The ugly return of homophobia

— Bigotry is coming from the progressive establishment

By

As a child of the Eighties and Nineties, I remember well that homosexuals were fair game in the mainstream media. One columnist in The Star railed against “Wooftahs, pooftahs, nancy boys, queers, lezzies — the perverts whose moral sin is to so abuse the delightful word ‘gay’ as to render it unfit for human consumption”. After the death of Freddie Mercury, sympathy in The Mail on Sunday was limited. “If you treat as a hero a man who died because of his own sordid sexual perversions,” one writer cautioned, “aren’t you infinitely more likely to persuade some of the gullible young to follow in his example?”

It was sadly inevitable that the AIDS crisis would exacerbate this ancient prejudice. A headline in The Sun declared that “perverts are to blame for the killer plague”. And while a writer for the Express held “those who choose unnatural methods of self-gratification” responsible for the disease, letters published in its pages followed suit. One reader called for the incarceration of homosexuals. “Burning is too good for them,” wrote another. “Bury them in a pit and pour on quicklime.” Someone had been reading his Dante.

I happened to come out in a much less hostile climate. In the early 2000s, we were enjoying a kind of Goldilocks moment, neither too hot nor too cold. We weren’t generally on the receiving end of homophobic slurs, but nor were we patronised by well-meaning progressives. My memory of this time was that no one particularly cared, and I was more than happy with that. Being gay for me has never been an identity, it’s simply a fact, as unremarkable as being blue-eyed or right-handed.

And so it has been troubling to see a resurgence in the last few years of the kind of anti-gay rhetoric that was commonplace in my childhood. Of course, it could be argued that the rise of social media has simply exposed sentiments that were previously only expressed in private. As Ricky Gervais has pointed out, before the digital era “we couldn’t read every toilet wall in the world. And now we can.”

Yet the most virulent homophobia appears to be coming from a new source. Whereas we have always been accustomed to this kind of thing from the far-Right — one recalls Nick Griffin’s remark on Question Time about how he finds the sight of two men kissing “really creepy” — but now the most objectionable anti-gay comments arise in online spheres occupied by gender ideologues, from those who claim to be progressive, Left-wing and “on the right side of history”. The significant difference is that the word “cis” has been added to the homophobe’s lexicon. Some examples:

“Cis gay men are a disease.”

“Cis gay men are truly some of the most grotesque creatures to burden this earth.”

“I hate cis gay people with a burning passion.”

“If you’re a cis gay man and your sexuality revolves around you not liking female genitalia I hope you die and I will spit on your grave.”

“Cis gays don’t deserve rights.”

“There’s so many reasons to hate gay people, most specifically white gays, but there’s never a reason to be a transphobe.”

“It’s time to normalise homophobia.”

Of course, any bile can be found on the internet, but these kinds of phrases are remarkably commonplace among certain online communities. Even a cursory search will reveal innumerable examples of gender ideologues casually branding gay men “fags” or “faggots”, praising the murder of gays and lesbians, and claiming that the AIDS epidemic was a positive thing. Many thousands of examples had been collated on Google Photos under the title “Woke homophobia: anti-gay hatred & boxer ceiling abuse from trans activists & gender-identity ideologues”. The site was taken down last year, presumably because it violated Google’s policy on hate speech — or perhaps because it revealed the toxicity of the ideology the company has spent so long promoting.

If such ideas were restricted to the demented world of internet activism, we might be justified in simply ignoring it. But we now know that the overwhelming majority of adolescents referred to the Tavistock paediatric gender clinic were same-sex attracted. Whistleblowers have spoken out about the endemic homophobia, not simply among clinicians but also parents who were keen to “fix” their gay offspring. And of course there was the running joke among staff that soon “there would be no gay people left”.

And now a series of leaked internal messages and videos from WPATH (World Professional Association for Transgender Health), has revealed that clinicians in the leading global organisation for transgender healthcare have openly admitted in private that some teenagers mistake being same-sex attracted for gender dysphoria. The result of the “gender-affirming” approach has amounted to what one former Tavistock clinician recently described as “conversion therapy for gay kids”. Homosexuality was removed from the World Health Organisation’s list of psychiatric disorders in 1993, and yet here we are medicalising it all over again.

So how did we reach the point where gay conversion therapy is being practised in plain sight by the NHS? Much of the responsibility has to lie with Stonewall, a group that once promoted equal rights for gay people but now actively works against their interests. It has even gone so far as to redefine “homosexual” on its website and resource materials as “same-gender attracted”. It should go without saying that gay men are not attracted to women who identify as men, any more than lesbians should be denounced for excluding those with penises from their dating pools. What trans activists call discrimination, most of us call homosexuality.

“What trans activists call discrimination, most of us call homosexuality.”

Indeed, activists often claim that “genital preferences are transphobic”, or that sexual orientation based on biological sex is a form of “trauma”. The idea that homosexuality is a sickness was one of the first homophobic tropes I encountered as a child. Now it is being rebranded as progressive.

As for Stonewall, its former CEO Nancy Kelley went so far as to argue that women who exclude trans people as potential partners are analogous to “sexual racists”. She claimed that “if you are writing off entire groups of people, like people of colour, fat people, disabled people or trans people, then it’s worth considering how societal prejudices may have shaped your attractions”. It is worth remembering that Stonewall is deeply embedded in many governmental departments and quangos, as well as corporate and civic institutions. Anti-gay propaganda is being reintroduced into society from the very top.

Meanwhile, the Crown Prosecution Service has been meeting with trans lobby groups such as Mermaids and Stonewall to discuss changes to prosecutorial policy in cases of sex by deception. Since these meetings — only revealed after sustained pressure from a feminist campaigner who submitted Freedom of Information requests — the CPS has recommended what Dennis Kavanagh of the Gay Men’s Network has described as “a radical trans activist approach to sex by deception prosecutions that would see them all but vanish”. In trans activist parlance, the barriers to having sex with lesbians and gay men are known as the “cotton ceiling” and “boxer ceiling”. Now it seems the establishment is attempting to support the coercion of gay people into heterosexual activity.

Consider a recent post on X by Stephen Whittle, OBE, a professor of equalities law at Manchester Metropolitan University. In a reply to LGB Alliance’s Bev Jackson, Whittle took issue with the notion that “love is all about genitals” (an argument that Jackson has never made). Having dismissed this straw man as “a very hetero/homo-normative perspective”, Whittle then claimed that “a lot of gay men can’t resist a young furry ftm [female-to-male] cub”.

While it is true that there are some bisexuals who identify as gay, it is simply not the case that homosexual men “can’t resist” certain kinds of women. As Jackson rightly noted in her response, this is rank homophobia, “disturbed and disturbing on every level”. Yet it has been expressed by an individual who has been described as a “hero for LGBTQ+ equality”. With heroes like these, who needs villains?

Another example is Davey Wavey, a popular online influencer, who has encouraged gay men to perform heterosexual acts in a video called “How to Eat Pussy — For Gay Men”. It may as well have been called “Gay Conversion Therapy 2.0”. We are firmly back in the Eighties, where gays are being told that they “just haven’t found the right girl yet” and lesbians are assured that they just “need a good dick”. And yet now these demeaning ideas are being propagated by those who claim to be defending the rights of sexual minorities.

The Government’s recent guidance on how schools are to accommodate trans-identified pupils — in which biological sex will take precedence over identity — has been met with horror from gender ideologues. One of the common refrains one hears from activists is that it represents “this generation’s Section 28”. But this is to get it precisely backwards. Gay rights were secured on the recognition that a minority of the population are same-sex attracted. In dismantling the very notion of sex and substituting it for this nebulous concept of “gender identity”, activists and their disciples in parliament are undoing all of the achievements of previous gay rights movements.

The widespread homophobia of the Eighties, epitomised by Section 28, was based on the notion that homosexuality was unnatural, dangerous and ought to be corrected. Present-day gender identity ideology perceives homosexuality as evidence of misalignment between soul and body. In other words, it seeks to “fix” gay people so that they fit into a heterosexual framework. It is no coincidence that so many detransitioners are gay people who were simply struggling with their sexuality. Gender identity ideology is the true successor to Section 28.

The proponents of this revamped gay conversion therapy dismiss our concerns as “transphobia” and “bigotry”, or as part of a manufactured “culture war”. Worse still, the new homophobia is being cheered on by those it will hurt most. While prominent gay figures continue to feed the beast that wishes to devour them, we are unlikely to see this dire situation improve any time soon. It was bad enough in the Eighties, when gay people were demonised and harassed by the establishment. Who thought we would have to fight these battles all over again?

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!

Men who identify as feminists are having more — and more varied — sex

By

In 2015, Justin Trudeau surprised many by claiming a feminist identity. Numerous celebrities and entertainers have recently asserted themselves as feminists, and some have even chastised those who reject feminism.

While more and more men from across social divides have begun supporting feminist values and asserting a feminist identity, many are scrutinized for talking the talk but not walking the walk.

Feminism is predicated on support for gender equality. Men may associate with feminism to help distance themselves from outdated gender roles, bringing them in line with current sociopolitical trends.

In a recent article I co-authored with sociologist Tina Fetner, we looked at whether feminist men care about equality in the bedroom, the most intimate environment where the gender oppression may play out. Specifically, we were interested in how the sex lives of feminist men differed from non-feminist men: Did their personal politics mean they acted differently when having sex with women?

Beyond simply claiming a progressive identity, what sort of behaviours accompany a feminist identity? Do feminist men actually live up to their identity in various aspects of their lives?

Surveying men

Seeking answers to these questions, we analyzed a sub-sample of self-identifying heterosexual men from a larger survey on sex and sexuality in Canada. The Sex in Canada survey is a nationally representative survey of Canadian adults. It asks questions not only about sexuality, but also about personal sexual behaviours, sexual history and political and social values.

Of all the straight Canadian men surveyed, we found that only about 22 per cent of men actually identified as feminist. Most men, around 60 per cent, said they were not feminists, and about 18 per cent were “not sure.” And, as with feminist women in previous studies, feminist men were more likely to have higher levels of education.

Feminism = more sex

Taking a look at how recently men engage in certain sex acts, we found feminist men had more sex than non-feminist men. Specifically, feminist men reported having intercourse and both performing and receiving oral sex with women partners more recently than non-feminist men.

While feminist men reported giving oral sex to their partners more recently, they also engaged in intercourse and received oral sex more recently than non-feminist men, suggesting they do not sacrifice their own pleasure. Instead, we believe feminist men continue to benefit from traditional approaches to sex that emphasize sex acts pleasurable for men.

Taking a deeper look at this, we examined men’s most recent sexual encounter to further test if intimate encounters differed between groups. Feminist men, and those who said they were unsure of their feminist stance, were more likely than non-feminists to have intercourse and engage in breast touching or nipple stimulation.

Feminist men and even those who were not sure, reported giving oral sex to their female partners at higher rates than non-feminists. This is critical as research consistently finds that clitoral stimulation through oral sex is an important and pleasurable act that brings women to orgasm.

Gender equality in private and public

All too frequently we see men say one thing and do another; we tend to focus primarily on public attitudes and behaviours. We have little knowledge of what goes on beyond closed doors.

Although men who claim a feminist identity may not be more equitable in their everyday public interactions with women, our findings suggest that identifying as a feminist matters in private settings.

In private sexual encounters, feminist men and those ambivalent toward feminism, perform sexual behaviours targeting women’s pleasure at a higher rate than those disavowing feminism, suggesting these men may care about their partners as expressed through the performance of equality in sexual pleasure.

Many men claiming a feminist identity also declare support for gender equality. Our results indicate this purported support coincides with a commitment to gender equality in sexual interaction. Feminist men help transcend sexual (interaction) inequality by bridging the gender gap in orgasms.

While this is a good sign, we encourage further conversation and research addressing inequality in private heterosexual relations.

Complete Article HERE!

Our Partners, Ourselves

— Why Is It So Hard To Know What To Call A Significant Other?

By Olivia Harrison

Because of a congenital heart defect, I have an annual checkup with a cardiologist. This yearly visit to the hospital — involving numerous tests, conversations about future surgeries, and a waiting room filled with babies who have only just embarked on the same lifelong journey of doctors’ appointments and arrhythmias that I’ve been on for almost 30 years — is always an existential trip. But perhaps one of the most daunting parts of the day is when the triage nurse asks for my emergency contact info. I give the name, phone number, and address without hesitation, but when she asks: “Relationship to patient?” I stumble. Technically speaking, the answer to this question is: “He’s my boyfriend” — but this particular title just doesn’t quite fit.

Answering with “boyfriend,” I have the overwhelming impulse to add more context. I hope the nurse will notice that my emergency contact hasn’t changed from the one I gave last year and that our addresses are the same, but either she doesn’t notice or, more likely,  she just doesn’t care. That doesn’t stop me from awkwardly joking, “Don’t worry, this isn’t just some guy I met on Tinder or picked up at a bar last weekend,” as she silently connects me to the EKG, having already moved on. For some reason, I need her to know that we live together, we’ve been in each other’s lives in one form or another for almost 10 years, and we’ve raised two beautiful cats together. “Boyfriend” just doesn’t get that message across.

“There is a practical history of people needing a word to label a serious relationship that doesn’t involve marriage,” says Lal Zimman, Associate Professor of Linguistics at University of California, Santa Barbara. This, of course, is the exact situation I’m in. The term “boyfriend” doesn’t conjure up associations with commitment. A boyfriend is someone you only see on weekends or someone who could easily ghost you at any time because your lives aren’t necessarily so intertwined. Despite wanting to make the seriousness of my relationship known, however, I almost never find myself thinking about marriage. It might be something we eventually decide to do, but it’s not a priority, and he’s definitely not my fiance. So what is he?

For many people in my position — I’m a cis woman in a long-term relationship with a man — the word “partner” has become the default term — more and more, using the word “partner” even continues after marriage. The implications are clear: A partner will likely stick around. A partner knows and even loves your family and will absolutely answer the phone when the hospital taps them as your emergency contact — a partner is your family. A simple fix, right? Perhaps, but, of course, “partner” doesn’t come without its own complicated history and associations and echoes of appropriation. And maybe that’s why I still have a hard time saying it.

As the term partner has become more and more widely used, it’s important to note why it not only feels like a progressive term, but also what it took to make it become a common one. Zimman points out that “partner” deemphasizes the terminology most associated with heterosexual marriage and traditional gender roles within relationships. Still, that progressive connotation is exactly what makes me self-conscious about using it as the label for one of the most significant relationships in my life. For a long time, I heard the word partner mostly used by queer couples, either because same-sex marriage was not yet legal or because gendered terms like “husband,” “wife,” “boyfriend,” and “girlfriend” simply didn’t fit. It was hard not to wonder if I would be appropriating the term if I started using it.

Interestingly, “partner” was defined as a term exclusively used for heterosexual couples for a long time before being widely adopted for queer relationships. According to Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s Editor at Large, the word partner originally meant one who shares a parcel of land — that being the measure of wealth in medieval England, a type of currency that often came into play with marriages, which were thought of as economic, rather than romantic, relationships. This origin as an even division of wealth, and therefore power, speaks to its use in many romantic contexts even today though. “Merriam-Webster did not define a same-sex version of the word partner until 1993,” says Sokolowski. “Prior to that, it was simply a cross-reference to ‘husband, wife.’ So partner, if it was a romantic partner, was exclusively heterosexual.” It wasn’t until the dictionary’s 10th Collegiate Edition was released in 1993 that “husband, wife” was replaced in the definition with the word “spouse.” According to Sokolowski, the definition for partner then became “either of two people living together; especially spouse

Sokolowski also shared that the first use of the word partner recorded by the Oxford English Dictionary was taken from the private correspondence of a single family in the 16th century; each member of a married couple referred to one another as “partner.” John Milton also used the word in Paradise Lost in the late 17th century to reference a heterosexual spouse. The first example of partner being used to talk about queer relationships noted in the Oxford English Dictionary is from a publication called Gay News in 1977. “This is interesting because it was in 1978 that Berkeley passed the Sexual Orientation Non-Discrimination Ordinance whereby the city promised to provide equal treatment regardless of sexual orientation,” Sokolowski explains. “So basically, around the late ’70s, this idea of domestic partnerships came about, therefore connecting this word partner to a spouse-like relationship that was not yet legal in a marriage context, but was being made legal in a civil context.

Clearly, there is an extensive history of queer couples being excluded from the definition of the word partner because the existence of queerness and queer relationships was for so long wholly ignored. In the period from the late ’70s through the ’90s, though, things began to change. In a 1992 essay from Law & Sexuality, David L. Chambers explores the impact that the AIDS epidemic had on the fight for the legal recognition of domestic partnerships, specifically in San Francisco and New York. “AIDS had brought home the price that gay men and lesbians had been paying for the social and legal nonrecognition of their relations,” Chambers writes. “That price revealed itself when the biological families of gay men with AIDS tried to exclude their sons’ partners from hospital visitation or from participating in decisions about medical treatment. Conflicts continued after death, with struggles over burial and property.”

The urgency of having a relationship be recognized in the eyes of the law was also highlighted when many gay men with AIDS lost their health insurance because they had become too ill to work and could not obtain insurance coverage through their partners. In New York, many gay men who had cared for their sick partners found that they were not legally eligible to remain in their partners’ rent-stabilized apartment after their partners’ deaths. According to Chambers, in addition to emphasizing the need for legal recognition of same-sex relationships, the AIDS epidemic also brought into focus the significance of these partnerships for many gay men and lesbians. In his piece, Chambers quotes Jean Harris, a lesbian activist and chief of staff to Harry Britt, the openly gay member of San Francisco’s Board of Supervisors who first introduced domestic partner legislation in S.F., “AIDS made us realize that our lovers are our support systems. It made us more aware of the importance of primary relationships. It made love and relationships even more important than they had seemed before.”

This all speaks to the power of this word partner, as queer people were literally trying to save their lives by showing society-at-large that their commitments to one another mattered as much as those of heterosexual couples. Eventually, partner became more universally accepted as the term used by and for those in queer relationships, but that long and tragic fight for acknowledgment and acceptance is a big part of why I feel like I’m co-opting the word when I use it to describe my own heterosexual relationship. And yet, perhaps my discomfort is just a sign that the evolution of the word “partner” is still ongoing, and that there’s still a lot of work to be done with regards to the terminology surrounding our relationships

Sokolowski points to the way that the definition of the word “marriage” has changed in recent years as an example of how language surrounding relationships is still in flux. “Merriam-Webster’s definition of marriage is a great microcosm of how this works because initially we separated gay marriage from traditional marriage in our definition as a. and b. for the simple reason that whenever gay marriage was used in The New York Times or something, it was made extremely clear that this was gay marriage,” he explains. “It was always used with the term ‘gay’ in front of it, which means that they weren’t exactly equivalent, and that gay marriage was clearly regarded as a special case or special kind of marriage. So we separated them as a. and b., two different senses, and then later collapsed them into one, using the word spouse as we do for partner, because now the evidence shows that gay marriage is no longer a special case. It’s simply marriage.”

Sokolowski highlights the three stages of this evolution: First, gay marriage was not recognized; then, it became isolated as a special case, an asterisk on marriage; and finally, it was integrated into the traditional definition. “The same discomfort that the culture might have felt with the idea of same-sex marriage is sort of echoed in the discomfort we have in the use of new terminology,” he shares. “The British linguist, David Crystal says, ‘frequency breeds content,’ so the more often you hear it, the more comfortable you are.

Since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down all state bans on same-sex marriage in 2015, gay marriage has become less othered, and queer couples have embraced terms like husband, wife, and spouse with pride. Many have even left behind the term partner. However, depending on where you are, the association between the word partner and queerness still lingers.

Sarah S., who lives in D.C. with her partner, tells me, “I’m bi and in a hetero relationship. I intentionally use partner not only to normalize it for queer couples, but also because it does sound inherently queer right now, so it kind of affirms my queer identity to myself — especially as a woman who realized they were bi while in a relationship with a man.”

U.K.-based lifestyle blogger Luisa-Christie, who is also bisexual, feels similarly. “I think it’s fab when heterosexual people say ‘partner,’ because it normalizes gender-free language and it means that those people who are queer but maybe not out yet, aren’t outing themselves in potentially unsafe situations or in front of friends, family, or work colleagues they may not want to share it with.” Amber Grace, 28, agrees. “For me, using the term partner is inclusive of the whole spectrum of sexuality and gender, which is really important as my life has taught me that who we are and who we love is not something set in stone.”

On the other hand, Carla tells me that she resents this idea that genderless language and queerness need to be “normalized.” She says, “As far as I am concerned, I am normal. I feel that no matter what I say or what other queer people say about this, straight people, at the end of the day, will do whatever they want.” She also stresses that using certain words is not enough. “If straight people want to be allies, maybe do it in action. Do straight people stand up to any type of bullying? Are you providing a safe environment, everywhere you interact in your life, as a straight person? You don’t need to adopt language to be ‘inclusive.’ Be inclusive with your actions not with your virtue signaling. Hire people, stand up, ACTUALLY DO! Especially, in a workplace, which from my own experience has always been nothing but violent. Hearing people say ‘partner’? Meh! It doesn’t help me in any way — never has in the past and it won’t in the future, as long as we are being killed and experiencing harassment

Amber Grace acknowledges that this issue is complicated for some queer folks. “I have absolutely been privileged in my coming out, and have very rarely felt unsafe or unwelcome — at least in comparison to many others in the community,” she explains. “So I do understand why some feel that the term ‘partner,’ which, at least in part, was really created so that non-hetero couples could safely refer to their ‘more than friends’ in less than safe spaces, should only be used by people who need that protection. I think if I saw someone who was the opposite of an ally to LGBTQ+ use the term ‘partner,’ I’d be irritated.”

Australia-based designer Oliver Boston also emphasizes the importance of remembering why queer people often use the word. “I don’t think it’s up to anyone to tell a couple how they define their relationship,” they say. “I just wish that heterosexual people stayed aware that one of the reasons LGBT people use the term partner instead of boyfriend/girlfriend/husband/wife is because it’s still often unsafe for us to immediately disclose our sexuality. It is also a nod to the fact that until only recently it was illegal for us to marry or have our relationships recognized officially — and in many places, it’s still illegal. I guess the way I feel about it boils down to: Straight people can call each other what they want but just remember that the history behind why we do it is different.”

According to Zimman, the use of the word partner, regardless of gender or sexuality, is more common in certain places. “In the U.K. and Australia, ‘partner’ is used really widely as a label for straight couples,” he says. “Even within the U.S., there’s some variation. I had a conversation with a colleague not long ago who had lived on the East Coast, and he found that when he used ‘partner’ there, people immediately understood that he’s gay, but in California, when he uses partner, people don’t make that same assumption.” I know that, for me, because the word is so open to interpretation, I worry that some people might think I’m using “partner” not just because I want my progressive beliefs about relationships and identity to be known, but also because I want people to think I might also be queer.

“In the past, same-sex couples would sometimes use a ‘they’ pronoun in reference to their partner to just avoid gendering them and avoid bringing their sexuality up. It seems like some straight people might be doing something similar, but reversed. They might use the word partner because they want to leave some mystery or openness about the gender of their partner,” Zimman acknowledges. When I asked Zimman how he felt about this type of trickery, which is all too common among liberal, white, straight people, he said that, as a linguist, he is not inclined to make judgments about what is better or worse in terms of people’s language use. He did offer this, though: “The word partner could potentially be taken as a way of hiding the person’s actual sexual orientation, but of course, we do a lot of other things besides just using words to describe our relationships. So a conclusion on whether there’s any kind of queer-baiting going on is really something that you get from the full context. There’s a difference between a person who presents themselves consistently as ‘maybe I’m queer and I kind of want people to think that about me, even though I’m not’ versus a person who uses the word partner but also uses a pronoun to refer to their partner or has other things to say about who they are and how they identify. I think we don’t have to put as much pressure on this word partner to be what really matters in terms of how we’re presenting ourselves. Let’s start thinking about it more holistically.”

Zimman’s point that one single label — whether it be partner or boyfriend or emergency-contact — doesn’t have to do all heavy lifting when explaining who you are is an important one. It’s a reminder that saying the word partner feels complicated because identities and the nature of our many relationships themselves are complicated — and our collective history of inequality toward and stigmatization of queer relationships only makes it more so. Acknowledging that may make it easier to approach language without so much judgment, and more like a linguist — or even a busy nurse who can’t be bothered to reassure you that she understands that you’re in a serious relationship.

Complete Article HERE!

Shere Hite, pioneering sex researcher

PARIS, FRANCE: US feminist and sexologist, now a naturalized German citizen, Shere Hite poses for the photographer, 12 February 1990, in Paris. Hite made waves in the 1970s and 1980s with her radical feminism, asserting for example that women could easily find sexual fulfillment and raise children properly without men.

“All too many men still seem to believe, in a rather naive and egocentric way, that what feels good to them is automatically what feels good to women.”

Such terse pronouncements made Shere Hite – a sex researcher who died this week at the age of 77 – both a feminist hero and a controversial figure in 1970s America.

Her pioneering work The Hite Report upended prevailing notions about female sexuality.

The book, which came out in 1976, laid out the views of 3,500 women on sexuality and the female orgasm. It challenged many male assumptions, and was derided by some, including Playboy, which dubbed it the “Hate Report

She endured intense and lasting criticism in the US, and eventually renounced her American citizenship in 1995.

Born Shirley Gregory in the conservative heartland US state of Missouri, she once worked as a model in New York.

To pay for her degree at Columbia University she appeared in a typewriter advert that capitalised on her blonde hair and attractive looks with the caption: “The typewriter that’s so smart that she doesn’t have to be.”

Her anger over its sexism inspired her to join protests against it.

At one meeting of the National Organization for Women, Hite said the topic of whether all women had orgasms came up. There was silence until someone suggested she look into the topic.

The Hite Report: A National Study of Female Sexuality became a huge international bestseller, totalling 50 million copies worldwide.

Thousands of contributors set out the pleasures and frustrations of their sexual lives in the work. More than 70% of the women interviewed said they could not reach orgasm through penetrative sex with men alone, and needed clitoral stimulus to reach climax.

“I was the only sex researcher at the time who was feminist,” she told the Guardian in 2011. “I tried to extend the idea of sexual activity to female orgasm and masturbation.”

Feminist writer Julie Bindel said that Shere Hite’s “groundbreaking” work “put women’s sexual pleasure first and foremost for the first time ever”.

“In many ways she began the real sexual revolution for women,” she told the Guardian.

But the work generated a huge backlash. Some accused her of hating men, while others said she was helping break apart families at a time of rising divorce rates

The controversy around the Hite Report and her later works – for which she received death threats – caused her to leave the US and move to Europe, spending time in Germany and the UK. She renounced her US citizenship in 1995.

“After a decade of sustained attacks on myself and my work, particularly my ‘reports’ into female sexuality, I no longer felt free to carry out my research to the best of my ability in the country of my birth,” she wrote in the New Statesman in 2003.

Her husband, Paul Sullivan, told the Washington Post that she had the rare neurological disorder corticobasal degeneration. She died at her home in north London on Wednesday.

Complete Article HERE!

‘It’s a human right’:

The campaign for learning disabled people’s love lives

Pam Bebbington and her husband, Mike. ‘Relationships are important because they give you a life companion,’ she says.

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Care staff are being encouraged to support people to develop intimate relationships and enrich their emotional lives

Pam Bebbington met her husband, Mike, through a personal ad in her local paper. She’s been married for 21 years, and appreciates having a soulmate. “Relationships are important because they give you a life companion,” she says. “You can share things and cuddle up.”

But Bebbington, a consultant at self-advocacy charity My Life My Choice (MLMC), says many of her learning disabled peers struggle with relationships. “Finding the right person is hard. Parents and carers can get in the way and curfews [such as in supported housing], money and travelling all make it difficult.” She says care staff must “allow people to have a relationship and encourage them to do so”.

This is the aim behind the nationwide Supported Loving campaign MLMC is involved in, which offers practical advice on enabling people’s intimate and emotional lives. Research has shown that young people with a learning disability lack accessible sex education resources and only 3% of people with a learning disability live as a couple, compared with 70% of the general population.

Supported Loving originally began two years ago as a social media campaign. Since then it has grown according to demand, offering good practice resources developed by support organisations and people with learning disabilities, some of whom feature in videos used in training.

Claire Bates, Supported Loving founder, says the campaign’s ultimate aim is mandatory training in sex and relationships.

She believes supporting someone’s emotional and intimate needs should be par for the course in social care. “This shouldn’t be [in] the ‘too difficult’ pile,” she says. “People with learning disabilities are often so far away from having a sexual partner, they need support to meet someone first. We need to help people have meaningful friendships and from that will come a sexual relationship, if they want one.”

Supported Loving’s latest development is an online toolkit contributed to by a range of organisations, including family planning associations, care providers, specialist dating agencies, and staff working in relationship and sex education. There is practical advice on topics including contraception, sexual health, masturbation, online dating, LGBT relationships and sex workers.

There are also plans to publish a charter promoting the relationship rights of learning disabled people, which MLMC, Supported Loving and social inclusion charity National Development Team for Inclusion are developing.

One of the toolkit’s guides outlines how relationship support should be a vital part of a care professional’s role. The tips and examples, contributed by training organisation Paradigm, suggest staff receive face-to-face guidance on how to have conversations about and support people in exploring sexuality, love and relationships. There must be clear policies around relationships rather than incorporating this issue into safeguarding training. Staff must also not assume people lack the capacity to form loving bonds or have sexual relationships.

Such online guidance is available alongside quarterly meetings that take place across the country. These aim to discuss issues and share best practice on everything from sexual abuse to online dating, with participants including people with learning disabilities or autism, family members and professionals working in social care and health.

Supported Loving is also complemented by research at the Tizard Centre University of Kent (Bates is the project’s honorary research associate). Michelle McCarthy, the professor leading the work, says of social attitudes: “Historically we didn’t expect people with learning disabilities to have rich, emotional lives – as if they were somehow ‘other’, and if they were physically cared for that was enough. That attitude hasn’t entirely gone.”

McCarthy’s project, which included four advisers with learning disabilities, explored the views of 40 learning disabled adults and 40 family carers and support staff. The research has yet to be published but emerging findings illustrate the very specific barriers created by social care services. These include a lack of one-to-one support, restrictions about overnight visitors and safeguarding concerns.

McCarthy explains: “The way services are structured and run is that they themselves can be barriers to people. So if you’ve only got only a few staff you can’t offer people one-to-one support to go and meet someone to have a date.”

The comments from learning disabled people gathered by McCarthy and her researchers underline just how vital it is to achieve progress in this area. When asked about why relationships are important, one learning disabled participant replied: “Sometimes I get lonely and I think if I’ve got somebody who I could trust it would make me happier.”

As Bates says: “It is people’s human right to have a relationship. It shouldn’t be a ‘nice to have’, but something that adds value to people’s lives. We are social animals; if you don’t see someone in that way, then you don’t see them as human.”

Complete Article HERE!

7 Amazing Women Who Made It Easier For You To Have Sex

By Kasandra Brabaw

Sunday, August 26, marked the 98th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which officially granted women the right to vote. And as we celebrate Women’s Equality Day, which August 26th is known as now, we think about those incredible women who fought for our right to vote and won. Often, we also think of women who fought (and are continuing to fight) for women’s equality in the workplace. But, there’s another kind of equality that we can thank brave women for: sexual equality.

Without the tireless work of some badass women in history, single women would still be expected to be celibate. We wouldn’t have access to the birth control that makes it safe for us to have sex without fear of pregnancy. And we’d probably still think women can only orgasm when someone sticks a penis inside of them (although, some people really do still think that). So, let’s raise a glass to the women who made it okay for us to have as much (or as little) sex as we want.

Ahead, we celebrate 7 of the women who pioneered conversations about sexuality and sexual health.

Emma Goldman (1869-1940)

Emma Goldman

In 1917 a U.S. Attorney General wrote, “Emma Goldman is a woman of great ability and of personal magnetism, and her persuasive powers make her an exceedingly dangerous woman.” Goldman gained a reputation for being “exceedingly dangerous” partly for spreading the idea that women should have access to birth control. She was also a hardcore anarchist who spoke with such firey passion that the man who assassinated President William McKinley in 1901 credited one of Goldman’s lectures as the inspiration. So, you know, that could also be part of it.

Perhaps because her lectures were so “inspirational,” Goldman was frequently harassed and arrested while speaking about radical reform. So, she worked with the first Free Speech League to insist that all Americans have a right to speech, no matter how radical or controversial.

Although she was active during the time of first-wave feminism, Goldman shunned the suffrage movement and instead called herself an anarchist. She held lectures on politically unpopular ideas like free love, atheism, capitalism, and homosexuality. After Margaret Sanger, who coined the term “birth control,” printed information about contraceptives in a pamphlet called Family Limitation, Goldman took it upon herself to make sure people had access to the information. She distributed the pamphlet and in 1915 went on a nationwide speaking tour to raise awareness about birth control options. In 1916, she was arrested outside of one of her lectures under the Comstock Law, which prohibited the dissemination of “obscene, lewd, or lascivious articles.” She spent two weeks in prison.

Goldman was deported back to her native Russia in 1919.

Margaret Sanger (1879-1966)

Margaret Sanger

In addition to creating the birth control pamphlet that got Emma Goldman arrested, Margaret Sanger founded Planned Parenthood, along with her sister Ethel Byrne and fellow-activist Fania Mindell.

Sanger’s mother died at 50-years-old, partly due to complications from delivering 11 babies and having 7 miscarriages. Inspired by her mother’s pregnancy struggles, Sanger went to Europe to study contraceptive methods, even though educating people about birth control was illegal in the U.S. at the time.

When she came back to the U.S., Sanger was frequently arrested under the Comstock Law for distributing “obscene, lewd, or lascivious articles.” In 1912, she wrote What Every Girl Should Know, in which she argues that both mothers and teachers should clearly explain sexual anatomy in order to rid children of shame about sex. She wrote: “Every girl should first understand herself: she should know her anatomy, including sex anatomy.” (Preach.)

Two years later, Sanger wrote Family Limitations, an instructional pamphlet in which she coined the term “birth control.” And two years after that, Sanger, Byrne, and Mindell opened the country’s first birth control clinic in Brownsville, Brooklyn, which the police shut down only nine days later. Sanger spent 30 days in jail after the Brownsville clinic was raided (where she instructed the inmates about birth control).

In 1923, Sanger opened the Birth Control Clinical Research Bureau to distribute birth control to women and to study the long-term effectiveness and side effects of contraceptives. She also incorporated the American Birth Control League, an organization that studied global impacts of population growth, disarmament, and famine. Eventually, the two groups merged to become what we now know as Planned Parenthood. Sanger continued to fight for contraceptive rights and sexual freedom along with other birth control activists, and in 1936 their efforts led to a court ruling that using and talking about birth control would no longer be considered obscene. Legally, birth control information could be distributed in New York, Connecticut, and Vermont. It took another 30 years for those rights to be extended to the rest of the country (but birth control was still only legal for married couples until the 1970s).

Helen Gurley Brown (1922-2012)

Helen Gurley Brown

In 1962, when birth control was still illegal in most states for anyone who wasn’t married, Helen Gurley Brown wrote Sex And The Single Girl, a book that argued for single women’s right to have as much sex as they wanted. (The book later inspired a 1964 movie.) At the time, many publishers rejected the book for being too provocative, because it did such scandalous things as encouraging women to pursue men, and suggesting that women actually enjoyed sex (gasp!). When the book eventually was picked up, the publishers omitted a chapter dedicated to birth control. So unmarried women at the time could have sex, they just couldn’t know how to protect themselves from unwanted pregnancies.

Three years after her book published, Gurley Brown became Editor-In-Chief of Cosmopolitan. But the magazine many now associate with brazen sex advice wasn’t so risque back then. And although the staff at the time was not thrilled with her message, it was Gurley Brown’s influence that turned Cosmo into the go-to mag for learning how to please your man.

Virginia E. Johnson (1925-2013)

If you’ve watched Masters Of Sex, then you’re already familiar with Virginia Johnson’s story. Johnson was first the research assistant for and later wife to William H. Masters, a gynecologist and sex researcher. Together, the two studied sexual responses in hundreds of men and women and published groundbreaking studies that transformed how people understood sexuality.

Many of their participants credited Johnson’s warm and encouraging nature as the reason they felt comfortable enough to participate in Master’s studies (which often required them to masturbate or have sex while hooked up to machines that registered heart rate and other bodily functions). Although Johnson never finished her degree, she’s considered a sexologist for her help in Master’s work. Often, it was her who collected patients’ sexual histories and recorded data as they became sexually aroused.

Masters and Johnson made several important discoveries in their work, many of which broke negative assumptions about how women experience sex. In their 1966 book Human Sexual Response, they established that the clitoris is essential for women to have orgasms and that women can have multiple orgasms during a single sexual experience. After their book was featured on the cover of Time Magazine, it became a bestseller, making it common for people to say words like “clitoris,” “orgasm,” and “masturbation,” for the first time.

In 1964, Masters and Johnson founded the Reproductive Biology Research Foundation (later the Masters and Johnson Institute), where they treated sexual dysfunction until the institute closed in 1994.

Joani Blank (1937-2016)

Anytime you pass a sex toy shop with large glass windows that proudly displays dildos, vibrators, and butt plugs instead of hiding them under seedy lighting, you can thank Joani Blank. In 1977, she founded the first Good Vibrations store, a feminist-leaning sex toy shop and one of the first to be run by a woman.

Blank had noticed that all of the sex toy shops she’d encountered reeked of men. The windows were covered, as if you should be ashamed of the products inside, and often, there would be men watching porn at quarter-operated booths once you got inside. It was a hostile space for women. “Over and over, women would say they were afraid to go into one of those places,” Carol Queen, the staff sexologist at Good Vibrations, said in Blank’s obituary.

Prior to opening Good Vibrations, Blank was working at UCSF’s medical school with women who struggled to have orgasms. She encouraged them to try vibrators. And her experiences with these women also informed her plans for the sex toy shop. In addition to having a place that felt safe for women, she wanted to train her staff to be able to answer questions about sex and sexual health. She wanted her customers and her staff to be able to have frank conversations about sex. It was all in an effort to take some of the shame and stigma out of having sex, especially for women.

Loretta Ross (1953-present)

Anytime you’ve ever used the term “reproductive justice,” that was because of Loretta Ross. Ross coined the phrase in 1994 following the International Conference on Population and Development.

Ross is co-founder of the SisterSong Women of Color Reproductive Justice Collective, which organizes women of color in the reproductive rights movement. Her work focuses on the intersectionality of social justice and on building a human rights movement that includes everyone. She was co-director of the 2004 March for Women’s Lives, the largest protest march at the time, which saw 1.15 million people gather to advocate for abortion rights, birth control access, and reproductive healthcare.

Ross also started the Women of Color Program for the National Organization for Women (NOW) in the 1980s, where she brought delegations of women of color to international conferences on women’s issues and human rights. In the 1970s, she became one of the first African American women to direct a rape crises center.

Complete Article HERE!

Federal courts ask: What is the meaning of ‘sex’?

Existing prohibitions against discrimination ‘because of sex,’ already provide a civil rights umbrella wide enough to cover discrimination based on sexual orientation and transgender identity, some judges are beginning to say.

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[A] number of federal courts have begun to ask a question that has become more and more subtle over the past few years: What is the meaning of ‘sex’?

It’s a question that has in many ways evolved out of the storms of cultural change that have surrounded the country’s shifting ideas about human sexuality and gender over the past few decades. Many of these culminated in the US Supreme Court’s landmark 5-to-4 decision in 2015, in which a bare majority declared same-sex marriage a constitutional right.

On the one hand, the high court’s epoch-changing decision that legalized same-sex marriage created the kind of situation that inevitably arises out of rapid cultural change. Today, neither the federal government nor some 28 states offer any explicit civil rights protections for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people (LGBTQ), either in the workplace or any other arena of daily life.

“It is constitutionally jarring to know that, in most states, a lesbian couple can get married on Saturday and be fired from their jobs on Monday, without legal redress,” notes the legal scholar William Eskridge, professor at Yale Law School in New Haven, Conn.

And many throughout the country, even those with liberal-leaning views, continue to be uneasy about the presence of transgender people in certain sensitive places, including school bathrooms and locker rooms.

On Friday, President Trump issued a policy memo that would disqualify most transgender people from serving in the military, after tweeting about his plans to issue such a ban last July. As Defense Secretary Jim Mattis reported to the president in February, the administration is concerned that the presence of transgender soldiers could “undermine readiness,” “disrupt unit cohesion,” and create unreasonable health care costs for the military, echoing arguments used in the past for other groups.

At least four federal courts have found this reasoning constitutionally jarring as well, potentially violating the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection under the law.

Yet beyond sweeping constitutional questions which regulate what the government can do to its citizens, the nation’s evolving definitions of sex, marriage, and gender have also been quietly transforming the nation’s civil rights laws, which regulate how citizens live their common lives together.

Title VII and Title IX

Indeed, a number of federal courts have recently begun to weigh in on a vigorous and relatively new legal idea, simmering for the past few years in federal civil rights cases but only now beginning to take a more defined legal shape.

There may be no need to press Congress and the majority of state legislatures to change their statutes and explicitly add LGBTQ people to their lists of protected classes. (Traditionally, these include race, color, religion, sex, and national origin.) Existing prohibitions against discrimination “because of sex,” already provide a civil rights umbrella wide enough to cover discrimination based on sexual orientation and transgender identity, some judges are beginning to say.

The Obama administration took this position in 2016, telling the nation’s public schools that transgender students should be able to use the bathroom of their choice, a directive that interpreted Title IX’s prohibitions against sex discrimination as covering transgender identity.

Last April, the US Court of Appeals of the Seventh Circuit in Chicago, which includes nine justices nominated by Republican presidents and five by President Ronald Reagan, also embraced this idea. In an 8-to-3 decision that spanned the panel’s ideological spectrum, the full court ruled that the Title VII’s prohibition against sex discrimination in the workplace also included any based on sexual orientation.

Last month, the Second Circuit in New York issued a similar ruling. “Sexual orientation discrimination is a subset of sex discrimination because sexual orientation is defined by one’s sex in relation to the sex of those to whom one is attracted,” wrote Chief Judge Robert Katzmann for the 10-3 majority. It would be impossible “for an employer to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation without taking sex into account,” he continued.

Such an evolving legal definition of sex could again reshape the nation’s legal landscape. “Potentially a lot is at stake,” says Professor Eskridge. “Depending how broadly you go, this idea could affect dozens of state statutes and dozens of federal statutes, the chief of which are Title VII and Title IX,” sections in the landmark 1964 Civil Rights Act that forbids discrimination both in the workplace and in public schools.

Original intent

On the surface, the debate over the meaning of “sex” in these cases divides legal thinkers into classic liberal and conservative approaches to the law. Those who focus on the “original intent” of laws and the precise words of the legal text have generally rejected the expansive lines of thinking about the definition of sex.

“I think the better answer, the cleaner answer is just, let Congress go ahead and change the laws,” says Mark Goldfeder, senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Law and Religion at Emory Law School in Atlanta. And there’s virtue in hashing out such questions through a political process rather than letting a panel of judges make such society-shaping decisions.

Indeed, this was part of the reasoning behind a three-judge panel in the 11th Circuit in Atlanta, which came to the opposite conclusion. In a 2-to-1 decision, the majority said that discrimination “because of sex” and discrimination based on sexual orientation were two different things. The disagreement among appeals courts could invite a potential Supreme Court review, scholars say.

But the history of the legal concept of “sex discrimination” unfolded in a much more complex way, many observers note, and conservative jurisprudence, too, has played a key role in the evolving definitions of “sex” that almost immediately began to widen over time.

“There’s been this natural progression of the law,” says Susan Eisenberg, managing partner at the Miami office of Cozen O’Connor. As a trial attorney who has been defending companies from civil rights complaints for more than two decades, she’s has watched as the concept of “sex” in discrimination cases has evolved over time, changing the ways she defends her clients.

The evolution of civil rights law

In the first decade after the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, she and others point out, the “original intent” of the prohibition against sex discrimination was clear. The nation’s elite law schools and medical schools were often reserved for male applicants only, single women could be denied leases and bank accounts, and the nation understood its merit-based workplace as the natural domain of men alone.

But by the 1970s, people began to claim that sexual harassment in the workplace also violated Title VII’s prohibition against sex discrimination, and the Supreme Court agreed, declaring “a hostile work environment” as a violation of Title VII.

By the end of the 1980s, the Supreme Court found that discrimination based on “gender stereotypes” was also a violation of civil rights laws – in this case a woman who was passed up for promotion because she did not act feminine enough.

“She argued: that’s discrimination against me on the basis of my sex,” says Steve Sanders, a professor at Indiana University’s Maurer School of Law in Bloomington. “They’re not discriminating against me as a woman per se, but they’re discriminating against me because I failed to demonstrate certain stereotypes of what it means to be a woman, and the Supreme Court accepted that.”

And the nation’s high court broadened the definition even further in 1998, ruling unanimously that Title VII’s workplace protections covered sexual harassment between members of the same sex – a key decision, says Ms. Eisenberg, citing a passage that in many ways redefined her job.

“Statutory prohibitions often go beyond the principal evil to cover reasonably comparable evils, and it is ultimately the provisions of our laws rather than the principal concerns of our legislators by which we are governed,” wrote Justice Antonin Scalia for the majority in the case Oncale v. Sundowner, explaining the expanding definition of sex in this area of civil rights law.

“The sexual orientation cases that we’re now seeing basically takes the logic of these cases one step further,” says Professor Sanders. “If you’re a man, the social stereotype and the social expectation is that you will want to have sex with a woman, that you will want to have a relationship and a marriage with a woman. But, no, you defy that gender stereotype about what it means to be a man, because you’re attracted to other men.”

“Well, if the idea that men should only be attracted to women and women should only be attracted to men is a form of gender stereotyping, ergo, the logic goes, it’s covered by Title VII,” he says.

The Trump administration, however, maintains that while the Justice Department “is committed to protecting the civil and constitutional rights of all individuals,” in these case it remains “committed to the fundamental principle that the courts cannot expand the law beyond what Congress has provided,” said Justice Department spokesman Devin O’Malley in February.

‘Lack of clarity can prove expensive’

Corporate attorneys say most businesses have already instituted their own antidiscrimination policies. “But though many have adopted these, only voluntarily, the unevenness, the irregularity of anti-discrimination laws, I think is very challenging for the business community to grapple with,” says Darren Rosenblum, professor at the Elisabeth Haub School of Law at Pace University in New York. “So I think there is an imperative to clarify the law on this point. That’s what they need first and foremost, because the lack of clarity can prove expensive, figuring out which norms to follow.”

Even so, Eisenberg points out that given the ways in which the high court has redefined the meaning of sex in past precedents, today simple claims of “gender stereotyping” already covers most claims of discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity.

“And if you’ve got people who are being discriminated against just because they’re not part of a protected characteristic, that’s just not good management,” Eisenberg says. “It’s not good for recruiting, it’s not good for maintaining employees, it’s not good all the way around.”

Complete Article HERE!

What is good sex?

Here are six sexual health principles to follow

by Silva Neves

Sex is one of those topics that everybody talks about and everybody has opinions about.

[W]hat I mostly hear in my consulting room is that people don’t have good sex education and they compare themselves to what they think others do in bed.

In the absence of good sex education, what we have left to rely on is pornographic films, which is entertainment and not an accurate depiction of everyday sex, or your friends lying about their sex life being amazing.

Deep down, many people are confused about what good sex really is, and many people wonder if their sex life is good enough.

Some people criticise their sex life as ‘healthy’ or ‘unhealthy’. Some people ask me questions like: ‘Am I normal for having a fetish?’, ‘Am I unhealthy for having lots of sex?’, ‘Do I masturbate too much?’, ‘Should I feel more sexual?’, ‘Am I strange for not liking penetration?’ And so on and so forth.

When we talk about sex, we tend to focus on the particular acts rather than on the broad view of sexuality: human sexuality is rich and varied and there are thousands of ways to have sex and be sexual. One person’s favourite sexual activity can be another person’s repulsion. How can we even begin to identify what is good or bad, healthy or unhealthy without falling into the trap of being opinionated, judgemental, critical and shaming?

I invite you to think about your sex life differently. If you want to know if the sex you’re having is good or bad, stop focusing on sexual acts and instead think about sexual health principles. There are six of them:

1. Consent: Consent can only be expressed from a person aged 16 or over, with a fully functioning brain. Consent cannot be expressed from a person who has impaired thinking under the influence of drugs or alcohol, for example. Consent to exercise your sexual right to have sex with whomever you choose should be unambiguous. If there is doubt, take some extra time to have a conversation with your sexual partners to make sure the cooperation between you is clear.

2. Non-exploitation: This means to do what you and your partner(s) have agreed to do without any coercion using power or control for sexual gratification.

3. Protection from HIV, STIs and unwanted pregnancy: It is your responsibility to make sure that you are at low risk of contracting a sexually transmitted infection. Often it requires a honest conversation with your partner, and an explicit agreement on how you are going to protect each other. If you have a STI that is infectious, it is your responsibility to put protection in place that won’t knowingly infect your partner(s).

4. Honesty: Being honest and upfront with your sexual desires and sexual needs is important. Everybody is different, and human sexuality is diverse. It is likely that your partner may not know all of what you like, need or want sexually. In fact, some people are not in touch with their own sexual landscape and all the parts of their body that is erogenous. Being able to express to your partner what you want or need is important. It can be difficult and it is a courageous conversation to have, because you can risk hearing your partner saying that they don’t like what you like. When couples stay in a place of honesty and truth, often they can work some things out between them to achieve a fulfilling sex life.

5. Shared values: It is important that you and your sexual partner are ‘on the same page’ about what is acceptable and what is not. Our values are important to us because it informs us on what specific sexual acts means to us and contributes to our motivation for having sex. Conversations about values can clarify important aspects of your sexual health which will help with giving consent to have sex.

6. Mutual pleasure: Pleasure is an important component of sex. For good sexual health, it is crucial that you make sure that what you do bring you pleasure and at the same time, to be able to hear what your partner finds pleasurable. It is a good idea to talk about it with your partner because it is not possible to assume. We usually feel good when we bring pleasure to our partners and we also feel good when we feel pleasure ourselves.

You can stop thinking about being a ‘good bottom’ or a ‘good top’. You can stop worrying about your kinky sex life being healthy or not. If you move away from opinions about specific sexual acts, there is no judgments to be made and you can ensure your sexual life to be good by meeting the six principles of sexual health.

Complete Article HERE!

“The Alternative Is Awful”

Sexual Justice Pioneer Carol Queen on Why Sexual Justice Needs to Evolve

by

“As Wilhelm Reich believed, if a state can control peoples’ sexuality, it can control them — politically, culturally. This is a huge challenge for organizers, theorists, justice advocates,” Dr. Carol Queen, founder of the sexual justice movement (and my queer fairy godmother since I interned for her at the Center for Sex and Culture), tells me.

As a pivotal figure of the sexual justice — formerly sex positivity — world, Dr. Queen is no stranger to that challenge. “The deeper definition of sex positivity — way more than just enthusiasm about sex, which was never intended to be the definition of that phrase — is about social justice: access to information, resources, freedom from shame, a focus on consent, diversity and more,” she says.

Dr. Queen has decades of experience uniting social justice and sexuality through advocacy, education, and community development. She has written extensively on topics ranging from bisexuality to queer kink; co-developed sex education resources to combat the AIDS crisis; and mentored up-and-coming activists, artists and educators. One of her key accomplishments is founding the Center for Sex and Culture along with her partner Robert Morgan Lawrence in 1994 after they noticed the lack of spaces for sexuality workshops in the Bay Area. The center has become especially important for subcultures and marginalized communities in the world of sexuality and gender: queers, leather and kink communities, sex educators, sex workers, erotic artists and more. “[The Center] tries to make space for multiple needs: giving diverse people a space to gather, collecting cultural materials in the library and archive and making them available to researchers, etc., [and] presenting creative work about sex/gender, which is the way more people develop their understandings about sex more than any sex ed class,” says Dr. Queen. In other words: the centre gives people the chance to learn from and build connections with each other, pointing us towards the future.

“I want more conversations that help us connect and unite across identity barriers.”

“I want more conversations that help us connect and unite across identity barriers. This is an era when we must, must revive alliances. I came out in Eugene, Oregon, in the 1970s, and the importance of alliances was one of the first lessons I learned. It has never seemed so relevant to me as it does now,” says Dr. Queen.

Carol Queen

She would know. Key to her work in sexual justice is understanding the diversity of identities and “sexual possibilities” through education and advocacy, especially in “respect[ing] each person where they are and helping them appreciate their own point in the diversity mix.” “This is important because too many people have been taught there is only one way to be, and honestly don’t understand they may have their own unique sexuality,” she explains.

As a bisexual woman and longterm LGBTQ rights activist, Dr. Queen believes that sexual justice is especially important for queer women, and that queer women are in turn a key part of sexual justice movements. “Queer women have the gift given to all queers: we must wrestle with cultural notions of normativity to be able to live our lives, find our people, create our alternative relationship variants. Sure, we can marry now, but many queer women don’t want to and wish to connect in different ways. This intersection makes us really important stakeholders in sexual justice and sex positivity,” she says.

Bisexual women, for instance, were key to work changing sexual attitudes in the late 1980s and early 1990s. In a 2000 paper co-written with Lawrence for the Journal of Bisexuality, Dr. Queen documents the importance of bisexual people in the fight against AIDS via their contributions to the Sexual Health Attitude Restructuring Process (SHARP), a safer-sex-oriented program that exposed participants to accurate sexual health information and the possibility of diverse sexual experiences that Dr. Queen worked on directly for several years starting in 1987. SHARP’s active and hands-on education was part of the acclaimed “San Francisco model”: “community-based effort to educate, prevent infection, and provide services that does not primarily rely on governmental or medical direction and intervention” that inspired other work around HIV/AIDS across the United States and worldwide in the 1980s.

Dr. Queen has observed significant shifts in the discussions around sexual justice and sexual diversity since SHARP. “I don’t see the basic underlying activism or kinds of sex as fundamentally different, mostly, but discourse about sex is out of the box and so many issues have been more or less mainstreamed that it’s striking,” she says. “It means more and more people potentially are exposed to the idea that sex, relationship and gender possibilities are many and varied; communities exist; normative ideas can be oppressive and sex/gender/relationship are not ‘one size fits all’ constructs. This is mildly interesting for some people and a matter of life and death for others.”

“[Sexual justice] has to adapt. The alternative is awful.”

“I think many people in the world of sexual justice activism believed that the path forward would only grow more progressive,” she explains. “The reality is way more fraught, and more entwined with tons of other issues: electoral politics, civility and respect on the internet, reactionary responses to identity politics, educational policy, racial justice, feminist issues, so much. And [sexual justice] has to adapt. The alternative is awful,” she says.

To look forward, for Dr. Queen, the long arc of sexual justice requires more deeply examining the healthcare matrix for reproductive rights and gender confirmation; reexamining consent and its intersections with the criminal justice system; more comprehensive sex education that incorporates consent, pleasure, and media literacy especially around pornography; the removal of laws that penalize sex workers as well as certain consensual sexual behavior and relationships; and more respect and understanding around diversity and intersectionality. It also requires looking backward. “I’m sick of all discussions that revolve around the notion that people who came before didn’t know as much as people who are setting the terms of the discourse now. That is, to me, so disrespectful. And it’s my belief that the internet age has made understanding our history, ironically enough, more difficult,” she explains.

Looking backwards to look forwards, what’s her best advice for following in her footsteps? “To do something like I’ve done, one would have to be entrepreneurial, have help from other people who want the project/s to find their audience or community and who help broaden perspective, get as much education as you can manage, realize your own experience is significant but not the marker of everyone else’s, be an ally for other peoples’ genius and identities, and consider it a gift whenever you learn more about other peoples’ perspective and struggle,” she says. The work has never been more urgent.

Complete Article HERE!