wasn’t. She had felt pushed to do something that she didn’t want to do, and she should be honest with her partner and herself. Her discomfort was valid. That she felt the need to ask a stranger for confirmation felt disturbing — and sad

Yet I understood her hesitancy. Early in the #MeToo movement, many commenters argued that women should simply get better at saying no, at withholding their consent and exiting uncomfortable situations. There’s some truth to that. But it also felt like yet another burden placed on women: to be gatekeepers, whose comfort and safety were predicated on having the right level of self-confidence and self-possession even in their most vulnerable moments. What about those of us who are not always perfectly self-assured

And making the issue “being firm about consent” sidesteps a critical question about what our standards should be. There are some sexual practices — Kaitlin’s surprise choking encounter among them — that eroticize dehumanization and degradation, ones for which the issue should not be whether they are consented to but whether they’re ethically valid at all.

Instead, “between two consenting adults” has become a stock phrase, a conversational yield sign indicating that whatever is detailed next might raise eyebrows but remains beyond critique. This obscures the fact that not all sex is the same. Some things are worse than others. Yet the bias toward acceptance makes it difficult to say so, even when something feels obviously wrong.

And when we do object to a particular act or practice, there isn’t language to do so. Since we have made it effectively impossible for anything apart from nonconsent to be wrong, we end up framing issues in that prevailing standard — the consent given wasn’t the right kind, we say: It wasn’t verbally affirmative or visibly enthusiastic. There’s no clear way to talk about the underlying problems of sexual acts agreed to in order to “be polite,” to please a pushy partner or to avoid something worse.

This is the problem with consent: It leaves so much out. Nonconsensual sex is always wrong, full stop. But that doesn’t mean consensual sex is always right. Even sex that is agreed to can be harmful to an individual, their partner or to society at large.

As a society, we tend to shy away from declaring certain behaviors intrinsically wrong, or right, or uncomfortably in between. The focus on consent has — perhaps inadvertently — allowed us to dodge difficult questions about morality, autonomy and what our sexual culture ought to look like.

But that low-bar formulation doesn’t begin to cover the complications that arise in modern-day dating and mating. And the gap between what young people want the sexual landscape to look like and what the consent paradigm offers is turning many off of sex entirely, as evidenced by falling rates of sexual activity, partnership and marriage — some have dubbed this the “sex recession” — that recently hit a 30-year low. One woman told me that at the age of 34 she had “just stopped thinking a relationship is even possible.” Rather than expanding our happiness, liberation seems to have shrunk it.

What would a better ethic look like?

I met a lot of Rachels and Kaitlins, failed by our current sexual protocols. And I heard from men, too, that the current culture was less to their liking than one might guess.

In their experience, the pressure to say “yes” feels more like a pressure not to say “no” — to live up to the “callous womanizer” stereotype that the low bar of consent culture still seemed to allow. This pressure, they said, made it harder to pursue the real connection many of them desired. And at the same time, a lack of clear norms apart from consent contributed to an underlying level of anxiety and uncertainty — you know enough not to be Harvey Weinstein, but what if you end up canceled like West Elm Caleb? — making even low-stakes interactions feel more and more out of reach. As one therapist told me: “Men in their twenties are terrified, and they talk about it a lot.”

I asked many of these people what a better sexual world might look like. “Listening,” I heard. “Care,” they said. “Mutual responsibility,” some suggested. Or, as one woman plaintively put it: “Can we not just love each other for a single day?”

That question points to what looks to me like a good answer. The word “love” tends to conjure ideas of flowers, chocolate, declarations of undying devotion. But the term has a longer, more helpful history. Thomas Aquinas, the 13th-century philosopher and theologian, defined love as “willing the good of the other.” He borrowed that definition from Aristotle, who talked about love as an intention to bear goodwill toward another for the sake of that person and not oneself.

Willing the good means caring enough about another person to consider how your actions (and their consequences) might affect them — and then choosing not to act if the outcome would be negative. It’s mutual concern — thinking about someone other than yourself and then working so their experience is as good as you hope yours to be. It’s taking responsibility for navigating interactions that might seem ambiguous, rather than using that ambiguity to excuse self-serving “misunderstandings.”

In practice, this would mean that we have to think about the differentials in power that come with age, gender, experience, intoxication level and expectations of commitment, especially when clothes come off. This new ethic would also acknowledge that sex is likely to be something different and more substantial than we want or expect it to be. This makes it our responsibility to make a good-faith bet on what the good actually is — and what just might be a bad idea.

There are many situations in which a partner might consent to sex — affirmatively, even enthusiastically — but in which sex would still be ethically wrong. In general, “willing the good of the other” is most often realized in restraint — in inaction rather than action. This involves a certain level of maturity and self-knowledge on all our parts: an understanding that if we aren’t able to manage this level of consideration — in the moment or more broadly — we probably shouldn’t be having sex. And, yes, it might lead to less casual sex, not more.

It’s a much higher standard than consent. But consent was always the floor — it never should have been the ceiling.

Complete Article HERE!

My sexual resume, or lack thereof

By

My 60-year-old Catholic immigrant mom called me after my first column was published. She told me that one of her patients at her dental office saw my face next to my column on her news feed. Given the nature of what I write, all I was thinking was, “Well folks, it’s the end for me.”

Luckily, I was able to make up a shaky excuse because her patient couldn’t read English very well. At the time, I almost wished that she could, that she would tell my mother every nasty detail about my sexual and romantic life. Fearing that my mom would take me out of this world just as swiftly as she had brought me into it would have been a great reason to not write about sex anymore.

I didn’t want to write about sex because I believed I wasn’t qualified to write about sex. I’m no Dan Savage, no Alexandra Cooper, no Sofia Franklyn. People always tell me their crazy sex stories, not the other way around. To be honest, I don’t have sex as often as you think a sex columnist would, and I carry terrible intergenerational trauma that taught me to put off intimacy in order to survive. In fact, I was so uncomfortable with being vulnerable that I always felt extremely uneasy when my friends talked to me about something as simple as their favorite sex positions or how many fingers they had up their butthole last weekend.

Alas, being honest with myself and my sexuality was an easier bridge to cross than I had thought it would be. There was no epiphany or anything. I just continued being me. Both in sex and in my writing, I find it amusing to swing back and forth between boisterous confidence and quiet vulnerability, blunt physicality and embellished make-believe. I discovered quickly that sex is everywhere — that every corner of life is overflowing with orgasms, vulvas and phalli.

Everywhere I looked, sex was there looking right back at me — for better or for worse.

Once, while standing on a crowded street in San Francisco, I felt someone’s hand caress me under the hem of my skirt. But when I turned, I could only see the back of his head as he walked away. I was shocked. I mentally reenacted that moment many times, daydreaming about what I wished I’d said to this man who touched me.

I imagined grabbing him by the back of his polo, spinning him around and decking him in the face. I imagined what would have happened if I had worn pants that day instead. I imagined someone noticing what he did and asking me if I was OK. None of these scenarios played out. Instead, my voice caught in my throat. At the time, all I could muster was a private expletive before angry tears began to well up in my eyes.

Moments like those have shown me sex at its worst. As soon as I was old enough to notice, I learned that men wield a unique power to objectify and commodify women’s bodies. I learned that sex is often the manifestation of an unjust imbalance of power. All of the heteronormative, patriarchal, misogynistic and colonialist dimensions of sex left me with little hope of uplifting myself, let alone being vulnerable.

I have, however, also seen sex at its best. I love how beautiful and powerful I feel when someone touches me with care and respect. I love having sex with people who ask me for my consent. I love laughing during sex. I love having sex with people who have grown beyond selfishness, and I love decolonizing my body and unapologetically asking for more.

I have also fallen in love with the sheer physicality of sex, but sometimes I forget this. I have to remind myself that outside of all the oppression and injustice, sometimes sex is just something that makes me feel good. Sex lets me forget how much I hate the way that the patriarchy finds its way into my life, if only for a moment.

Sex is many things, not just eroticism. Sex is everywhere because sex is about power and choice. Sexual chemistry, horniness, intimacy — these are all realities that we will into being, not just happy accidents. Everyone, especially oppressed peoples, can wield the vulnerability of sex to dismantle systems of domination. As soon as I realized that I have the power to advocate for myself, feel good and make other people feel good, writing about sex suddenly didn’t seem that daunting after all.

Noticing that sex surrounds us means embracing our vulnerability and physicality in full. I restored power to myself when I freely chose not to hide or disappear. I thought I wasn’t qualified to write about sex, but I did it anyway. Indeed, most of us are far more qualified to talk about sex than we think. It’s just a matter of paying attention.

Complete Article HERE!

Where Sex Positivity Falls Short

Television wants to help us get better at talking about sex, but some of its recent offerings miss a crucial point.

By Sophie Gilbert

Since its debut in 2019, Sex Education, Netflix’s charming and filthy comedy about teenagers at a bucolic British high school, has been a jewel in a very mixed bag of streaming content. I’ve loved and appreciated its sweetness, its sex positivity, and its absurd dramatization of school as a place where everyone is willingly and creatively getting it on, no matter the real-world evidence to the contrary. In the show’s conceit, Otis (played by Asa Butterfield), the awkward, virginal son of a sex therapist (the regal Gillian Anderson), finds self-worth and—in the end—satisfaction by giving sex advice to his cluelessly horny peers, despite having no practical experience of his own to draw on. All sex problems, the show posits, are really just communication problems. Talking openly about things (the shape of vulvas, douching, intergalactic alien erotica) diminishes shame, which means no more dysfunction. Right?

In so many ways, Sex Education is a fantasy. It’s an oddly nostalgic, Frankensteinian fusion of ’80s American movieland and British humor, all wooded landscapes and mid-century furniture and regional slang. Of late, though, I’ve started to wonder whether the show’s cheerful raunch is obscuring something crucial. Midway through the recent third season, Olivia (Simone Ashley) reluctantly agrees to have sex with her boyfriend without a condom. (“You know it feels soooo much better. Please,” he whines.) Later, panicked that she might be pregnant, she visits a sexual-health clinic in town, where a nurse gently asks if her boyfriend is pressuring her to have unprotected sex, and how that makes her feel. “Like I can’t enjoy the sex, because I’m just scared of getting pregnant,” she replies. Soon we see Olivia walking out and telling her best friend, who’s waiting for her, that she knows her boyfriend’s a “dickhead” but she still loves him. To me, it felt like an oddly neat and evasive conclusion to a story line that had raised more questions than it answered. The intimation that people frequently cajole other people into doing things that they’re not comfortable with seems to jibe awkwardly with the show’s generally breezy approach to sexuality. Rather than trying to meaningfully define the nebulous edges of consent, Sex Education changes the subject.

The scene reminded me that the fantastical nature of the series extends beyond its verdant, anachronistic setting. The catch of a faultlessly sex-positive universe in which everyone’s up for everything is that there isn’t much space to explore what happens when they’re not. The show doesn’t just put forth an unhelpfully idealized portrayal of what sex is like for teenagers. (In a recent study of male university students in the United Kingdom, more than 10 percent admitted to committing acts of sexual assault, rape, or coercion in the past two years.) In light of series such as I May Destroy You, Michaela Coel’s intricate, confrontational consideration of assault and consent, a show like Sex Education also feels more limited and confining.

Still, it’s only one in a spate of recent Netflix shows hoping to—if you’ll pardon the double entendre—fill the gaps in our sexual savoir faire. The streamer just released Sex: Unzipped, an hour-long special hosted by the rapper Saweetie that’s a kind of comical revue of modern sexual mores, loosely pegged to what the host dubs a post-pandemic “sex drought.” (“Without sex, Netflix and chill would just be watching a whole-ass movie with someone and not getting it in. Ewwww.”) Its premise, which might feel familiar by now, is that sex of all stripes is great, shaming is bad, and subjects such as coercion, consent, and even plain old discomfort aren’t up for debate at this time. The closest Sex: Unzipped comes to engaging with unequal power dynamics in bed is when the drag queen Trixie Mattel asks a puppet version of the sex educator Dr. Ruth how to make sure she’s treating sex workers ethically and Puppet Dr. Ruth quips back, “Pay double.”

Because of sex positivity’s well-intended focus on embracing openness and negating shame, it can exclude nuance, and sidestep the murkier questions of power and intimacy and trust and trauma that people inevitably bring with them into any sexualized situation. It’s easier for popular culture to present sex as a comedic smorgasbord of erotic experiences, outlandish and heartburn-inducing, than it is to wade into the realm of the unpleasant or regrettable. (That is, unless TV is presenting graphic scenes of sexual violence for arbitrary or titillating reasons.) For six seasons on Sex and the City, Carrie Bradshaw and her friends prattled about anal sex and porn addiction and depressed vaginas, but rarely did they talk about consent, or how to safely remove yourself from a situation that isn’t what you thought it would be. In embracing openness but not complication, Sex Education and Sex: Unzipped follow the same model.

We don’t, at this point in time, need TV shows to do PR for sex. We do need them to challenge and enrich how we think about it. Sweeping in to the rescue, oddly, comes the person I least expected to be helpful—a woman whose history of selling vagina-scented candles and jade eggs belies the fact that she’s made one of the most counterintuitive and empathetic analyses of sex on TV.


I started watching Sex, Love & Goop limbered up for new feats of eye-rolling. And at first, I got what I was prepared for: Gwyneth Paltrow in a sleeveless gray turtleneck made (one imagines) out of Tibetan-antelope hair; the introduction of “somatic sexologists,” who take a hands-on approach to sexual dysfunction; a wok cleaner repurposed as a sex toy; the breathy teasing of cutting-edge techniques that can “optimize our lives.” But somewhere amid a discussion of the “erotic blueprints” that define how individual people relate to sex, I realized I was riveted. The series wasn’t just examining the kinds of sex lives rarely considered in mainstream culture: lesbian couples, parents, people in their 60s. In acknowledging what a fundamental force expressions of desire can be in people’s lives (a means of “self-realization,” “a pathway for healing,” and everything in between), Sex, Love & Goop seems intent on redefining what people think of as sex altogether. But being a true cheerleader for pleasure also means acknowledging and confronting all the things that might be getting in the way of it.

Over six episodes, the show places five couples whose sexual and romantic lives have plateaued with different therapists who help them try to work out their issues. Some critics have objected to the fact that the series includes only people in long-term, monogamous relationships, but I found this decision revealing—if people can’t communicate openly with their most intimate partner, how are they supposed to do it with strangers? As the couples worked with their therapist, nuggets of information began to emerge: Erika, in a relationship with Damon, struggles to achieve orgasm; Shandra and Camille contend with entrenched shame and guilt about their sexuality and their bodies; Felicitas, the mother of two children with Rama, can’t get past thinking about sex as one more obligation in a day loaded with them. “Once you have a child to take care of, your capacity and willingness to take care of someone else who’s an adult diminishes,” she says. “I’m giving so much of myself, of my body. I do not need any more neediness from anybody.”

What becomes clear as the show continues, though, is how little the people participating know about themselves, and how conditioned they’ve been to avoid intimacy rather than be truly vulnerable. “Your intimate relationship is a meditation in everything that’s wrong with you,” Paltrow quotes one of her past therapists saying in the first episode, not in judgment but to say that our sex lives are usually a symptom or an expression of other parts of our psyches. Damon has understood his whole life that sex is a particular physical act, but when he works with a therapist to explore other kinds of touch, the sensation is so profound that he weeps. Erika realizes in one scene that she’s unwittingly prepared herself for pain before sex, which blocks her from fully experiencing pleasure. “I just realized I’ve been bracing for a long time,” she says, also in tears. “That’s a lot to think about.”

In the fifth episode, Sera and Dash, a couple whose problems aren’t sexual so much as emotional (both have a history of fleeing from relationships), undergo a treatment called family-constellation therapy to dig into their hang-ups. The scene is perhaps the most quintessentially Goopy of the series: A group of constellation-therapy practitioners meets outside, wrapped in folksy blankets, and absorbs the “energy” of the couple in order to channel and perform as their ancestors. “We get an imprint from how we were first loved. Then you are either going to rebel against that or want that,” a relationship expert explains to Paltrow. “In family-constellation work, you get to see it.” The moment wasn’t entirely convincing for me—some of the practitioners were more consciously performing than others—but the revelations about family members who’d deterred themselves from loving others as a kind of self-preservation felt almost universally applicable all the same. To be alive is to be exposed to hurt. But with sex, love, and intimacy, the series argues, invulnerability can be its own kind of psychic wound.


One of the strongest scenes in Sex Education comes midway through the third season, when Maeve (Emma Mackey) kisses Isaac (George Robinson), a neighbor of hers who uses a wheelchair because of a spinal injury. The moment is extraordinarily tender, as the pair continually discuss what they’re doing and negotiate ways to give each other pleasure. “I can’t feel anything below my level of injury,” Isaac tells Maeve. “If you put your hand on my chest, I’ll show you.” They briefly discuss the mechanics of intercourse, but Isaac is clear that they shouldn’t try yet—the intimation being that there’s a level of trust involved that they haven’t quite reached. “When I get touched in the places that I can feel,” he tells her, “it can get a little intense.” She complies, kissing his eyebrows and stroking his face. The chemistry between the two actors is seismic.

It’s maybe the most truly sex-positive scene I can think of on television—an example of two people who are sexually attracted to each other communicating what they want, what they don’t want, what they can do, and what they don’t want to do, yet. It made me wonder why a scene like this exists only for a character with a disability, while virtually everyone else in the series seems to see sex as a kind of eroticized trampoline park, bouncing around cheerfully with no sense of the deeper kinds of connection they might be missing. The unfettered positivity of works such as Sex Education and Sex: Unzipped can also start to feel a little like shaming for anyone whose experiences of sex might have been minimal, or disappointing, or scary. “Our culture teaches us it’s not okay to not know about sex, or to not know exactly what to do,” a therapist says in Sex, Love & Goop. The most striking truth the show reveals is that no one knows anything at all, unless they ask.

Complete Article HERE!

The Sex Educators Helping Muslim Women Claim Their Sexuality

By Hafsa Lodi

‘Orgasm’ and ‘Islam‘ are two words you don’t typically see together. I never thought I’d use them in the same sentence and certainly never imagined I’d have the guts to write publicly about sex. It just isn’t something you talk about as a Muslim, especially if you’re female.

And so I can’t help but do a double take when I see the O word used colloquially by female Muslim personalities on social media. A post on @villageauntie’s Instagram states: “My orgasm is not optional.” “Orgasm is one part of a spectrum of sexual pleasure that Allah has created our bodies to experience,” reads a caption by @sexualhealthformuslims. Both platforms are treasure troves of advice, insight and tips tailored for Muslims – invitations to not-so-secret social media networks that work to remove stigma and democratise faith-based discussions about sex.

An Instagram poll of 615 Muslims revealed that growing up, only 9% had any sort of sex ed from a religious framework. Yemeni-British musician Noha Al-Maghafi, known as Intibint, recalls living in Yemen and being instructed to rip out the pages on reproduction from her science book in Year 6. In Year 9, her biology teacher gave her girls’ class a covert lesson on sex ahead of some students’ impending weddings. For other Muslim women, sex ed may amount to a whisper from their mother ahead of their wedding night, reminding them to shower afterwards to purify themselves. What happens in between is often pieced together from gossip, magazines, movies and television shows.

Intentions to shelter young Muslims from education about sex might be well-meaning – an extension of protecting their chastity and overall naivety – but there are far-reaching consequences to promoting this sort of ignorance. Lack of awareness and education about sex can lead to a fear of intimacy, unbalanced sexual roles, unenjoyable sex and, in extreme cases, marital rape. Thankfully, there is a movement brewing to demystify sexual education for Muslims, driven largely by women on social media who are speaking openly about sex. Discussing topics like consent, fertility, ejaculation and orgasms, their guidance is imbued with religious language and emphasises the equality of genders in sexual intimacy.

Sameera Qureshi of @sexualhealthformuslims is an occupational therapist and sexual health educator whose teachings are grounded in Islamic spirituality. A decade ago she was helping Muslim immigrants to acclimatise to Canadian society. Upon realising that sexual health wasn’t being addressed in Islamic schools, she helped to develop and facilitate an “Islamically oriented curriculum” for sexual health. “I just thought, How can we not bring Islam into this, it’s a part of our life,” she explains. Fast-forward to 2021 and Qureshi now offers consultation services, teaches courses and provides free, informative content through her platform. “There are just too many restrictions for Muslims to get this information, and what better way to do it [than] through social media and online courses? Nothing like this exists in terms of there being a journey in sex ed for Muslims – everything is very scattered and piecemeal,” she says.

Angelica Lindsey-Ali (known by her social media moniker, Village Auntie) is an intimacy and relationships expert in America who began discussing sex with groups of Muslim women while living in Saudi Arabia and now offers courses through her Village Auntie Institute. “My work lies at the intersection of the sacred and the sacral – so I like to talk about spirituality while using sex as a framework to have those discussions,” she explains. “Everything I do is focused on women. I’m not really interested in male perspectives just because I think that we’ve been overwrought with male perceptions about sexuality and the female body.”

Orthodox Muslim positions on sex have been interpreted and passed down primarily by men, so seeing Muslim spokeswomen striving to change the narratives around sex in Muslim communities is quite revolutionary. However it isn’t only women who are lifting the veil on sexual awareness and empowerment. Habeeb Akande is a UK-based Muslim historian, sex educator and author of seven books, including A Taste of Honey: Sexuality and Erotology in Islam. To celebrate International Female Orgasm Day on 8th August, he hosted a webinar for men to learn about female pleasure. “I’m passionate about female sensuality and aim to close the gender orgasm gap,” he says. “I believe every man should know how to help a woman climax until she is truly satisfied, and that every woman should understand her body and feel entitled to pleasure from her man.”

Exuding charisma and approachability, these educators are in stark contrast to the often fear-based ‘religious’ sexual discourse, rife with foreboding words like ‘impure’ and ‘haram’ (forbidden), which can perpetuate a cycle of shame. The little information that does seep through the cracks of censorship is often patriarchal, emphasising men’s active role and women’s passivity. “A lot of Muslim scholars incorrectly understand sexual response,” says Qureshi. “They often talk about males having ‘really strong, sexual drives’ and unfortunately this gets relegated to mean that men have no control over their sexual desire, that when they’re aroused, they need sex and that it’s the role of the woman to satisfy that in marriage – not vice versa. This creates an environment that’s very inequitable for sexual pleasure in marriage.”

Conversely, many Muslims emphasise the egalitarianism of the Quran’s message, which refers to spouses as ‘garments’ for one another. Akande points out that in several of his sermons, the Prophet Muhammad urged men to treat women well, which includes being affectionate and providing financial support, sexual fulfilment and emotional security. “Sadly, many women have been raised to believe their body belongs to their father or husband,” he says. “Some even incorrectly believe that Islam permits a man to force himself on his wife and that ‘good women’ do not initiate intimacy with their husbands.” The misconception that sex is just for men needs to be dispelled, believes Akande; in Islam, women have just as much right as men to sexual pleasure. “It is also important to debunk myths regarding male sexual entitlement as some Muslims erroneously believe consent does not exist in marriage,” he adds, explaining that these attitudes stem from cultural understandings and are not aligned with Islamic values. “Oftentimes people conflate Islam with culture, and Islamic teachings with Muslim practices.”

When Akande travelled to Egypt to study Arabic and Islamic law at Cairo’s Al Azhar University, he came across numerous ‘sex manuals’ written by male Islamic scholars – findings that he believes would surprise many Muslims today. “Erotic texts such as Encyclopaedia of Pleasure by Jawami’ Al-Ladhdha and The Perfumed Garden by Al-Rawd Al-Atir emphasised the sexual needs of women and female romantic fulfilment for a pleasurable marital relationship,” he explains, adding that “sexually empowered women have long existed in Islam but their stories are often untold.”

Lifting the lid on this suppression of perspectives is the groundbreaking work of these Muslim ‘sexperts’ and social media has been instrumental in spreading their messages. “It has been one of my best tools for community generation because I can reach those women who live in places where I may never actually get a chance to visit,” says Lindsey-Ali. Muslims can turn to these educators with questions that they feel unable to ask their parents, teachers or spouses and will be met with refreshing responses presented in relatable Instagram posts – from Qureshi’s “Debunking myths about the hymen” and “Muslims and masturbation: a ‘touchy’ subject” to Lindsey-Ali’s “How to improve your stroke game” and “Tips for husbands maximising the possibility of female ejaculation”.

Because these educators’ approaches are rooted in religious beliefs, their teachings are intended for sex within marriage. Akande, however, offers advice for non-married Muslims struggling with desire and lists questions for them to ask potential spouses about sexual compatibility. Qureshi, meanwhile, plans on launching a pre-marital workshop about intimacy later this summer. She also believes that unmarried Muslims can benefit from following her platform. “I’m well aware that there are Muslims engaging in sex before marriage and they’re not doing so with best practices,” she says, adding that she follows a “harm reduction-based” approach which aims to minimise the health and social impacts of a practice without necessarily requiring one to abstain from it. “I’m not here to tell you what to believe, I’m someone who wants to expand the conversation and bring forward perspectives that we haven’t been exposed to, because Allah gave us intellect and we’re ultimately responsible for our decisions,” says Qureshi.

Using their public platforms to discuss topics traditionally relegated to the private sphere has brought some backlash from more conservative critics. Lindsey-Ali has a handful of messages from “creeps” in her inbox and has been told that she will “go to Hell” and Akande has been told that his work is “very inappropriate”. Nonetheless, the increasing number of clients, subscribers, readers and followers is testament to the high demand for their services, and these experts hope this is the beginning of a collective revival of candour when it comes to Muslims and sex. Female sex educator Dr Shaakira Abdullah, who goes by @thehalalsexpert on Instagram, is targeting future generations of Muslims and offers ‘halal sex talks’ courses for parents seeking to discuss sex openly with their children while “keeping them connected to God”.

“Sexually empowered women have long existed in Islam but their stories are often untold. — Habeeb Akande”

From a truly religious standpoint, the work of these educators is hardly radical or rebellious – they are calling for Muslims to return to the foundations of the faith and distinguish religious ethics and values from the patriarchal cultures which have clouded them. Qureshi points out that Islam, as a religion, has been colonised over the past couple of hundred years and that many Muslims have reacted with very purist interpretations. “Going back to our tradition, if we learn about the nature of what it means to be a Muslim and we really expand that to an internal journey, I think the remedy is there,” she says. “Sexual education to some folks seems really minute but if you look at our scripture, it’s a huge topic with so much sacredness.”

The sacredness of womanhood remains a focal point for Lindsey-Ali, who believes that a profound confidence in their faith is driving Muslim women’s spiritual reawakening to their rights in the bedroom. “I think women are going back and looking at the Quran and Islamic texts and saying, ‘Does it really say that?’ and trying to unearth the true teachings of Islam,” she says. In the process they’re learning some valuable lessons, like “My pleasure is just as important as his”.

Complete Article HERE!

What Does Sex Positive Mean?

Here’s How Experts Explain It

Being sex positive can actually be really good for your health.

By Colleen Murphy

If you’ve been watching The Bachelorette at all this season, there’s a term you’ve likely heard over and over again: sex positive. Several of the men competing on the show have used “sex positive” to describe the current bachelorette, 30-year-old Katie Thurston, who is known for being super comfortable talking about sex.

Even if you don’t watch The Bachelorette, you might be hearing the phrase “sex positive” pop up elsewhere. That includes Twitter, as people are making jokes about turning this season into a drinking game: Whenever anybody says “sex positive,” take a drink.

But what exactly does it mean to be sex positive? Here’s how experts explain it.

What does ‘sex positive’ mean?

Someone who is sex positive is open to learning more about their own body, other people’s bodies, as well as consent, intimacy, and how to communicate about sex topics, Rachel Needle, PsyD, a psychologist in West Palm Beach, Florida, and the co-director of Modern Sex Therapy Institutes, a company that trains couples and sex therapists around the world, tells Health.

It also means they’re open to embracing and exploring their own sexuality and that of others-including sexual behavior, gender, sexual identity, and anatomy-in a respectful, non-judgmental way without shame.

But sex positivity doesn’t only have to do with sex-positive experiences and ideas. Theo Burnes, PhD, a psychologist practicing in Los Angeles and the director of clinical training at Antioch University in California, tells Health that sex positivity can also be about fighting for people who work in the sex industry, making sure they have equal rights and that their work is decriminalized. It can include advocating for accurate sex education that is not abstinence-only or fear-based. Sex positivity can also focus on understanding sex in the media-and that sexualized pornography, movies, or ads tend to portray some types of people yet leaves other out.

Being sex positive can also mean being the person a friend can come out to or go to with “their own fears, their own internalized stigma, sometimes their own shame,” Burnes says. Someone might call you, as a sex positive person, and say, “I’m really nervous about trying this new experience with my partner and I want to talk to somebody about it,” he explains.

What sex positivity isn’t

“Being sex positive doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re having an increased frequency of sexual behavior, or sexual encounters, or sexual arousal, but it does mean that you have an openness and a non-judgmental attitude toward engaging in sex, talking about sex, being open to other people talking about sex,” says Burnes.

Being sex positive also doesn’t mean you disregard the need for consent, Rosara Torrisi, PhD, certified sex therapist and director of The Long Island Institute of Sex Therapy, tells Health. “It’s not about encouraging folks to have a certain sexual orientation, minimum or maximum number of partners, or engage in certain behaviors during sex,” she says. “Expectations and pressure for anything about sexuality is inherently anti-sex positivity.” Consent is always a must.

Why is sex positivity talked about more these days?

Sex positivity isn’t just a concept that people identify with-it’s also a political and social movement.

“One of the things that really started that movement is this idea that sexuality has been often talked about as secretive, shameful, unhealthy, and that being overtly sexual in any kind of way-whether that’s talking about it, whether that’s having conversations about it-is problematic,” Burnes says. “And so the [sex positive] movement basically tries to say, ‘Hey, wait a second, this is a part of our normative development. And it’s not necessarily unhealthy or shameful, but having these conversations, doing exploration with sex when consent and trust and communication are part of the sexual process, is not wrong or unhealthy.'”

It’s a movement that’s been around for a long time. Recently, however, celebrities like Lady Gaga, Amber Rose, Jessica Biel, and Lizzo have spurred more conversations about sex positivity after speaking publicly about their experiences with slut shaming, sexuality, sexual assault, body acceptance, and sexual health and responsibility, Burnes explains. And yes, even The Bachelorette has expanded this trend.

“It wasn’t some agenda that I had coming on to the show. It’s just who I am and who I’ve been this whole time,” Thurston said on the podcast Bachelor Happy Hour earlier this year, after viewers were first introduced to her sex positive attitude when she was a contestant on The Bachelor. “It wasn’t until after the fact that I realized how big of a deal it was-which excites me, because I do believe it’s 2021, and women should be comfortable talking about their sexuality.”

“I appreciate being comfortable being able to talk about it,” Thurston continued. “Hopefully that means other women will soon start to open up a little bit, because being sex positive is important in a relationship, [the relationship you have with] yourself, in your self-care, and so many different things, especially in this [ongoing COVID-19] pandemic.”

Sex positivity has real health benefits

Being sex positive is “actually quite healthy and has been endorsed by a variety of organizations, like the World Health Organization (WHO),” according to Burnes. In fact, the WHO says that “a positive and respectful approach to sexuality and sexual relationships” is paramount to sexual health.

“When we are sex positive we are more sexually healthy,” Needle points out. “To many, being sexually healthy includes being comfortable with your own sexuality and making decisions related to and communicating about it.” Being sexually healthy can also mean enjoying sexual pleasure, having access to health care (including reproductive health care), having better communication skills with our partner(s) so that we are more likely to get what we want and need, and knowing how to avoid unintended pregnancy and minimize the risk of sexually transmitted infections (and accessing treatment if needed).

Having sex positive views can enhance your mental well-being too, according to Burnes. “That can mean decreased amounts of feelings of isolation, which can lead to things like depression and anxiety, [as well as a] decrease in shame and stigma, which can also lead to building resilience,” he says. When we eradicate ourselves from stigma and shame, he adds, we often demonstrate better health-related behaviors.

How can you become more sex positive?

First, know that anyone can be sex positive. “Sex positivity has little to do with what your sexual behaviors, identities, etc. are and much more about your perspective about sexuality,” Torrisi says. “It doesn’t matter if you’ve had sex with only yourself, a million people, or no one. Sex positivity is a set of values that is inclusive and nurturing of your own and others’ sexuality. It’s not just for polyamorous and kinky folks.”

As a whole, the US “has improved its understanding of sexual consent, pleasure, functioning, identity, orientation, behaviors, and expression,” according to Torrisi. But there’s still work to be done. “We’re still grappling with dual realities about sex in this country,” she says. “We are on one hand obsessed with sexuality, and on the other hand we are terrified of sexuality. Either end of this spectrum isn’t sex positivity. Recognizing the nuances, the lived realities of billions of individuals, each with their own valid truths, now that’s sex positivity.” 

It also helps to recognize the culture many Americans were raised in, “where we’re constantly bombarded with images that sex is something we should think about, but never talk about,” as Burnes puts it. Next, he suggests thinking about whether you want to see a therapist, read some books, or visit different websites to help you navigate what being sex positive will look like for you.

“Being sex positive doesn’t necessarily mean that [you’re] going to go and have certain sexual encounters-although if that’s something that someone wants to do, that’s great and awesome, as long as they’re safe, consensual and communicative,” Burnes says. Instead, he says, it can simply mean being more open to other people’s and your own sexual curiosity and experiences.

Complete Article HERE!

Ancient Greek and Roman erotic art

Explicit erotic art was common in ancient Greece and Rome. Sex is ubiquitous in the black-figure and red-figure vases of Athens in the 6th and 5th centuries BC. The Romans were also surrounded by sex.

Mosaic depicting Leda and the Swan, from the sanctuary of Aphrodite in Paphos, circa 3rd century AD. It is currently located at the Cyprus Museum in Nicosia.

By Craig Barker

LP Hartley’s saying “the past is foreign” is rarely held more firmly than in the field of sexuality in classical art. The erotic images and depictions of the genitals, especially the phallus, were very popular motifs in a wide range of media in ancient Greece and Rome.

Simply put, sex is everywhere in Greek and Roman art. Explicit sexual expression was common in the Athenian black-figure and red-figure vases of the 6th and 5th centuries BC. They often have spectacular confrontations in nature.

The Romans were also surrounded by sex. Bronze carved as a chinchin nabla (wind chime), often found in the gardens of Pompeii’s house, is carved in relief on a famous wall panel that tells us the famous habitat Felicitas from a Roman bakery. (“Happiness dwells here”).

But these erotic acts and classic images of the genitals reflect more than a culture of sexual attachment. The depiction of sexuality and sexual activity in classical art seems to have had many uses. And while our interpretation of these images is often censored in modern times, it reveals a lot about our attitude towards sex.

A modern reaction to ancient erotic art

When antique collection began in earnest in the 17th and 18th centuries, the openness of ancient eroticism embarrassed and embarrassed the Enlightenment audience. This embarrassment was exacerbated after the excavations began in the rediscovered Roman towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum.

The Naples National Archaeological Museum’s Gavinette Segrate (the so-called “secret cabinet”) best represents the modern reaction to classical sexuality (repression and repression) in art.

The secret cabinet was founded in 1819 when King Francis I of Naples visited the museum with his wife and little daughter. Shocked by the blatant depiction, he ordered to remove all items of sexual nature from sight and lock them in a cabinet. Access is restricted to scholars with “mature age and respected morals.” I will. In other words, it was only a male scholar.

A metal shutter was installed in Pompeii itself because the explicit materials such as the mural paintings of the brothel were preserved as they were. Until the 1960s, these shutters restricted access only to male tourists who were willing to pay extra.

Of course, the secret of the collection in the cabinet was sometimes difficult to access, but it only increased its fame. John Murray’s Handbook to South Italy and Naples (1853) sacredly states that it was very difficult to obtain a permit.

Therefore, few people have seen the collection. And those who have it are said not to want to visit again.

The cabinet was not open to the public until 2000 (despite protests by the Catholic Church). Since 2005, the collection has been exhibited in a separate room. The object has not yet been reintegrated with modern non-sexual crafts, as it did in ancient times.

Literature also felt censors’ anger, and works such as Aristophanes’ plays were mistranslated, obscuring “unpleasant” sexual and catalog references. Unless trying to claim moral and liberal dominance in the 21st century, the depiction of the infamous marble sculpture of bread mating with the goats in the collection still shocks the modern audience.

Censorship of ancient sexuality is probably best reflected in the long tradition of removing genitals from classical sculpture.

The Vatican Museums, in particular, were famous for (but not limited to) modifying classical art for modern morals and sensations. In the case of irregularities, it was common to apply carved and cast fig leaves to cover the genitals.

It also showed the modern willingness to associate nudity with sexuality and would have embarrassed the ancient audience, where the physical form of the body itself was considered perfect. Have you misunderstood ancient sexuality? Yes, yes.

Ancient porn?

It is difficult to determine how much the ancient audience used explicit erotic images for awakening. Certainly, the erotic scenes that were popular on board would have given the Athenian party an exciting atmosphere over a glass of wine.

These types of scenes are especially popular with kylix or wine cups in the tond (the center panel of the cup). Hetaira (cans) and Polnai (whores) are likely to have attended the same symposium, so the scene may have been used as a stimulus.

In the late Greek and Roman eras, the painted eroticas were replaced by molded depictions, but their use must have been similar.

The Romans’ application of sexual scenes to oil lamps is probably the most likely scenario, and the object may have actually been used in a romantic scene. Erotica is often found in molded lamps.

Phallus and fertility

Ancient Greek erotic art
Delos Museum.

Female nudity was not uncommon (especially in connection with the goddess Aphrodite), but the phallic symbol was at the heart of many classical arts.

Fars is often depicted on Hermes, Bread, Priapus, or similar gods of various art forms. Its symbolism here was not considered erotic, but was related to protection, reproduction, and even healing. We have already seen phallic use in various home and commercial situations in Pompeii, which clearly reflects its protective properties.

The helm was a stone carving with a head (usually Hermes) on a rectangular pillar, on which the male genitals were carved. These blocks were placed on borders and borders for protection and were so highly regarded that many people said that when the Athens Herm was destroyed before the Athens fleet departed in 415 BC, this was the Navy. I believed it would threaten the success of the mission.

The famous frescoes of the House of the Vettii in Pompeii depict Priapus, the minor and guardian deity of livestock, plants and gardens. He has a huge penis, a bag of coins, and a bowl of fruit at his feet. As researcher Claudia Moser writes, this image represents three types of prosperity: growth (large members), fertility (fruits), and abundance (bags of money).

It is worth noting that a casual look at the museum’s classic sculptures reveals that the bare gods and heroes’ penises painted in marble are very small. Classic cultural ideals often value small penises over large ones and surprise the modern audience.

All the expressions of the big penis in classical art are related to desire and stupidity. Priapus was terribly despised by other gods and was thrown out of Mount Olympus. For the Greeks and Romans, the bigger it was, the better.

Ancient Greece: Mythology and Sex

Classic myths are gender-based. There are many stories of incest, marriage, polygamy, and adultery in mythology. Therefore, the artistic depictions of myths end up portraying these sometimes explicit stories. Zeus’s reckless attitude towards women’s consent in these myths (in many cases he raped Danae in the form of a swan in the form of Leda and Rain) was male domination and female. Strengthened the idea of ​​female contempt for subordination.

The penis was also emphasized in the delightful portrayal of Dio Brando. Dionysus, the god of Greek wine, drama and transformation, is not surprised by his followers, the male satyr and the female menard, and their depictions on the wine vessels.

The satyr was a half-human half-goat. Somewhat comical, but also tragic in a way, they were deep-rooted masturbation and party animals that loved dance, wine and women. In fact, the term saturia is still alive today and is classified by the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD) as a form of hypersexuality in men, alongside the female form of nymphomania.

The intent of the (upright) satyr on the penis is clear from the appearance of the vase (even if they rarely catch the manado they are chasing). At the same time, their huge erect penis shows the “beastiness” and grotesque ugliness of a large penis, in contrast to the classic ideal of male beauty represented by a smaller penis.

The actors who performed the satyr play at the dramatic festival appeared on stage and in orchestras in fake phallic costumes to show that they were not humans, but Dionysian mythical beasts.

Early classical art collectors were shocked to learn that the Greeks and Romans they admired were earthlings with varying sexual and desires. However, by emphasizing the sexual aspect of this art, they underestimated the non-sexual role of the phallic symbol.

Complete Article HERE!

Choosing Everything

— Why Queerness Is Freedom To Me

By Rebecca Woolf

First, I want to give thanks to all the queer people who didn’t have the luxury of being offered opportunities to write essays about their queerness, and certainly not for pay. I recognize that the privilege I have in writing such an essay, specifically about mid-life queer awakening, is because of all the queer activists who refused to be minimized. I honor every person who has a story they cannot tell, and every person who has one, but was refused a platform — or wasn’t ever afforded the decency of having their humanity recognized.

The first time I had sex with a woman I was 38 years old. This is not counting the times I participated in male-gaze-y sexual situations that were so performative I instinctively duck my head as I write this out of cringe.

In other words, when I was younger, I got drunk and felt up my friends in front of dudes sometimes. Because I knew they would think it was hot.

Throughout my early twenties, I was almost always the straight girl in a sea of gays. And while I was always attracted to women, I was also petrified of them. I was so detached sexually at that point in my life that the idea of connecting with a person anything like me — even if only in body — was a paralyzing thought.

Beyond that, from the vantage point of a femme, straight-identifying white woman who had no experience with homophobia save for speaking out against it on behalf of my friends, it felt disingenuous for me to identify as anyone other than this version of myself: straight, but up for experimenting.

If I were to sexually identify my early 20-something self now, though, it would be “imposter.”  I was a woman masquerading as whatever the man I was fucking was turned on by; unable to articulate her own wants and needs and, frankly, unsure of what they even were.

But all of that changed when, after 14 years of marriage, I became single again at 37. What a relief it was to feel as if I could start over. I was my new life partner now, and to her I solemnly swore that the only gaze I would prioritize from now on was my own.

Entering a sort of reclamation phase, I opened myself up to every possible situation that excited me. There would be no labels on any of it. No expectations. Just freedom to move about the cabin without turbulence.

Unbuckled, wandering me.

Heteroflexible was a term I first heard via the sex positive dating app Feeld, and it was one that resonated immediately. It felt peripherally queer. Like strapping training wheels to my bike and exploring a new cul-de-sac. Beyond that, it suggested a sort of indefinability which appealed to the part of me who never wanted to be labeled again.

Sexually and otherwise, it felt like a misrepresentation for me to identify with a community that had been marginalized in a way I never felt I was — friends who had been kicked out of their homes, banished from their churches, spat on, beaten up or worse, all for coming out of the closet.

And as a cis, white, hetero-passing person, who has never struggled in the way so many of my friends have, I have found myself questioning whether or not there was even a need for people like me to come out. I live in Los Angeles after all. Queerness in our community is the norm. I can count how many straight-identifying girlfriends I have on one hand. Straightness comes as more of a surprise, if I’m being honest.

Not that we are, in any way, living in a post-biphobic society. Statistically speaking, bisexual people, specifically those with cis partners are the least likely to come out.

And it wasn’t until recently that it occurred to me that in the same way I claimed to be an imposter in my early-twenties — centering the male gaze as the only gaze that mattered — I found myself similarly centering all queer voices save for the ones I personally identified with: bisexual cis women.

Because we can pass as straight. Because we tend to engage in heteronormative sex. Because because because because because….

It wasn’t until I had my first solo, sexual, no-men-in-the-room experience that I realized, Wait, no, THIS is for me.

This is for me.

At one point I felt as if I’d left my body, so overwhelmed was I by the euphoria of connecting to another woman in a way I never had before.

When it was over, I cried. Beyond the sexual dynamic between women being so profoundly different, I felt like I had been reborn in my own image. The power of experiencing sex without men was overwhelming to me — not because I do not love sex with men but because, up until that point, sexual experiences without men didn’t exist.

It felt a bit like the dreams I sometimes have, where after years of living in the same house, I discover another room that had been there all along. How could I have missed this? Where have I been all my life?

This, of course, led to more experiences, which led to a love affair — my first and also hers — a coming-together so overwhelming I assumed, I would only ever love women after this.

I am done with men! There’s no going back! Cheers to a future with women ONLY.

But it wasn’t true, and months later, I am once again in a relationship with a cis man — one I happen to love very much.

I am now extremely aware of the fluidity of my sexuality, which is not unlike my fluidity when it comes to intimate relationships — the wanting, the needing of an open door. And a partner who not only respects that, but desires the same thing.

Many women who identify as bi, pan, or queer feel like the nuances of having a non-binary sexuality precludes them from being a part of the conversation. When you’re not queer enough to be gay and you’re not straight enough to be straight, your voice tends to come out as a whisper, your experience less validated. Perhaps because we have confused fluidity with fickleness; recognizing our inability to commit to a team without celebrating what that really means.

And even though I was in free-fall, life-altering-first-love with a woman, I found myself doing what I’d been working so hard NOT to do: pushing myself off the side, standing on the periphery, insisting that my experience was inconsequential. Not valid enough. As a person who claimed to be inclusive, why did I have such a hard time including myself?

There’s a conundrum in feeling empowered by new freedoms and unworthy of experiencing sexual relationships that might be unfamiliar: Because so many of us have spent years in traditional relationships, we never had the opportunities to pursue them. It’s not because we haven’t wanted to, but rather because monogamous heteronormative relationships have not allowed us to.

It is because of this that, for many of us, we don’t know where to begin. Additionally, it is not uncommon for women to come into our sexuality later in life, perhaps because we realize how much of it has been wrapped up in performative heteronormativity. We are told our early experiences were just a phase (Oh, her? That was just her “experimenting” in college) while also struggling with our own internalized monosexism, which suggests exclusive heterosexuality and/or homosexuality is superior or more legitimate because it’s specific. This is not to mention the various forms of biphobia claiming that women are only attracted to other women because of the trauma we’ve experienced with men.

And, because we are so conditioned to get specific — to pick a team — we still feel, even in 2021, that wanting sexual relationships with people of different genders, often simultaneously, makes us indecisive when in reality, many of us, after years of struggling, have finally arrived as our whole selves.

It makes sense if you think about how our culture is so obsessed not only with binaries, but also with choosing one thing. We don’t think twice about asking our children what their favorite color is. Or asking our date about their favorite film. We want so badly for people to choose, to be decisive about one person or one gender or one sexual orientation. And then we get confused when The One isn’t enough, when we realize we don’t work that way.

Queerness isn’t just about sexuality and gender. It’s also about embracing healthy lifestyles that do not fit into a white, patriarchal, heteronormative box. This goes beyond intimate partnerships and intersects with inclusion of all people who deserve love, autonomy, pleasure, and joy.

And isn’t that the whole point of Pride? To pull at the seams of limitation so that everyone, regardless of their past experiences, can pour through the ever-expanding opening? So that all humans — regardless of gender expression or sexual orientation — can experience such moments of intense realization without the fear of repercussions? I want everyone who feels similarly to be able to explore their feelings unencumbered, to experience the euphoria of connection without obstruction.

I have long made an effort to center those who have always identified as queer. But, as a way to understand how to include myself — while also being mindful of the many privileges I possess as someone who has never had to fight against anyone else’s bias to love who I love — I have also spent this time embracing my own version of heteronormative defiance. It’s one that is personal to me, and no one else. It’s a reminder to myself that a person’s truth is theirs to experience, define, and prioritize — not on the periphery of other people’s experience, but to center as our own.

All of this is why, in the end, I knocked the heteroflexible from my dating bio and replaced it with queer.

It is a beautiful thing to stay open. To liberate ourselves from all gazes beyond our own. That’s queerness to me. It’s about embracing the nuances of sexuality and gender and defining ourselves as indefinable. It’s about allowing ourselves to trust our bodies, to listen to our own wants and needs — especially as women and mothers who have centered everyone else’s for so long, only to wake up and realize we have never even asked ourselves what we want out of love — out of sex; out of connection.

And, as we collectively celebrate Pride this month, no matter where we are in our journey and what it took to get to queerness, may we remember that Pride was always a protest against the puritanical fear of queer liberation, acceptance and joy. It has always been a celebration of freedom to live and love and fuck with abandon, in bodies that are worthy of uninhibited truth — filtered through no one’s gaze but our own.

Complete Article HERE!

Five of the best sex podcasts for your aural pleasure

Sexual relationships are changing, and sex podcasts are breaking the mould. Here’s a quintet we like

By Nenseh Koneh

I still remember my sex ed class in high school. Every other week, my teacher would have us read from sexual health books that had last been signed out by students two decades prior. With graphic pictures of STIs surrounded by penis graffiti on the corner of each page, the books only showed the negatives aspects of sex, and touted abstinence as the best option.

Ten years on, things have, mercifully, changed. Whilst my sex education included dressing a banana with a condom, some organizations are now helping sex talk in the classroom to be geared towards consent culture, rather than merely “no means no”. But when it comes to pleasure, conversation has remained traditional. Despite the fact that roughly 75% of women cannot achieve orgasm through penetrative sex, and that many men enjoy prostate stimulation, for example, the media is still rife with how to guides that are completely focused on penis and vaginal penetration.

Fortunately, sex podcasts, in talking about real-life sex issues, are breaking the mould. From hearing Black queer femmes talk about navigating the world of sex to unfiltered stories about threesomes, cam girls and swingers, these are some of the best sex podcasts to look out for in 2021.

Inner Hoe Uprising

Inner Hoe Uprising is a podcast by a rotating group of four twentysomething Black queer people living in New York that is dedicated to sex, love and dating in different parts of the US. They talk about plenty of sex, but also how the Black experience varies from person to person. For example, one of their most recent guests talked about moving to Tucson, Arizona, and how he faced challenges in his personal life due to being in a predominantly white town.

There is also a current affairs segment called Fuck That, which brings awareness to issues pertaining to sex, love, gender and race, among others. Some of the most recent topics covered include the trans bills passed in Florida banning trans athletes, and the self-proclaimed “sexual addict” shooter involved in the Atlanta spa shootings.

Better In Bed

Love talking about sex but hate not having anyone to talk to about it? Better In Bed is a fun and informative podcast hosted by Sara Tang, a sex coach and educator. The podcast (and Tang’s career in general) was inspired by bad sexual education in school, and seeks to act as a corrective.

Tang talks about sexting, toys, BDSM and orgasmic meditations (which allows an orgasm by slowing down and becoming mindful of yourself, rather than rushing and over-focusing). Having trouble imagining it? Well, no worries – in one episode, Tang, with the help of YOLO coach Ying Han Cheng, demonstrates an orgasmic meditation live by performing actions on her clitoris. The practice is meant to be a calm and relaxing experience that channels your own pleasure, possibly changing your entire perspective on orgasms.

Along with a rotating guest list of other sex educators and friends, the show mixes personal experiences in with tips. Even if you think your sex life is satisfactory now, Tang’s podcast, which is well researched and full of surprises in every episode – will help you have more fun.

Sex with Strangers

If you love sex, culture and travel, this podcast will be right up your alley. Sex with Strangers is a traveling sex podcast hosted by Chris Sowa, who travels the world to talk to new “strangers” about sex in every episode. From a trans cam girl who grew up in a conservative US town to an Australian couple that has had threesomes with at least 22 women, no topic is off limits.

Sowa uses the cross-cultural element of his work to analyse what is on offer for the sexually curious in different places, from Icelanders joining in their country’s hook-up and BDSM culture, to the rope bondage and love hotels on offer in Japan.

Due to the pandemic, Sowa’s travel is currently limited, but he is still able to call in his international guests.

We Gotta Thing

Ever wanted to learn about swinger relationships, or secretly desired to be in one? We Gotta Thing, hosted by a married couple going by the names Mr and Mrs Jones, may help you break the ice on the topic. With 37 years of marriage under their belt, the couple talks about every aspect of their lifestyle, all while drinking cocktails. The couple shows us that more goes into “swinging” than people may perceive, including how to reject a couple you have no sexual desires for, how to address consent in a situation defined by blurred lines, or how to budget your newfound swinger sex lifestyle.

Esther Perel’s Where Should We Begin

Although this podcast has been around for quite some time – since 2017 – it was revolutionary for its time, and still is. Who else to look towards for advice about sex and relationships other than a psychotherapist?

In Where Should We Begin, Perel invites listeners to a therapy session between her and a new couple every episode, delving into some of the most taboo topics in relationships, and coming up with inventive ways to spice things up in the bedroom.

Perel, a therapist known for her motto of “fixing the sex first”, broaches topics with couples who have serially cheated on each other, trying to find the perfect balance of effort in an international long-distance relationship, and even a wife having sex with other women after years of frustration in her marriage and sex life. Perel does not hold back with her questions as she wants the couples to benefit from her services as much as possible.

The 50-minute podcast is well edited, with plenty of soundbites from the session and Perel’s additional take in between. She also offers guided questions for each episode that may make you play devil’s advocate and spike interest in something you might not have previously considered.

Complete Article HERE!