Category: Sexual Shaming

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The persistent myth of sex addiction

Either we’re all sex addicts or nobody is

By Hallie Lieberman

According to every online test I’ve taken, I’m a sex addict. And if you took the quizzes, you probably would be too, at least if you answered honestly to questions like “Do you often find yourself preoccupied with sexual thoughts?” “Do you ever feel bad about your sexual behavior?” and “Have you used the internet to make romantic or erotic connections with people online?”

Even if you answered “no” to all these questions, you’re still not off the hook. If you watch porn, you might be a sex addict; If you “often require the use of a vibrator… to enhance the sexual experience” you might be a sex addict; if you spend some of your time “ruminating about past sexual encounters,” you might be a sex addict.

By these standards, nearly all human beings are sex addicts, as a recent study found that 73 percent of women and 85 percent of men had looked at internet porn in the past six months; other studies found that about half of American men and women have used vibrators. Perhaps that is right: sex is one of our strongest drives, and according to one study, the median number of times people think about sex is 10-19 times a day. But pathologizing all of humanity for expressing normal human sexuality is ridiculous in the least and dangerous at the worst. The fact that most people would be considered sex addicts is positive for only one group of people: those employed by the multimillion-dollar sex addiction industry.

Sex addiction treatment forces people into a kind of re-education program, which tries to convince them that perfectly normal consensual sexual behavior is the sign of a serious problem. Some of them are run by Christian pastors, others by licensed professional counselors. In-patient facilities are often located in picturesque areas, like palatial Arizona desert retreats, complete with poolside ping-pong and equine therapy (how nuzzling a horse cures sex addiction is never explained). These programs tell supposed sex addicts that they can reprogram themselves through behavioral modifications to become ideal sexual citizens: monogamous, non-porn-using people who rarely masturbate or fantasize about anyone other than their main partners. Some even take it further and force people to abandon healthy activities like masturbation for 30 days.

If this sounds familiar in a bad way, it might be because some of the same centers that treat sex addiction also offer gay conversion therapy, although they no longer call it that because conversion therapy has been banned for minors in 19 states (instead they say they treat “unwanted same-sex attraction” and “homosexuality/lesbianism“). This sad fact further illuminates the ugly truth behind the sex addiction industry: it’s based on a moralistic judgment on what sexual behaviors are socially acceptable, yet it’s cloaked in a scientific sheen that gives it legitimacy. Although gay conversion therapy is much more harmful, sex addiction treatment is similar in that both are about modifying behavior even though biology and psychology are compelling a person in a different direction.

One key question that appears on nearly all sex addiction quizzes is: “Do you feel that your sexual behavior is not normal?” The problem is, most people don’t know what a “normal” sex life is, and consensual sexual behaviors that are statistically abnormal are not the sign of a disease. As psychologist David Ley has argued in his book, The Myth of Sex Addiction, the criteria for sex addiction “reflect heterosexual and monogamous social values and judgments rather than medical or scientific data.”

Sex addiction isn’t a new concept, it’s a new name for an old one; it falls into a continuum of pathologizing sexual behavior going back to the 19th century when women were labeled nymphomaniacs for behavior we would consider normal today, such as having orgasms through clitoral stimulation. In fact, 21st-century sex addiction therapists sound nearly identical to 19th-century vice reformers.

“Pornography coupled with masturbation and fantasy is often the cornerstone for sexual addiction. This is a dangerous combination …A fantasy world is created, sometimes as early as adolescence, that is visited throughout developmental stages,” says the website of a current therapy center called L.I.F.E. Recovery International. “The sexual addict may use his or her addiction in place of true spirituality — sex becomes the addict’s God,” the website declares.

Similarly, 19th-century vice reformer Anthony Comstock wrote that “Obscene publications” and “immoral articles” [sex toys] are “like a cancer” which “fastens itself upon the imagination…defiling the mind, corrupting the thoughts, leading to secret practices of most foul and revolting character.” He suggested that young adults read the Bible instead of giving into their sexual urges.

Why do we continue to further such an outdated view of sex? Sex addiction is a way to police sexual behavior and impose conventional morality through a seemingly scientific, trendy addiction model. It attempts to slot people into some mythical standard of normal sexuality, one defined by monogamy and devoid of fantasy.

The sex addiction industry persists in spite of the fact that again and again sex addiction has been debunked by experts. Sex addiction isn’t considered legitimate by psychologists; the scientific literature doesn’t back it up; and it isn’t in the DSM-5, the authoritative catalog of mental disorders published by the American Psychiatric Association. Yet therapists benefit financially from sex addiction diagnoses, moralists benefit spiritually from them, and supposed sex addicts benefit practically from them. Sex addiction provides a great excuse for people who engage in socially objectionable sexual behavior (It’s not my fault! I couldn’t help banging the sexy neighbor! I’m an addict! I’ll go to treatment!).

This coincides with the fact that most sex addicts are heterosexual men, so the diagnosis frequently becomes a way to legitimize male sexual behavior, while also sometimes labeling their female partners as enablers. Convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein reportedly checked himself in to an in-patient treatment program after allegations against him were first published in late 2017, a path that many other high-profile men have taken in the wake of scandal.

The concept of sex addiction makes sex seem way more logical than it actually is. It fits into our culture’s view of controlling and constraining sex through rules, like the criminalization of sex work. Hiring a sex worker or engaging in any illegal sexual activities is a sign you’re a sex addict, according to most sex addiction screening tests. Yet, a wide range of more widely accepted sexual behavior is also illegal in the U.S., including having sex with an unmarried person of the opposite sex (a crime in Idaho, Illinois, and South Carolina) and adultery, which is a crime in over a dozen states.

But sex is messy and complicated, and hardwired and controlled by hormones, and no amount of counseling is going to stop you from having sexual urges. The sex addiction model provides a 12-step solution to the messiness of sex and the challenge of monogamy: if you follow these simple steps, the thinking goes, you too can be in control of the strongest biological urge and be free of daily horniness. If only it were that simple.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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How to Overcome Religious Shame in Your Sex Life

By Lindsey Ellefson

If you were raised to see sex and sexuality as a source of shame and embarrassment, you might notice that such feelings tend to linger, no matter how educated, open-minded, and open-legged you consider yourself today. If you come from a religious background, it’s probably even worse.

Fortunately, many religious leaders and secular counselors in the year of our Lord 2021 know that hardline teachings on sexual expression and orientation don’t do much to draw in the spiritually wayward, and can even ostracize believers. So whether you’re trying to balance your religious leanings with your carnal desires or overcome shame you internalized as a child and dragged into bed in your agnostic adulthood, we called on experts who can help.

Don’t be afraid to talk about sex

In a lot of religious households and communities, talking about sexuality is off limits, but refusing to talk about something doesn’t make it go away. A 28-year-old erotic artist in Philadelphia who goes by Claire Voyant tells Lifehacker that her religious upbringing is still causing problems in her sex life, but she’s slowly working through them by talking to friends and counselors.

Leo Morton, an associate pastor and drag queen in North Carolina, suggests the same, adding, “Everybody needs two really good things in this world: One is a good hairdresser and the other is a good counselor.” Morton is openly gay, but found that when he first spoke to a clergy member about his same-sex attraction in his youth, he was shut down and told not to bring it up. Obviously, that approach didn’t make him less gay—and not talking about sexuality isn’t going to make you less randy, either, only more needlessly ashamed of being so. Not acknowledging your sexuality only leads to repression, and that’s how archaic ideas about sex lead to such a pervasive shame. Talking about sex helps you to break the cycle before the cycle breaks you.

Fortunately, there are specialized counselors who can help—people like Kevin Salazar, a psychotherapist at the Gender & Sexuality Therapy Center in New York City, who tells Lifehacker they see lingering shame in their work often.

“I find it is common for clients who grew up in a conservative religious environment to feel shame around how they experience (or don’t experience) sexual and romantic attraction. Folks may feel shame about acting on their attraction even in a supportive and consensual environment,” they say.

Sex-positive friends can help, too

Counseling isn’t the only option, as friends make great listeners, too. Claire, who is also a retired sex worker, explains that because her Catholic education taught her that sexual pleasure was a woman’s duty to provide a man, she has struggled well into her late 20s to masturbate or focus on her own enjoyment during the partnered encounters she began having once she decided not to wait for marriage—in itself is a big step for people with a similar upbringing. Talking to friends, she says, helps, though she does admit she feels “jealousy” toward those who grew up in more liberal households and don’t really get where she’s coming from.

“I totally feel like the odd person out sometimes, like I’m hiding in plain sight,” she says.

Salazar explains, “Folks who grew up in a conservative religious environment and now have a liberal, sex-positive community have also expressed feeling isolated and not understood by their peers who did not experience the same kinds of shame and stigma.”

In some cases, a “hair of the dog” approach might work, especially if you’re still spiritual. Consider talking to insiders who can relate. Not all religious leaders are like the one Morton encountered when he was first questioning his sexuality, especially in this day and age. If you’re trying to square the sexual part of yourself with the religious or spiritual part, you don’t need to pick one.

“The shame and stigma the church has propagated around sexuality—regardless of orientation or gender—is longstanding,” says Rev. Mandy McDow, senior minister at Los Angeles First United Methodist Church, who strives to make sure her congregation is welcoming to members of the LGBTQ+ community and sex workers. “It has been a way in which the church has exercised power and dominion over the vulnerable, which is an actual sin.”

Find community online

Welcoming spaces also exist outside of traditional churches, the most obvious and vast option being right here, on the Internet.

“There are various religious and spiritual communities that will be welcoming and expansive in their understandings of gender, sex, and sexuality,” says Jesse Kahn, LCSW-R, CST, director and sex therapist at the Gender & Sexuality Therapy Center. “And if it’s important for you to be a part of a specific church that tends to have more repressive teachings, there are often variations in how the teachings are discussed based on geography and in progressive online spaces.”

Learn how to talk to yourself about sex

Don’t be afraid to work on yourself, by yourself, and for yourself. As Claire can attest, sex isn’t all about your relationship to someone else; it’s just as much about you. Salazar recommends journaling and listening to related podcasts or reading books; Claire suggests reading columns like this one, then taking time to explore your own beliefs and desires in a comfortable space. Go at your own pace, she says, and practice some gentle self-talk: “The more positive messaging you can incorporate into your life about sex, the better. Like, if you can, just max out until you’re sick of hearing people speak positively about sex, because you really need to rewire your brain completely.”

Echoing advice from Salazar, who mentioned replacing stigmatizing language with affirmations in their practice with clients, Claire advises, “Think about all of the time that was scheduled into your life for people to talk negatively about sex, and now you have to do that, like, twice as much positively.”

If you can believe an all-knowing god was angry at you for being sexual, why not try believing that same god would be proud of you for it? Morton sums up his thoughts accordingly: “God created us, and we are beautiful and our bodies are part of the extension of God himself.” Praise be.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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What Does Sexual Coercion Look Like?

by Crystal Raypole

Sexual trauma can happen in many ways, and it doesn’t always involve physical force. Sexual coercion, for example, happens when someone pressures or manipulates you into having sexual contact when you don’t want to.

Sexual coercion can be confusing and deeply distressing. You know what happened wasn’t right, but you might not fully understand how or why. You might even believe they couldn’t have assaulted you since you said “yes” in the end.

Here’s one important thing to know, though: True consent is given voluntarily.

If you only consent because you want the other person to stop pressuring or threatening you, you didn’t really consent.

Coercion describes any attempt to control your behavior with threats or manipulation.

Sexual coercion, then, happens when someone won’t accept “no” and continues to try to convince you to change your mind about engaging in sexual activity.

In this article, we’re using “sex” as shorthand to describe any and all forms of sexual contact or activity. There is no one definition of sex, and what’s considered to be sex varies from person to person.

For example, this might include:

  • kissing, licking, or sucking
  • touching, rubbing, or grinding
  • fingering or stroking
  • cunnilingus or fellatio
  • vaginal or anal penetration

Once you turn down sex, the story should stop there. But this doesn’t always happen.

Sometimes, coercion is pretty blatant. For example: “If you don’t have sex with me, I’ll tell everyone we’ve been having an affair.”

Other times, it might take a more subtle form. For example: “Here, why don’t you have a glass of wine and get out of those work clothes, and we’ll just see what happens.”

Common coercion tactics include:

Coercion typically remains in the realm of verbal and emotional pressure. That said, it isn’t uncommonTrusted Source to give in to coercion if you’re afraid the manipulation and pressure will escalate to physical aggression and violence.

Sexual coercion often happens in romantic relationships, but it can also happen in other contexts — between acquaintances, co-workers, friends or family, at school, at a party, or anywhere else.

If you don’t really want to have sex but agree because you feel obligated or don’t want the other person to get mad, you aren’t consenting voluntarily.

Coercion happens when someone wants you to consent when you’ve already said no or otherwise expressed disinterest. They might use threats, persuasion, and other tactics to get the outcome they want.

When alcohol is involved

Most people can still consent after moderate drinking, but you can’t consent if drugs or alcohol have impaired your ability to make decisions.

Say you’re on a date. You’ve had a couple of drinks, and the alcohol has given you a pleasant buzz, but you don’t feel drunk. What you do feel is great chemistry with your date. From the way they’re looking at you, they feel the same thing.

“Want to head back to my place?” They ask.

“Definitely,” you reply.

As long as neither of you are incapacitated, you can still consent.

When someone keeps offering you drinks with the goal of getting you to agree to sex when drunk, that’s coercion.

In a relationship

Being in a relationship does not mean you give ongoing consent.

Everyone has the right to decide when they do and don’t want to have sex. Once you say no, your partner should respect that. Any threats, wheedles, guilt trips, or other persuasion intended to wear you down counts as coercion.

With that in mind, you might wonder if it’s coercion when a partner tells you how sexy you look in that outfit or gives you a sensual massage to try and get you in the mood.

Typically, the difference comes down to a few key factors:

  • their intent
  • whether you’ve already said no
  • how they respond to your refusal

Let’s say you tell them, “I’m not feeling it tonight.”

They reply, “That’s OK. I’m happy just massaging you, unless you want me to stop.”

This gives you the choice to continue the current level of intimacy with no pressure for more.

If, a little later on, you decide you actually do feel like sex, this isn’t coercion — as long as the decision really does come from you.

It would, however, be coercive if they insist they want to help you relax, but then ask repeatedly, “Are you sure you aren’t feeling a little sexier after all this massaging?”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Sexual assault is a consequence of how society is organized

By Jennifer Hirsch and Shamus Khan

The Department of Education is about to release new rules about how schools must deal with sexual harassment, stalking, and sexual assault. There’s a lot that’s disastrous about this interpretation of Title IX, which is supposed to promote equal access to education for women.

But what’s largely missing from both the rules and the flood of public criticism they are generating is a discussion about prevention. This is typical of the national discourse about sexual assault on campus and beyond, and of the broader conversations in this era of #MeToo. The singular focus on adjudication reflects two assumptions.

The first is that victims frequently fabricate claims of sexual assault; all the evidence suggests that false accusations are rare. The second is that sexual assaults happen because of “bad” or “sociopathic” people. The only way to deal with them is through punishment harsh enough to strike sufficient fear into those who commit or want to commit assaults.

But what if the most sexual assaults were “normal”? Not in the sense that it’s acceptable, but in the sense that it’s often something that everyday people do—  a predictable, if awful, a consequence of how society is organized. In doing the research for our book, Sexual Citizens, that’s exactly what we found. And there’s an important consequence to this finding: we’re not going to punish our way out of these normal assaults.

Because those who commit normal assaults often don’t think they’re committing assaults, they believe they are having sex. When a student we interviewed for our research with undergraduates at Columbia and Barnard told us “I put on a tie. So I knew I was going to have sex”, he meant that, for him, agreeing to go to a sorority formal with a woman who invited him came with an obligation to have sex her. He described doing while she was blackout drunk; he never reflected any awareness that he’d raped her.

Acknowledging that sexual assault is often socially produced, rather than solely the result of individual moral failings, expands our vision of what to do about sexual assault: rather than responding to sociopaths’ evil acts, the goal also becomes to prevent those harms from ever being committed.

We’ve been successful using this approach to address other social problems. Think about drunk driving. Since 1982, there’s been a 50 percent reduction in drunk driving fatalities. Among those under 21, fatalities have reduced by 80 percent. This tremendous success reflects what public health calls a ‘multi-level’ response, with efforts that include but go far beyond trying to change the behavior of the individual causing the harm.

Drunk drivers are held responsible, but so are the bar and restaurant owners who over-serve them. Road design has smoothed dangerous curves and urban planners have added speed bumps to slow traffic, complemented by safer cars, drivers’ education, points on licenses for repeated infractions, and increased enforcement during periods of greatest risk. The power of moral persuasion has made it socially unacceptable to drive drunk or to allow others to do so and has normalized the idea of a designated driver.

We need a prevention approach for a sexual assault that parallels the success in addressing “drunk driving”. We still must address the harm done by those who commit assaults. But punishment would not be enough, both because it doesn’t necessarily address harm and because it’s relatively ineffective at prevention. A new approach must be built upon the realization that far more progress will be made through things like education, transforming the physical environment, and drawing upon our moral institutions and commitments. The steps are many, but they are also fairly clear.

The adults at home need to be partners in sexual assault prevention — which means raising children who have the skills to have sex with other people without assaulting them. This is consistent with a central task of parenting: helping children develop the social and emotional skills to manage their bodies so that they can go about their lives without hurting others. When they want something, we say, “don’t grab — use your words.” We teach them not to hit and to apologize if they step on someone else’s foot. We make sure that they know how to drive before we let them borrow the car. Yet our silences around sex have meant these lessons haven’t been extended and applied to young people’s intimate lives, with disastrous consequences.

Parents may object that talking about sex is awkward, or that it’s the children themselves who shut down the conversations. But many parents are frequently the source of much discomfort.

When they choose words like “hoo-hoo” or “pee-pee” instead of vulva and penis, they are communicating that some body parts are unspeakably shameful. Children learn very early that sex is not something they can talk about, especially with their families.

The solution isn’t only to start naming body parts. Nor is it to make the discussion technical, talking with young people about fallopian tubes — that’s like teaching driving by explaining how spark plugs work. 

What young people need is a moral education: to hear from us that we want them to be fully formed sexual citizens, with the right to say yes and to say no to sex, and that they must always respect that those they’re with have the same rights. Adults have a choice: to talk with young people about how sex and intimacy will be an essential part of their lives — how they connect a person they love—or to let their values be shaped by a cacophony of messages from pornography, advertising, and mass media.

Families can’t do this work alone. Children fortunate enough to have the adults in their life help them develop a sense of sexual citizenship will nonetheless go out into a world in which they will be surrounded by others who have grown up in sexual silence and shame. That’s why comprehensive sex education is so essential.

Research suggests that sex ed can reduce the likelihood of perpetrating sexual violence. An analysis of survey data from the Columbia and Barnard campuses showed that women college students who had had sex education that taught them to refuse sex they didn’t want were half as likely to be raped in college. That’s as strong a protective effect as the flu vaccine. At the population level, high immunization rates create “herd immunity.” Protecting everyone. Making sure that all American school-children receive comprehensive, age-appropriate, medically-accurate sex education will prevent a vast number of campus sexual assaults.

And yet the current American landscape for sex education is starkly unequal; young people who grow up poor or in rural areas are less likely to receive comprehensive, medically-accurate sex education. And as is true nationally, the LGBTQ students we talked with told us that the sex-ed they’d received in high school only addressed heterosexual experiences. They didn’t feel just underserved; they feel erased. That erasure is part of their well-documented greater vulnerability to being assaulted on campus.

Beyond parents and schools, faith communities have mainly figured in discussions about sexual violence as sites of perpetration. Those same institutions can and must do more than just prevent harm — they can join as allies in prevention. We have seen through the first-hand experience how powerful it can be for young people to engage in conversations about relationships and intimacy grounded in religious values with trusted adults other than their parents.

If the fundamental goal of religion is to provide a framework for people to figure out what it means to live a good life, then sex and intimacy must be part of that discovery. Prevention is everyone’s job. The character-development element of youth sporting can reinforce lessons of fundamental respect and decency. Musical education can reinforce lessons of listening to one another. Sexual education isn’t just about sex. It’s about connecting the experiences of what it means to be a good person to one’s intimate life.

Unquestionably, campus adjudication processes should be fair to all involved and not cause more harm. But research conducted on our campus showed that only a minute proportion of all assaults are formally reported; that’s typical of many institutions. Getting adjudication right will barely move the needle on reducing sexual assault. We can’t spend most of our energy reacting to assaults that have already happened.

There are small clear steps we can take to make assaults less likely to happen in the first place. We need to talk about sex. We need to ground that discussion in moral visions of how we must treat one another. And we need to provide comprehensive age-appropriate sexuality education for young people. The path to prevention is clear. We simply all need to walk along with it together.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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That’s a shame –

Live and let kink

by Race Bannon

Within the radical sex and relationships communities in which I navigate, there are few things that spark my anger more than shaming. Whether it’s coming from within the leather, kink, polyamory or gay men’s sex cultures, or from external sources, shaming is far too prevalent.

I’m sure shaming comes from within and without women’s sex cultures too, but I don’t pretend to understand that fully enough to comment. Still, this likely applies across the gender and orientation spectrums.

Shame as a noun describes a feeling of guilt, embarrassment, humiliation or disgrace due to awareness of a misstep or impropriety. The thing is, virtually none of the things kinksters and other sex and relationship adventurers are accused of is something for which they should feel any negative emotions at all.

Shaming as a verb is to engage in actions that try to instill a sense of shame in someone else, and this is where the greatest problems lie in our communities.

Misguided people consider shaming a viable way of trying to modify someone else’s behaviors or views. Some inappropriately use shaming to express disagreement with another’s choices or actions.

While you can only feel a true sense of shame upon perceiving that others’ disapproval is valid, when you already play on the edge of societal norms and might be struggling with self-acceptance you can fall prey to accepting shaming regardless of the validity of the source. This is why shaming marginalized people like kinksters and other erotic rebels can be particularly damaging.

Instances of shaming are sadly plentiful.

Just last week at Mid-Atlantic Leather Weekend, a friend overheard two leather-clad men in the lobby of the host hotel shaming a young guy who wasn’t dressed in what they considered “appropriate” gear. That happens a lot. A young guy might walk into a bar on a leather/gear night wearing nothing but the harness he excitedly scraped together every disposable cent to buy only to hear a snide comment from someone else in the bar about his attire.

During Folsom Street Fair I observed a BDSM scene taking place in one of the designated play areas. A fetish-clad kinkster made a comment about how that kink “went too far.” What was taking place was a moderate flogging, an activity countless people do all the time and it brings them joy and fulfillment.

Body shaming is common. It happens within the leather world for sure, but interestingly I think in many ways we deal with this a bit better than some mainstream folks.

However, within what I refer to as gay sex culture, I’ve seen it happen often. One non-sexual illustration of the prevalence of body shaming is how some people (gay men mostly) comment that if the nude guys walking around the Castro were hotter, they’d be more comfortable with it. If that’s not overt body shaming, I don’t know what is.

Orientation-shaming happens. Bisexuals are still too often besieged by comments that they should make up their mind one way or the other. I could point to mountains of data that attraction orientation resides on a spectrum and these folks would likely ignore it all and remain resolute in their misguided bias.

Polyamorous people are often shamed for the evils of promoting non-monogamy or being a bad example amid the LGBTQ set that’s decided only parroting the heteronormative two-person monogamous relationship is acceptable. It doesn’t matter to the deriders that the people in these relationships might be supremely happy. Their ‘one size fits all’ mindset fails to see the joys of the diversity of experience.

Entire leather events have been shamed because of a real or imagined misstep of some sort. Shamers rarely approach such situations as an opportunity for correction, refinement or dialogue. They would rather trash the entire event outright.

Highly sexual people are shamed by those who perceive their own level of sexual activity and the way they do it as the only correct or proper way. Anyone who deviates from that is a slut, a whore, or a spreader of disease.

Bottom-shaming happens frequently. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard “Oh, he’s a bottom,” said in a dismissive or elitist tone, I’d be a rich man.

None of this is helpful. None of this is productive. None of this makes life better for anyone.

Shaming takes place in all venues, but social media of course provides an easy-access megaphone to blast the shaming out to the world to be amplified by those who like to shame too.

In a Psychology Today article, ‘Why Shaming Doesn’t Work,’ psychology professor Krystine I. Batcho, Ph.D. points out some of the damage shaming can do. Since I contend that kinksters, the polyamorous and sexual adventurers are engaging in what feels genuine about themselves, I think this applies since it points out the stress and depression shaming can elicit.

“Shaming someone for what they cannot change places them in an impossible situation that can yield nothing beneficial. The absurdity and futility of such interactions are clear when a parent admonishes a young child to grow up.

“For people who are able to conceal a stigmatized identity, shaming can increase the ‘divide’ between public and private dimensions of their self-concept. Research has shown such separation to be associated with greater social stress and depression.”

Please don’t shame. Please gently point out shaming when you see or hear others do it. Let them know why it’s not helpful. Much of shaming is sadly built into our competitive and sometimes screwed up culture, but that doesn’t mean we should tolerate it.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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In ‘Sexual Citizens,’ Students Open Up About Sex, Power And Assault On Campus

By

Sex, power and assault are at the heart of a new study that looks at what it is that makes college the perfect storm for misunderstandings around sexual encounters.

Beginning in 2015, Professors Jennifer Hirsch and Shamus Khan interviewed more than 150 Columbia and Barnard College undergrads to learn about their sex lives. What they wanted out of sex, how troubling encounters unfolded, and how layers of misunderstandings led to assault.

In their new book, Sexual Citizens, Hirsch and Khan make the case that prevention starts with education — and they offer new approaches for universities, parents and kids on how to tackle the problem and empower people to feel like they have the right to choose their sexual experiences.

Interview Highlights

On why the students opened up to them about sex

Hirsch: So the research that we did that we share in Sexual Citizens was part of a bigger project, The Sexual Health Initiative to Foster Transformation, which I co-directed with Claude Mellins. And so one of the ways that we worked with the students, we had a group of undergraduates who advised us and we also had a research team in the day-to-day data collection with students. And, so, some of the interviews I did, or Shamus did, but some of the interviews were done by this group of younger researchers. And we generally find in doing this kind of research that people are hungry to tell the stories of their lives.

Khan: I mean, we sent out this note as part of the broader project, just announcing the project. And students emailed back saying, I have a story to tell. And one of the things that we found was that people are often, you know, adults and young people’s lives are often producing so much silence around sex and sexuality that many of the young people we spoke to expressed it as a relief that someone finally sat down and listened to them about their sexual lives. …

Hirsch: There were so many of them that we had to hire another interviewer with experience in trauma-based research. I remember walking up Amsterdam after doing one of those interviews sobbing because the story [one woman] had told me about being assaulted and then trafficked was so intense. And yet she slung her backpack over her back and walked out of the interview room. I think, it seemed like she had a feeling of satisfaction that there was going to be somebody at the university who knew how she had suffered and was going to think about what that suffering would mean.

On consent and misinterpretation

Khan: So, so much of what we think about when we think about assault is predation, or sociopaths — that is people who are trying to assault someone. But what we found really frequently was that often people who assaulted others thought that they were having sex. They didn’t think that they were committing an assault. They didn’t think they were a predator. And, you know, we had one young man tell us a story, for example, and he said to us, I put on a tie so I knew I was going to have sex.

And, you know, he felt like she really liked him. She’d invited him to this formal and she had gotten very drunk. And he described to us her going in and out of consciousness as he, in his words, had sex with her. Thinking that’s what in some ways he was obligated to do. And in that context, you know, it has to do with … men who often think about their own needs and desires, but who also think about, you know, sex as something that they accomplish — and not really considering what the other person was thinking or what the other person’s [plan] might be in that moment.

On enormous neglect and lack of awareness

Hirsch: There’s neglect and there’s also, in many cases, a lack of awareness of their own power. In the book, we tell the story of a freshman Lucy being assaulted by a Scott. Obviously, all of these are pseudonyms. …Lucy was a freshman, it was orientation week. She met Scott in a bar. They stumbled back to the fraternity … he led her upstairs to his room, started to take off her pants. She said no. He said to her, it’s OK — but it wasn’t OK. He raped her. And in that moment, obviously, he’s a senior. She’s a freshman. So it’s not just gender that has power, it’s also age. It’s control over the space. It’s control over alcohol. So there’s so many forms of power that produce those experiences, those moments of vulnerability to assault. And the most charitable interpretation that we could give for Scott’s behavior is that he was unaware of how much power he exerted in that moment.

On describing assaults as assaults

Khan: There are lots of reasons why people don’t describe assaults as assaults. We need to remember that most people are assaulted by somebody they know, not by strangers. And given that, given that they know the person, given that they’ve often had some kind of sexual contact with them before, naming something an assault isn’t just describing what happened to you. It actually fundamentally transforms your relationship with that person — and often your relationships with your shared friends. It’s like saying, you know what, my boyfriend or my girlfriend is a sexual predator, is somebody who did something terrible to me. And many people don’t want to do that. They don’t want to say that. …

We heard from many young women who told us that they were in a room with a man and they didn’t really want to be there anymore. And so they just performed oral sex on him to get out of there. And those young men didn’t force those women to have sex — but I think that they fundamentally didn’t realize what it was that the person they were with wanted to do.

We had other stories of a young woman who was asked to go out for a walk with her ex-boyfriend, who was very upset about the fact that his sister had just gotten a cancer diagnosis and she was thinking she was going to comfort a friend. And he ended up raping her up against a tree and dragging her to the ground. And she told us this story — chuckling, laughing about how she later found dirt on her body. And she didn’t describe this as a rape, but instead as a weird experience that she had. For these women, it’s not that they’re fundamentally denying the experience of their assault. It’s that they’re enmeshed in so many relationships that are important to them that they don’t want to call it what we see it as, which is assault.

On changing the conversation

Khan: We’re trying to change the conversation away from: Did it happen or didn’t it happen? Did she say no or did she not say no as vigorously? And instead to say: How do we prevent this in the first place? So, I think that adjudicating that situation with that woman in the room, with that young man, is nearly impossible. But I think what we outlined in Sexual Citizens is a way to make sure that that situation is less likely to happen in the first place.

On race

Hirsch: So, yes, I think that the stories that black men shared with us about an acutely racialized fear of false accusation drove home the way gender is not the only form of power that shapes experiences of assault or accusation. And, so, there was a sense of racialized precarity. Black men, students, that we spoke with felt like they were marginal on campus, didn’t fully belong. Were less secure. And so the way they navigated consent reflected not just gender, but also race in … a really painful way.

Khan: As Jennifer has said so many times, racial justice is fundamentally an issue of preventing sexual assault. We may not think about those two things together, but it’s really important that we do. In addition to black men, every single black woman that we spoke to told us a story of unwanted, sexualized touching — every single one. It was profoundly disturbing when we analyzed our data that that occurred to us. And this reflected the ways in which black women’s experiences in college was something where their bodies were seen as accessible, things that people could touch without consent in in ways that other students didn’t describe to us.

On LGBTQ rates of assault

Khan: I think there were a lot of reasons why LGBTQ students experienced assault at higher rates. One was that they didn’t accept as normal the kind of touching that happens at parties. So, you know, if you’re in a college basement, at a party rubbing up against each other and someone, you know, casually uses their hand and grabs your butt or something like that — a lot of LGBT students were like, this is not what I’m here for. I’m here for a different kind of experience. Whereas for heterosexual students, you know, there was sort of an understanding that this was part and parcel of being a college student. But there are other reasons why LGBT students also experienced assault at such high, high, high levels. And that’s because every single LGBTQ student that we talked to told us that they had sex ed that wasn’t at all relevant to their own sexual experiences, or sexual identities. And so, really, they just had to figure out sex on their own without any guidance from the communities and families that had raised them.

On solving the problem

Hirsch: Part of what solving the problem would look like is starting out when kids are young. Teaching them how to be respectful of other people’s bodies, right. It starts out in kindergarten. Sit criss-cross applesauce. Keep your hands on your own body. So those sort of early lessons in interpersonal respect, which are part of comprehensive sex education but are also part of just good education, are a fundamental first step.

Khan: And I think further steps are: comprehensive sex ed. You know, it wasn’t just LGBTQ students who described sex ed that really didn’t meet their needs. Most young people describe the sex ed that they received as a sexual-diseases course, or something that was incredibly fear-based. Here are the risks of pregnancy. Here are the risks of sexually transmitted infections. Here are the risks of sex — sex is something terrifying and really dangerous. And instead, we need to think about talking to young people about sex that’s something that will be really important in their lives. That’s going to be one of the ways in which they connect to some of those [that] are the most meaningful relationships that they’ll have. And to talk to young people about sex where they treat the other person that they’re having sex with as a human being — not just a toy that they’re going to be playing with. And if we don’t do that, what’s going to happen is that young people are going to learn about sex, but they’re going to learn about it from things like pornography.

On what parents can do

Hirsch: I think, as parents, we have a choice. We can have conversations with our children and, you know, the other children in our lives, about sex and values and how to treat people and what feels good. Or we can let our kids have their sexual values be formed by pornography and advertising.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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Sexist attitudes towards sex are cheating women of orgasms – and worse

The myth that women just ‘go along’ with sex denies their right to pleasure and makes it harder to convict men who rape

By

We may like to think we’re quite sexually free and equal these days, but an End Violence Against Women Coalition/YouGov survey of nearly 4,000 adults finds that two-fifths of people think men want sex more than women do. And between a third of and half of us think it is more likely that in heterosexual couples men will initiate and orgasm during sex, and decide when sex is finished, than women. In contrast, women are believed to be much more likely to refuse sex and to “go along with sex to keep their partner happy”.

This shows the persistence of the idea that sex is more “for” men than it is for women. The female climax is talked about in terms of being elusive, and yet the fact that this “orgasm gap” exists solely in heterosexual sex speaks to a lack of understanding, effort and mutuality, because lesbians are not having this problem. It’s a product of setting up the male orgasm, usually achieved through penile penetration, as the centrepiece of sex.

It is a sad state of affairs that there is a lower expectation that women will experience pleasure or climax during sex, and that this is accepted as to be expected, or “normal”. It’s self-perpetuating, because if women believe that “going along” with sex is a common female experience, they may be less likely to articulate and explore their needs and wants in early sexual relationships or when older. They may also feel pressure not to express discomfort or pain. And when sex is only one part of a long-term relationship, alongside persistent inequality around work, chores, caring and other people’s gendered expectations, plain talking and yet another plea for fairness might be just one battle too many.

Sexual inequality matters enormously, in and of itself, because women should be able to expect and enjoy sexual relationships that are based on mutual pleasure and equality. This shouldn’t need contesting or sound radical any more but apparently it does.

But there’s even more than this at stake. The sexist ideas about sex that we identified can also be a basis for some men developing a sense of greater entitlement to sex, as well as the excusing or minimising of men pestering or pushing women for sex. If you combine these ideas that men want and need sex more, and that women are just less motivated and more likely to refuse, you end up with a toxic status for women as the “gatekeepers” of sex, where it is a woman’s role to manage sexual interactions and access to her body.

If women are “gatekeepers” of whether sex takes place, then it is women who carry all the responsibility for every single sexual interaction they have. And this means that women are also seen as responsible if their boundaries are broken and they experience sexual violence. And it will be principally her who is investigated to ascertain whether a rape took place if she alleges it. The man’s behaviour apparently does not need close examination. It is assumed he will have been up for and will have pushed for sex – only 1% of people think men ever refuse sex, and 2% think men “go along with” sex. This can then lead to the rhetoric of sexual violence being set up as an unfortunate failure to properly gatekeep, a regret, just a big misunderstanding. These are powerful myths that have malign consequences. However, if we thought about sex differently, based on equality, these would be less likely.

This entrenched sexism about sex matters when we consider what is going wrong in a society that is utterly failing to deter, reduce and prevent rape. These ideas are part of why reported rape prosecutions fail, as police and prosecutors decide they can’t build a case if they think a jury will see a woman who “failed to gatekeep” before they see a man who knew he was crossing the line.

This is why we are calling for more, accelerated and frank conversations about actual sexual practice. We need men to recognise their responsibility and accept accountability both for sexism and for good sex. We need to put an end to the notion that sex is something done “to” women, and to reach a place where enthusiastic, mutual consent, equality and pleasure in sexual relationships is the norm.

Sex will be so much better when it’s more equal.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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The Worst Thing About Sex For Nearly A Third of Women

by Kelly Gonsalves

If I asked you what the worst thing about having sex is, what would you say?

For nearly one out of three women, it’s body shame.

Sex toy company Lovehoney asked over 3,000 people this question. Men’s top concern about sex was when it was over too quickly. But for women, the most commonly reported worst thing about sex was feeling self-conscious—some 30% of women said this.

Why women feel so self-conscious during sex—and how it affects their pleasure.

“Our culture puts a lot of pressure on women to be attractive yet not too sexual—open and receptive to sexual experience but not too knowledgeable or demanding,” certified sex coach Myisha Battle, M.S., explains to mbg. “There is also societal pressure for women’s bodies to conform to an often unattainable standard of beauty. All of this (and sometimes more) contributes to why women feel self-conscious during sex.”

Past research has found body image to be a big roadblock to women’s sexual well-being: Studies have shown feeling bad about your body makes you less likely to advocate for your needs in bed, stand firm in your boundaries, and ask for safer sexual practices. On the other hand, feeling confident in your body—particularly your genitalia—has been linked with being less stressed over “performance” during sex and actually having an easier time getting turned on, lubricated, and having orgasms.

“It’s really challenging to believe in your sense of pleasure when you are constantly questioning whether or not you are living up to standards that the world imposes upon you,” Battle says. “When we don’t feel the best in our bodies, our sex lives can suffer. In my practice I see people who have difficulty with arousal and orgasm as a result of self-monitoring and overthinking. It’s actually very common. When our minds are racing with these thoughts, it can inhibit our ability to tap into physical sensations and dampen our experience of pleasure.”

How to get out of your head during sex.

1. The “M” word.

Yes, it’s about mindfulness—you can’t get away from it!

Mindfulness is deeply tied to sexual pleasure. No matter your gender, if you regularly find yourself feeling self-conscious and anxious about the way your body looks during sex, Battle recommends taking up a meditation or mindfulness practice to be able to monitor your thoughts and learn to release the negative ones.

“Notice when you’re having a self-critical thought. Keep a journal if it’s helpful. You may be surprised at how many times this happens,” she explains. “You can then try replacing each negative thought with a positive one. It takes time and sometimes a lot of effort to come up with something positive, but over time it can be really helpful for cultivating a positive self-image.”

(If you need some ideas for positive thoughts to repeat to yourself about your body, I love feminist life coach and women’s rights lawyer Kara Loewentheil, J.D.’s recommendations.)

2. Rally the troops.

Self-confidence stems from within, but that doesn’t mean the people in your life who love you can’t help you in that journey. Research shows people who talk about sex with their friends tend to have more sexual self-confidence and are more willing to ask for what they want in bed. And if you’re in a relationship, that partner of yours should be worshipping your body—and making it obvious. Another study found people who feel like their partner really appreciates their body are more sexually satisfied, have more desire and orgasms, and are more satisfied with their relationship overall.

3. Develop a body love ritual.

“I also recommend taking some time out of each day to practice body acceptance and self-love. Take a moment to thank your legs for getting you to work, your belly for digesting your food, your arms for helping you carry your groceries, and so on,” Battle says. “We only get one body in this world, and regardless of ability, age, size, or race, every body has the capacity for pleasure and is deserving of it.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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The Modern Monogamous Marriage Is Built on Lies, Not Sex Research

By Carrie Weisman

With some exceptions, gender constructs have served men well in the modern world. It’s landed them in more high-powered positions. It’s gotten them higher wages. And, yeah, it’s given them license to pursue sex in ways that would lead women to be ostracized or shamed. In her new book Untrue: Why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women Lust and Adultery Is Wrong and How the New Science Can Set Us Free, author Wednesday Martin digs into the damage incurred through this “boys will be boys” mentality. And she blows a whistle on the many biases that have boxed their female counterparts into such sexually constrained identities.

Fatherly spoke to Martin about what authentic sexuality looks like in women and how men can help them find their own special shade.

A lot of Untrue is about adultery. Why was it important for you to look into how women function in relationship to non-monogamy?

Infidelity is really a great test case for how we actually feel about gender parity. We have people who believe women should make the same amount men do. We have people who believe that women should hold political office. But how do they feel when women seize a privilege that has historically belonged to men, the privilege of not being monogamous? We don’t have any autonomy if we don’t have the autonomy to do what we want with our bodies.

This book really looks at how science and social science has conspired to put out a narrative that keeps women from attaining sexual autonomy. We think it’s physical violence, coercion, and slut-shaming that keep women in their place within this culture, but it’s also bad science and bad social science. So much of it has been abused to coerce women into monogamy and to discourage us from being sexually autonomous.

How does that message relate to the current cultural climate? How does it relate to the ways in which women are now asserting their sexual autonomy?

In terms of the #MeToo movement, well, I feel like bad science brought us to this moment. There’s been inaccurate science that posits that men are naturally sexually aggressive and that the male sexual coercion of females is natural. There’s a lot of more recent science that tells us that’s not true. I think a lot of that bad, biased science helped bring our culture to a point of crisis.

What are some other misconceptions surrounding female sexual identity and desire?

There is some research to suggest that the institutionalization of a relationship, whether it’s marriage or moving in together, dampens female sexual desire even more than male desire. There are studies that document women talking marriage and long-term partnership as anaphrodisiacs, as something that dampens sexual desire. They talk about familiarity and security killing their libidos. Men need to understand this about the women that they’re with. These women need sexual adventure just as much as men do.

Okay. That’s probably going to unnerve or surprise some guys out there. And maybe that’s indicative of the issue. Why do you think so many women have a hard time coming out about their genuine attitude towards polyamory and other nonconforming sexual behaviors?

You pay a high price for being honest about your sexual desires in this culture. Everything from slut-shaming to lethal violence to someone just thinking that you’re weird. Women who do step out face a lot of danger. In this country, so many mass shootings involve men trying to control women who have left them. And a lot of the triggers don’t even involve infidelity, but the suspicion of infidelity. It’s still really dangerous for women to exercise that really basic form of autonomy within the U.S.

How can men help women feel safe speaking about their desires?

I think men need to educate themselves. They need to understand the female erectile network, the extensiveness of the clitoris, the possibility of multiple orgasms, the fact that we have no refractory period. This all seems to suggest, to me, that women really evolved for sexual pleasure and serial sexual pleasure.

What about guys in monogamous relationships with wives who are not likely to be experiencing serial sexual pleasure any time soon? How can they help their partners enjoy a more diverse sex life?

I wrote the book to be a conversation starter between women and their partners. Men should know that some women really struggle with monogamy. Now, that doesn’t mean they’re going to go invite a “third” into the bedroom as a way to attain novelty. But it should encourage men to step up their game. Buy her a sex toy. Talk about sexual fantasies. Watch porn together. Go on adventures that have nothing to do with sex. Go on a zip line. Learn to tango. Take a trip. Remember, adrenaline can deliver a similar feeling to what sexual novelty gives us. These are all options if you don’t want to seek out adventure by way of consensual non-monogamy.

What about men with daughters? How can they impart healthier sexual attitudes?

It would be extremely helpful to start educating kids about female sexual pleasure at home. It’s important we teach them that women are more than an extension of male desire. Girls are more than precious little things who have to protect themselves from the boys. They are thinking, feeling people who have an amazingly evolved sexual anatomy with an extremely high capacity for pleasure. This is really basic information that kids aren’t getting in school.

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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5 Ridiculously Common Worries Sex Therapists Hear All the Time

For anyone asking, “Am I normal?”

By Anna Borges

Fun sex things to talk about: enthusiastic consent, pleasure, sex toys, kink, orgasms, positions, intimacy. Less fun sex things to talk about: insecurity, inadequacy, unwelcome pain, dysfunction, internalized stigma, embarrassment. Understandable. No one wants to sit around chatting about their deepest sexual anxieties. But when you rarely see people having these less sexy conversations, it’s easy to assume you’re the only one who might have a complicated relationship with sex. You’re not.

“The sex education standard in North America is fear-based, shame-inducing messages that erase pleasure and consent,” sex therapist Shadeen Francis, L.M.F.T., tells SELF. “Because of this, there is a lot of room for folks to worry. Most of the insecurities I encounter as a sex therapist boil down to one overarching question: ‘Am I normal

To help answer that question, SELF asked a few sex therapists what topics come up again and again in their work. Turns out, no matter what you’re going through, more people than you might think can probably relate.

1. You feel like you have no idea what you’re doing.

Listen, good sex takes practice. It’s not like sex ed often covers much outside the mechanics: This goes here, that does that, this makes a baby. For the most part, people are left to their own devices to figure out what sex is actually like. A lot of the time, that info comes from less-than-satisfactory places, like unrealistic porn that perpetuates way too many myths to count. So if you’re not super confident in your abilities and sometimes feel like you have no idea what you’re doing, you’re not the only one.

This is especially true for people whose genders and sexualities aren’t represented in typical heteronormative sex ed. “Intersex people, gender non-conforming people, and trans people rarely have been centered in sexual conversations and often are trying to navigate discovering what pleases them and communicating that with partners outside of gender tropes,” says Francis.

People also worry that they’re straight up bad in bed all the time, Lexx Brown-James, L.M.F.T., certified sex educator and the founder of The Institute for Sexuality and Intimacy in St. Louis, tells SELF. “The most common question I get is, ‘How do I know if I’m good at sex?’” This, Brown-James emphasizes, isn’t the right question to be asking. Not only is everyone’s definition of “good sex” different, but it’s not going to come down to something as simple as your personal skill set. It’s about consensually exploring and communicating about what feels good, emotionally and physically, with your partner or partners.

2. You’re embarrassed about masturbation.

Depending on a few different factors, you might have a lot of internalized shame and self-consciousness around masturbation. Maybe you grew up in an environment that told you it was dirty or wrong, maybe no one talked to you about it at all, or maybe you’ve always felt a little nervous about the idea of pleasuring yourself. According to Francis, a lot of people have masturbation-related hangups.

If that sounds familiar, it’s important to remember how common masturbation is and that there’s no “right” way to do it. Not only do people of all ages, abilities, races, genders, religions, sizes, and relationship statuses masturbate, but there are tons of different ways to go about it, too. “People masturbate using their hands, their body weight, their toys, and various household or ‘DIY’ implements,” says Francis. Same goes for how people turn themselves on—people masturbate to fantasies, memories, visual and audio porn, literature, and a lot more. Some masturbate alone, while others also do it in front of or with their sexual partner or partners. Sex therapists have heard it all.

Basically, if your way of masturbating feels good to you and does not create harm for yourself or others, then it is a wonderfully healthy part of your sexuality and you should embrace it, says Francis. (Just make sure you’re being safe. So…don’t use any of these things to get yourself off.)

3. You worry that you’re not progressive enough.

You’ve probably noticed that lifestyles like kink and polyamory are bleeding into the mainstream. It’s not unusual to stumble across phrases like “ethically non-monogamous” and “in an open relationship” while swiping through a dating app.

According to sex therapist Ava Pommerenk, Ph.D., this increased visibility is having an unfortunate side effect: Some people who aren’t into the idea of polyamory or kink have started to feel like they’re…well, boring or even close-minded. Which is not true! But plenty of people equate alternative sexual practices with progressiveness when it’s really about personal preference. If you’ve been thinking your vanilla nature makes you old-school, just keep in mind that it’s totally OK if any kind of sexual act or practice isn’t your thing

While we’re on the topic, it’s worth noting that both non-monogamy and kink can be wonderful but require a lot of trust and communication. Some people who aren’t educated on the ethics involved are taking advantage of these practices as buzzwords to excuse shitty behavior.

“I get a lot of people, particularly women in relationships with men, whose [partners are] making them feel guilty for not opening up their relationship,” Pommerenk tells SELF. At best, that kind of behavior means there’s been some serious misunderstanding and miscommunication, but at worst, it can suggest an unhealthy or even emotionally abusive dynamic, says Pommerenk. If that sounds familiar to you, it’s worth unpacking, possibly with the help of someone like a sex therapist. You can also reach out to resources like the National Dating Abuse Helpline by calling 866-331-9474 or texting “loveis” to 22522 and the National Domestic Violence Hotline by calling 800-799-SAFE (7233) or through email or live chat on the hotline’s contact page.

4. You feel pressured to have sex a certain way or amount.

“One aspect of this that I see a lot—and this is true for all genders—is pressure to perform,” sex therapist Jillien Kahn, L.M.F.T., tells SELF. “[That] can include things like the pressure to have sex at a certain point in dating, feeling expected to magically know how to please a partner without communication, and/or fear of sexual challenges and dysfunctions.”

Kahn likes to remind her clients that sex isn’t a performance. “The best sex happens when we forget the pressure and are able to connect with our bodies and partners,” she says. “If you’re primarily concerned with your own performance or making your partner orgasm, you’re missing out on so much of the good stuff

Pommerenk also says it’s not uncommon for her clients to worry about the consequences of not being sexually available to their partners. For example, they feel like they’re bad partners if they’re not in the mood sometimes or that their partners will leave them if they don’t have sex often enough. A lot of this is cultural messaging we have to unlearn. It’s not difficult to internalize pressure to be the “perfect” sexual partner. After all, people in movies and porn are often ready and available for sex at all times. But much like worrying that you’re not open-minded enough, if this is how your partner is making you feel or something that they’re actually threatening you about, that’s not just a sexual hangup of yours—it’s a sign of potential emotional abuse.

5. You’re freaked out about a “weird” kink, fetish, or fantasy.

“Many of my clients seem to have a fantasy or enjoy a type of porn they feel ashamed of,” says Kahn. Some of these clients even feel ashamed to mention their fantasies or preferred porn in therapy, she adds. “The thing is, the vast majority of your fantasies have been around far longer than you have. The porn you look at was developed because a lot of people want to watch it. Even in the rare exception of unique fetishes or fantasies, there is nothing to be ashamed of,” says Kahn.

It can help to remember that just because you have a fantasy or like a certain type of porn doesn’t necessarily mean you want to do any of it IRL. According to Kahn, that’s an important distinction to make, because people often feel guilty or panicked about some of the thoughts that turn them on. For example, rape fantasies aren’t unheard of—in fact, like many fantasies, they’re probably more common than you’d expect, says Kahn—and they don’t mean that a person has a real desire to experience rape.

“I try to make sure my clients know that the fantasy doesn’t necessarily mean anything about them, so it is not necessary to try and analyze it,” says Kahn. “Whatever you’re fantasizing about, I can confidently tell you that you’re far from the only person excited by that idea.”

What if you do want to carry out a fantasy you’re worried is weird? Again, as long as you’re not actively harming yourself or anyone else, chances are pretty good that whatever you’re into sexually is completely OK—and that you can find someone else who’s into it, too.

If you’re still feeling embarrassed about any of your sexual practices, desires, or feelings, Kahn has these parting words: “Sexual anxiety and insecurity [are] such a universal experience. There’s constant comparison to this continually changing image of sexual perfection. [People should] discuss sex more openly for many reasons, and if we did, we would see how incredibly common sexual insecurity is.”

Complete Article ↪HERE↩!

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How Evangelical Purity Culture Can Lead to a Lifetime of Sexual Shame

Former born-again Christian Linda Kay Klein combines personal reflections with years of research to trace the psychological effects of purity culture on women in her new memoir, “Pure.”

by Stephanie Dubick

For millions of girls growing up in evangelical Christianity, sexuality is a sin. Girls are sexual “stumbling blocks,” they’re told—a danger to the relationship between men and God.

Such is the way of the purity movement. Emerging out of white evangelicalism in the early 1990s, the conservative Christian movement—today promoted by both local churches and national organizations such as Focus on the Family and True Love Waits—emphasizes sexual purity and abstinence-only education. The cornerstone: If women remain virgins until the day they marry a man, they’re holy; if not, they’re damaged goods. To avoid the latter outcome, young adults are required to make promises—signified in the form of purity balls, rings, and pledges—to remain abstinent from puberty ’til “I do.”

After marriage, the metaphorical chastity belt unbuckles. But as writer Linda Kay Klein engrossingly details in her recently released book, Pure: Inside the Movement that Shamed a Generation of Young Women and How I Broke Free, the psychological effects don’t stop there; they can follow women into their adult lives, leading to mental and physical side effects similar to symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.

In purity culture, both young men and women are taught that sex before marriage is wrong. But it’s teenage girls who end up most affected, Klein finds, because while boys are taught that their minds are a gateway to sin, women are taught that their bodies are. After years of being told that they’re responsible for not only their own purity, but the purity of the men and boys around them; and of associating sexual desire with depravity and shame, Klein writes, those feelings often haunt women’s relationships with their bodies for a lifetime.

Klein knows from personal experience. After realizing she couldn’t be the woman the church wanted her to be, she left the evangelical community in the early 2000s. It was at that point, when she began considering having sex, that the symptoms started. “It began when I took the possibility of having sex and put it on the table,” Klein tells Broadly. “From that point on, sometimes it was my boyfriend and I being sexual that would make me have these breakdowns where I was in tears, scratching myself until I bled and ending up on the corner of the bed crying.”

Klein knew immediately that the reactions were linked to her religious upbringing, but assumed it was specific to her. “I never wondered where it came from, I just wondered why it was manifesting that way,” she says. “It couldn’t be that everyone who was taught these things were having these experiences, because surely I would have heard about it.”

Eventually, though, Klein realized that she wasn’t nearly alone. In 2006, she began compiling dozens of testimonies from childhood friends involved in the purity movement and found that they were all experiencing similar feelings of fear, shame, and anxiety in relationship to sex. “Based on our nightmares, panic attacks, and paranoia, one might think that my childhood friends and I had been to war,” writes Klein. “And in fact, we had. We went to war with ourselves, our own bodies, and our own sexual natures, all under the strict commandment of the church.”

Today, Klein considers the phenomenon an epidemic. When she first realized the scope and severity of what she was researching, she decided to quit her job—at the age of 26—and dedicate herself to learning more about the effects of purity culture. She went on to earn an interdisciplinary Master’s degree from New York University, for which she wrote a thesis on white American evangelicalism’s messaging toward girls that involved interviewing hundreds of current and past evangelicals about the impact of the purity movement on their lives. Eventually, those seeds of research grew into Pure.

A 12-year labor of love, the resulting book is an eye-opening blend of memoir, journalism, and cultural commentary that masterfully illustrates how religion, shame, and trauma can inform one another. Citing medical studies, she lays out that evangelical adolescents are the least likely “to expect sex to be pleasurable, and among the most likely to expect that having sex will make them feel guilty.” And in comparison to boys, Klein observes, girls are 92 percent more likely to feel shame—especially girls who are highly religious. For many women, like Klein, that shame can manifest in physical symptoms.

Klein observes and cites an expert who found that many women who grow up in purity culture and eventually begin having sex report experiencing an involuntary physical tightening of the vagina—also known as vaginismus—that is linked to a fear of penetrative sex and makes intercourse extremely painful. This could also be considered a symptom of Religious Trauma Syndrome (RTS), a diagnosis developed by Dr. Marlene Winell, a psychologist in San Francisco and author of Leaving the Fold: A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving Their Religion. According to Winell, as quoted by Klein, RTS is a condition “experienced by people who are struggling with leaving an authoritarian, dogmatic religion and coping with the damage of indoctrination.” The symptoms resemble those of PTSD, anxiety disorders, borderline personality disorders, and can result in depression, sexual difficulty, and negative views about the self.

Perhaps more convincing than the medical research and professionals that Klein cites, though, is the wealth of testimonies she gathers from women. One woman she spoke to described having years of awkward, uncomfortable sex with her husband until she began to feel overcome by such extreme exhaustion, she had difficulty getting out of bed. Another shared that after her first sexual experience, her body began to shake uncontrollably. In one extreme account, a woman said that feelings of panic and guilt flooded her mind “like a cloud of locusts” after an early sexual encounter. Soon after, orange-sized welts broke out on her stomach, arms, back, and breasts and it became difficult to breathe. After jumping into the shower to find relief, welts the size of both of her palms formed on her vagina. “I would say it’s the scariest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” she told Klein. “I had no idea what was happening to me. My legs, my face, everything was bright red. It felt like I had absolutely no control over these horrific, nightmarish things that were happening to my body.” The woman was rushed to the emergency room, and though the doctors told her she went into anaphylactic shock, they couldn’t explain what caused it. While she knows something medical happened, she told Klein that’s she is certain something spiritual happened to her as well—the result of what happens “when you tempt Satan.”

Pure is a thorough and focused study on the effects of the purity movement’s rhetoric on women and girls, but Klein stresses that her findings aren’t relevant only to religious conservatives. Rather, they represent an extreme microcosm of a broader culture of gendered sexual shaming to which we should all be paying attention.

“The conclusion that I reached was that the evangelical culture is useful because it provides a mirror of what’s happening in other places in the culture,” Klein says. “You see what happens when you have high doses of this toxic messaging. But the reality is that this toxic messaging is everywhere and we’re all taking in unhealthy amounts of it.”

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Why Men Sexually Harass Women

Men vastly outnumber women among sexual harassers. The reason has more to do with culture than with intrinsic maleness.

By Olga Khazan

I can’t imagine my teenage self—or any girl I knew—doing anything like what Christine Blasey Ford described teenage boys doing to her. Watching the Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing last week, I was struck by the feeling that the Brett Kavanaugh she described and I both went to something called “high school,” but they were about as similar as a convent is to Space Camp.

Ford has alleged that when she and Kavanaugh were in high school, the Supreme Court nominee drunkenly pinned her down on a bed, tried to rip off her clothes, and covered her mouth so she wouldn’t scream. A confidential FBI investigation, according to Senate Republicans, did not corroborate her account. Senate Democrats, meanwhile, say the investigation was not thorough enough, and several people who say they have knowledge of the allegations against Kavanaugh have told The New Yorker that they felt the FBI was not interested in their accounts.

Let’s say, for the sake of argument, that Ford was mistaken and that it was some other boy who assaulted her. Either way, it boggles my mind that any teenage boy would feel empowered to do such a thing.

In high school, I made a list of all the boys I liked. My bitchy friend (everyone has one) told some of the listed boys. I was mortified—not only because they did not return the sentiment (this went without saying) but also because I felt like I had inflicted my liking on the boys. They were just minding their business, trying to live, and here I was, burdening them with my liking. It felt like such a grievous imposition, making someone deal with affection he wasn’t prepared to receive.

I wasn’t a particularly shy kid or an introvert. I was just taught—or maybe had absorbed—that boys will let you know if they want to date you, and your job was to sit patiently and wait to be let known. Bucking this norm occurred only on one day of the year, for our version of the Sadie Hawkins dance, which was special and exciting for the simple fact that it was the day when girls were allowed to tell boys what they wanted.

Admittedly, some of this was almost certainly regional: I grew up in the deep suburban South, where many of the cool kids at my school were saving themselves for marriage. None of my close friends drank, and I had my first sip of alcohol at dinner with my parents the night I graduated.

I hated our gendered dating rules and found them endlessly inefficient. But still, leaking a list of my boy preferences felt like asking for a raise on your first day at a new job—too forward, too eager, too much like something guaranteed to bring about the opposite result of the one you were hoping for.

The past year has opened my eyes to the fact that, apparently, many men do not have similar compunctions. I experience this same befuddlement every time I read about yet another #MeToo allegation. It would never occur to me to install a button under my desk to entrap my victims. It would never occur to me to try to masturbate in front of people I barely know. I would find it unthinkable to ask a stranger to watch me shower.

I can’t help but feel like the difference between teen me and how teen Kavanaugh allegedly behaved, and indeed between me and the other accused #MeToo perpetrators, comes down to how our different genders are conditioned to approach anything of a sexual nature.

Though there have been several cases in the #MeToo movement in which a woman was the perpetrator of harassment, the overwhelming majority of the offenders have been men. What is it about men, I’ve found myself wondering, that explains this extreme gender disparity? And is it even about the men themselves?

Some have ascribed it to knee-jerk assumptions about men’s essential nature: nasty, brutish, and short on impulse control. Boys will be boys, and the best we can do is contain their boyish urges. But where do we get the idea that it’s just what men are like?

One theory I had, especially when it comes to the lower-level sexual-harassment offenses, was that women are simply more risk-averse. They don’t dare put their hands on the knees of co-workers at bars because they know that they might be rejected, or that the co-worker might not like it, or that it’s just not a good thing to do with someone who’s going to be sitting next to you at the Thursday event-planning meeting. Women, I thought, must just like to err on the side of caution.

Meta-analyses have indeed shown that men are more likely to take various types of risks than women are. Some studies also show that men are more into thrill seeking, if exposing yourself to a woman without her permission could be considered a sick kind of thrill. (One older paper even characterized risk taking as an inherent part of “masculine psychology.”) Stress, like the kind people experience at work, might exacerbate these differences, since men take more risks under stress and women take fewer.

But other studies have complicated that narrative. For one, women seem just as keen to take certain kinds of risks, like disagreeing with their friends on an issue or attempting to sell a screenplay. It’s just that when surveys measure risk taking in terms of things like unprotected sex and motorcycles, women tend to demur, since those types of activities are either more dangerous for women (the unprotected sex) or less familiar to them (riding motorcycles).

In fact, when researchers measured risk using more stereotypically feminine risky behavior, such as “cooking an impressive but difficult meal for a dinner party,” women turned out to be just as, if not more, likely to take risks as men. “Maybe there isn’t anything so special about male risk taking, after all,” wrote the University of Melbourne professor Cordelia Fine in Nautilus.

Several prominent psychologists believe there are actually few psychological differences between men and women. Men, it would seem, are from Mars, and women are also from Mars but are nonetheless baffled by why our fellow Martians would opt to do things the way they do. The major differences between the genders are that men are more aggressive, can physically throw things farther, masturbate more, and are more comfortable with casual, uncommitted relationships. These very differences can help explain the disparity in sexual harassment.

“The bottom line is that men and women have quite similar psychology other than sexuality and aggression,” says Janet Shibley Hyde, a psychologist at the University of Wisconsin who has done several studies on this topic.

There’s also evidence that men and boys are less empathetic than women are. Men make up the vast majority of prison inmates, commit 99 percent of rapes and 89 percent of murders, and cause more severe car crashes. Just 16 percent of sexual-harassment complaints to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission were filed by men.

Boys are raised to think that men should be the initiators of sexual relationships, and, as Hyde explains, boys are also socialized to be more aggressive. The two processes can be toxic when combined. “Gender differences in empathy are not huge, but they’re there,” Hyde says. “If you’re going to victimize someone, it takes a certain lack of empathy.” (Though some studies point to men’s higher level of testosterone as the explanation for their higher levels of aggression, she says, “Humans are much less controlled by their hormones than other species are.”)

The explanation, then, might lie in social norms, or in what society is telling boys as they grow into men. Men are told they’re supposed to behave more aggressively, so they do. According to research, powerful people follow different societal rules than those who are powerless, and there are more men in power than there are women. Among men in powerful positions, but not among women, a fear of being seen as weak is related to an inclination to sexually harass others. People in power are more likely to wrongly perceive that subordinates are sexually interested in them.

“Power is enabling, and it is known to reduce empathy,” Peter Glick, a psychology professor at Lawrence University, told me. “It allows people to act on their impulses.” Glick says this is why it’s so often confident women who are harassed, or those who try to assert themselves, or who behave in a masculine way, or who otherwise challenge men’s power. They are being put back in their place.

People in power enjoy “looser” rules, according to work by the University of Maryland psychologist Michele Gelfand, the author of the new book Rule Makers, Rule Breakers. “Loose” environments are those in which norms are less strict and norm violations go unpunished; “tight” environments are the opposite. “People in high-power positions tend to live in looser worlds where they sometimes not only violate social norms but also border on completely inappropriate behavior,” she told me. In her book, Gelfand points to Uber as an example of a company where extreme looseness went wrong. “Several former employees described the exceedingly loose work environment as a ‘frat house,’ rife with unprofessional and even abusive behavior,” she writes.

In a 2010 study, Gelfand and Hannah Riley Bowles hinted at why sexual harassers often get away with the behavior for so long. They found that people who thought of themselves as “high status” were more likely to want to punish their subordinates when they broke the rules, but not other high-status people. White men, but not white women, were more lenient toward other men when they broke the rules. The social hierarchy is reinforced, they write, because high-status people are granted more leniency.

Glick also underscored how a permissive, boys’-club environment can turn a would-be harasser into an actual harasser. “There are these bad apples, but there are also environments that really permit it,” he says. “If the allegations are to be believed about the guys that Kavanaugh hung out with, it’s a lot of bragging about their sexual conquests.” This is a major reason that fraternities, with their culture of heavy drinking, male-on-male competition, and hazing rituals, are so often associated with higher rates of sexual assault than the rest of the university.

When women are seen as mere tokens of status to be collected, natural male aggressiveness can descend to a dark place. Subtle messages within social circles can imply that women are, sometimes quite literally, up for grabs. Men who want to sexually harass someone, says John Pryor, a professor of psychology at Illinois State University, “are unlikely to do it if they’re in social settings where there’s normative pressure not to do it.”

Perhaps the problem, then, is not in “masculine psychology,” but in environments that allow the least scrupulous men to act on their most hideous impulses. The norms I grew up with were not great for women. Those of Georgetown Prep, where Kavanaugh went to high school, may have been even worse.

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‘Compulsive sexual behaviour’ is a real mental disorder, says WHO, but might not be an addiction

Global health body not yet ready to acknowledge ‘sex addiction’, saying more research is needed

The World Health Organisation logo at the headquarters in Geneva.

The World Health Organisation has recognised “compulsive sexual behaviour” as a mental disorder, but said on Saturday it was unclear whether it was an addiction on a par with gambling or drug abuse. 

Dr. Geoffrey M. Reed

The contentious term “sex addiction” has been around for decades but experts disagree about whether the condition exists.

In the latest update of its catalogue of diseases and injuries around the world, the WHO takes a step towards legitimising the concept, by acknowledging “compulsive sexual behaviour disorder”, or CSBD, as a mental illness.

But the UN health body insisted more research is needed before describing the disorder as an addiction.

“Conservatively speaking, we don’t feel that the evidence is there yet … that the process is equivalent to the process with alcohol or heroin,” said WHO expert Geoffrey Reed.

In the update of its International Classification of Diseases (ICD), published last month, WHO said CSBD was “characterised by persistent failure to control intense, repetitive sexual impulses or urges … that cause marked distress or impairment”

But it said the scientific debate was still going on as to “whether or not the compulsive sexual behaviour disorder constitutes the manifestation of a behavioural addiction”.

Maybe eventually we will say, yeah, it is an addiction, but that is just not where we are at this point

Geoffrey Reed, World Health Organisation

Reed said it was important that the ICD register, which is widely used as a benchmark for diagnosis and health insurers, includes a concise definition of compulsive sexual behaviour disorder to ensure those affected can get help.

“There is a population of people who feel out of control with regards to their own sexual behaviour and who suffer because of that,” he said pointing out that their sexual behaviour sometimes had “very severe consequences”.

“This is a genuine clinical population of people who have a legitimate health condition and who can be provided services in a legitimate way,” he said.

It is unclear how many people suffer from the disorder, but Reed said the ICD listing would probably prompt more research into the condition and its prevalence, as well as into determining the most effective treatments.

“Maybe eventually we will say, yeah, it is an addiction, but that is just not where we are at this point,” Reed said.

But even without the addiction label, he said he believed the new categorisation would be “reassuring”, since it lets people know they have “a genuine condition” and can seek treatment.

Claims of “sex addiction” have increasingly been in the headlines in step with the so-called #MeToo movement, which has seen people around the world coming forward and claiming they have been sexually abused.

The uprising has led to the downfall of powerful men across industries, including disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein, who has reportedly spent months in treatment for sex addiction.

[Film producer Harvey Weinstein arriving at Manhattan Criminal Court on Monday, July 9, 2018. Photo: TNS]

Reed said he did not believe there was reason to worry that the new CSBD listing could be used by people like Weinstein to excuse alleged criminal behaviours.

“It doesn’t excuse sexual abuse or raping someone … any more than being an alcoholic excuses you from driving a car when you are drunk. You have still made a decision to act,” he said.

While it did not recognise sex addiction in the first update of its ICD catalogue since the 1990s, the WHO did for the first time recognise video gaming as an addiction, listing it alongside addictions to gambling and drugs like cocaine – but only among a tiny fraction of gamers.

The document, which member states will be asked to approve during the World Health Assembly in Geneva next May, will take effect from January 1, 2022 if it is adopted.

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The Shaming of Sexuality: America’s Real Sex Scandal

By

In early September, the Twitter account of Texas Senator and former Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz “liked” a post containing explicit pornographic video content. Once noticed by other Twitter users, the news shot around social media; many were both shocked and amused by the public slip-up by the typically straight-laced Senator. For his part, Cruz blamed the error on a staffer, denying that he was the one who had liked the post.

Whether you believe this explanation or not, the idea of Cruz publicly revealing a pornography habit and preference is simultaneously absurd and infuriating. Both of these reactions are a result of Cruz’s staunchly conservative views on sex and sexuality. In 2007 as Texas solicitor general, he defended a law banning the sale of sex toys in the state, arguing that no right existed “to stimulate one’s genitals for non-medical purposes unrelated to procreation or outside of an interpersonal relationship.” Though he did not personally fight to preserve Texas’ anti-sodomy laws in 2003’s Lawrence v. Texas, his negative attitudes towards LGBTQ+ causes are well-established: He called the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling in favor of marriage equality “fundamentally illegitimate” and supported North Carolina’s “bathroom bill,” referring to transgender women as “men” in the process. When pressed in an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on the Texas sex toy law, Cruz backtracked on his previous position, calling the sex toy law “idiotic” and “a stupid law” before adding, “consenting adults should be able to do whatever they want in their bedrooms.” If Cruz truly feels that way, then his past attempts at legislation appear either opportunistic or self-contradicting.

Cruz is far from alone among politicians who have contributed to legislation and rhetoric against private consensual sexual practices. As stated above, it took until 2003 for the Supreme Court to strike down anti-sodomy laws, and, as of 2014, a dozen states still technically had those laws on their books. (In fact, several states have actually been stricter against sodomy than bestiality – including Texas, which has had an anti-sodomy law on the books since 1974 but only made bestiality a crime in 2017.) The sale of sex toys is currently punishable in Alabama by a fine of up to $10,000 and a full year in jail, and last year a US appeals court upheld a similar law in Georgia. Also last year, Utah Governor Gary Herbert declared pornography and pornography addiction a “public health crisis” via a signed resolution, continuing a long trend of political attempts to push back against pornography.

What is most interesting about these types of consensual sex-related laws and attitudes in the United States is that support for them seems to be in direct conflict with the amount of people who participate in said sex acts. Utah residents, for example, actually buy more internet porn per person than those of any other state according to a 2009 study (though it’s a solidly red and majority Mormon state). Only 29 percent of Americans consider watching porn “morally acceptable,” and only 39 percent would “oppose legal restrictions on pornography.” However, between 75 and 80 percent of Americans age 18 to 30 report watching porn at least once a month, and a 2015 Marie Clare study of people 18 and older found that 92 percent of respondents watch porn at least a few times a year, and 41 percent at least every week. Statistically, then, a good number of those who find porn “morally unacceptable” and wouldn’t necessarily fight against anti-porn laws watch porn themselves. In the same vein, there are a number of famous cases of politicians and activists with anti-LGBTQ+ standpoints later being revealed as LGBTQ+ themselves.

So why the hypocrisy? Why do a considerable number of Americans support legislation and rhetoric against sex acts they themselves enjoy? The answer lies squarely on the shoulders of the country’s odd relationship with sex and the public discussion of it. In the US, hyper-sexualization is not simply tolerated but rampant. Everything from M&M’s to sparkling water seems to ascribe to the idea that “sex sells,” their sexed-up ads running on television in plain sight. But once a certain fairly arbitrary line is crossed, the conversation is seen as “too explicit” and gets tucked away in the corner. This creates an environment where pornography, masturbation, sex toy use, and homosexuality are seen as shameful, leading to the statistical discrepancies laid out above. Indeed, in that same Marie Claire poll, 41 percent of respondents said they “don’t want anyone to know about” their porn watching and another 20 percent feel “embarrassed” and “ashamed afterward.”

The don’t-ask-don’t-tell culture around sex in the United States makes it is quite possible that support for sex-based legislation comes more from perceived societal pressure than from personal concern about the issues at hand. In other words, there are potentially more people who support restricting pornography or the sale of sex toys simply because they feel that others expect them to, even if they personally use pornography or sex toys, than there are people who don’t participate and find said actions immoral enough to be worthy of legislative restriction.

American public and social discourse about sex is an unruly, multi-faceted mess, and not one that can be untangled in a day. But if attitudes around sex were to thaw, and people were free to talk more openly about their habits, the stigma and taboos surrounding certain aspects of sexuality – many of which are overwhelmingly common and actually healthy – could be eliminated. This change could come from the top down, with politicians and medical professionals emphasizing the need for healthy sex discourse, or, more likely, from an effort by the populace (which may already be underway) to tear away the curtains. New sex education programs – which are far easier to talk about than actually implement – could put more emphasis on the healthy aspects of sex and sexuality. Celebrities could also speak out, using their platforms to acknowledge the realities of human sexuality. If all this were to happen, eventually laws could be pulled back, and politicians could potentially stop feeling pressure to espouse hypocritical views on sexuality. Maybe then Ted Cruz could truly act on his belief that “consenting adults should be able to do whatever they want in their bedrooms.”

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