Don’t say “period”

— How Florida Republicans are taking aim at basic sex education

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis answers questions from the media in the Florida Cabinet following his “State of the State” address during a joint session of the Florida Senate and House of Representatives at the state capitol in Tallahassee, Florida, on March 7, 2023.

A bill wants to restrict when students can discuss “human sexuality” at school.

By

While many of the controversial education bills in Florida have limited how schools teach about history or gender, the latest, House Bill 1069, is turning back to a more traditional target for conservatives: sex education.

If passed, the law would require that teachers get approval for materials used in sexual health classes, which can only be taught in grades six through 12 under the law. It would also require that schools teach a specific definition of “sex” and “reproductive roles.”

The bill advanced last week at a Florida House Education Quality Subcommittee hearing — bolstered by a Republican supermajority — and is on its way to a vote on the state House floor. Ultimately, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis will likely sign it into law.

The bill joins DeSantis’s two other education initiatives — the “Don’t Say Gay” law and the Stop WOKE Act — in seeking to restrict what teachers can talk about in the classroom. And while it’s nominally about sex education, it would also reinforce those laws’ restrictions on what students learn about gender and relationships, and increase the state’s ability to restrict what students read in the school library by giving parents and community members the power to object to some materials.

During the subcommittee hearing last week, Democrats were aghast that lawmakers didn’t consider whether a topic as innocuous as menstrual cycles would be barred from discussions at school under the legislation. Rep. Ashley Viola Gantt asked Rep. Stan McClain, who proposed the legislation, whether the bill would prohibit young girls from talking about their periods in schools.

“Does this bill prohibit conversations about menstrual cycles ― because we know that typically the age is between 10 and 15 ― so if little girls experience their menstrual cycle in fifth grade or fourth grade, will that prohibit conversations from them since they are in the grade lower than sixth grade?” Gantt asked McClain during the committee hearing. McClain responded that the bill would restrict such conversations, but later said the goal of the bill is not to punish little girls.

“Teachers are a safe place. Schools are a safe place. [But teachers] can’t even talk to their students about these very real and biological things that happen to their bodies, these little girls. It wasn’t even contemplated that little girls can have their periods in third grade or fourth grade,” Gantt said in her testimony. “If we are preparing children to be informed adults, we need to inform them about their bodies and that’s something very basic.”

The bill would regulate Florida’s already disjointed sex ed landscape

Florida schools are not required to teach sex education, but are required to teach comprehensive health education. There is no statewide curriculum for sex education, which makes instruction inconsistent across the state, according to an ABC report. Plus, Florida has long touted its opt-out policy, which allows parents to remove their children from instruction on reproductive health.

Critics of the bill fear that it will push the state away from embracing comprehensive sex education, which advocates say is necessary. A 2019 CDC youth risk behavior study found that more than half of Florida’s 12th graders had already had sexual intercourse; of those who were sexually active, half of them did not use a condom during their last sexual encounter.

The bill is also another avenue for DeSantis and his allies to enforce conservative beliefs about sex and gender. According to the bill, “sex” is either female or male “based on the organization of the body of such person for a specific reproductive role.” One’s reproductive role and sex are determined by their “sex chromosomes, naturally occurring sex hormones, and internal and external genitalia present at birth.”

This law goes further than other proposed legislation that would require teachers to use pronouns that correspond with a student’s gender assigned at birth, which opponents of the proposal have argued is an attack on trans students and faculty members.

In building on earlier book restrictions already in effect in various parts of the state, the law would require that materials used to teach about reproductive health or sexually transmitted diseases be approved by the state education department. The bill does not detail what the approval process would entail. Teachers subject to book bans in certain districts, including the Duval County school district, have already described the process as time consuming and shrouded in mystery.

>Sex ed, health, and science classes that teach about HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases can only discuss human sexuality in grades six through 12. And the courses must abide by the idea that “biological males impregnate biological females by fertilizing the female egg with male sperm; that the female then gestates the offspring.” Under the law, these reproductive roles are “binary, stable, and unchangeable” — a statement that refuses to admit the existence of trans and nonbinary people.

Democrats also noted that limiting certain discussions to middle school and higher grade levels could be harmful to younger students.

“Imagine a little girl in fourth grade going to the bathroom and finding blood in her panties and thinking that she is dying. This is a reality for little girls in school. They can be in foster care. They could have parents who just work a lot because wages are stagnant and the price of living continues to grow,” Gantt said. “She doesn’t actually know what’s going on. And her teacher doesn’t have the ability to tell her that this is a part of life because she’s in the fourth grade.”

The law doubles down on abstinence education, which the state has long promoted, despite evidence that abstinence-only education does not lower adolescent birth rates. According to the law, teaching abstinence from sexual activity is a “certain way to avoid out-of-wedlock pregnancy.” The law emphasizes that teachers must teach the benefits of monogamous heterosexual marriage. The bill says teachers must teach material that is grade and age appropriate for students but does not offer additional details.

Relatedly, as DeSantis prepares his expected presidential run, his administration is moving to expand its “Don’t Say Gay” law, which took effect in 2022. It bars grades K-3 teachers from teaching about gender identity and sexual orientation, and a proposed State Board of Education rule, which comes up for a vote in April and doesn’t require legislative approval, would expand the restriction to grades four to 12.

The bans keep coming

DeSantis has said his education legislation empowers parents, giving them greater latitude to monitor what happens in classrooms. This bill carries this effort forward, though advocates have said such laws allow parental overreach and take power away from teachers who are experts.

The proposed legislation tasks district school boards with choosing course content and instructional materials used in classrooms. This means that boards have the power to control what’s available in school and classroom libraries and classroom reading lists. They’re also tasked with developing guidelines for how parents can object to what’s being taught and make it easier for them to do so.

The same provision even empowers “a resident of the county” to submit objections. Content can be objected to for a variety of reasons under the law, including if it depicts sexual content, is “not suited to student needs,” or is inappropriate for a student’s grade level or age group.

As with other Florida legislation, if certain material is objected to it must be removed from a classroom within five school days from when the objection was filed and cannot return to the school until the objection is investigated and resolved. If a school district finds an objection to be valid under the law, teachers must discontinue its use.

The bill also opens up avenues for parents to contest a school board’s decision to adopt certain course materials via petition. School districts are to consider petitions during hearings and make a determination. If a parent disagrees with a district’s decision, the law gives them the power to request that the commissioner of education appoint a special magistrate to issue a recommendation for how to resolve the dispute.

These allowances build on legislation that Florida passed last year that limits the kinds of materials that schools can carry in their libraries.

Republicans have argued that these bills do not constitute book bans, but activists say that’s exactly what they are.

“This is a ban because the language in the bill says this information will be removed completely. What if a parent says I don’t want my child to ever be exposed to slavery and that part of our history?” Gantt asked during her testimony. “There are so many ways we can keep children safe and informed and have these conversations.”

If signed by DeSantis, the law would take effect July 1, 2023.

Complete Article HERE!

Bisexuals are the ‘invisible majority’ in LGBTQ America

By Daniel de Visé

Nearly three-fifths of LGBTQ adults in America identify as bisexual, according to a new Gallup poll, a finding that illustrates the extent of a population that some researchers have termed the “invisible majority” of the queer community.

Young Americans, and young women in particular, have widely rejected the notion of sexuality as a binary choice — straight versus gay — just as they have largely abandoned the either-or, boy-girl system of fixed gender.

One-fifth of Generation Z respondents identified as queer, Gallup found, one of the largest generational LGBTQ populations ever documented.

Two-thirds of young, queer adults polled consider themselves bisexual, meaning they are attracted to more than one gender. Most of them are women, who outnumber bisexual men 3 to 1, according to Gallup. Scholars say American society allows women more latitude than men in exploring sexual identity.

“We have a range of sexualities within us,” said Michael Bronski, a Harvard professor who penned a definitive Queer History of the United States. “I think women have far more permission to be open about their sexual desires than men do, no matter how men feel.”

Around 7 percent of American adult respondents overall identified as queer in 2022, according to Gallup. Of that group, 58 percent identified as bisexual.

Researchers increasingly recognize bisexuality as the largest LGBTQ population. A pioneering 2011 study by the Williams Institute, a UCLA thinktank, examined several earlier surveys and found that bisexuals constituted a narrow majority.

A 2011 report from the San Francisco Human Rights Commission termed bisexuals the “invisible majority” of the queer community, calling out a societal tendency to act as if the largest LGBTQ group didn’t exist.

The San Francisco report found that bisexuals are frequently “ignored, discriminated against, demonized, or rendered invisible by both the heterosexual world and the lesbian and gay communities. Often, the entire sexual orientation is branded as invalid, immoral or irrelevant.”

The concept of “bisexual erasure” has a long and growing Wikipedia page.

Meanwhile, the visibility of the LGBTQ community as a whole has been increasing. With polls revealing ever-larger numbers of queer Americans, observers may be tempted to conclude the population is rising. One long-running Gallup survey, for example, found twice as many young, queer adults in 2021 as in 2017.

Researchers see the rising poll numbers more as a journey of discovery.

American society has stigmatized homosexuality, bisexuality, pansexuality and polysexuality for generations. Same-sex sexual activity remained illegal in parts of the United States until 2003. Federal law did not protect same-sex marriage until 2015.

As society has become more accepting of queer Americans, experts say, more people have publicly identified as queer. Rising tolerance may also explain why the queer community is proportionally larger among younger adults than older ones. Among the Silent Generation — Americans born in 1945 or earlier — only 1.7 percent identify as queer.

“As exciting as it is to see those numbers going up, I think those numbers are still not giving us the full picture,” said V Varun Chaudhry, a cultural anthropologist at Brandeis University who studies gender and sexuality.

Only recently have many surveys and studies focused on subgroups in the queer community, such as bisexuals, along with the total LGBTQ population. Gallup, for one, did not ask respondents to identify a specific category until 2020.

The categories themselves have not been static. The definition of bisexuality has expanded in recent years to embrace a broader view of gender and a growing range of LGBTQ subgroups, populations that don’t always fit within the strictures of a one-word label.

The modern concept of bisexuality dates to the 1800s, and the label is showing its age. “Bisexual” implies an either-or duality of genders that arguably ignores transgender, gender-variant and nonbinary people. A landmark 2021 study found 1.2 million nonbinary adults identify with neither the male nor female gender.

The term “is imperfect at best,” the San Francisco commission concluded in its report.

In recent years, bisexuality has evolved into a catchall that embraces pansexuality and polysexuality, expressing the concept of being physically attracted to someone regardless of gender.

The idea of attraction to multiple genders has seeded both celebration and conflict over the decades.

The 20th century saw brief periods of “bisexual chic,” times of heightened public interest and acceptance, sometimes extending to androgynous imagery in fashion magazines and on runways.

The blues singers Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith and poet Edna St. Vincent Millay openly identified as bisexual in the 1920s, an era of social and sexual exploration.

Another epoch of bisexual chic peaked amid the androgynous disco stylings of the late 1970s. Elton John came out as bisexual in a 1976 issue of Rolling Stone; David Bowie came out as gay in 1972. Sir Elton later identified as gay, while Bowie settled on a more ambiguous sexual identity.

At the time, celebrities who came out as either bisexual or gay risked fortune and fame. Bowie “said the bisexual label helped sell records in the U.K., but it hurt selling records in the U.S.,” the Harvard professor Bronski said, illustrating how American society resisted accepting queer identities.

Bisexual people have faced ostracism from within the queer community as well as from without.

The modern LGBTQ rights movement struggled for decades to posit the simple idea that some people are born with a natural attraction to others of the same biological sex, a concept that the movement’s opponents have sought to deny.

Many in the movement “felt that people who were saying they were bisexual were being evasive,” Bronski said.

Prejudices persist to this day. A 2019 study found that bisexual people experience “bi-negativity”— anti-bisexual prejudice — “from both heterosexuals and lesbian and gay individuals, as well as the LGBTQ community more broadly.”

Bisexual people are stigmatized over the belief that they are “confused about their sexuality, or that bisexuality does not actually exist,” the study found. They are sometimes viewed as promiscuous or untrustworthy.

“There’s this assumption that you’re either gay or straight and you will ultimately fall to one side or the other,” Chaudhry said. “People might say, ‘Oh, you’re not really committed to this relationship because your last partner was the other gender.’”

To this day, some older lesbian and gay people struggle to accept bisexuality. Younger adults, by contrast, have grown up with “a range of sexualities,” Bronski said, with gay and lesbian just two identities among many.

Survey numbers suggest, however, that young men are far less open than young women to exploring attraction to people of multiple genders. Six percent of American women respondents identify as bisexual, Gallup found, but only 2 percent of men.

Researchers cite enduring masculine stereotypes that associate sexual exploration with femininity. Popular culture is awash in female celebrities who identify as bisexual; male bisexual role models seem fewer.

“If I had to guess, I would say there are more societal constraints around masculinity than around femininity,” Chaudhry said. “There’s a lot more societally accepted fluidity and freedom in so-called female friendships.”

A 2019 Pew Research survey found bisexual people are much less likely than gay or lesbian people to be “out” to important people in their lives. One reason, Pew reported, is that bisexuals are less likely to see sexual orientation as central to their identity.

Bisexual people are far more likely to marry or cohabit with partners of a different sex. A 2021 Gallup survey found 32 percent of bisexual adult respondents had partners of a different sex, and 5 percent had same-sex partners. Some of that disparity, researchers say, reflects enduring prejudice.

“There’s actually enormous pressure from parents to get married,” Bronski said. “Still. Parents who are younger than me. These are mostly younger, heterosexual parents who are invested in heterosexual relationships.”

Complete Article HERE!

Young people are more likely to accept gay couples

— And to identify as gay

A sign outside the House chamber at the Statehouse in Indianapolis on Monday.

By

As it does regularly, Gallup asked Americans last year if they identified as straight, lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender. About 7 percent of Americans said they identified as one of the latter four categories, essentially the same percentage as identified that way in 2021.

There was an interesting divide, though. When Gallup broke out responses by age, it found that younger Americans were much more likely to identify as LGBT (the Gallup poll excluded “queer,” so no “Q”) than older ones. Only about 2 percent of those in the Silent Generation (born during or before World War II) identified as LGBT. By contrast, about 20 percent of Gen Z (should be known as Lockdowners) chose one of the LGBT options.

This phenomenon is not new. The divide between older and younger Americans on self-identification has been a subject of debate for some time and is often cited in rhetoric targeting the perceived liberalizing effect of education and culture. As Florida considered legislation passed last year that limited discussion of same-sex relationships in schools, the dangerous idea that kids were being actively encouraged to be gay became prevalent in right-wing rhetoric.

There is a simpler explanation, one that grants adults the agency of their choices. Decades of hostility to same-sex relationships loosened in recent years, and younger Americans grew up in a country that was less hostile to gay relationships than it used to be. And, therefore, they’re more comfortable expressing their sexual identities openly.

We can see the trend in acceptance of same-sex relationships in the General Social Survey (GSS), a national poll fielded every two years. (The 2020 survey was postponed to 2021 because of the pandemic.) Since the early 1970s, respondents have been asked how they view sexual relations between members of the same sex. After rising slightly in the 1980s — no doubt influenced in part by the AIDS epidemic — there has been a steady decline in the percentage of Americans who say same-sex relationships are always wrong. Importantly, that decline has been seen in every generational group, even those who haven’t attended elementary school in half a century.

We only have good data for members of Gen Z and younger groups in the past two GSS polls. Since only a relatively small group of members of that generation were surveyed in 2018, there’s a greater margin of error for that year. That probably helps explain the seeming jump in the 2021 figure.

Importantly, there is a correlation between the extent to which generations view same-sex relationships as always wrong and the extent to which members identify as LGBT in Gallup’s data. Gen Z is least likely to view those relationships as wrong (the dot farthest to the left on the graph below) and most likely to identify that way (highest). (The graph also indicates where the Gen Z dot would be using the 2018 GSS data. It’s visible as a light red dot behind the “G” in the label for the vertical axis.)

In the abstract, this could be seen as evidence in favor of the idea that young people were being trained to view LGBTQ relationships as acceptable. But this does not account for the downward shift in opposition to same-sex relationships among members of other generations.

It also ignores other lessons from American history. In 2015, The Washington Post presented this graph, showing how identification of children as left-handed rose during the 20th century and then plateaued at about 1 in 8 kids.

Kids weren’t being groomed to be lefties. Quite the opposite: When my mother was young, she was told to learn to write with her right hand. Over time, that idea fell out of favor and lefties could simply be lefties. The percentage of the population that is left-handed stabilized.

Perhaps what’s happening with LGBTQ identification is analogous. Perhaps the change isn’t that kids are being encouraged to be gay when they aren’t; perhaps it’s that they feel free to identify that way if they are — a freedom older Americans didn’t enjoy. A freedom some still see an unacceptable for themselves or in their peer groups.

Maybe what Gallup is doing, then, is simply more accurately measuring reality.

Complete Article HERE!

28 Republicans Vote Against Bill to Protect Child Sex Abuse Victims

By

The bipartisan Respect for Child Survivors Act, a law that would aid victims of child sex abuse and their families, just passed the House in a 385-28 vote.

All 28 votes against the bill came from Republicans.

The bill would require the FBI to form multi-disciplinary teams to aid sex abuse victims and their families in order to prevent re-traumatization from investigation and any cases from being dropped. These teams would include “investigative personnel, mental health professionals, medical personnel, family advocacy workers, child advocacy workers, and prosecutors,” Newsweek reported.

U.S. Senators John Cornyn (R-TX), Chris Coons (D-DE), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), and Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) introduced the legislation.

“I applaud Senator Cornyn’s leadership on this issue to correct an egregious wrong committed by certain FBI agents regarding their treatment of victims of sexual abuse,” said Sen. Graham. “Requiring the FBI to use appropriate, tried and true methods to interview child victims will help ensure the FBI’s failure in the Nassar case doesn’t happen again. This legislation will make it clear that we expect better.”

However, not all Republicans expect better from the FBI, it seems.

The bill was opposed by the following GOP Representatives: Andy Biggs and Paul Gosar (Ariz.); Dan Bishop and Virginia Foxx (NC); Lauren Boebert (Colo.), Mo Brooks and Barry Moore (Ala.); Louie Gohmert, Ronny Jackson, Troy Nehls, Chip Roy, and Michael Cloud (Texas); Andrew Clyde, Jody Hice, Austin Scott, and Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.); James Comer and Thomas Massie (Ky.); Rick Crawford (Ark.); Byron Donalds and John Rutherford (Fla.); Bob Good (Va.), Clay Higgins (La.), Tom McClintock (Calif.), Ralph Norman (SC), Scott Perry (Pa.), Matt Rosendale (Mont.), and Jeff Van Drew (NJ).

Despite this, the bill is supported by the Rape Abuse & Incest National Network, the National District Attorneys Association, Army of Survivors, the National Children’s Alliance, Keep Kids Safe, Together for Girls, Darkness to Light, the Monique Burr Foundation for Children, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP), and the Brave Movement.

It is also expected to pass the Senate.

Complete Article HERE!

How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex

— An Unexpected History

By Samantha Cole

Samantha Cole has been a journalist for over 10 years, spending the last five reporting on tech, sexuality, gender, and the adult industry. She is a senior editor of Motherboard, the science and technology outlet for VICE.

Below, Samantha shares 5 key insights from her new book, How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex: An Unexpected History. Listen to the audio version—read by Samantha herself—in the Next Big Idea App.

How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex: An Unexpected History By Samantha Cole

1. The internet was built on sex.

Early modes of internet communication were predicated on, and popularized by, a desire for sex and romance. Bulletin Board Systems, the digital equivalent of public cork boards, were quickly popularized as places to access porn online. With names like SleazeNet, ThrobNet, and Pleasure Dome, many subscription-based bulletin boards were for trading images scanned from porn magazines or photos uploaded by amateurs.

But they weren’t all just for smut; they were also hubs of harm reduction, especially during the AIDs crisis and as a way for queer and marginalized people to find community and care in a time when coming out was even more dangerous than it is today.

On Usenet, a decentralized messaging system, people debated concepts of safe spaces and moderation. They fought over whether men should be permitted in women’s-only threads, and kept long-running threads about everything from politics to how have sex on a scuba dive.

In text-based multi-user domains, or MUDs people roleplayed as fantasy versions of themselves, and found love and loss. In one classic MUD legend, someone playing as an evil clown sexually assaulted other members of the chat, which threw the entire community into chaos.

“People fell deeply in love within these online spaces, met in person, got married, or got their hearts broken.”

In these systems, people grappled with how to define consent, abuse, and harassment. People fell deeply in love within these online spaces, met in person, got married, or got their hearts broken. Ex-lovers emailed administrators to ask to be removed from the chats, since seeing their former partners even through a screen was too emotionally charged. The desire to be seen and understood permeated these earliest predecessors of social media, and naturally, they often turned to the sexual.

2. The tech we take for granted was pioneered by sex.

Much of the technology used today was developed to build an internet devoted to sex and sex work. Browser cookies and user tracking were developed by online dating entrepreneurs and porn webmasters who wanted to keep track of who visited their sites so that they could advertise more effectively. Affiliate marketing, which makes a lot of the internet run today, was popularized by porn site owners who needed to make money from the thousands of people visiting their sites every day.

The JPEG was developed using a photo of a playboy centerfold named Lena, and her photograph was used as the test to standardize image processing for decades.

Webcams and web conferencing software were popularized by the earliest generations of cam models, who set up sites to sell a peek inside their bedrooms. Lifestreamers, who streamed their lives 24/7, no censorship, paved the way for today’s Twitch and Tiktok stars. Tech that was once used mostly for sexual intrigue we now use for business calls every day.

“Online sex tech pioneers are still crafting new ways to express themselves and capitalize on the internet’s insatiable desires.”

The founder of Web Personals, which was one of the very first online dating websites, claims to have invented the shopping cart and the tech that tracks users from page to page within a site.

Site subscriptions, members-only content, online credit card transactions, and advertising models—the list goes on, and online sex tech pioneers are still crafting new ways to express themselves and capitalize on the internet’s insatiable desires.

3. The internet transformed the porn industry.

The adult industry used to work very differently. Pre-internet, it was based on a studio system, where you typically had to have an agent, know a producer, or be located somewhere like LA or the San Fernando Valley. The production companies or the studios owned the rights to your images as well as all the video you shot with them.

This system also meant that buying porn required finding a store, browsing the shelves, and buying or renting a tape or magazine. These shops were very male-dominated spaces.

All of that changed with the internet and inventions like the webcam and user-generated content platforms like clip and cam sites. Suddenly anyone could break out and carve their own niche, retain ownership of their own content, vet clients through safer means, and work on their own terms, often without leaving home.

4. The internet transformed the sex toy industry.

The 70’s saw a revolution in women’s pleasure: people like Dell Williams, the founder of Eve’s Garden in New York City, and sex educator Joani Blank pioneered the notion of sex toys and orgasms as something healthy and worthwhile. Hitachi magic wands were sold at Macy’s and buying one is what inspired Dell Williams to open her own shop.

“More people than ever could safely browse, comparison shop, read reviews and chat about their interests, kinks, and fetishes.”

But when the World Wide Web came along in the late 80’s, the internet did for sex toys what it had done for porn: took an experience previously isolated to socially stigmatized spaces (like sex shops or adult video stores) and brought the shopping experience home. A wider variety of people could now access sex toys that were once out of their grasp. More people than ever could safely browse, comparison shop, read reviews and chat about their interests, kinks, and fetishes.

There has been a big destigmatizing effect as well. It’s a lot less awkward than it used to be to buy a sex toy, and it’s a lot less weird to talk to strangers about your kinks.

5. The future of sex online depends on us.

On the modern-day internet, sexual speech—including sex work, sex education, and expressions of sexuality outside of the heteronormative—are increasingly suppressed. Bad legislation like FOSTA (Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act) or SESTA (Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act), which passed into law in 2018 and conflated all sexual speech as trafficking, made it harder for anyone working in these industries or trying to build communities around sexual identity to exist online. Anti-sex groups are pushing for increased censorship and discrimination by mainstream platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, under the guise of saving women and children from exploitation. Demonizing sex doesn’t solve abuse online—it makes it worse.

The pessimistic view is that things will continue to get more sterilized and censored online. The reality is that things aren’t getting more welcoming to sex, they’re getting more hostile.

If we want a future where sexuality, innovation, and safety co-exist, then we have to stand against discrimination of sex workers and marginalized people, and take control of how we want to exist online.

Complete Article HERE!

23 new gender and sexuality terms added to the dictionary in 2022

By

  • In 2022, Dictionary.com and the Oxford English Dictionary added 23 words to describe gender and sexuality concepts.
  • New gender-related words include “enby,” “nounself pronoun,” and “pangender.”
  • New sex and sexuality words include “throuple,” “sixty nine,” and “simp.”

As people’s understandings of gender and sexuality shift, whether due to cultural changes or scientific findings, so do the words we use to describe them.

Language is a major factor in how to shape our identities and view ourselves, and using words that people relate to can break down taboos and allow them to feel understood.

This year, Dictionary.com and Oxford English Dictionaryadded new gender and sexuality words and phrases to their pages, giving readers more options to describe who they are, what they desire, and how they show up in the world.

Words that are already popular slang, like “simp,” made the cut, as did the verb form of “sixty nine.”

Oxford English Dictionary additions include ‘TERF,’ ‘stealthing,’ and ‘sixty nine’

  • Anti-gay (adjective): Opposed or hostile to homosexual people (sometimes specifically gay men) or homosexuality
  • Condomize (verb): To put on a condom; to use a condom during sexual intercourse, either as a contraceptive or to protect against infections
  • Demisexual (adjective, noun): Involving ambiguous or amorphous sexual characteristics or activity
  • Enby (adjective, noun): A person who has a non-binary gender identity; non-binary
  • Hypersexualize (verb): To make (a person or thing) pervasively, excessively, or inappropriately sexual; to imbue or permeate with intense sexual or erotic
  • Multisexual (adjective): Characterized by sexual or romantic attraction to, or sexual activity with, people of different sexes or gender identities
  • Pangender (adjective): Designating a non-binary person whose gender identity encompasses multiple genders, which may be experienced simultaneously or in a fluid way
  • Sixty nine (verb): To engage with a partner in simultaneous mutual oral stimulation of the genitals for sexual pleasure; to participate in a sixty-nine”
  • Stealthing (noun): The action or practice of removing one’s condom during sex (or occasionally of intentionally damaging it prior to sex) without the knowledge and consent of a partner
  • TERF (noun): Transgender-exclusionary radical feminist; typically derogatory term for a feminist whose advocacy of women’s rights excludes (or is thought to exclude) the rights of transgender women

Dictionary.com added ‘simp,’ ‘aromantic,’ and ‘throuple’

  • Aromantic (adjective): Noting or relating to a person who experiences little or no romantic attraction to other people
  • Bachelorx party (noun): An inclusive pre-wedding party, often on the night before or in the days leading up to the wedding, and ranging from a night of drinking to a destination vacation (used in contrast to bachelor party and bachelorette party, and intended to be welcoming for wedding participants and guests of any gender)
  • Demisexual (adjective): Noting or relating to a person who is sexually attracted only to people with whom they already have an emotional bond
  • Feminine of center (adjective): Noting or relating to a person, especially an LGBTQ+ person, who is more feminine than masculine on a spectrum of gender expression
  • Hegemonic masculinity (noun): A socially constructed masculine ideal, defined chiefly in contrast to or as the opposite of femininity, and held up as the most prestigious form of manliness in a heteropatriarchy
  • Heteropatriarchy (noun): A hierarchical society or culture dominated by heterosexual males whose characteristic bias is unfavorable to gay people and females in general
  • Masculine of center (adjective): Noting or relating to a person, especially an LGBTQ+ person, who is more masculine than feminine on a spectrum of gender expression
  • Neopronoun (noun): A type of gender-neutral pronoun, coined after 1800, and used especially by nonbinary and genderqueer people, as in English ze/hir/hirs,e/em/eirs, or xe/xem/xyrs
  • Nounself pronoun (noun): A type of invented gender-neutral pronoun used by some nonbinary and genderqueer people in place of gendered pronouns such as he/himself or she/herself to express a spiritual or personal connection to a specific concept: the nounself pronoun is derived from a word, usually a noun, that is linked to that concept, such as the use of star/starself by people who feel a connection to celestial objects or bun/bunself, derived from bunny, by people who feel a connection to rabbits
  • Simp (noun, verb): A person, especially a man, who is excessively attentive or submissive to an object of sexual attraction; To be excessively attentive or submissive, especially to an object of sexual attraction
  • Sologamy (noun): The practice or state of marriage to one’s self
  • Throuple (noun): Three people who are engaged or 
 married to one another, or involved 
 as romantic partners
  • Unlabeled (adjective): Noting or relating to a person who does not name their gender or sexuality

Complete Article HERE!

Americans’ support for transgender rights has declined.

— Here’s why.

A sign outside a restroom in Durham, N.C., in May 2016.

The culture war over transgender rights is part of a fight over competing notions of gender and sexuality, including issues like abortion and sex education

by Kelsy Burke and Emily Kazyak

During the 2022 midterm election campaign, Republican public officials targeted transgender rights in what NPR and other news media have called the new front in the culture wars. Last month’s Public Religion Research Institute’s American Values Survey appears to offer confirmation, finding increased polarization on all measures of LGBTQ rights. In particular, Americans’ support for transgender rights has declined.

Public opinion on ‘bathroom bills’

Take one measure: whether laws should require transgender people to use bathrooms that correspond to their sex assigned at birth, not their current gender identity. In 2016, only 35 percent of all Americans favored these “bathroom bills,” the first of which was proposed that year in North Carolina. In 2022, after numerous other states proposed similar laws, the number of Americans supporting them rose to 52 percent.

The jump was especially pronounced for White evangelicals and Republicans. In 2016, only 41 percent of White evangelicals and 44 percent of Republicans supported the requirement that transgender people use bathrooms that aligned with their sex assigned at birth. By 2022, that number doubled to 86 percent and 87 percent, respectively.

Other groups also increased their opposition to transgender rights, but the rise was less dramatic for Democrats and Americans who are unaffiliated with religion. Only 27 percent of Democrats favored bathroom bills in 2016, compared with 31 percent in 2022. Among nonreligious respondents, support for requiring transgender people to use the bathroom that aligns with their sex assigned at birth increased from 21 percent in 2016 to 34 percent in 2022.

These numbers suggest that transgender issues are increasingly being lived out in polarizing ways among Americans — in other words, that the “culture wars” narrative holds true. As sociologists, we have sought to dig deeper than the quantitative findings to understand why Americans hold such diverging beliefs.

Gender logics

Using Nebraska as a case study, we asked residents to explain their views about transgender bathroom use in their own words.

The random sample of 938 mostly cisgender Nebraska residents who completed the mail survey were evenly split across this issue, with a slight majority (51 percent) saying transgender people should be required to use bathrooms that align with the sex they were assigned at birth. Like the latest PRRI national data, our respondents who were politically conservative and White evangelicals were more likely to oppose transgender rights on bathroom use.

In analyzing the 623 respondents who answered open-ended questions about “bathroom bills,” we found that support or opposition hinges on beliefs about the nature of gender itself. Sociologists have described these as believing in “static gender” (assigned at birth and unchanging) or “fluid gender” (can change over the life course and can manifest differently for different people).

Supporters of transgender rights believe in gender fluidity and take transgender people’s experiences seriously. These respondents reasoned that “people should live their lives as the way they identify themselves.” They argued that to deny transgender people the ability to use the bathroom aligned with their gender identity is “disrespectful,” “discriminating,” and “exposes them to needless humiliation.” Some supporters questioned why social life is organized around gender at all, and suggested gender-inclusive restrooms as an option that would allow everyone, transgender or cisgender, to “pee in peace,” as one of our respondents wrote.

In contrast, opponents of transgender rights see gender change as illegitimate and privilege cisgender people’s experiences. Respondents reason that “you cannot choose gender” and that “society should not be forced to recognize other categories than male and female.” Opponents also take for granted that social life should be organized by gender and position transgender people as threats to both the status quo and to cisgender people, especially women and children. To allow transgender people the ability to use the bathroom aligned with their gender identity is “dangerous to our children” and “an invasion of our privacy,” two respondents wrote.

The PRRI survey finds that Americans overall are more likely to view gender as static than as fluid (59 percent of adult Americans surveyed), dividing sharply along political and religious lines. In 2022, 87 percent of White evangelical Protestants say they believe there are only two genders, man or woman, compared with 68 percent of White mainline Protestants, 76 percent of Black Protestants, 70 percent of White Catholics, 51 percent of Hispanic Catholics, and 45 percent of nonreligious respondents. Eighty-eight percent of Republicans believe there are only two genders, man or woman, compared to 66 percent of independents and 36 percent of Democrats. These data reflect the broader political landscape, with White Protestant Republicans pushing anti-trans legislation.

The stakes of the culture wars

Though these findings obviously relate to transgender people, they implicate cisgender people, too. The culture war over transgender rights is part of a war over competing notions of gender and sexuality, and how those should be regulated in the social world. Thus, in 2022, we have observed simultaneous political attacks on transgender people, reproductive freedoms, and sex education. Americans are divided because we have fundamentally different vantage points over whose identities deserve protection and which experiences are to be prioritized and believed.

Complete Article HERE!

A history of the horny side of the internet

In a new book, journalist Samantha Cole digs through the rich history of sex on the internet, from BBS to FOSTA

By Russell Brandom

From the very beginning, people on the internet have been obsessed with sex.

That’s the argument laid out in a new book by journalist Samantha Cole, How Sex Changed the Internet and the Internet Changed Sex. Cole digs through early internet history to show how sexual content and communities were part of the internet from its earliest days and had a profound effect on how the online space deals with identity, community, and consent. From identity play on early bulletin board sites to the rise of online pornography as an industry unto itself, Cole makes the case that you can’t make sense of the internet without sex — even if today’s major platform companies would like to.

Content note: This interview describes multiple sexual practices in straightforward language. Readers who are uncomfortable with these topics should use discretion.

The book makes the case that sex was a fundamental part of the internet from the very beginning. Why do you think that is?

It’s just such a part of human nature to want to connect as deeply as possible to other people, whether it’s online or not — and the internet opened up a new venue for that. Suddenly people could be whoever they wanted to be. They could take on these personas that were different from who they were away from the keyboard. They could express themselves in a way they never had before. For a lot of people, that branches out into sexuality almost immediately.

“What level of reality do you want to experience through the internet?”

It’s interesting reading those old message boards where people describe themselves as mythological creators or blobs or whatever they wanted to be. Then they would have these really deep, interesting, philosophical conversations about love and sex and relationships. In many cases, they would meet up and go on dates after that. Sometimes they got married and had kids. I say in the book, there are real people walking around who only exist because these bulletin board systems connected their parents.

There’s an immediate security concern there because you have people adopting pseudonyms to share information that’s otherwise really private. But it seems like, at this stage, the internet didn’t have a ton of tools for keeping your identity private.

Right — just to get in the door of a BBS like this, you had to call someone on the phone and give them your name and credit card info. So it was tangibly personal between you and the admin. Once you were inside, a lot of them would let you use whatever name you wanted, but there were other communities that would demand you use your name. Others would have you put your email address at the end of every post so people could contact you directly. It’s an interesting divide: what level of reality do you want to experience through the internet? But the more sexualized communities really emerged when people were using the internet to pretend to be something they wished they were or wanted to try.

How much does this change when you get into the contemporary internet, built on companies like Google and Facebook that are able to treat sexual content very differently?

It gets really complicated when you go from a single person running their hobbyist bulletin board scanning Playboy pictures to this huge machine of moderators making decisions. People can get really frustrated not having a central person to talk to about what’s happening on this platform that is a big part of their life. So that definitely has been a huge shift. We have these huge monopolies that are just running the show for us now, and it’s hard not to feel like you don’t have any of that control left.

“The conversation is getting more heated because everyone has a stake in it.”

At the same time, these companies are now beholden to payment processors and banks, and so they have to push all of this stuff off of their platform, in many cases, because of those financial obligations. So just seeing that change, it’s hard not to imagine the internet is going to keep getting more sanitized and less sexual.

You describe a lot of early moments of sex panic in a way that seems very similar to what we see now — but then, in other places, the internet seems to have made people more accepting. Do you think the conversation over moderating sexual content is changing?

People are definitely more aware of the legal landscape. If you asked the average person in the late ’90s if they knew about something like the Communications Decency Act, they would have no idea what you were talking about. But now, lots of people have real opinions about Section 230 and are really read up on this stuff. It’s all a lot more visible, and the conversation is getting more heated because everyone has a stake in it. You have so many more people relying on the internet for their jobs, sexual or not. So people are paying attention now in a way that they haven’t been in previous decades

What about the second part of the title, how the internet changed sex? All through the book, you can see people getting turned on to new things or exploring themselves in ways that wouldn’t have been possible offline. Do you think the internet has made our sex lives more specific or extreme?

I think having access to communities of like-minded people can really be world-changing. I researched a lot about fetish and kink communities, and for a lot of people, before they found those communities, they thought they were the only ones. So it’s been really interesting to see that grow up with the internet. Suddenly, you have thousands and thousands of people reading forums about their specific fetish and talking about what they’re into and why they’re into it.

One thing that really surprised me was these forums about how to suck your own dick. People were just trading tips and advice about how to do it, exercises to do. You would never have access to that kind of information without the internet because, first of all, you would never say it out loud to someone, just hoping they were into it. But suddenly, you have access to all these people all over the world who are like, “Yes, I want to trade advice about how to suck my own dick.”

That one was actually too vulgar for the book.

Do you think the internet is creating these desires or just making it safe to express them?

It can be hard to tell. You can definitely discover something new that you didn’t know you were into. Or you might realize you were into it all along, and you didn’t know it.

One of the stories I wrote recently was about people who were into blueberries and blueberrification. A lot of them were into this because they had watched Charlie & the Chocolate Factory when they were kids and said, “Oh, that made me feel a way,” and carried that with them for years without telling anyone. Then they get online, and they see there are a lot of people who also feel this way. That’s a transformational change. It’s not just, “I found this thing I didn’t know I was into,” but also “Now I can really express myself and buy a blueberry suit because I see other people are doing it, too.”

Having that community makes you feel less weird. It’s less isolating. I think that’s a huge part of why people have so much shame about their sexuality and their porn use. They feel like they’re the only one who wants this. When you find out you’re not the only one, that can be revolutionary.

Complete Article HERE!

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

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

By

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Complete Article HERE!

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

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

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

By Nation World News Desk

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

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

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

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

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

Student and mentor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A love affair and professional collaboration

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Li’s vision of sexuality reemerges

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Complete Article HERE!

The pendulum is swinging back

— reversing hard-won sexual freedoms and civil rights

Handing out pamphlets about birth control in 1916 on Union Square in New York City.

By Rebecca L. Davis

The leaked Supreme Court opinion by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., which would overturn Roe vs. Wade, marks a devastating setback for reproductive justice in the United States. It also highlights how bound up the right to abortion is with other fundamental sexual freedoms and civil rights. Whatever happens in the wake of this likely decision, we are already witnessing the undoing of more than a century of successful efforts to expand and protect individual rights to sexual and gender self-expression.

A decision nullifying Roe could threaten protections for other sexual rights. The majority opinion in Roe in 1973 relied on a right to privacy first established in Griswold vs. Connecticut (1965), which lifted a state ban on contraceptive access for married people. Recognition of a right to privacy also underpinned the court’s decision in Lawrence vs. Texas (2003) to overturn state anti-sodomy statutes. The majority opinion in Obergefell vs. Hodges (2015) likewise cited a right to privacy among its reasons for requiring all states to legalize marriages for same-sex couples. All those cases marked wins for individual liberty, human rights and civil rights.

Whether or not federal protection for abortion rights disappears this year, the erosion of sexual freedoms is already well underway. Although a majority of Americans support abortion rights, several states have passed extraordinarily restrictive abortion laws. School boards have banned books with LGBTQ content. And state legislatures have authorized retaliation against transgender people and their allies — even investigating the parents of children who receive trans-affirming healthcare.

It is not a historical accident that a likely Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe has coincided with these other assaults on sexual freedom and gender identity. The legal right to abortion is but one issue — if a critical one — at the heart of a much larger struggle for sexual autonomy.

That struggle took shape in the wake of another devastating attack: the passage of the Comstock Act in 1873, championed by Anthony Comstock of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. Officially the Act for the Suppression of Trade in, and Circulation of, Obscene Literature and Articles of Immoral Use, the law prohibited sending “obscene, lewd, or lascivious” items through the U.S. mail or across state lines. The act defined reproductive technologies and all printed material about contraception as obscene.

Many states had started to outlaw abortion procedures in the 1850s, often due to pressure from (male) physicians determined to undermine a measure typically provided by (female) midwives. The Comstock Act made even the possession of abortifacients a federal crime.

Prudish, sanctimonious and often cruel, Comstock was a “fire and brimstone” Protestant who considered any sex outside of marital reproduction to be sinful. He succeeded in convincing the federal government to impose his religious values on all Americans.

But Comstock’s law did not affirm the status quo. It sought to thwart increasingly permissive sexual values.

Contrary to caricatures of the era, the 19th-century United States was not prudish about sex. A prolific pornography industry enjoyed unprecedented success. Bigamy and divorce had become more common, and Indiana served as the “divorce mill” that Nevada would become decades later. Same-sex couples and queer people lived openly in communities where what mattered was not whether someone conformed to a strict sexual morality but whether they caused any trouble for their neighbors. Most people placed a high premium on privacy.

When Comstock and Congress determined that they had the authority to decide which kinds of sex were moral, and which were not, they upended that equilibrium by authorizing agents of the state to police Americans’ erotic and reproductive lives.

A century of activism defending the individual’s right to sexual self-expression followed. Across multiple movements and battlegrounds, activists have made clear that an overwhelming majority of Americans wanted to make their own decisions about their sexual desires and relationships.

Birth control activists distributed informational pamphlets and opened clinics in defiance of Comstock’s bans on contraception. Lawyers and advocates gradually won carve-outs for physician-directed birth control and the sale of condoms. Bar owners and LGBT activists fought back in court and in the streets against liquor boards and vice squads, eventually refuting the idea that a gathering of LGBT people was by definition obscene. Filmmakers, publishers and others challenged the government’s censorship powers. And by the 1960s, activists took direct aim at laws that criminalized abortion, insisting that sexual freedoms were meaningless if women could not make decisions about whether to carry a pregnancy to term.

Many of us who have benefited from those movements have grown to adulthood expecting to be able to express our gender identities, our sexual desires and our reproductive decisions according to our own consciences. The revelation of the draft opinion to overturn abortion rights should animate anyone in the U.S. who values sexual freedoms. The decision would impose a minority’s interpretation of Christian morality on the nation and render all non-marital non-reproductive sexual expressions vulnerable to policing and prosecution.

The activism that undid the Comstock Act transformed American culture. It ingrained values of sexual autonomy across our social institutions, laws and popular culture. Americans today overwhelmingly support marriage equality, access to contraception, comprehensive sex education and abortion, and they consume sexually explicit material in staggering quantities. In a country where we have grown so accustomed to seeing our sexuality as a core part of our humanity — and as an arena of freedom and expressiveness — we can only hope that it will require far less than a century to undo the damage of an end to Roe.

Complete Article HERE!

These Christian leaders embraced sex positivity

— and now preach it

In recent years, social media has allowed these views to become more widespread

By Suzannah Weiss

Jo Neufeld, a 40-year-old living in Manitoba, Canada, used to feel that she was sex positive despite being Christian. Then, about 10 years ago, she started following Twitter accounts like those of Kevin Garcia, a gay pastor based in Atlanta, and other Christians who talked openly about sex.

Neufeld said the accounts introduced her to “ideas around God wanting pleasure for us” and helped her to reconcile her Christianity with her sex positivity: “I’ve found examples of people living out holy sexuality. And for me, that has been about slowly embracing that I was created for sexual flourishing.”

Traditionally, most Christian leaders have accepted the teaching that sex should occur only in marriage. That has come with a great deal of stigma about sex outside of marriage, leaving Christians — women and LGBTQ people especially — often feeling forced to choose between following their religion and embracing their sexuality.

In recent years, that has borne out in mainstream politics, with conservative Christian groups backing abortion restrictions and the prohibition of discussion of gender and sexuality in schools.

But in some corners of the Internet, church leaders and other public figures are merging Christianity and sex positivity — that is, the belief that all forms of sexual expression between consenting adults are permissible and should be destigmatized.

That follows a general cultural trend: Over the past two decades, Americans have become increasingly accepting of sex outside marriage, LGBTQ relationships and more, according to Gallup.

Thanks in part to the ubiquity of these views on social media, some Christians say they are coming to view a healthy relationship with one’s sexuality as spiritually beneficial and even in line with the Bible.

In 2020, the Pew Research Center found that half of U.S. Christians consider casual sex — defined in the survey as sex between consenting adults who are not in a committed romantic relationship — acceptable at least some of the time.

And in a survey that year of 133 Christian college students across the United States, Aditi Paul, an assistant professor of communication studies at Pace University, found that 80 percent of Christian students masturbate, 68 percent watch pornography and 60 percent have had between one and six casual hookup partners.

The majority of students agreed that casual sex is acceptable; one-night standards are enjoyable; and an individual does not need to be committed to someone to have sex with the person, Paul’s survey found.

Xaya Lovelle, 28, a sex worker in New Orleans, said she had always felt at odds with the sexual mores she had learned in the Roman Catholic Church. But she didn’t feel validated in that perspective, she said, until as a 17-year-old she read “The Purity Myth” by the feminist writer Jessica Valenti. The book argues that American society’s obsession with virginity hurts young women.

Two years later, she started web-camming (which involved live broadcasts and private shows), because she found that “sex wasn’t incompatible with Jesus’ teachings,” she said. Since then, Lovelle added, other Christians, including the nonbinary Catholic mystic sex worker William October, have affirmed her belief that “sex positivity is largely about acceptance of other people and withholding judgment, which reflects Jesus’ actions.”

Alexa Davis, 23, a blogger in Illinois, was raised in a nondenominational church that taught that sex was only for marriage. But she started questioning this dogma in her teens as she came across sex-positive ideas online, from secular figures including video-blogger Laci Green and from religious leaders including the Philadelphia-based Rev. Beverly Dale.

“It felt reassuring to see that confirmation from a practicing minister that sex is meant to be positive,” she recalls of reading an article about Dale, who created the YouTube series “Sex Is Good.”

Dale grew up on a farm in Illinois in the 1950s and attended the Christian Church. Her family didn’t discuss sex at all, making it seem forbidden and shameful, she said. The role of women in her community, she remembers, was “to take care of and teach children and work in potluck oversight in the church.”

“It was the women’s movement that taught me it was okay to be a female and it was perfectly fine to be a sexual female at that,” Dale added. “Once I realized this, I turned to my Christian teachings and the church with a lot of anger.”

Christianity in the United States stems largely from a Puritan tradition that sees the desires of the flesh as contrary to those of the spirit. It wasn’t until the 1970s that women began entering seminaries in larger numbers and publishing writing that critiqued mainstream Christian views of sex, influenced by second-wave feminism. In the 1980s, Dale attended the Chicago Theological Seminary, where she got to read these works, she said, which helped her contextualize her “sex-phobic” upbringing.

“The reason I began to heal was because of feminist theologians,” she added. “If I had stayed with such negative thinking about myself as a woman and denied my own sexuality, I’m convinced I would have died — if not physically, then certainly spiritually.”

New Orleans-based minister Lyvonne Briggs, who shares her sex-positive beliefs on Instagram and hosts the spiritual online learning community Sensual Faith Academy, was raised similarly; she attended a Caribbean Episcopal church, which didn’t talk about sex, and was indoctrinated into purity culture in college, she said. She began to shift her perspective while getting a master of divinity degree at Yale Divinity School. There, Briggs said, she came to understand Jesus as a radical figure, one different from the version of Jesus she had learned about in church growing up.

>On examining the Bible, Briggs said, she found that Jesus had little to say about sex. “What we were told Jesus said are actually gross misinterpretations of the Bible,” she said. “We have to be honest about who wrote the Bible, who’s been translating the Bible, and who it serves us to believe Jesus condemned.”

Dale believes that Jesus uplifted and associated with women in ways that were progressive in his time. “U.S. Christians … have been teaching ideas about sex from sexually conflicted, misogynistic church fathers instead of Jesus,” she said. “If Jesus were their guide, Christians would discount the pleasure police in the church as party poopers.”

Rather than coming from the Bible, Dale said, many sex-negative Christian ideas came from writers born after Jesus’ time, such as Saint Augustine and Saint Jerome. It was Augustine, for instance, she said, who developed the concept of “original sin” — sin passed to a child by sex itself.

Dale and Briggs advocate for interpretations of the Bible that celebrate sexual pleasure. In the biblical book the Song of Solomon, for instance, a female narrator speaks of a lover in erotic terms.

“These lovers are not mentioned as being married; they’re not in the same household,” said Joy Bostic, an associate professor of religious and Africana studies at Case Western Reserve University. “This text, which is an official part of the Bible, echoes medieval mystics, who talk a great deal about spiritual ecstasy as akin to sexual ecstasy.”

As more Christians are being exposed to alternative readings and less-talked-about parts of the Bible, some are denouncing the directives to wait until marriage to have sex or to condemn forms of sexual expression such as LGBTQ relationships and sex work.

Others take pieces of Christian thinking without subscribing to them fully: In her study, Pace University’s Paul found that many students had adopted modified versions of traditional Christian rules, such as not having sex with someone unless intending to marry that person, avoiding in-person sex but still sexting partners, or engaging in hookups but refraining from intercourse. She also found that increasing numbers of students are identifying as both Christian and LGBTQ.

Roya King, a retired Unitarian Universalist bishop in Ohio, was already working in ministry when she started identifying as queer in 2009. When other leaders in her church spoke against same-sex marriage, she recalls, “the idea that I could perform a wedding ceremony but could never participate in one kind of shook me at the core.”

She made a point thereafter to speak to her congregation about LGBTQ rights, she said: “I talked about all people being in the image of God.” And she preached that everything God creates, including sexuality, is holy and should be celebrated, she said.

Other Christians say their sex positivity stems simply from what Jesus deemed the most important commandments: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind,” and “Love your neighbor as yourself.”

“If what I am doing leaves me aligned with these three commands [love God, love yourself and love others], I can rest easy knowing I’m living in the fullness of this life God has given me,” said Chris Chism, a pastor at the House Dallas church who identifies as gay.

To this end, he added, “it’s the job of our spiritual leaders to facilitate safe conversation — free of condemnation and shame.” Those negative reactions, he added, “are the conduits to unhealthy relationships, unsafe sex practices and even hardcore drug use that has ravaged our communities.”

For King, the most important thing is spreading the word that Jesus provides salvation for the entire world, not just for certain people who live a certain way.

“We have ostracized so many people because of who they are, who they really are,” she said. “We need to preach a gospel of inclusion and love. We can’t get where we need to be without it.”

Complete Article HERE!

Uncovering Mysteries of Female Dolphin Sexual Anatomy

A close examination of 11 clitorises from common bottlenose dolphins suggests the female cetaceans experience pleasure during frequent sexual activity.

“A lot of people assume that humans are unique in having sex for pleasure,” said Justa Heinen-Kay, a researcher at the University of Minnesota. “This research challenges that notion.”

By Sabrina Imbler

Common bottlenose dolphins have sex frequently — very likely multiple times in a day. Copulation lasts only a few seconds, but social sex, which is used to maintain social bonds, can last much longer, happen more frequently and involve myriad heterosexual and homosexual pairings of dolphins and their body parts. Anything is possible, and, as new research suggests, probably pleasurable for swimmers of both sexes.

According to a paper published on Monday in the journal Current Biology, female bottlenose dolphins most likely experience pleasure through their clitorises.

The findings come as little surprise to scientists who research these dolphins. “The only thing that surprises me is how long it has taken us as scientists to look at the basic reproductive anatomy,” Sarah Mesnick, an ecologist at NOAA Fisheries who was not involved with the research, said, speaking of the clitoris. She added, “It took a team of brilliant women,” referring to two of the authors.

“A lot of people assume that humans are unique in having sex for pleasure,” Justa Heinen-Kay, a researcher at the University of Minnesota who was not involved with the paper, wrote in an email. “This research challenges that notion.”

And learning more about the anatomy of marine mammals’ genitalia has clear implications for their survival, Dr. Mesnick said: “The more we know about the social behavior of these animals, the better we’re able to understand their evolution and help use that to manage and conserve them.”

Historically, researchers have focused on male genitalia, driven by prejudice toward male subjects, prejudice against female choice in sexual selection and the fact that it can be easier to study something that sticks out. “Female genitalia were assumed to be simple and uninteresting,” Dr. Heinen-Kay said. “But the more that researchers study female genitalia, the more we’re learning that this isn’t the case at all.” She added that this shift may be driven in part by the increasing number of women researchers.

Patricia Brennan, an evolutionary biologist at Mount Holyoke College and an author on the paper, wound up studying the dolphin clitoris by way of the dolphin vagina. She and Dara Orbach, a biologist at Texas A&M University and another author on the paper, previously revealed how female dolphins have intricately pleated vaginas that can handily stopper a penis. The internal anatomy grants the female agency in choosing which male’s sperm may fertilize her egg.

When Dr. Brennan and Dr. Orbach began researching dolphin vaginas together in 2016, they found themselves dissecting as many of these pleated pouches as they could get their hands on. The researchers put out a request to local stranding networks and received lumps of frozen tissue over the years from stranded cetaceans in varying states of decay.

As the researchers thawed the samples in a sink, the warming flesh often began to reek. “I’m really glad I’m a vegetarian because I think I would never be able to eat meat again,” Dr. Brennan said.

Like cultured oysters, every dissected dolphin vagina unfurled to reveal a kind of treasure: an unmistakable clitoris, the size of an AA battery and the color of spam. “You open it up and then there’s this giant clitoris right there,” Dr. Brennan said.

The researchers dissected the clitorises of 11 common bottlenose dolphins and ran tissue samples through a micro CT scanner. Their examination revealed a number of signs of a functional clitoris, including erectile tissue that could become turgid with blood. They also found a band of connective tissue surrounding the erectile tissue, which ensures the clitoris could engorge and keep its shape. And the clitoris changed shape as the dolphins reached adulthood, suggesting it has a function related to sexual maturity.

The CT scanner showed the clitoral tissue contained unusually large nerves — up to half a millimeter in diameter — and abundant free nerve endings just under the skin, increasing sensitivity. And the clitoral skin itself was a third of the thickness of neighboring genital skin, making it much easier to stimulate.

These observations provide “some nice suggestive evidence” that female dolphins feel pleasure responses to tactile stimulation, said Brian Langerhans, an evolutionary biologist at North Carolina State University, who was not involved with the research. He added that more research was needed to prove the hypothesis.

But it is no easy feat to study dolphin sex experimentally in a lab, or in the wild. The physiological signs of pleasure associated with humans and other primates — vocalizing, grimacing, rolling eyes and panting — may look totally different in a dolphin. “Their bodies are so different from us, and their faces are so different from ours,” Dr. Brennan said. “How would we know?”

Dr. Langerhans and Dr. Mesnick both suggested the need for comparative research between other species of cetaceans. “Are they going to find the same kind of anatomy in species that are more solitary or open-ocean or deep-diving?” Dr. Mesnick wondered. For example, a pleasurable clitoris might be far less useful in a species where males and females interact less often.

Dr. Brennan hopes to study clitorises from across the animal kingdom — she already has an orca clitoris sitting in a jar in her lab. The white whale of marine clitorises may be the blue whale’s. “They’ve got the biggest everything,” Dr. Brennan said. “I would bet you a million dollars that they have a clitoris, and it’s probably huge.”

Complete Article HERE!

Space sex

— The trouble with joining the 62-mile-high club

Whether NASA likes it or not, humans eventually will be having space sex.

By Ross Pomeroy

According to NASA, no humans have ever had sex in space, but with the swift ascent of private space tourism, you can bet that humankind will soon join the 62-mile-high club.

This impending achievement, coupled with renewed efforts to populate Earth orbit, build a colony on the Moon, and travel to Mars, lay bare the urgent need for scientific research into all aspects of sex in space, a team of Canadian researchers from Concordia University and Laval University argue in a paper just published in the Journal of Sex Research.

The team, led by Simon Dubé, a Concordia University PhD candidate in psychology specializing in human sexuality, sextech, and erobotics, calls for space programs to seriously explore “space sexology,” defined as “the comprehensive scientific study of extraterrestrial intimacy and sexuality.”

Don’t ask, don’t tell

Until now, space agencies like NASA have ignored the topic of sex almost entirely, perhaps fearful of generating a controversy that could jeopardize their funding. When queried about sex, NASA officials have brushed the matter aside. Astronauts are apparently prohibited from having sex or developing intimate relationships onboard the International Space Station.

But, again, as humankind increasingly begins to embrace the prospect of colonizing low-Earth orbit and beyond through private missions, disregarding research into a basic human drive is growing less tenable. Dubé and his co-authors outlined a number of potential risks related to space sex that merit study.

Space sex matters

For starters, ionizing radiation could interfere with sexual reproduction by altering the DNA of sperm cells, egg cells, and even human embryos (though one study suggested that mammal embryos can develop normally in space). Moreover, microgravity could make sex both difficult and messy — a big problem in a setting where cleanliness is paramount. Space habitats are also cramped, remote, and not always private, making sexual needs hard to satisfy. Thinking even farther into the future, small settlements with limited intimate partners will undoubtedly breed stress, conflicts, and even sexual harrassment or assault. The further people are from Earth and the longer they are in space, the more likely that sexual and relationship-related problems will arise, Dubé and his colleagues write.

They make the case for researching solutions to these risks right away. “As technology makes extraterrestrial life and travel more accessible to the public, the people who go into space in the future — from scientists to tourists — may not have to undergo the same kind of stringent training or selection process as current astronauts,” they argue. “Producing quality science and implementing systemic changes take time, so why not start immediately, rather than wait for problems to arise?”

Dubé and his co-authors have already fleshed out a few potential areas for research. The first is designing systems and spaces that allow for eroticism to be safe, private, and hygienic. This effort may also include preliminary planning for delivering babies in space and treating any sex-related health issues. The second is creating training programs that prepare space travelers for intimacy, sexual activity, and any social problems that may arise. The third is engineering sexual technologies like toys or robots that permit clean and satisfying sexual experiences.

Ultimately, if properly researched and planned for, “intimacy and sexuality — like leisure — could help endure and normalize life in space by making it more enjoyable and less lonely,” the researchers say. Sexual activity relieves stress, lowers blood pressure, and helps with sleep, among many other benefits.

“Facilitating intimacy and sexuality in space could improve the life of astronauts and future space inhabitants,” Dubé and his colleagues add. “Intimate and sexual activities can arguably help people adapt to space contexts and normalize spacelife.”

Complete Article HERE!

5 Ways the COVID-19 Pandemic Has Changed Our Sex Lives and Relationships

By Kasandra Brabaw

There’s been a lot of speculation about how the COVID-19 pandemic would change our sex lives. At first, when people thought they were facing just a couple of weeks at home, there were predictions of a new baby boom. The assumption was that lots of people would spend their newfound free time having hot, passionate sex.

Then, when it became clear that quarantine would last a long time (and the pandemic would have a devastating impact), predictions of a divorce boom started rolling in — for the first time ever, people were stuck inside with their spouses, and maybe their children, without an escape. Surely that would lead to a lot of breakups. Finally, we had “hot vax summer.” Once the vaccines started rolling out, we once again predicted that people would use their relative freedom to start hooking up all the time.

But none of this actually happened. New data from theNational Coalition for Sexual Health and the Kinsey Institute looks at how American sex lives actually changed in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. For one, instead of igniting sexual fires, the pandemic cooled many of us way down. But it also seems to have strengthened relationships and encouraged sexual exploration.

Here are some of the ways our sex lives have changed since March of 2020:

1. People are having less sex overall

The survey finds that over half of Americans aged 18-35 reported sexual difficulties during the pandemic, including low sexual interest, mismatched sex drives with their partners, and trouble orgasming.

These results aren’t too surprising. There are a couple of big reasons people may have had less sex than they did pre-pandemic. For one, couples may have simply had less opportunity, says Justin Lehmiller, PhD, a research fellow at the Kinsey Institute who led the survey and data analysis. The prediction that everyone would have lots of sex, overlooked couples who had children at home. With everyone home all the time and no way to get childcare, parents were likely hard-pressed to find time for sex. People who were in long-distance relationships also lost opportunities for partnered, in-person sex, as did people who were single.

But perhaps the biggest reason people saw a dip in libido or trouble orgasming is the stress and uncertainty COVID-19 caused across the world, says Raegan McDonald-Mosley, MD, an OB/GYN and CEO of Power to Decide. For a lot of people, stress and anxiety are big libido killers, and the pandemic gave us many, many reasons to be stressed. Millions of people lost jobs, many became part-time teachers in addition to stay-at-home parents, and all of us had to worry about ourselves or someone we love getting sick. So even though coupled up people had more time with their partners, they weren’t necessarily in the mood for sex.

“People’s focus was on survival, especially at the beginning when there was so much uncertainty about the level of infectiousness of the virus and how to protect yourself,” Dr. McDonald-Mosley says. Instead of sexual pleasure, many of us focused on basic needs.

2. Instead of a baby boom, there was a baby bust

The baby boom prediction isn’t exactly a new one. Anytime there’s a big storm that forces people to stay home for a while, people speculate about an influx of births. The logic makes sense—there’s a chance people will have more sex when stuck at home and, statistically, more sex should equal more babies. But this prediction ignores both the libido-killing stress of the pandemic and the existence of very effective contraceptives.

“If you look at the reasons why people have sex, having sex to have a baby is actually one of the least common reasons,” Dr. Lehmiller says. And it became even less common during the pandemic. Birth rates in the U.S. declined after the pandemic was declared a national emergency. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there were 763 fewer births each day in December 2020 than there were in December 2019. With hospitals packed with COVID-19 patients, fears of catching the virus, and economic reasons like job loss, it’s not hard to see why couples would purposefully delay having a baby during the pandemic.

3. Couples are communicating more

Not everything about the way COVID-19 changed our relationships was doom and gloom. In fact, the data imply that many couples learned how to communicate more effectively during the pandemic. Instead of the predicted divorce boom, people figured out how to make their relationships work.

“The pandemic really tested people in ways they hadn’t been tested before,” Dr. Lehmiller says. “And it prompted a lot of people to have more meaningful conversations about their relationships and what they want.”

The survey showed that 47 percent of people in relationships increased their communication with partners to deal with sexual problems, as opposed to only 15 percent of singles. Of course, there were still breakups and divorces, but the overall trend for relationships was surprisingly positive. “It suggests that our relationships are more resilient than we give them credit for,” Dr. Lehmiller says.

Because society places so much shame on sex drive, whether you think yours is too low or too high, it can be really difficult to talk about your sexual desires or problems you notice in your sex life. It’s wonderful to see more couples speaking candidly. If you’re interested in talking to your partner or future partners about sex, the National Coalition for Sexual Health has put together a guide to thinking through sexual concerns and having the conversation.

4. People are exploring sex toys, lube, and kinks

One other silver lining for many couples, and some singles, was a push toward sexual exploration. The data shows that many people tried sex toys for the first time during the pandemic. “People got more sexually exploratory in a lot of ways,” Dr. Lehmiller says. Couples who could easily be together explored new forms of pleasure as well as having sex in new positions or new places, while singles tried virtual solutions like sexting and phone sex.

Those who tried new things were more likely to report improvement in their sex lives than those who didn’t, Dr. Lehmiller says. The data show that among people in relationships, 42 percent reported more satisfying sex lives during the pandemic, compared to 20 percent of singles. This may indicate that sexual exploration can be an adaptive way to maintain a healthy sex life during a stressful time, according to Dr. Lehmiller. Sometimes the solution is as simple as trying a new way or place to have sex or using lube or a sex toy for the first time.

5. Online dating is on the rise

As much as we hear about online dating, most Americans still haven’t tried it. As of 2020, only about one in three Americans had ever dated online, Dr. Lehmiller says. Yet, the pandemic likely added fuel to the trend. Dr. Lehmiller’s data finds that many people tried online dating for the first time during the pandemic.

“One of the things we saw in our Kinsey Institute data was that the nature of online dating is different now than it was before,” he says. People are having longer, more meaningful and intimate conversations online. Prior to the pandemic, many people used dating apps as a way to find someone to date, send a few messages, and meet up in person as soon as possible.

Now, people are taking the time to really get to know someone online first. There’s a rise also in virtual dates, which helps them test the waters before meeting someone in person. A virtual date has the benefit of being totally free and giving you an easy escape if you need it. “So I think the model for relationships going forward is shifting,” Dr. Lehmiller says. He sees a future where many people use virtual dates as a step between connecting online and meeting in person.

Complete Article HERE!