[T]he sexual revolution of the 1960s and ’70s came to an abrupt and brutal end for many gay and bi men the moment AIDS was traced to sexual contact. In the early days of the epidemic, sex between men was equated with AIDS, not just in the mainstream media, but also in prevention efforts by other gay men. Since AIDS in those days was seen as a death sentence, for men who had sex with men, every sexual interaction carried the risk of death. Indeed, tens of thousands died of AIDS-related conditions.
“I was alive when homosexuality was [still] considered to be a psychological illness,” David Russell, pop star Sia’s manager, recently told Plus magazine. “The two generations ahead of mine, and a good portion of my generation, were completely decimated by AIDS. They’re gone.”
While some men with HIV outlasted all predictions and became long-term survivors, the widespread adoption of condoms is credited with dramatically reducing HIV transmissions among gay and bi men in subsequent years. Yet reliance on nothing but that layer of silicone — a barrier some complain prevents true intimacy and pleasure — couldn’t erase the gnawing dread gay men felt that every sexual encounter could be the one where HIV caught up to them.
There have been, of course, moments when nearly every gay or bi man has allowed their passions to override their fears and enjoyed the skin-on-skin contact that opposite-sex couples often take for granted. Thinking back on those unbridled and unprotected moments of passion filled many of these men with terror, regret, and guilt.
“Shame and gay sex have a very long history,” acknowledges Alex Garner, senior health and innovation strategist with the gay dating app Hornet. “And it takes much self-reflection — and often therapy — to feel proud and unashamed of our sex when everything around us tells us that it’s dirty, immoral, or illegitimate.”
Since the late 1990s and the advent of lifesaving antiretroviral drugs, some of the angst around sex between men faded — and with that came changes in behavior. Condom use, once reliably high among gay and bisexual men, has dropped off in the past two decades. According to a recent study published in the journal AIDS, over 40 percent of HIV-negative and 45 percent of HIV-positive gay and bi men admitted to having condomless sex in 2014. Researchers found the decrease in condom use wasn’t explained by serosorting (choosing only partners believed to have the same HIV status) or antiretroviral drug use. And despite what alarmists say, condom use had been declining long before the introduction of PrEP.
Garner, who has been HIV-positive for over two decades, says he’s almost relieved he acquired the virus at 23, because “My entire adult life I have never had to worry about getting HIV.”
The Rise of PrEP
Now there’s hope the younger generation may also experience worry-free sex lives — without the side effects of living with HIV.
The use of the antiretroviral drug Truvada as pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP (it’s the only medication approved for HIV prevention), has been shown to reduce the chance of HIV transmission to near zero. Since the medication was first approved as PrEP in 2012, only two verified cases of transmission have been documented among those who adhere to the daily schedule (a third, according to HIV expert Howard Grossman, could not be confirmed). New, longer-lasting PrEP injectables should reach market in the next few years. Studies suggest that on-demand PrEP (such as taking it before and after sexual activity) may also be effective.
“This is a revolution!” Gary Cohan, MD, who prescribes PrEP, told us in 2016. “This should be above the fold in The New York Times and on the cover of Time magazine. A pill to prevent HIV?”
Undetectable Equals Untransmittable
Those who are already HIV-positive also have a sure-fire option for preventing the transmission of HIV that doesn’t rely on condoms. It’s called treatment as prevention, or TasP. Those who are poz, take antiretroviral medication, and get their viral load down to an undetectable level, can’t transmit HIV to sexual partners. Last year, The New England Journal of Medicine published the final results of HPTN 052, a study that proved antiretroviral medication alone is enough to prevent HIV transmission among serodiscordant couples. In a Facebook Live interview for AIDS.gov, Dr. Carl Dieffenbach, director of the Division of AIDS at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, noted, “The chance of transmitting [HIV] if you are virally durably suppressed is zero.”
Since Dieffenbach’s statement, a number of HIV organizations and medical groups have joined the “Undetectable Equals Untransmittable” bandwagon, including GMHC, APLA Health, and the Latino Commission on AIDS.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends the use of condoms in addition to PrEP or TasP, primarily because neither biomedical approach prevents other sexually transmitted infections like gonorrhea or syphilis. Still, PrEP and TasP make it safer to have condomless sex — and that could jump-start the new sexual revolution. “When the threat of HIV is removed from sex there is a profound sense of liberation,” Garner says. “Sex can just be about sex.”
One hurdle is PrEP stigma, furthered by the myth of “Truvada whores,” and AIDS Healthcare Foundation’s Michael Weinstein’s deliberate efforts to portray the HIV prevention pill as “a party drug.”
“Fear and shame have been ingrained in gay sex for decades,” Garner admits. “And it will take time and a great deal of work to extricate those elements.” But he remains optimistic that “together negative and poz men can shift the culture away from fear and toward liberation.”
He argues that what’s at stake is far more than just a better orgasm.
“Our sexuality is at the core of our humanity,” Garner says. “Our sexuality is as integral to us as our appetite. We can’t advance social justice without including sex. As queer people and as people of color, our bodies have been criminalized, our sexuality has been pathologized, and structures continue to dehumanize us. It’s a radical act of resistance when, as gay men, we choose to find pleasure and intimacy in our sex. Our sex has been, and will continue to be, intensely political. It can change our culture and our politics if we embrace it and run to it instead of away from it.”
[Z]hana Vrangalova had hit a problem. On a blustery day in early spring, sitting in a small coffee shop near the campus of New York University, where she is an adjunct professor of psychology, she was unable to load onto her laptop the Web site that we had met to discuss. This was not a technical malfunction on her end; rather, the site had been blocked. Vrangalova, who is thirty-four, with a dynamic face framed by thick-rimmed glasses, has spent the past decade researching human sexuality, and, in particular, the kinds of sexual encounters that occur outside the norms of committed relationships. The Web site she started in 2014, casualsexproject.com, began as a small endeavor fuelled by personal referrals, but has since grown to approximately five thousand visitors a day, most of whom arrive at the site through organic Internet searches or referrals through articles and social media. To date, there have been some twenty-two hundred submissions, about evenly split between genders, each detailing the kinds of habits that, when spelled out, can occasionally alert Internet security filters. The Web site was designed to open up the discussion of one-night stands and other less-than-traditional sexual behaviors. What makes us engage in casual sex? Do we enjoy it? Does it benefit us in any way—or, perhaps, might it harm us? And who, exactly, is “us,” anyway?
These alarms have sounded before. Writing in 1957, the author Nora Johnson raised an eyebrow at promiscuity on college campuses, noting that “sleeping around is a risky business, emotionally, physically, and morally.” Since then, the critiques of casual sexual behavior have only proliferated, even as society has ostensibly become more socially liberal. Last year, the anthropologist Peter Wood went so far as to call the rise of casual sex “an assault on human nature,” arguing in an article in the conservative Weekly Standard that even the most meaningless-seeming sex comes with a problematic power imbalance.
Others have embraced the commonness of casual sex as a sign of social progress. In a widely read Atlantic article from 2012, “Boys on the Side,” Hanna Rosin urged women to avoid serious suitors so that they could focus on their own needs and careers. And yet, despite her apparent belief in the value of casual sex as a tool of exploration and feminist thinking, Rosin, too, seemed to conclude that casual sex cannot be a meaningful end goal. “Ultimately, the desire for a deeper human connection always wins out, for both men and women,” she wrote.
The Casual Sex Project was born of Vrangalova’s frustration with this and other prevalent narratives about casual sex. “One thing that was bothering me is the lack of diversity in discussions of casual sex,” Vrangalova told me in the café. “It’s always portrayed as something college students do. And it’s almost always seen in a negative light, as something that harms women.”
It was not the first time Vrangalova had wanted to broaden a limited conversation. As an undergraduate, in Macedonia, where she studied the psychology of sexuality, she was drawn to challenge cultural taboos, writing a senior thesis on the development of lesbian and gay sexual attitudes. In the late aughts, Vrangalova started her research on casual sex in Cornell’s developmental-psychology program. One study followed a group of six hundred and sixty-six freshmen over the course of a year, to see how engaging in various casual sexual activities affected markers of mental health: namely, depression, anxiety, life satisfaction, and self-esteem. Another looked at more than eight hundred undergraduates to see whether individuals who engaged in casual sex felt more victimized by others, or were more socially isolated. (The results: yes to the first, no to the second.) The studies were intriguing enough that Vrangalova was offered an appointment at N.Y.U., where she remains, to further explore some of the issues surrounding the effects of nontraditional sexual behaviors on the individuals who engage in them.
Over time, Vrangalova came to realize that there was a gap in her knowledge, and, indeed, in the field as a whole. Casual sex has been much explored in psychological literature, but most of the data captured by her research team—and most of the other experimental research she had encountered—had been taken from college students. (This is a common problem in psychological research: students are a convenient population for researchers.) There has been the occasional nationally representative survey, but rigorous data on other subsets of the population is sparse. Even the largest national study of sexual attitudes in the United States, which surveyed a nationally representative sample of close to six thousand men and women between the ages of fourteen and ninety-four, neglected to ask respondents how many of the encounters they engaged in could be deemed “casual.”
From its beginnings, sex research has been limited by a social stigma. The field’s pioneer, Alfred Kinsey, spent decades interviewing people about their sexual behaviors. His books sold, but he was widely criticized for not having an objective perspective: like Freud before him, he believed that repressed sexuality was at the root of much of social behavior, and he often came to judgments that supported that view—even when his conclusions were based on less-than-representative surveys. He, too, used convenient sample groups, such as prisoners, as well as volunteers, who were necessarily comfortable talking about their sexual practices.
In the fifties, William Masters and Virginia Johnson went further, inquiring openly into sexual habits and even observing people in the midst of sexual acts. Their data, too, was questioned: Could the sort of person who volunteers to have sex in a lab tell us anything about the average American? More troubling still, Masters and Johnson sought to “cure” homosexuality, revealing a bias that could easily have colored their findings.
Indeed, one of the things you quickly notice when looking for data on casual sex is that, for numbers on anyone who is not a college student, you must, for the most part, look at studies conducted outside academia. When OkCupid surveyed its user base, it found that between 10.3 and 15.5 per cent of users were looking for casual sex rather than a committed relationship. In the 2014 British Sex Survey, conducted by the Guardian, approximately half of all respondents reported that they had engaged in a one-night stand (fifty-five per cent of men, and forty-three per cent of women), with homosexuals (sixty-six per cent) more likely to do so than heterosexuals (forty-eight per cent). A fifth of people said they’d slept with someone whose name they didn’t know.
With the Casual Sex Project, Vrangalova is trying to build a user base of stories that she hopes will, one day, provide the raw data for academic study. For now, she is listening: letting people come to the site, answer questions, leave replies. Ritch Savin-Williams, who taught Vrangalova at Cornell, told me that he was especially impressed by Vrangalova’s willingness “to challenge traditional concepts and research designs with objective approaches that allow individuals to give honest, thoughtful responses.”
The result is what is perhaps the largest-ever repository of information about casual-sex habits in the world—not that it has many competitors. The people who share stories range from teens to retirees (Vrangalova’s oldest participants are in their seventies), and include city dwellers and suburbanites, graduate-level-educated professionals (about a quarter of the sample) and people who never finished high school (another quarter). The majority of participants aren’t particularly religious, although a little under a third do identify as at least “somewhat” religious. Most are white, though there are also blacks, Latinos, and other racial and ethnic groups. Initially, contributions were about sixty-per-cent female, but now they’re seventy-per-cent male. (This is in line with norms; men are “supposed” to brag more about sexual exploits than women.) Anyone can submit a story, along with personal details that reflect his or her demographics, emotions, personality traits, social attitudes, and behavioral patterns, such as alcohol intake. The setup for data collection is standardized, with drop-down menus and rating scales.
Still, the site is far from clinical. The home page is a colorful mosaic of squares, color-coded according to the category of sexual experience (blue: “one-night stand”; purple: “group sex”; gray: the mysterious-sounding “first of many”; and so on). Pull quotes are highlighted for each category (“Ladies if you haven’t had a hot, young Latino stud you should go get one!”). Many responses seem to boast, provoke, or exaggerate for rhetorical purposes. Reading it, I felt less a part of a research project than a member of a society devoted to titillation.
Vrangalova is the first to admit that the Casual Sex Project is not what you would call an objective, scientific approach to data collection. There is no random assignment, no controls, no experimental conditions; the data is not representative of the general population. The participants are self-selecting, which inevitably colors the results: if you’re taking the time to write, you are more likely to write about positive experiences. You are also more likely to have the sort of personality that comes with wanting to share details of your flings with the public. There is another problem with the Casual Sex Project that is endemic in much social-science research: absent external behavioral validation, how do we know that respondents are reporting the truth, rather than what they want us to hear or think we want them to say?
And yet, for all these flaws, the Casual Sex Project provides a fascinating window into the sexual habits of a particular swath of the population. It may not be enough to draw new conclusions, but it can lend nuance to assumptions, expanding, for instance, ideas about who engages in casual sex or how it makes them feel. As I browsed through the entries after my meeting with Vrangalova, I came upon the words of a man who learned something new about his own sexuality during a casual encounter in his seventies: “before this I always said no one can get me of on a bj alone, I was taught better,” he writes. As a reflection of the age and demographic groups represented, the Casual Sex Project undermines the popular narrative that casual sex is the product of changing mores among the young alone. If that were the case, we would expect there to be a reluctance to engage in casual sex among the older generations, which grew up in the pre-“hookup culture” era. Such reluctance is not evident.
The reminder that people of all ages engage in casual sex might lead us to imagine three possible narratives. First, that perhaps what we see as the rise of a culture of hooking up isn’t actually new. When norms related to dating and free love shifted, in the sixties, they never fully shifted back. Seventy-year-olds are engaging in casual encounters because that attitude is part of their culture, too.
There’s another, nearly opposite explanation: casual sex isn’t the norm now, and wasn’t before. There are simply always individuals, in any generation, who seek sexual satisfaction in nontraditional confines.
And then there’s the third option, the one that is most consistent with the narrative that our culture of casual sex begins with college hookups: that people are casually hooking up for different reasons. Some young people have casual sex because they feel they can’t afford not to, or because they are surrounded by a culture that says they should want to. (Vrangalova’s preliminary analysis of the data on her site suggests that alcohol is much more likely to be involved in the casual-sex experiences of the young than the old.) And the old—well, the old no longer care what society thinks. For some, this sense of ease might come in their thirties; for others, their forties or fifties; for others, never, or not entirely.
This last theory relates to another of Vrangalova’s findings—one that, she confesses, came as a surprise when she first encountered it. Not all of the casual-sex experiences recorded on the site were positive, even among what is surely a heavily biased sample. Women and younger participants are especially likely to report feelings of shame. (“I was on top of him at one point and he can’t have forced me to so I must have consented . . . I’m not sure,” an eighteen-year-old writes, reporting that the hookup was unsatisfying, and describing feeling “stressed, anxious, guilt and disgust” the day after.) There is an entire thread tagged “no orgasm,” which includes other occasionally disturbing and emotional tales. “My view has gotten a lot more balanced over time,” Vrangalova said. “I come from a very sex-positive perspective, surrounded by people who really benefitted from sexual exploration and experiences, for the most part. By studying it, I’ve learned to see both sides of the coin.
Part of the negativity, to be sure, does originate in legitimate causes: casual sex increases the risk of pregnancy, disease, and, more often than in a committed relationship, physical coercion. But many negative casual-sex experiences come instead from a sense of social convention. “We’ve seen that both genders felt they were discriminated against because of sex,” Vrangalova told me. Men often feel judged by other men if they don’t have casual sex, and social expectations can detract from the experiences they do have, while women feel judged for engaging in casual experiences, rendering those they pursue less pleasurable.
Perhaps this should come as no surprise: the very fact that Vrangalova and others are seeking explanations for casual-sex behaviors suggests that our society views it as worthy of note—something aberrant, rather than ordinary. No one writes about why people feel the need to drink water or go to the bathroom, why eating dinner with friends is “a thing” or study groups are “on the rise.”
It is that sense of shame, ultimately, that Vrangalova hopes her project may help to address. As one respondent to a survey Vrangalova sent to users put it, “This has helped me feel okay about myself for wanting casual sex, and not feel ashamed or that what I do is wrong.” The psychologist James Pennebaker has found over several decades of work that writing about emotional experiences can act as an effective form of therapy, in a way that talking about those experiences may not. (I’m less convinced that there are benefits for those who use the site as a way to boast about their own experiences.) “Often there’s no outlet for that unless you’re starting your own blog,” Vrangalova points out. “I wanted to offer a space for people to share.”
That may well end up the Casual Sex Project’s real contribution: not to tell us something we didn’t already know, or at least suspect, but to make such nonjudgmental, intimate conversations possible. The dirty little secret of casual sex today is not that we’re having it but that we’re not sharing our experiences of it in the best way.
[S]eventy-nine-year-old Jane Fonda is doing for vibrators what 44-year-old Jane Fonda did for aerobics videos: mainstreaming them.
And not a moment too soon.
The new season of her critically acclaimed Netflix series, “Grace and Frankie,” co-starring Lily Tomlin, sees the two women launch a business selling sex toys for women. If you happen to drive down Vine Street in Hollywood, you might see a giant billboard of Fonda and Tomlin holding ribbed, purple objects under the words “Good vibes” — in case there was any confusion about what they’re holding.
And if you watch “The Ellen DeGeneres Show,” you may have happened upon Fonda unveiling a vibrator on daytime TV. (Take that, “The View”!)
“Use it or lose it, right?” Fonda says to DeGeneres, who seems uncharacteristically bewildered.
“Was this something you knew about before the character?” DeGeneres asks. “Before you researched it, was this something you knew about, I mean, were familiar with? Used?”
Fonda offers an emphatic “yes,” before explaining that she owns one vibrator that doubles as a necklace. “It looks like a beautiful piece of silver jewelry.”
Until it doesn’t.
“I applaud her,” said Lauren Streicher, medical director of Northwestern Memorial Hospital’s Center for Sexual Medicine and Menopause. “I’ve been trying to talk about this on daytime TV for years, and no one will have any part of it.”
Fifty-two percent of American women use a vibrator, Streicher said, according to a 2009 study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine. And women over 60, in particular, need to know about their benefits.
“Sometimes nerve endings aren’t as sensitive as they used to be, so what did it for you before isn’t going to necessarily do it anymore,” said Streicher, who wrote “Sex Rx: Hormones, Health, and Your Best Sex Ever” (Dey St.). “In addition, you have a lot of medical conditions — diabetes, cardiovascular disease, multiple sclerosis — that can cause a desensitization of nerve endings, so there is a need for increased stimulation.”
Which may explain why the Carol Wright Gifts catalog — known mostly for its compression support knee-high socks, bunion bandages and denture liners — features a two-page spread of “personal massagers” with such names as Couple’s Raging Bull and The Amazing Butterfly Kiss.
There should be no shame in the vibrator game.
“It’s really just an acknowledgment that women are entitled to pleasure,” Streicher said. “It’s OK for men to have sex and pleasure and to desire that until the day they die, but when you look at women in their 70s talking about sexuality, that’s been something mainstream media has absolutely no interest in.”
Maybe Fonda will help change that.
“I hope so,” Streicher told me. “When I teach medical students, I tell them: Don’t ever say to a woman, ‘Do you have a vibrator?’ That is the wrong question. What you say is, ‘When you use your vibrator …'”
She continued: “When I ask a patient, as part of her history, ‘Are you able to have an orgasm?’ and she says no, I say, ‘How about when you use your vibrator?'”
It lessens the stigma and leads to a more honest discussion, Streicher said.
“We know, at best, maybe 25 percent of women are able to have an orgasm through intercourse alone,” she said. “If men weren’t able to have orgasms and there was a device that made it happen, there would be nothing taboo about it.”
And if Fonda has her way, there won’t be for much longer.
It may be killing your sex life: Those who believe in soulmates make no effort to improve chemistry in the bedroom, study finds
A study found that people who believe in ‘sexual destiny’ expected satisfaction to simply happen if they were meant to be. These individuals saw a lack of chemistry as a sign of incompatibility and instead of working to resolve the issues, they ended the relationship
[S]cientists have uncovered the secret to a happy sex life – time and effort.
A new study has found that individuals who believed in ‘sexual destiny’ expected satisfaction to simply happen if them and their partner were meant to be.
The team had discovered that these individuals saw a lack of chemistry in the bedroom as a sign of incompatibility and instead of working to resolve the issues or giving it time, they simply ended the relationship.
‘People who believe in sexual destiny are using their sex life as a barometer for how well their relationship is doing, and they believe problems in the bedroom equal problems in the relationship as a whole,’ said Jessica Maxwell, a PhD candidate in the department of psychology at the University of Toronto.
‘Whereas people who believe in sexual growth not only believe they can work on their sexual problems, but they are not letting it affect their relationship satisfaction.’
Maxwell collaborated with a team at Dalhouse University to explore how ‘people can best maintain sexual satisfaction in their romantic relationships’.
Together they conducted six studies during their analysis to uncover the factors that impact a couple’s relationship and sexual satisfaction, reports Psychology Today.
During the study, researchers interviewed a range of couples, a total of 1,900 participants, who were at different stages of their relationship – some individuals were still in college, others lived together and a few were new parents.
Each couple was asked a series of questions that reflected either their ‘sexual soulmate’ or ‘sexual growth’, the idea that sexual satisfaction takes time, ideologies.
The team found that couples who followed the ideas of sexual growth had more of a connection during sex, higher sexual satisfaction with their partner and even a better relationship than those who endorsed the sexual destiny belief.
The team found that couples who followed the ideas of sexual growth had more of a connection during sex, higher sexual satisfaction with their partner and even a better relationship than those who endorsed the sexual destiny belief
And people who were firm believers ‘that two people are either sexually compatible or they are not’ reported lower relationship quality and less sexual satisfaction.
It was also found that this group viewed sexual performance as playing a key role in determining the success of a relationship – which may have added pressure during sexual encounters and affecting performance.
But the other group, sexual growth believers, were much more open when to sexual changes from their partner – even if they were not compatible.
This has suggested ‘that individuals primed with sexual growth are not threatened by incompatibility information and still think it is important to work on the sexual relationship in such cases’, reads the study published in APA PsycNet
‘Those primed with sexual growth may be deeming sex to be more/less important to maintain their global relationship views, but their belief in effort and work allows them to remain committed on working to improve their sexual relationship.’
Maxwell said there is a honeymoon phase lasting about two to three years where sexual satisfaction is high among both sexual growth and sexual destiny believers.
But the benefit of believing in sexual growth becomes apparent after this initial phase, as sexual desire begins to ebb and flow.
‘We know that disagreements in the sexual domain are somewhat inevitable over time,’ she said.
‘Your sex life is like a garden, and it needs to be watered and nurtured to maintain it.’
Much like Facebook and Twitter, Grindr is a community of people interacting politically, revealing how our desires are shaped and politicized by culture.
[W]hy am I on it? What do I want? Who do I talk to? Which profile picture should I use? Where should I hook up? When am I going to delete this?
For those of us who use Grindr, these questions probably sound familiar. I know that they haunt my subconscious pretty much every time I load the app. Some of my friends even like to joke that I spend so much time talking about Grindr, as opposed to talking on Grindr, that I’m just a “Grindr Academic.” To them, I’m the person who writes about my sex life (like I’m doing right now) and then cites Michel Foucault to give it academic legitimacy. I find the joke endearing. But, we should not trivialize the politics of Grindr.
So, what can this space of hooking-up teach us about sexual and racial politics?
Whether you are cruising for casual sex or complaining about love or procrastinating online, Grindr has rapidly transformed the way we negotiate intimacy and frame sexuality. Erotic, platonic, and/or romantic relationships are now just a “click” away on our smartphones. With millions of users worldwide, Grindr has become a source of sexual sustenance. From the moment I tap on to Grindr, I’m connected to a range of other profiles via my geographical proximity to them. I am enmeshed in a process of—as one user so neatly describes—“window shopping.” What I choose to shop for as I scroll through profiles, however, tends to vary. Some profiles display semi-nude selfies that invite “NSA” (no strings attached sex) while others display a photo of a night out in a club to indicate their interest in “friends, dates and maybe more.”
I can use Grindr to organize casual sex, professional networks, neighborhood parties, friendship, and dating. There are infinite intimate possibilities. In the words of Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner, these new “sexual counterpublics” emerge to facilitate new forms of emotional and sexual labour that do not just revolve around the traditional imaginaries of reproductive or matrimonial relationships.
With such titillating possibilities, I could easily herald Grindr as a transformative and revolutionary space for queer connections. My optimism, however, comes with concern: filters cannot block the everyday cruelties of ignorance and inequality. Grindr, for example, relies on standard categories of defining bodies (ethnicity, height, weight, age) in order to mediate sexual desire. Many of the app users fashion their online identities through both visual and written statements that they are “masc” (masculine) and “str8 acting” (appearing heterosexual). In doing so, Grindr users mimic and reproduce norms of what is socially desirable.
Discussing our desires can evoke feelings of embarrassment or anxiety. We like to protect our intimate attachments from public interrogation. Apps like Grindr, however, blur such distinctions. When “personal preferences” take shape in rhetorical statements like, “Don’t be another old, ethnic, nelly bttm” or “If people can tell you’re gay … you’re not masculine,” private desires are woundingly public. Even if it is a virtual platform, much like Facebook and Twitter, Grindr is a community of people interacting politically.
Grindr users respond to these disaffecting profiles in various ways: some people angrily use the block button, more patient people try to challenge the rhetoric online, and others just take screenshots and vengefully send them to Douchebags of Grindr. For those who have not stumbled upon it, it is a website where we can revel in shaming those who shame. The idea of shaming arrogant Grindr users seems both fair and funny. But, despite this, the public “outing” and breach of privacy involved raise a number of ethical questions about how we should respond to the “Douchebag Politics” we encounter online.
We need to recognize that bigotry is a social malaise—not a personal pathology. Grindr makes bigotry painfully apparent but this is not unique to the online platform. In making spectacles out of the purported douchebags on Grindr, we can make the more insidious forms of racialized activities seem palatable by comparison. After all, why does using overtly racist words in your profile attract moral opprobrium, while using an automatic filter to exclude certain kinds of bodies does not?
Making spectacles out of unrepentant bigots may satisfy or entertain us, but it does little to ensure that the intimate worlds we are building are inclusive and respectful. Whether we are on public transportation or networking online, racism is a systemic problem that is not just isolated to highly visceral tirades. Isolating people or profiles in order to stigmatize the individual person, rather than challenge the problematic behavior, is counterproductive. It just makes most of us more defensive (no one likes being labeled as a racist or homophobe even if they obviously are). Moreover, this usually limits our ability to confront the more insidious forms of prejudice that underscore such problematic behavior or that which is coded in terms of “preferences.”
This is not to suggest we can turn to anti-discrimination law in order to redress our sexual grievances. We should not treat desires as justiciable. There is little value in policing ourselves to desire others on the basis of exclusion. Finding someone solely attractive because of, or in spite of, their difference—whether it is their perceived “Asianness” or a specific body type—turns people into fetish or pitied objects to be consumed.
But, we do need some uncomfortable reflections. We live in a society that privileges certain kinds of body types, genders, ethnicities, and ages. From eroticizing heterosexual masculinity or whiteness to repudiating effeminacy or fatness, Grindr is saturated with social hierarchies that are pervasive in society. Grindr shows us how our desires are shaped and politicized by culture. Few of us would deny that.
While we are often quite willing to confront the scenes of bigotry that our visible to us in public forums, we need to extend this ethic when reflecting on the prejudices that operate at the most banal and emotional level of our lives.
Grindr is a tool for sex. It’s also a tool for politics. In the words of Audre Lorde, “our visions begin with our desires.” So, let’s be open about that. The political is personal.
[P]ower imbalances in heterosexual relationships are common, but having less power takes a greater toll on young women than young men, according to a recently published University at Buffalo study.
The results, appearing in The Journal of Sex Research, suggest “a healthy skepticism when it comes to what looks like gender equality,” says Laina Bay-Cheng, an associate professor in the UB School of Social Work and an expert in young women’s sexuality. “This research refutes the claim that gender equality has been reached and we don’t have to worry about misogyny anymore.”
Bay-Cheng says the dynamics underneath relationships require scrutiny and the often-heard claim that girls and women have reached and in some ways surpassed equality with men unravels quickly when examined in detail.
“We have to look closely at relationships and experiences and stop taking surface indicators as proof of gender equality,” says Bay-Cheng. “When men are subordinate in a relationship, it doesn’t bother them very much. They don’t see those relationships as less intimate or stable than relationships in which they are dominant. But for young women, having less power in a relationship is associated with diminished intimacy and stability and comes with greater risk of abuse.
“Inequality within a relationship doesn’t cost men as much because they are still cushioned by a broader system of male privilege.”
Relationships that develop during emerging adulthood are foundational events. It’s from these early experiences that people learn how to be in a relationship and depending on the nature and quality of the experiences, the effects – both positive and negative – can echo throughout life.
“It’s so important that we understand that it’s not that sex and relationships are at the root of risk or vulnerability. Instead, some young women, because of intersecting forms of oppression – especially misogyny, racism and economic injustice – enter relationships and are already at a disadvantage,” says Bay-Cheng. “For young women, relationships are where all different forms of vulnerability and injustice converge.”
Bay-Cheng developed a novel research method for this study that considered both the objectives of researchers and participants’ experience, which, she says, is as important as the findings.
For this study, Bay-Cheng used a digital, online calendar that participants fill out using all of their sexual experiences from their adolescence and early adulthood. The open-ended digital calendar can be filled out over a month and participants can enter anything they want, not just text, but audio files, images or even emoji.
The result is a more meaningful measure for researchers and participants.
“On the research side we get varied and diverse data,” says Bay-Cheng. “For participants, rather than circling a number on a scale on some survey, they get to express themselves how they want, at their own pace, and then look at their calendars and get different perspective on their sexual histories and how these relate to other parts of their lives. Participants have told us how meaningful that chance to reflect can be. It’s important for researchers to care as much about the quality of participants’ experiences in our studies as the quality of our data.”
[W]hen it comes to sex, we are quite the shallow bunch: Something as simple as the smell of your sweat, the dilation of your pupils or the proportion of your waistline can make all the difference.
Yet science also shows that personality traits matter at least some of the time, both in the long-term partners we choose and our shorter-term, umm, relationships.
So say you want to have more sex — hypothetically, of course. Should you offer flowers or act aloof?
The answer is complicated. Here’s just some of what science has figured out about the mating game and personality. The findings are as diverse — and as seemingly contradictory — as we humans.
Nice Men (and Women) Can Seal the Deal
Recent research published in the British Journal of Psychology showed that altruism may put you in the best position (ahem) to find a willing partner. The results of two trials conducted by Canadian researchers showed that men and women who scored higher on altruism also said they were more desirable to the opposite sex.
Men who scored higher on altruism also reported more sexual partners, and more casual hook-ups compared to female participants. If altruistic participants were in long-term relationships, those altruistic men and women said they had more sex over the last 30 days.
Researchers didn’t just take their word for it. Watch the video above for more.
Honesty Is Sexy
Let’s be real. Humans are drawn to other humans they find physically attractive. But there may be more going on than simple hotness, according to a study published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.
Researchers from China divided 120 study participants into into three groups. Before the experiment began, all of these participants, 60 men and 60 women, were asked to rate 60 random Google photographs of Chinese women. The faces were unfamiliar to the study participants, and all the women in the photos had neutral expressions.
Two weeks later, the study participants were asked to look at the photos again. But this time, one group of participants was given the same photos with descriptions of positive personality traits such as decent and honest. Another group was given the photos that now contained negative personality traits including evil and mean. A third group was given no information about personality.
The researchers found no difference among the groups during the first cycle of the experiment. But in the second cycle, those photos that contained positive descriptions of personality traits scored high on attractiveness. Those with negative descriptors scored lowest.
The researchers say “what is good is beautiful,” and this so-called “halo effect” shows that desirable personality traits are reflected in facial preference.
But We Like The Dark Side, Too
Men (and women) may say they like nice humans, but sometimes what we do tells a different story. When it comes to mating, both sexes seem to be drawn to (cue the theme from Jaws) “The Dark Triad.” That psych-speak for the personality traits of Machiavellianism, narcissism and psychopathy.
We know it’s true: Mean girls and bad boys can be pretty popular, at least for a while. It seems the Dark Triad may boost short-term mating prospects for men, and, importantly, women too, despite being “fundamentally callous, exploitative traits that deviate from species-typical cooperation,” explains Dr. Gregory Louis Carter, a lecturer in Psychology at York St John University.
Narcissism, for example, is related to good physical and mental health and longer life while Machiavellianism is linked to social flexibility. Psychopathy results in impulsivity and sensation-seeking, which can be extremely seductive, he says.
So men and women who score high on the Dark Triad scale may appeal to because they are confident, persistent, have a higher-ranking status and look pretty darn good.
The ‘Big Five’ Traits That Mean More Action
If you want to learn about your personality traits, most psychologists suggest looking at the “Big Five.” That’s a group of descriptors that include openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. Taken together those Big Five can influence our health as well as our sex lives.
In a study of newlyweds, researchers from Florida State University shed some light on how a couples’ personalities influenced how often newlyweds had sex. Although the study did not look at non-married individuals, there is a good chance the results would hold true, says co-author Dr. Andrea Meltzer, Assistant Professor of Psychology at Florida State University.
The study included data on 278 newlywed heterosexual couples, all of whom were married less than six months. They kept a two-week journal detailing their life and how often they had sex. The couples also took a Big Five test to figure out their individual personalities.
Here’s what they found. There was absolutely zero link between the man’s personality traits and how often the couple had sex. But higher levels of the traits of agreeableness and openness among wives led to more frequent sex.
“Openness refers to the willingness to explore new idea and experiences,” says Meltzer, adding these folks tend to like art and abstract ideas, often try new and different foods, and love novelty.
Agreeableness means you can get along well with others and maintain social harmony. These folks are often perceived as kind, generous, and trustworthy, she says.
No surprise that husbands and wives who scored low on neuroticism were more satisfied with their sex lives. But husbands who scored low in openness also were more satisfied with their sex lives. Maybe these guys just weren’t into novelty.
Make ‘Em Laugh
Humor always ranks near the top of seemingly any list of what men and women find attractive in each other.
Some research shows that humor gets us hot because it may reveal intelligence, a creative bent, and robust genes that equate to not only good health but also good parenting traits.
Although humor is almost universally appealing, there are sex differences. “Women want to be made to laugh more than men,” says Carter. “Men want to be able to induce laughter, though probably not in the bedroom.”
Studying the intimate relationship between narcissism and satisfaction
by Elaine Smith
[I]f you learned that your next-door neighbours were having sexual relations more frequently than you and your partner, would it bother you?
Three U of T Mississauga researchers set out to understand how people view their sex lives in comparison to those of others and discovered that sexual narcissism colours the way people make and view those comparisons.
“For some people, those comparisons are pretty influential,” said Lisa Day, a PhD candidate at UTM.
In new research published in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Day, Emily Impett, a UTM psychology professor, and Amy Muise (now a York University professor) looked at how these comparisons affect both relationship satisfaction and sexual satisfaction for people with varying degrees of sexual narcissism.
Sexual narcissism should not be confused with general narcissistic personality traits. It is defined as “the tendency to exploit others, a lack of empathy, feelings of grandiosity and an excessive need for validation in the sexual domain.” They’re the people, for example, who buy you dinner and expect sexual favours in return.
The trio of researchers discovered that many people seemed to be curious about the sex lives of others. Individuals who had a high degree of sexual narcissism were very susceptible to comparisons with others, regardless of whether the source was friends, colleagues, survey data or magazine articles. They tended to make comparisons favourable to themselves (downward comparisons). Comparisons that showed them in a lesser light (upward comparisons) appeared to decrease their satisfaction, both with their sexual relationship and their overall relationship.
“Individuals with a high degree of sexual narcissism tend to make comparisons with those who are less sexually skilled, for example,” Day said. “When they do make comparisons with someone doing better than they were, it gets under their skin.”
By contrast, individuals with a low degree of sexual narcissism weren’t much affected by favourable comparisons; they didn’t have much of an impact on how sexually satisfied they were or how much satisfaction they derived from their relationships.
The researchers reached these conclusions through three studies that used participants from the Amazon survey roster. In the each study, the participants were measured for sexual narcissism and for personality narcissism. In the first study, participants were then asked to recall the most recent comparison they had made between their sex lives and that of others – data show that people make such comparisons on five per cent of the days in the year.
The researchers assessed the direction of these comparisons. “People who were higher in sexual narcissism were more likely to recall a [favourable] social comparison, which in turn predicted greater sexual and relationship satisfaction immediately after recalling that comparison,” they wrote.
In the second study, the researchers asked the participants how much they would be bothered by sexual comparisons with those who had more prowess or more regular sexual relations if those people were: (a) their best friend, (b) their partner’s best friend, and (c) the average couple. The results, wrote the researchers, “showed that people who were higher in sexual narcissism reported that they would be more bothered by upward social comparisons, and, in turn, reported lower sexual and relationship satisfaction.”
In the third study, subjects were given a doctored magazine article relating to sexuality and randomly asked to compare its findings to their own sex lives in an upward fashion, a downward fashion or not to make any comparison. They were then asked about their satisfaction with their personal relationships and their sexual relationships. As anticipated, those with a high degree of sexual narcissism were very sensitive to such comparisons and were dissatisfied with their sexual and personal relationships when forced to compare themselves in a non-favourable way.
“People are curious about the sexuality of others and make comparisons that impact how they feel about their own relationships,” Day said. “This curiosity has opened a completely new line of research for us.”
[T]oday in news that may leave you joyous, exuberant, and otherwise rapt with passion: All the numbers point to Americans having lots and lots more sex than they used to — at least according to this infographic produced by sex psychologist Dr. Justin Lehmiller, based off research reported to the General Social Survey.
Lehmiller’s chart breaks down how American attitudes and sexual behaviors have shifted in the last 30 years, and if you’re a person who enjoys sex, there’s plenty of reason to be hopeful. Here are the highlights from the Lehmiller’s breakdown:
Sexual partners: Up
The average number of sexual partners increased by more than 57% since the 1980s, from 7 partners on average from 1988-89 to 11 from 2010-12.
The number of Americans who report having had casual sex in the last year jumped by 10%. In the ’80s 26.7% of responders copped to no-strings nookie, compared to 37.9% in 2012. Note that the numbers end with 2012; dating apps have only skyrocketed in popularity and cultural acceptance since then.
Friends with benefits: Up
The amount of acquaintances people report having sex with has also jumped almost 10%. In the ’80s 32.1% of respondents said they’d had sex with a friend in the last year. By the 2010s, that number’s grown to 41.2%.
Not a huge discrepancy on this one. The number of folks who say they get the dirty business on the regular from one partner grew from 92.3% to 93.1%. True love is still on top.
Paying for sex: Still not a thing most people do (or admit to)
This one’s gone up from 1.8% of respondents in the ’80s who said they paid for sex in the past year, to 3.2% — not a significant change.
Attitudes have also shifted
Premarital sex and and same sex activity are more widely accepted now than they were before, the chart reports — but teen sex and extramarital sex are still far more likely to be seen as “Always Wrong.”
All this might not exactly be surprising in the age of Tinder and wide-release films with names like Sausage Party. American society’s views on sex have come a long way since the time of the AIDS epidemic, and way further since sexual frustration in women was classified as “hysteria.” Despite how depressing the national dialogue on these topics can be sometimes, we’re lucky to live in a time where sex education and conversations about sexuality aren’t nearly as repressed or reductive.
The next time your (well-meaning) friends in relationships give you a hard time about how many Tinder dates you’ve been on this year, point them to this data and tell them to keep stepping.
“My most memorable Tinder date?” Kate Iselin gestures as if to say get ready. “It was a gentleman who invited me to lunch, took me to the food court at Martin Place and showed me a photo of his penis. Soft.”
It’s not the fondest memory Iselin – a writer and former sex worker – has of her experiences on the app. But the negative and the bizarre do have a tendency to stick with you.
Horror stories aside, Iselin, 28, is overwhelmingly positive about the impact apps like Tinder have had on the contemporary dating experience. And she’s not alone.
Despite a steady stream of articles about Tinder “killing romance”, making people depressed, or putting them in danger, the app and others like it are as popular as ever (even if some users are loathe to admit it).
Iselin herself has recently returned to 30 Dates of Tinder, a blogging project she’d abandoned a year ago due to “personal stuff” including a relationship. The concept is fairly self-explanatory: she goes on 30 random dates, and writes about them. Now halfway through, she’s accepted every date request received – “provided the date location was safe and they didn’t seem like a closet serial killer,” she says.
Clearly, there’s an appetite for reading stories about Tinder – and part of that is a fascination with what can happen when virtual strangers attempt to light a flame.
But as dating via Tinder increasingly becomes the norm, it’s less about the novelty of using a phone app to date people off the internet. Four years since Tinder launched, Iselin says she’s returning to her project with “a slightly more serious goal”. It’s now more about answering an age-old question than exploring a curious new technology: “To prove that love exists.”
Of course, the proof is already out there among the growing number of successful, lasting relationships launched via Tinder or its myriad competitors. These apps aren’t just facilitating one-night stands. People are finding lasting love in such significant numbers it is no longer considered “weird” to have a partner found online.
Fairfax Media columnist Giselle Au-Nhien Nguyen has met almost all of the people she’s dated, in her 28 years, online. Whereas five to 10 years ago there was a stigma attached to meeting people via the internet, it is now “completely normalised” among Gen-Y.
“Most people I know in relationships that have started in the last few years have met their significant others on Tinder,” she says.
Eliza Berlage, 26, met her boyfriend of 10 months on Tinder. She says it’s really a numbers game. “You could go to so many bars, libraries, music festivals, house parties, and still have as much luck … just swiping it lucky and giving it a chance and seeing how it goes.”
With numbers comes choice. And according to Iselin, it’s the choice these apps offer that makes them truly revolutionary – especially for women, minorities, and people whose preferences lie outside the norm.
Although there are some who feel nostalgic for the pre-Tinder dating scene, Iselin reckons women have never had it better; and she doesn’t see us ever going back.
“I know a lot of people say, ‘I would never use Tinder because I want to meet the love of my life the old-fashioned way’. But when we talk about old-fashioned times, we’re talking about a time when women in particular did not have a lot of choice in meeting partners.”
The same goes for people who may be otherwise constrained from exploring their sexuality ‘the old-fashioned way’, says Senthorun Raj, Grindr enthusiast and academic in law and gender studies.
“For people who are busy, those who have social, mental, or physical mobility issues, or individuals who are worried about ‘outing’ their sexual or gender identity in public spaces, dating apps can be a more comfortable way to chat, socialise, and become intimate than meeting people at clubs or bars,” he says. “For same-sex-attracted and gender-non-conforming people especially, these apps can be lifelines to connect with others dealing with similar experiences.”
What’s more, they have the ability to make connections “with people who we would never encounter in the places or circles we normally frequent,” he adds.
Of course, it’s not all rainbows, love-hearts and wink emojis for women, racial minorities or LGBT people. Prejudice and harassment is a real issue – but Raj says it would be a mistake to suggest apps like Grindr and Tinder have unleashed it.
“While Grindr does not cause these stereotypes, apps do make it easier in some ways to express harmful racial, age, and other ‘preferences’ because of anonymity or because the lack of ‘in-person’ interaction makes you feel like what you say or do online is … subject to less critical scrutiny.”
Nguyen says rape threats and racist, sexist comments are things she’s personally had to deal with just as much offline as on dating apps and social media.
“There’s such a big moral panic when it comes to online dating and safety, and it’s valid but we also need to remember that women face this everywhere. It really comes down to better education in schools about consent and respectful connections, and also the apps ensuring that they take reports of violence seriously.”
Sex and relationships expert Cyndi Darnell agrees that while mobile dating apps have revolutionised the sexual choices available and the ease with which users can access them, ultimately better education is needed to improve the human interaction side of things.
“We’re still operating on a very, very, very limited consent framework in terms of discussions around sex and pleasure … and yet our technology is far more advanced than that,” she says.
“There’s no app for getting over awkwardness. There’s no app for managing sexual anxiety. That’s the thing we need to remember: just because there is more access to sex, it doesn’t mean the quality of the sex has improved. We mustn’t confuse quantity with quality.”
Then again, there’s quality to be found – especially if you’re willing to put in the effort. “I’ve been on excellent dates and I have friends who’ve ended up in the most magical relationships,” says Iselin, who’s confident she’ll achieve her goal in one way or another by the end of her 30 dates.
“We are the generation now going to Tinder weddings. There are Tinder babies. I think that’s really exciting, and that gives me faith.”
Everyone has the right to have sex as they choose and we must make sure we protect that right
A gay couple kisses during the Gay Pride Parade in Medellin, Colombia, in 2015.
By Emily Witt
[S]exual equality – the right for consenting adults to love who they want, the way they want it – is a human right. In 2017 the right to have the kind of sex we want is still under threat.
Once again gay people, single women, the non-monogamous, the kinky, and many other people whose sexuality does not conform to the heterosexual, child-producing marital bedroom, will be forced to articulate their right to sexual freedom. For many adults, merely having sex, and being sexual, will become a political act. Welcome to the year of assertive sexuality.
In the 21st century the state wields control over sexuality through access to healthcare. In the United States, Donald Trump has appointed an orthopaedic surgeon, Tom Price, as his secretary of health and human services. Price has a record of opposition to LGBTQ and abortion rights and has voted in the past to deprive non-profit organisation Planned Parenthood of taxpayer support.
Even if Trump chooses not to revoke the Affordable Care Act, it’s likely the mandate that covers contraception will be repealed. A woman’s sexual freedom depends on her ability to access affordable contraception, treatment for infections and abortion services. Trump, who has a lifetime of boasting about his sexual promiscuity (both consensual and not), wants to impose a paradigm of risk on women, who will lose autonomy and safety and will face unnecessary and prohibitive expense and inconvenience in their pursuit of sexual happiness.
The United Kingdom also saw an attempt to thwart sexual freedom by denying access to healthcare in 2016. It was only after a successful lawsuit filed by the National Aids Trust and persistent lobbying by activists that the NHS announced in December that it would fund a three-year clinical trial that will make pre-exposure prophylaxis available through the NHS to 10,000 people at risk of contracting HIV. This was a shift from earlier in the year, when the NHS had made it clear that it would limit availability of PrEP to 500 men “most at high risk”.
Denying healthcare to certain populations in a misguided attempt to influence their sexual behaviour is a form of social control and exclusion that arbitrarily codes certain sexual acts as good or bad and certain lives as more dispensable than others. The point of such efforts – and other forms of sexual censorship, like the attempts of the Conservative government to block pornographic websites that show female ejaculation or that break the “four finger rule” – is to assert a hierarchy of sexual cultures in which heteronormativity occupies a place at the top and alternative sexual preferences are maligned as risky or obscene.
Tom Price, US secretary of health and human services, has a record of opposition to LGBTQ rights.
Attempts to re-establish a notion of “normal”, “conventional” and “responsible” sexuality come at a time in which consensus about what an adult life should look like is rapidly dissolving. In the United States and the United Kingdom, adults are getting married later or not at all. In the years of their lives in which they are dating and having shorter-term sexual relationships, technology has offered new ways of meeting people, of fantasising and of finding sexual community.
A shift in cultural morals has opened space for the articulation of a broad spectrum of sexual identities, orientations and gender identifications. If the first decade of the new century was about broadening access to institutions such as marriage, the second might be about taking pride in sex as an end in itself.
The culture finds itself at a crossroads: either attempt to restore a false consensus about what constitutes a legitimate sexuality, an ideal of monogamous fidelity that always contained hypocrisy, that not even the president-elect of the United States can claim to have upheld; or embrace a more honest view of the contemporary way some people relate to each other.
For the growing population of adults who have failed in one way or another to live up to an ideal of what a “good heterosexual” looks like, either because they have never married, or have divorced, or because they are not heterosexual at all, attempts by politicians to marginalise their sex lives would be comical if they didn’t come at such a high cost.
The only response that feels right, at this juncture in history, is to dispense with euphemism. Don’t call contraception “family planning”. Don’t limit the idea of sexual freedom to the right to marry (although even that right remains threatened.)
Don’t let the enjoyment of pornography be pathologised. Don’t meekly try to make your sexuality palatable to the people who are determined to deny its legitimacy.
In 2016 cautious appeals for responsibility lost out to ostentation and lies; 2017 is not a time to be demure.
“I was 17, when I first got sexually intimate with my boyfriend,” says Kriya (name changed), a 23-year-old IT professional from Hyderabad, while speaking to The News Minute.
“Later we were very scared, as it was the first time for both of us,” she recalls. She missed her periods that month. The 17-year old who had never once been to hospital alone, was scared and unsure of what to do next.
Trying to glean more information online just added to her worry over getting pregnant. Finally she discussed the issue with her boyfriend, and both of them decided to consult a gynaecologist.
“I was already very scared. After I told the receptionist my age, she kept staring at me. It made me so uncomfortable. While other patients were called by name, when it was my turn, she said ‘Aey, hello.…go!’ I felt so bad.
I expected at least the doctor to act sensitive. She first asked me what happened. When I told her, she started lecturing to me about our culture, and how young I am. It was a horrible experience. After the check-up, once I reached home, I burst out crying,” she shares.
From then on, Kriya has always felt too scared to discuss any sexual health problem with a gynaecologist. She is now 23, but in her view, nothing much has changed.
“Last month, I had rashes all over my vagina right up to my thigh. I just could not walk. It was painful. In the beginning, I used anti-allergic medication and antiseptic cream. But I was finally forced to go to a doctor. But even this time, I was ill-prepared for those weird looks.
The receptionist first asked for my name, then my husband’s name. For a moment, I panicked. After a pause I said, I am unmarried.”
Kriya feels that such unnecessary queries have nothing to do with a particular health problem and should not be asked: “We are adults and should not be judged for such things. After all, it is my decision. But society does not think so.”
Dr Kalpana Sringra, a Hyderabad-based sexologist agrees:“Doctors should not interfere in a patient’s personal life. But sadly, some do. A few are open-minded. They do not care whether the patient is married or not. We do at times have to ask about how frequently they have sex to ascertain the cause.”
Kalpana believes the rigid cultural restrictions and undue secrecy about anything related to sex are what makes patients uncomfortable sharing sexual health issues with their doctors.
Prapti (name changed), a 21-year old second year engineering student says: “Ï had quite a few relationships, and faced initial problems like bleeding and pain during sex. I sometimes lose interest while having sex, due to this immense pain in the vagina.”
But she does not want to consult a doctor: “I prefer advice from friends. At least, they will not judge me.” She remembers the time she had to consult a doctor two years ago, when after having sex, the pain persisted for a whole day.
“The doctor did not even try to explain the reason. I kept asking her whether it was anything serious. But she deliberately chose to ignore me. Later I heard her murmur ‘this generation….uff’! When I shared this with my friends, I realised they too had been in similar situations.
According to Kalpana, only ten percent women come forward to consult a doctor for sexual well-being, of which the majority are planning to get married soon and want to get themselves checked for infection and related advice.
No woman ever goes to the doctor for this, unless it is absolutely avoidable. Not just unmarried women, but even married ones are ignorant in this regard. Young unmarried women are only more hesitant to ask or seek medical help, fearing society and parents, she says.
“Both married and unmarried women are not comfortable. They mostly come with their partners. To make them feel comfortable, we talk to the women alone. After a while, they open up about their problems.”
She also claims that 20% of women who suffer from vaginal infection like UTI and rashes after marriage too feel shy to discuss it with the doctor: “Men seem more comfortable discussing their sexual problems. 90% of our patients are men. But they tend to come alone.”
That was not the case with Jayesh (name changed), a 27-year old. He used to earlier hesitate to talk about his sexual health: “It was only a year back that I consulted a doctor for premature ejaculation, something that I suffered from the age of 23. I used to think if my friends get to know, they would make fun of me.”
The common issues that men in the age group of 18-80 are premature ejaculation and erectile dysfunction. “Most men confess that they force their wives to use contraceptive pills, as they do not want to wear condoms,” Kalpana says.
Gaurav (name changed), a 29-yearold unmarried man insists that he has never forced his girlfriend to use contraceptive pills, but they do sometimes prefer pills over condoms.
Gaurav who is sexually active does not feel ashamed or uncomfortable consulting a doctor, but that is not the case with his girlfriend: “Four years back, she once started bleeding after we had sex. Honestly, I was clueless how to handle the situation and whom to contact. We did not go the doctor, fearing prejudice.
My girlfriend is not at all comfortable consulting a doctor. She usually avoids going to a gynaecologist, as they ask whether we are married or not. It makes her uncomfortable. It happened a few times with us in Hyderabad. That’s why sometimes she prefers to use emergency contraceptive pills rather than consult a doctor.”
“Sex jokes are allowed, but people are otherwise shy talking about sex. Parents do not talk freely on the topic. It is still a taboo for Indian society,” Gaurav remarks.
When Preeti (name changed) -who is now doing an event management course- was in her final BCom year, she led an active sex life:
“I went for a party and got drunk. That night my friend and I had sex. I did not then realise that we had forgotten to use a condom. After missing my periods, I freaked out. I was confused and went to see a doctor. They first asked if I was married. I lied.”
She also admits to feeling uncomfortable while buying I-pills, condoms or pregnancy test devices: “Once a medical shopkeeper asked whether it was for me, with those around giving me judgmental looks.”
Fearing societal disapproval, several unmarried women tend to take medications, after consulting the internet.
“They go to medical stores or send their partners to buy medicines without consulting a doctor. Emergency contraceptive pills have several side-effects like, dizziness, vomiting etc. Some even try to abort through pills, which is life-threatening and can affect their health in the long run,” warns Kalpana.
This year has been memorable for a lot of reasons, but one that may not be immediately obvious is that we learned a lot about the science of sex in 2016. Among other things, sex researchers brought us one step closer to a male version of the birth control pill, they debunked the idea that porn kills love, and they discovered that having a cat just might make you more inclined toward kinky sex (yep, you read that right). Let’s take a closer look at these findings and some of the other fascinating things scientists taught us about sex in 2016.
Americans are warming up to the idea of open relationships.
Americans are more interested than ever in consensual non-monogamy (CNM), or the practice of having multiple sexual and/or romantic relationships at the same time. A study published in The Journal of Sex Research in May found that Google searches for two forms of CNM—open relationships and polyamory—have significantly increased across the past decade. At the same time, a study published in the Journal of Sex & Marital Therapy found that more people are practicing CNM than previously thought: in a nationally representative survey of single Americans, more than 1 in 5 said they had been in a sexually open relationship before. Table for more than two, please.
We’re getting closer to a male version of the birth control pill.
An October study from The Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism reported the results of a clinical trial in which men were given hormone injections designed to suppress their sperm production. The results were stunning: over the course of a year, the pregnancy rate for couples taking part in the study was just 1.57 out of 100. Unfortunately, however, the rate of side effects was very high, which led an external review board to recommend shutting down the study. Although this injection won’t be hitting the market, this study provides optimism that we’re not too far off from having a male equivalent of the female birth control pill.
Millennials are identifying as LGB at much higher rates than Gen Xers.
In January, the CDC released a report revealing major generational differences in Americans’ sexual identities. Specifically, millennials aged 18-24 were almost twice as likely to identify as gay, lesbian, or bisexual than Gen Xers aged 35-44. Millennials were more likely to report having engaged in same-sex behavior, too. However, whether this means same-sex attraction is actually increasing or if it’s just a sign that younger folks are more comfortable acknowledging their non-heterosexuality, we can’t say for sure.
The HPV vaccine has been wildly effective at reducing cancer.
In August, scientists reported that, in the ten years since the first vaccine for the human papilloma virus (HPV) was administered, rates of cervical cancer have been halved. If we can increase vaccination rates even further, there’s a chance that HPV-related cancers—including those of the cervix, anus, throat, and penis—could be eradicated within just a few decades.
Porn doesn’t change how men feel about their relationships.
A classic study from the 1980s found that heterosexual married men reported less love for their wives after viewing images of sexy magazine centerfolds compared to images of abstract art. This year, researchers tried three times to replicate the effect, but found nothing. Nada. Zip. Zero. These findings suggest that porn probably doesn’t kill love after all.
BDSM acts can produce an altered state of consciousness.
In May, a study published in the journal PLOS ONE looked at the psychological experiences of people who took part in an extreme masochistic ritual in which their skin was pierced with hooks that had weights attached. These participants demonstrated evidence of an altered mental state known as transient hypofrontality, described as “reductions in pain, living in the here and now, little active decision making, little active logic, and feelings of floating and peacefulness.” This suggests that BDSM acts have the potential to be a very spiritual experience.
We might be able to treat low sexual desire by electrically stimulating the brain.
In a November study published in the journal PLOS ONE, researchers found that delivering electrical stimulation to the brain changes the way we respond to sexual stimulation. Specifically, a targeted cranial “zap” appears to enhance the response that occurs in the brain’s pleasure centers. This suggests that we might actually be able to use brain stimulation as a treatment for people who complain of low sexual desire in the not too distant future.
Sexual arousal puts us in a risk-taking state of mind.
A January study published in the Archives of Sexual Behavior reveals that being horny can make us susceptible to taking risks, including those that are both sexual and non-sexual. In one study, participants who watched an X-rated film subsequently expressed more willingness to keep having sex after noticing a broken condom. In another study, sexually aroused participants made riskier moves in a game of computerized blackjack. These findings suggest that, when we’re feeling hot and bothered, well, we can’t be bothered to properly evaluate risks.
Women can detect when other women are ovulating, an ability they might use to protect their relationships.
In an April study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, researchers showed female participants photos of a woman who was either ovulating or not. Those who saw an ovulating woman were the most worried about keeping their partners away from her, but this was only true for participants with attractive partners. This suggests that women may have evolved the ability to pick up on other women’s ovulation status as a means of helping them to guard desirable mates from potential relationship threats.
Having a cat might increase your interest in kinky sex.
A July study published in the journal Evolutionary Psychology reported that people’s attraction to kinky sex depended upon whether they had been infected with toxoplasmosis, a parasitic disease that can be passed from cats to humans. Specifically, those who said they had been infected were more into bondage, violence, zoophilia, and fetishism. Why is that? The researchers suspect that it’s because this infection affects the circuits of the brain involved in fear, given that in mice and rats, toxoplasmosis switches their natural fear of cat smell into an attraction toward it.
Here’s to hoping 2017 is another mind-blowing year for sex research!
Our inherent beliefs about sex can have a far-reaching impact on our relationships, finds new research published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
The way we think about sex may influence how satisfied we are with our relationships and sex lives, new research reveals.
[U]niversity of Toronto researcher Jessica Maxwell, a PhD graduate, and her colleagues created a new scale to measure people’s general attitudes on sexual compatibility. They then tested their scale out across a variety of six different studies that involved nearly 2,000 participants. Overall, they found that people who strongly believe in sexual growth — a mindset that a fulfilling sex life takes effort and hard work from both partners — had better relationship and sexual satisfaction than those who didn’t. Meanwhile, people who believed in sexual destiny — that a good sex life is more a matter of finding the right person for you — had worse relationships when they started having disagreements about sex with their partner.
“People who believe in sexual destiny are using their sex life as a barometer for how well their relationship is doing, and they believe problems in the bedroom equal problems in the relationship as a whole,” explained Maxwell in a statement. “Whereas people who believe in sexual growth not only believe they can work on their sexual problems, but they are not letting it affect their relationship satisfaction.”
The differences between sexual destiny and growth aren’t easily apparent at first, Maxwell added, since many new relationships have their “honeymoon” phase when sexual desire is at its peak. It’s only later on in a long-term relationship that they begin to show up.
“We know that disagreements in the sexual domain are somewhat inevitable over time,” Maxwell said. “Your sex life is like a garden, and it needs to be watered and nurtured to maintain it.”
Interestingly enough, women were more likely to have a sexual growth mindset, which may reflect a reality about female pressure. Said Maxwell: “I think that this could be because there is some evidence that sexual satisfaction takes more work for women, so they rate higher on the sexual growth scale.”
Most people rarely belonged exclusively to one camp or the other, which is often the case in psychology research. For instance, some might be all for the concept of a sexual soulmate, while still believing that any good sex life requires communication. And even wholeheartedly believing in sexual growth doesn’t guarantee a successful relationship. But Maxwell believes their findings can be a source of relief to both the average person as well as therapists trying to reassure their clients that a flagging sex life isn’t necessarily the end of the road. And she does think believing in sexual destiny may be more trouble than it’s worth.
“Sexual-destiny beliefs have a lot of similarities with other dysfunctional beliefs about sex, and I think it’s important to recognize and address that,” she said.
Study co-authors Kathryn Klement (left), Brad Sagarin and Ellen Lee.
[A] new study by Northern Illinois University psychologists suggests that evidence for the effectiveness of the “Yes Means Yes” affirmative-consent movement, which has taken hold on many college campuses nationwide, might be found in an unlikely subculture—the BDSM community.
While some critics of BDSM associate it with sexual aggression, and particularly violence against women, the subculture has had long-standing norms of affirmative consent, the researchers said. Their study found BDSM practitioners also report lower levels of rape-supportive beliefs than individuals surveyed from outside the subculture.
The psychologists used an online survey to measure the level of rape-supportive beliefs of 185 individuals from three groups—college students, random online respondents and BDSM practitioners.
BDSM practitioners reported significantly lower levels of “benevolent sexism,” “rape myth acceptance” and “victim blaming”— elements of what feminists and other researchers have proposed as being part of a larger rape culture that tolerates and even glorifies male sexual aggression against women.
Benevolent sexism is a chivalrous but also sexist attitude toward women, casting them as pure but fragile. Rape myths are inaccurate beliefs about rape, such as “women secretly want men to sexually dominate them” or “women incite men to rape by flirting with them.” Victim-blaming attitudes shift full or partial blame for sexual assault to the victim, such as “she was asking for it.”
The study was led by Kathryn Klement, an NIU doctoral student in psychology. A summary is available online ahead of print publication in the Journal of Sex Research.
Klement said the idea for the research survey was prompted by criticisms of the “Yes Means Yes” movement and related affirmative-consent policies and laws. The movement challenges sexual partners to explicitly communicate with each other about their desires prior to sexual activity.
In 2014, California began requiring college campuses to use an affirmative definition of consent. Many college and university campuses, and several other states (including Illinois), have adopted similar policies or laws. While the movement aims to stem the prevalence of sexual assault, it hasn’t been universally embraced.
“Affirmative consent contrasts with what we see in movies, TV shows and other media that often portray sex without communication,” Klement said. “Some critics have said ‘Yes Means Yes’ would make sex less sexy.”
The researchers hypothesized that BDSM practitioners would have lower levels of rape-supportive beliefs because of the subculture’s longstanding norms of affirmative consent through negotiation, when participants establish boundaries for sexual and BDSM activities and “safe words” to curtail or end activity.
“We wanted to look at attitudes in a subculture where consent and negotiation are normalized and accepted, yet people aren’t having less sex,” Klement said. “It made sense that this group of people might be more egalitarian, even though that seems paradoxical in a community that’s basically based on power exchange.”
The study, which controlled for age differences, indeed found significantly lower levels of rape-supportive beliefs among BDSM practitioners on three of six measures (with no significant differences among the survey groups on the remaining three).
“Negotiating about sex beforehand doesn’t make it any less sexy,” Klement said. “Consent is the critical element that separates healthy sexual encounters from assault.”
Klement said this point is especially important in light of other recent research, which shows college men and women report some differences in how they indicate and interpret consent from their sexual partners.
Co-authors on the NIU study include Ellen Lee, an NIU doctoral student in psychology, and Brad Sagarin, an NIU psychology professor who conducts research on the science of BDSM. Sagarin said that while the study clearly found an association between BDSM and lower rape-supportive beliefs, more research is needed to determine why that correlation exists.
“This was a correlational study, so we don’t know for certain why members of the BDSM community report lower levels of rape-supportive beliefs,” he said. “Nevertheless, it’s a first step in understanding another potential benefit of affirmative consent.”
In addition to how the study’s findings might relate to the practice of affirmative consent, Sagarin said there is another takeaway.
“The BDSM community has historically been stereotyped,” he said. “When you see a sexual sadist on TV, he is typically not a good guy.
“I think this study helps break the stigma of BDSM practitioners as bad or damaged people,” he added.
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