by Clare Scott
Sex education varies greatly from school to school, location to location – some places don’t teach it at all, while others teach abstinence only; some schools are much more thorough in terms of discussing safe sex and birth control. I went to Catholic elementary school, and I remember getting a textbook called Gifts and Promises, a few awkward anatomical diagrams, and dire warnings about ruined lives and sin. That was more than two decades ago, so I don’t know how the program may have changed since then, but there has been some encouraging news lately about public schools introducing increasingly comprehensive programs that address issues of consent and safety, as well as same-sex relationships and non-binary gender identities.
Then there’s sex ed in France. According to researcher Odile Fillod, the system has a lot of room for improvement, especially when it comes to the female anatomy. She’s not the only one who thinks so – in June, Haut Conseil à l’Egalité (High Council for Equality), a government organization dedicated to issues of gender equality, published a report indicating that sex education in France is still full of woefully outdated and sexist ideas. The information – or lack thereof – about one particular female organ especially concerns Fillod.
She turned to Melissa Richard, mediator of the Carrefoure Numérique Fab Lab at the Cité des Sciences et de l’Industrie in Paris, who took to Blender to create a 3D model of an organ that remains a mystery to many, and one that’s still given little mention in many sex ed programs: the clitoris.
“The idea came as part of the preparation of videos dealing with non-sexist way of themes SVT program about sex and sexuality,” says Fillod. “In textbooks, the clitoris is often overlooked and is systematically misrepresented when it is. It was therefore able to show concretely what it looks like to talk about sexual anatomical and physiological bases of desire and pleasure remembering women, for once.”
Fillod has been working with V’idéaux, a Toulouse-based documentary film production company, to create a Ministry of Education-supported website dedicated to the promotion of respect and equality between men and women. V’idéaux wanted to include a video about the clitoris on the website, which is set to launch in January 2017, and Fillod realized that she could incorporate a film of the 3D design and printing process onto the site. You can see the video, which probably has the most sensual soundtrack you’ve ever heard in a film about 3D design, below:
Fillod is hoping that 3D printed clitorises will be used by teachers and doctors to learn and teach about the actual structure, dimensions and function of this important part of the female body. Even though France has the reputation of being sexually progressive, Fillod told The Guardian, the focus is still mostly on male sexuality, to the extent that women and girls are largely uneducated about their own bodies.
“It’s important that women have a mental image of what is actually happening in their body when they’re stimulated,” she said. “In understanding the key role of the clitoris, a woman can stop feeling shame, or [that she’s] abnormal if penile-vaginal intercourse doesn’t do the trick for her – given the anatomical data, that is the case for most women.”
Will 3D printed clitorises start showing up in the classroom? We’ll see…but at least Fillod and Richard have brought some much-needed attention to the often-downplayed and still-taboo subject of female sexuality and pleasure.
Complete Article HERE!
Having Kids Helped Me Embrace My Own Sexuality
My children’s first interactions around sex and sexuality are actually taking place in our home right now. I’ve worked hard to establish where we live as a safe place for them to grow, make mistakes and learn from them, and to inquire about life. It’s why I made the choice early on in their lives to make sure that they learned about sex from me and from their dad, and that in teaching them about sex, we taught our kids to be sex positive. As much as people warned me that the conversation around sex is awkward between a parent and child, I didn’t let the fear of being uncomfortable keep me from taking about sex with my 3- and 2-year-old children.
I’m sure that talking to a 3 year old and a 2 year old about sex sounds like it’s a bit young, but I feel like that’s because we’re so used to framing the sex conversation around the “birds and the bees” conversation. When I was growing up I never had that conversation with my parents and had to frame my own ideals about sex and sexuality through experience and age. I didn’t want that for my children, though. So I felt that a toddler age was actually a wonderful time to start talking to them about how to love their bodies and how to appreciate them. I felt like the intro into sex isn’t about diving head first into questions like “where does the penis go?” and “what is the purpose of the vagina?” I wanted to give my kids a foundation for understanding and respecting their bodies before I ever taught them how about the intimacy shared between two people.
More than anything, I wanted my kids to understand as soon as possible how to love themselves, to understand consent, and to respect others’ bodies. I believe that sex positivity isn’t just about the act of having sex, it’s also about learning that the experience starts with you and will eventually (if you choose) include others.
By the time I was 18, I had disassociated myself from my body because of how my parents talked about it. now I had the chance to do things differently.
My upbringing kept me from understanding what sex was. My parents sex hidden, far above my reach. I was told we’d open that box when I was old enough, but only when I was was getting close to marriage. I found this strange — even at 10 years old. I would look sex up in the dictionary and in the encyclopedia. I often wondered what sex was and what was so special about it — why was it something only adults could understand? I’d hear my friends talk about boobs, about liking boys, and wonder if I’d ever feel comfortable enough to be naked around another person I liked. At the time, the thought horrified me.
I was uncomfortable with my body. I didn’t understand what was happening to it, or why I was suddenly getting hair under my armpits and on my vagina. My parents were constantly telling me to “be modest,” and I felt so much pressure and responsibility to look and behave and act a certain way. By the time I was 18, I had disassociated myself from my body because of how my parents talked about it. now I had the chance to do things differently.
When I was 18, I was in love and I had sex for the first time. It was amazing, and I had no idea why I’d been so afraid and so ashamed. I was raised Christian and was taught to believe that sex before marriage was shameful. But after having sex for the first time, I didn’t want any forgiveness. I simply wanted to keep having sex, without feeling guilty because of it. After I’d gotten married to my then-husband and had two kids, I looked back on my own sexual experiences and realized that I didn’t want my children gaining their sex education from the world around them without some input from me. I didn’t want them feel ashamed of the fact that they liked having sex or pleasuring their bodies. I wanted my kids to know that they could always come and talk to me, that I would always support them.
I tell them dressing my body in things that make me feel confident makes me feel empowered, as if my body hold some kind of magic. They love that. So do I.
So I started to talk to them about celebrating their bodies when they were young. And because of that, I had deeper conversations with myself surrounding my own sex positivity. I had some sexual trauma in my past, which has always made it a bit difficult for me to grapple with wanting to be sexual and carving out safe spaces to practice having sex. I made changes in my personal life: I was more vocal with myself about my needs and wants, then with partners. It helped me shape the conversations I’d have with my children about how they can and should voice what they want, not with sex because that’s still a ways off, but when interacting with others. I wanted them to learn and understand the power of their own voices. I taught them to say, “No, that’s not something I would enjoy,” or “I would really like if we did this” in their everyday lives, knowing that these lessons will help them in their sexuality later on. We’ve focused on how important it is for them to speak up for themselves and to advocate for themselves.
Another thing we do in our house is walk around naked. I used to shy away from showing parts of my body, like my stomach or my thighs. I have stretch marks and cellulite — both things I’ve been told aren’t “sexy.” My kids, however, could care less about whether or not my body is sexy enough, because they just like how soft my body is. It’s soft for cuddling and for hugging, two things that are very important to them. My kids move so confidently with their bodies, both with clothes on and with clothes off. My daughter’s favorite thing is to stand in front of the mirror and compliment herself. She’s actually inspired me to do the same. I’ve taken up the practice. They’ve seen me in some of my lingerie, and tell me it’s beautiful. They don’t know that lingerie is “just for sex” or that it’s something I should feel wary of other people seeing. Instead, I tell them dressing my body in things that make me feel confident makes me feel empowered, as if my body hold some kind of magic. They love that. So do I.
I watch them be confident in their bodies. I watch them say “no” strongly to each other, and to others, and most importantly, I watch them hear and respect each other.
My kids are 6 and 7 years old now, and we’ve talked about what sex is. The conversation has changed as they’ve grown up. They understand that sex is a beautiful act, one that mostly happens when people are naked. They don’t really care to know more yet, but I watch them be confident in their bodies. I watch them say “no” strongly to each other, and to others, and most importantly, I watch them hear and respect each other. As a person who is non-monogamous, I’ve shown them that sex and love are not limited to one person. It can be, but it doesn’t have to be. In turn, my children have taught me to respect and be proud of my body. They think it is magic — and I agree.
Lately, the children have been exploring their bodies, which I’ve told them is fine, but it’s reserved for their alone time. I’m trying to make sure that when we talk about our bodies and about sex that we do so in an uplifting, positive way. I don’t want my children to ever question or feel any shame around their bodies or their wants. I want to equip them with the right knowledge so that they’ll be able to enjoy. Most of all, I want them to be happy.
Complete Article HERE!
Are you getting any closer? A pocket-sized primer on female sexuality
Stay curious between the sheets, friends.
Closer: Notes from the Orgasmic Frontier of Female Sexuality
by Sarah Barmak
(Coach House Books, 2016; $14.95)
If it weren’t for Sarah Barmak’s Closer: Notes from the Orgasmic Frontier of Female Sexuality I might have gone for years of my life without ever finding out what my clitoris actually looks like.
“Illustrations of it resemble a swan with an arched neck,” Barmak writes. “When I saw an 
illustration of the clitoris’s true shape for the first time I felt like a blind man finally seeing a whole elephant when all he’s ever known was the tip of it’s trunk.” I realized while reading those sentences that no one in my Catholic high school health class ever bothered to show me such an image and I’d never thought to seek one out.
I consider myself a feminist and a sexually liberated woman. Yet, there are still surprising gaps in my understanding of my own body. And that’s why a book like Barmak’s is important. Closer tackles its subject with eloquence, intelligence and humour.
The book is split into five essays that tackle the “fear of pleasure,” the history of female sexuality, the science and psychology of the orgasm, the “female sexual underground” and the politics of acknowledging female desire.
While each essay has its own strengths, I think the most effective chapter is “A History of Forgetting.” This section aligns the historical “discovery” and “loss” of the clitoris with the individual experience of a woman named Vanessa — an actual interview subject.
We first meet Vanessa on the table at the doctor’s office filming herself masturbating in order to prove to the doctor that she can indeed ejaculate. We learn that Vanessa has been having a series of problems — pain after sex, recurring yeast infections and so on — that no doctors can figure out.
From here Barmak momentarily leaves Vanessa’s story behind and turns her attention to the clitoris itself, noting that “the mapping of the human genome was completed in 2003, years before we got around to doing an ultrasound on the ordinary human clit.”
While the tendency is to see history as ever moving forward and progressing, Barmak counters that “women’s sexuality began by being celebrated, then was feared as too potent, before being downplayed and denied in the scientific era.”
The Christian church, the scientific revolution and various other factors resulted in a demonization and rejection of female bodies. It’s a generalized historical account to be sure, but Barmak does point readers in the direction of Naomi Wolf’s Vagina, a much more comprehensive book on the subject.
What makes this essay so powerful is the way it revisits and concludes with Vanessa and her struggle. Her story held up against the larger history of the clitoris itself demonstrates all too well an overall contempt for and neglect of the female genitalia.
Along with research and anecdotes, Barmak amasses a diverse collection of interviews with doctors, researchers and sex educators. I was excited to learn many factoids that I will surely whip out at dinner parties in the future — for instance, vaginal self stimulation actually blocks pain in women, and even women who are paralysed can sometimes still feel sexual pleasure because of nerves which bypass the spinal cord and communicate directly with the brain!
Barmak combines this research and traditional journalistic writing with first-person narration, bringing her own experience into the story. This means attending seminars and workshops, watching a demonstration of a female orgasm at Burning Man, and getting a vaginal massage.
Barmak is open about her own skepticism and trepidation during these investigations. “I like to consider myself open to new things,” she writes. “Yet, the idea of a strange lady’s gloved fingers all up in my jade palace falls somewhat outside my personal boundaries.” She goes through with it and the personal account makes for a richer narrative overall.
A note about the term “woman”: Barmak uses it throughout the book to generally refer to the cisgendered female experience. If I have any strong critique of the book it is that by celebrating the distinctly female anatomy, the book sometimes verges on unintentionally emphasizing a gender binary. This is something Barmak herself seems aware of. She notes on pg. 21 that “the word woman can refer equally to cisgender, intersex, genderqueer and transgender women all representing varied shades of experience.” While it’s good that the acknowledgement is there, I think a declaration like this belongs even earlier on as a note for readers to keep in mind before the book even begins.
That said, Barmak does make an effort to include the experiences of typically marginalized women such as trans women and women of colour in her narrative. “Being white affords privileges even in non-mainstream spaces of revolt such as sexuality,” she notes.
The topic is something “that requires far more depth and attention than this little book can offer,” Barmak says and while this seems like a partial cop-out for having only a few pages devoted to women of colour and trans women specifically, Barmak makes a valid point. Issues regarding sexuality faced by marginalized women warrant entire books altogether, preferably penned by a writer who has lived those experiences.
Nevertheless, I think this book would have been more complete with a sixth section devoted specifically to these issues.
At its core this book is compassionately optimistic, celebrating the innate complexity of sexual pleasure itself and arguing in favor of orgasms for all, something I can definitely get behind.
Sex educator and vlogger Lindsay Doe has a motto she repeats at the end of each of her videos: “stay curious.” Closer isn’t the definitive book about female sexuality and it doesn’t claim to be. But it made me curious about my own body, and even more curious about the wonderfully vast array of experiences we humans have between the sheets.
I recommend it to my friends of all genders, my boyfriend, my sisters, and especially the woman who started it all, my mother.
Complete Article HERE!
I lost my virginity yesterday
Name: Mariana
Gender: Female
Age: 18
Location: Washington
I lost my virginity yesterday and I did not bleed. Why is this?
You lost your virginity yesterday? Where, at the mall?
I don’t mean to be facetious, but that phrase always grates on me. Mostly because it sounds like you were careless and misplaced something really important. Like, I lost my keys. I lost my phone. And it was all your fault!
Why do people (gals) say things like, “I lost my virginity?” Ya almost never hear guys say that.
What you do hear is shit like, “I took her virginity.” But wait; you took it? I thought she lost it? Can someone actually take something that has been lost? Maybe the more accurate phrase is I found the virginity she lost. But that would suggest that the guy didn’t take an active role in “winning” the virginity game. And that simply won’t do. Because the men folk, as we all know, gotta be the hunters, if ya know what I mean.
The language of sex is often so fucked. No wonder people, young folk as well as oldsters, are so confused and conflicted about sex.
Hey, sorry for the digression, Mariana.
So, my dear, are congratulations in order? I mean, was your first time enjoyable? Are you happy you’re no longer a virgin? It’s so amazing to me that you didn’t mention anything about your first intercourse other than that fact that you didn’t bleed. I guess, for some young women, that all that really matters.
As you may know, a hymen is a mucous membrane that is part of the vulva, the external part of your genitals. It’s located outside the vagina, which is the internal part of your genitals. Not all women have a noticeable hymen. You may or may not have had one to begin with. However most women do. Simply put, having a hymen and/or having it rupture during one’s first fuck is not a reliable indicator of virginity.
Many girls and teens tear or otherwise dilate their hymen while participating in sports like cycling, horseback riding and gymnastics. A young woman can tear her hymen inserting a tampon, or while masturbating. And it’s possible that the girl may not even know she’s done this. Often there is little or no blood or pain when it happens. The tissues of the vulva are generally very thin and delicate prior to puberty.
Like I said, the presence or absence of a hymen and/or bleeding in no way indicates whether or not you are a virgin.
Some hymens are elastic enough to permit a cock to enter without tearing, or they tear only partially, and there is NO bleeding at all. As I hope you know, when you are adequately aroused, you lubricate and your vagina becomes more flexible. It will stretch without discomfort for most women. It’s even possible for a woman to have sex for years without ‘tearing’ her hymen. And, like I said, some women never have much of a hymen to begin with.
Is that helpful? I hope so.
Good luck
Assisted-living facilities limit older adults’ rights to sexual freedom, study finds
Georgia State University
ATLANTA — Older adults in assisted-living facilities experience limits to their rights to sexual freedom because of a lack of policies regarding the issue and the actions of staff and administrators at these facilities, according to research conducted by the Gerontology Institute at Georgia State University.
Though assisted-living facilities emphasize independence and autonomy, this study found staff and administrators behave in ways that create an environment of surveillance. The findings, published in the Journals of Gerontology: Social Sciences, indicate conflict between autonomy and the protection of residents in regard to sexual freedom in assisted-living facilities.
Nearly one million Americans live in assisted-living facilities, a number expected to increase as adults continue to live longer. Regulations at these facilities may vary, but they share a mission of providing a homelike environment that emphasizes consumer choice, autonomy, privacy and control. Despite this philosophy, the autonomy of residents may be significantly restricted, including their sexuality and intimacy choices.
Sexual activity does not necessarily decrease as people age. The frequency of sexual activity in older adults is lower than in younger adults, but the majority maintain interest in sexual and intimate behavior. Engaging in sexual relationships, which is associated with psychological and physical wellbeing, requires autonomous decision-making.
While assisted-living facilities have many rules, they typically lack systematic policies about how to manage sexual behavior among residents, which falls under residents’ rights, said Elisabeth Burgess, an author of the study and director of the Gerontology Institute.
“Residents of assisted-living facilities have the right to certain things when they’re in institutional care, but there’s not an explicit right to sexuality,” Burgess said. “There’s oversight and responsibility for the health and wellbeing of people who live there, but that does not mean denying people the right to make choices. If you have a policy, you can say to the family when someone moves in, here are our policies and this is how issues are dealt with. In the absence of a policy, it becomes a case-by-case situation, and you don’t have consistency in terms of what you do.”
The researchers collected data at six assisted-living facilities in the metropolitan Atlanta area that varied in size, location, price, ownership type and resident demographics. The data collection involved participant observation and semi-structured interviews with administrative and care staff, residents and family members, as well as focus groups with staff.
The study found that staff and administrators affirmed that residents had rights to sexual and intimate behavior, but they provided justifications for exceptions and engaged in strategies that created an environment of surveillance, which discouraged and prevented sexual and intimate behavior.
The administrators and staff gave several overlapping reasons for steering residents away from each other and denying rights to sexual and intimate behavior. Administrators emphasized their responsibility for the residents’ health and safety, which often took precedence over other concerns.
Family members’ wishes played a role. Family members usually choose the home and manage the residents’ financial affairs. In some instances, they transport family members to doctor’s appointments, volunteer at the facility and help pay for the facility, which is not covered by Medicaid. They are often very protective of their parents and grandparents and are uncomfortable with new romantic or intimate partnerships, according to staff. Administrators often deferred to family wishes in order to reduce potential conflict.
Staff and administrators expressed concern about consent and cognitive impairment. More than two-thirds of residents in assisted-living facilities have some level of cognitive impairment, which can range from mild cognitive impairment to Alzheimer’s Disease or other forms of dementia. They felt responsible for protecting residents and guarding against sexual abuse, even if a person wasn’t officially diagnosed.
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Co-authors of the study, Georgia State alumni, include Christina Barmon of Central Connecticut State University, Alexis Bender of Ripple Effect Communications in Rockville, Md., and James Moorhead Jr. of the Georgia Department of Human Services’ Division of Aging Services.
The study was supported by a grant from the National Institute on Aging at the National Institutes of Health.
Read the study HERE!
Complete Article HERE!
Large number of young people experience sex problems, study finds
More to be done to help with ‘sexual function’ as well as advice on STIs and pregnancy, say authors of survey
Large numbers of young people experience sexual problems such as pain or anxiety during sex, the inability to climax and finding intercourse difficult, a study has found.
A third (33.8%) of sexually active teenagers and young men aged 16-21 and 44.4% of sexually active young women the same age experienced at least one problem, which lasted for at least three months, with their ability to enjoy sex in the past year, according to the research.
Experts say the results, from the latest National Survey of Sexual Attitudes and Lifestyles (Natsal-3) study of sexual health in Britain, show that young people need help with their “sexual function” as much as advice on avoiding sexually transmitted infection or unintended pregnancy. They experience problems almost as much as older people, it emerged.
For women, the most common problem was difficulty in reaching climax, which 21.3% of female participants said they experienced. The next most common problems were: lacking enjoyment in sex (9.8%), feeling physical pain as a result of sex (9%), an uncomfortably dry vagina (8.5%), feeling anxious during sex (8%) and no excitement or arousal (8%).
Among men, the biggest difficulty was reaching a climax too quickly, which 13.2% had experienced. Smaller numbers reported difficulty in reaching a climax (8.3%), difficulty getting or keeping an erection (7.8%), lacking enjoyment in sex (5.4%) and feeling anxious (4.8%).
The Natsal surveys, the funders of which include the Medical Research Council and the Department of Health, are seen as the most in-depth portraits of sexual behaviour in Britain. This latest edition has been carried out by academics from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM), University College London and NatCen Social Research. Natsal-3 is based on 1,875 sexually active and 517 sexually inactive men and women aged between 16 and 21.
“Our findings show that distressing sexual problems are not only experienced by older people in Britain”, said Dr Kirstin Mitchell, the lead author of the study. “They are in fact relatively common in early adulthood as well.
“If we want to improve sexual wellbeing in the UK population, we need to reach people as they start their sex lives, otherwise a lack of knowledge, anxiety or shame might progress into lifelong sexual difficulties that can be damaging to sexual enjoyment and relationships,” she added.
Among the sexually active, 9.1% of young men and 13.4% of young women said that they had felt distressed about a sexual problem that had troubled them for at least three months.
Natsal-3 found some significant differences between men and women in the sexual problems they encountered. Far more women (9.8%) than men (5.4%) lacked enjoyment in sex, felt anxious during sex (8% compared with 4.8% of men) and experienced no excitement or arousal during sex (8% compared with 3.2% of men).
The same stark gender divide was also apparent in those who professed no interest in having sex. One in five (22%) of women said they lacked interest, while far fewer men – 10.5% – said the same.
Young people are very unlikely to seek professional help for their problem. Although 36.3% of women and 26% of men said they had sought help, this was usually from family, friends, the media or the internet. Just 4% of young men and 8% of young women had turned to an expert such as a GP, psychiatrist or sexual health professional about their sex life.
Prof Kaye Wellings of LSHTM, a co-author, said: “UK sex education is often silent on issues of sexual satisfaction, but these are clearly important to young people and should be addressed. Sex education could do much more to debunk myths about sex, discuss pleasure and promote gender equality in relationships.”
Complete Article HERE!
How to Have a Happy Vagina
Your Cock; A Complete Owners Manual (abridged)
Name: Hector
Gender: male
Age: 17
Location: Tujunga, CA
I’m afraid my penis isn’t right. I worry because it doesn’t look like other guys. For one thing I’m a lot smaller. I’m afraid to have sex or show my penis. Is there any way for me to know for sure? I hope to hear from you because this is making me real nervous. Thank you.
I’d chill out, if I were you, Hector. Lots of guys your age mistakenly think there is something wrong with their unit, when actually their willie is quite normal. This heightened concern, as you suggest, can lead to anxiety or even a complex about one’s cock size and shape. You don’t really give me much to go on as to why you think your pinga is not like the other guys. That leads me to think you don’t really know all that much about your package in general. Do you? I mean, who are you comparing yourself to anyway?
Since I don’t have a lot of information to go on, I suppose we oughta start with some essentials. Here’s Part 1 of my primer — Your Cock; A Complete Owners Manual (abridged). That’s supposed to be funny, BTW.
We all know that there are big ones and little ones, fat ones and skinny ones. Some are bobbed; some are whole. Some curve and bend; some are straight as an arrow. Some have a mushroom cap; some sport more of a helmet look. Some grow; some show. And they come in a veritable rainbow of colors.
Despite the amazing diversity, there are lots of things that each of our members has in common with everyone else’s. The average length of a flaccid cock is 3.7 inches with a diameter of 1.25 inches. The average length of a hardon is 5.1 inches, with a diameter of 1.6 inches. If you are over the age of 17, you pretty much have all the cock you’re gonna have. That’s not to say that as we age and as our muscles slack, our pal won’t hang a bit differently than when we were a young buck. But there’s not gonna be significant change in length or girth after puberty is done with us. Keep in mind that all this stuff is determined by genetics and heredity, like your overall body type, the color of your eyes, your hair pattern, and how tall you are. So the likelihood that any guy will add even one permanent inch to his dick either in length or girth, without surgery, is about as likely as him adding even an inch to his height.
The head of your dick is called the glans. (It’s the thing that can be shaped like a mushroom or a helmet.) It is made up of soft tissue called the corpus spongiosum. Just below the glans, on the underside of your cock is a waddle of skin called the frenulum. This puppy is chock-full of nerve endings that make it ground zero for dick-centered pleasure.
All uncut (uncircumcised) men have a prepuce, or foreskin that covers and protects his dickhead. Cut (circumcised) men don’t, because it has been surgically removed. If you are lucky enough to be intact, your foreskin is a highly specialized, sensitive, and functional organ of touch. No other part of the body serves the same purpose. Please note: circumcision actually removes 50% of the skin of a guy’s dick. And who among us would choose that if we were allowed to choose?
You know the old adage, “Use it or lose it”? They may have had a penis in mind when that maxim was coined. Researchers agree — erections are good for you. When you get a woody, your cock is engorged with oxygen-rich blood, which is essential for the upkeep of the smooth muscle tissue. This kind of tissue makes up about 90% of your cock. You can see how a healthy circulatory system is vital to a vibrant sex life. An oxygen-deprived cock will build up a kind of plaque in your cock, which resembles scar tissue. This will cripple your rod (Peyronie’s disease) or rob you of your wood altogether.
I also want to alert you of some startling new data that came out of recent research about masturbation. Australian researchers questioned over 1,000 men who had developed prostate cancer and 1,250 men who had not, about their sexual habits. They found those who had ejaculated the most between the ages of 20 and 50 were the least likely to develop prostate cancer.
The protective effect was greatest while the men were in their 20s. And get this; men who ejaculated more than five times a week were a third less likely to develop prostate cancer later in life. But let’s not get off topic too much.
The other big part of your package is the family jewels. We mind as well take a look at them too while we’re at it. Your nuts (testis) and the sack (scrotum) they’re housed in are an evolutionary marvel. Your testicles are about 4°F cooler than your core body temperature. Lucky for us, this is the ideal climate for healthy sperm production. 90% of the male hormone, testosterone, is manufactured in our balls. Evolution has even provided that one nut, generally the left, hangs slightly lower than the other. The lower nut will also be slightly larger. I suppose this keep them from knocking into each other so much.
Ok so you think the outside of your junk is pretty impressive, well you ain’t seen nothin’ yet! Here’s where things get really interesting. First, there is no “bone” in your boner. Don’t laugh! Humans are one of the few mammals (horses, donkeys, rhinoceros, marsupials, rabbits, whales and dolphins, elephants and hyenas are the others) that don’t have a penis bone. Most males of our species have a unique bone called baculum in their penis. The baculum is designed for speed fucking. Sliding a bone in and out of a sheath is much faster than waiting for hydraulics to kick in. This enables our mammalian relatives to spend very little time actually mating. Which is, after all, a vulnerable position for them to be in.
If there’s no bone in there what make our dick hard? Good question. If you dissected your woody and looked at a cross-section you’d see three distinct spongy tubular structures, each are made up of smooth muscle tissue. Two of these tubular structures — one on either side of your cock, both of which run the length of your cock — are called the corpora cavernosa. These marvelous structures become engorged with blood lifting and thickening your cock to erection. The corpus spongiosum, the third tubular structure is located just below the corpora cavernosa. This baby houses your urethra, through which urine and semen pass during urination and ejaculation, respectively. This may also become slightly engorged with blood, but less so than the corpora cavernosa.
There are several points of interest in and around your balls too. I already mentioned your urethra, which stretches from your bladder to the tip of your dick. It carries your piss and cum, but not at the same time, I’m happy to report. Your prostate is an almond shaped gland that sits between your bladder and the root of your dick. Slightly in back of that is a pair of glands called the seminal vesicles. These tubular glands open into the vas deferens as it enters the prostate gland. They secrete the lion’s share of your spooge (ejaculate) about 70% to be precise. Most of us have two vas deferens tubes to correspond to the pair of ball (testicles) most of us have. These convey your mature sperm, the ones that have been comfortably relaxing in the epididymis, which is a tube filled mass at the back of each of your balls.
To conclude, the average male, between the ages of 15 and 60 will ejaculate 30 to 50 quarts of jizz (semen), containing 350 to 500 billion sperm cells. How amazing is that?
Good luck
Doctors urged to advise patients about risks of abstinence-centric sex education
American Academy of Pediatricians’ new report is the clearest denouncement of the failures of not talking about STIs and pregnancy prevention
By Molly Redden
The country’s largest organization of pediatricians entered fraught political territory on Monday, with a call for doctors to use their time with patients to combat the potential health consequences of abstinence-centric sex education.
In a new report, the American Academy of Pediatricians (AAP) issued its clearest denunciation yet of sex education programs that fail to offer comprehensive information on topics such as sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and pregnancy prevention.
“This is the mothership telling pediatricians that talking about sex is part of your charge to keep children and adolescents safe,” said Dr Cora Breuner, a professor and pediatrician at Seattle Children’s research hospital and the report’s lead author.
“These guidelines give pediatricians in communities where people might say, ‘We don’t want you talking to our kids about this stuff,’ permission to say, ‘No, I can talk about this, I should talk about this, I need to talk about this.’”
The report is broadly a call for pediatricians to help fill in the gaps left by the country’s patchwork sex education programs. It urges pediatricians to teach not only contraception and the benefits of delaying sexual activity, but to cover topics such as sexual consent, sexual orientation and gender identity with school-aged children who may not receive any information in the classroom and involve their parents.
But the authors single out abstinence-heavy education, which sometimes excludes information about contraceptives, as a key concern for doctors looking to help adolescent patients avoid sexually transmitted infections and unintended pregnancy. As a result, it is likely to fuel an already contentious debate.
Groups that have advocated for sex education to emphasize abstinence instantly found fault with the new guidelines.
“A health organization like the AAP should not be affirming a behavior that can compromise the health of youth,” said Valerie Huber, the president of Ascend, a group that promotes abstinence-centric sex education and advocates for federal funding. The group was formerly known as the formerly the National Abstinence Education Association.
“They recommend ‘responsible sex’ for young adolescents. Exactly what is responsible sexual activity for adolescents? … The science is clear that teens are healthier when they avoid all sexual activity.”
Moreover, Huber said, programs that “normalize teen sex” are unpopular with many parents.
“Most communities do not support the type of sex education they recommend,” she said.
Still, others embraced the report as bringing the AAP’s recommendations more in line with the reality.
“This is a fantastic move,” said Chitra Panjabi, the president of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), a research group that supports comprehensive sex education. “It’s really important that our medical providers are standing up and saying, hey, the youth in our communities are coming to us because they’re not getting the information they need. And so we need to step in.”
The US does not enforce national standards for sex education and schools in many states are not required to teach it. Across the country, SIECUS estimates, only 50% of high school students receive sex education that meets the recommendations of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The other half of students receive anything from an incomplete sex education, to education that emphasizes abstinence, to abstinence-only education, with a focus on delaying sex until heterosexual marriage.
In February, Barack Obama proposed a budget for 2017 that eliminated the $10m the department of health and human services spends on abstinence-only programs every year. But funding continues to flow to those programs from other sources. Title V, an abstinence-only program, allocates $75m a year to abstinence-only programs, money that states match by 75%.
In the last quarter-century, programs emphasizing abstinence as the optimal way to avoid pregnancy and STIs have received more than $2bn in funding from the federal government. Comprehensive sex education, by contrast, has no dedicated federal funding stream.
“It’s a political climate where people don’t want to talk about these issues,” said Breuner. “But it makes our job so much harder when we cannot coordinate our efforts with the schools. It takes time away from the other safety issues we need to be discussing. Don’t smoke weed. Don’t text and drive.”
Recently, two major surveys of existing research on sex education concluded that there was no evidence or inconclusive evidence to show that abstinence-centric programs succeeded in delaying sexual activity. One of the surveys found that comprehensive sex education was actually more effective than abstinence education at delaying sexual activity in teens. (Ascend points to select studies which show the opposite.)
A long-term study found that teens receiving abstinence-only programs were less likely to use contraceptives or be screened for STIs, although rates of infections were not elevated.
The studies helped compel the AAP to issue its first major guidance on sex education since 2001.
“It’s important for pediatricians to have the backing to say, ‘Look, I can’t support telling this stuff to children,’” Breuner said. “I have to deal with the aftermath, which is a 15-year-old who’s pregnant, or a 16-year-old who has a sexually transmitted infection he’s going to have for the rest of his life.”
Breuner said a number of her patients have suffered consequences from abstinence-only education. Many of them are pregnant teenagers and girls who, in the absence of accurate information, came to believe in common myths about pregnancy prevention.
“They’ll say, ‘I thought you couldn’t get pregnant when you were having your period,’ or, ‘I thought it took two or three years after you get your period to be able get pregnant.’ It’s heartbreaking, because I know with education, this could have been prevented.”
Complete Article HERE!
Here’s What Could Get You Committed If You Were a Woman in the 1870s
Many of things that got women committed in the 1870s would be considered normal behavior today.
Despite all the effort made today to de-stigmatize mental illness, the history of mental health and its treatment isn’t pretty. Even as late as the 1970s, lobotomies were widely practiced in the United States to “cure” things such as depression, anxiety, and even homosexuality. Now, imagine yourself in the late 1800s … let’s say around 1875. The germ theory of medicine had barely been worked out, let alone any sound understanding of the human mind and mental illness. People were still treated with bloodletting, mercury, and other dangerous practices. The definition of “insanity” was flexible, and often used to strip inconvenient family members of their money and land. Protections against being committed to an insane asylum in the late 1800s were few … and even fewer if you were a woman. With only the signature of a husband or a male guardian, women could be committed for the rest of their lives for “illnesses” that are now recognized as normal, healthy sexual behavior.
Complete Article HERE!
a pretty good looking guy, but a total wanker
Name: Anonymous
Gender: male
Age: 22
Location: Phoenix
Dear Dr. Dick, Im a pretty good looking guy, with a pretty average penis size, with a pretty average ego and confidence level. I am unable to make a first move. Whenever the situation rises, I become nervous as a little girl and the only thing I can think of is the awkwardness of rejection. Its really starting to throw me off balance when I cant get the physical attention I need, you know? It’s starting to make me think I’m gay also, which is totally fucking with my head. Help me out doc, what’s going on?
Well, anonymous, the fact that you couldn’t even bring yourself to put your own first name on this anonymous submission form, or even think up a plausible substitute marks you as a world-class wimp. And hey, here’s a tip, stop comparing your total lack of cojones to being a girl or being gay. You are neither — a girl don’t need no balls and gay men have ‘em. You, on the other hand, need to grow yourself a pair, pal!
So you’re 22, a pretty good-looking guy (or so you report) with an average sized dick (although I don’t see what that has to do with anything.), and yet you still are stumped on how to connect with a chick. Holy cow, did you miss junior high? Is there anything about you that women might find interesting? Are you intelligent, witty, fun to be with, a good conversationalist, sensitive, kind, a good cook, romantic…are you rich? Listen chum, you’re gonna need more to recommend you than bein’ pretty good lookin’ and a modest peanut.
“I can’t get the physical attention I need…” I’m gonna go way out on a limb here and guess you mean you can’t get laid, right? Maybe you need to work on your presentation. Because what self-respecting woman is gonna want to put out for someone as desperate as you. Start by getting off the pity-pot and learn to handle rejection. Don’t take it personal, rejection is just part of being a grownup. Also, jettison the notion that women are put here simply to satisfy men’s physical needs, that’s so freakin’ Neanderthal.
Put your pride aside and start connecting women as friends, not as potential sex partners. For most women, sex flows from intimacy. If you take the time to get to know a woman first, without that lean and hungry sex-starved look that I just know you have about you, you’ll find that, unless you are a totally dorky klutz, even you will get laid sooner or later.
Good luck
4 Stupid Female Masturbation Myths We Wish Would Disappear
Women may be more empowered about their sexuality than ever before, but there are still a few myths about female masturbation that just won’t die.
I still don’t understand why female masturbation is still shrouded by so much misinformation. We live in the age of information. Women are more empowered about their own sexuality than ever before. Yet, without fail, most TV shows and movies portray female masturbation as some mythical thing, one that often involves ridiculously impractical rituals that most women just don’t have time for. We need to clear this right up. I know that writing just one article isn’t going to magically remove the misinformation, but we have to start somewhere, right? Here area few incorrect assumptions I often see in the media and daily life about female masturbation.
We Make a “Night” Out of It
The biggest misinformation I see in the media is that when women masturbate we do shit like light candles, wear sexy things, maybe have a bath – you know make a “night” out of it.
What?! This is certainly worth doing, but it isn’t routine for any woman I know – nobody has time for that! Plus, women are perfectly capable of masturbating without any fanfare: before we sleep, when we wake up, because we’re bored, as a quickie before we leave the house. You know, just like men. The best part is that many of us can do it multiple times in a row, because multiple orgasms.
Complete Article HERE!
Men in Relationships Assume Their Girlfriends Don’t Want to Fuck
by Gabby Bess
According to a new study, this could be a good thing.
Sex is complicated, not least because it generally involves two people with varying wants and needs that don’t always match up—and aren’t always obvious. In the context of evolution, heterosexually speaking (sorry), men are characterized as pursers who are always down to bone down. Women, on the other hand, are considered more selective. Because of these caveman instincts, research has suggested, men—when dimly trawling bars or Tinder for mates—tend to over-perceive just exactly how interested a woman is in having sex with them so they don’t “miss out” on the rare opportunity to spread their seed.But does that perception last once these males enter into a long-term relationship? That’s the question Amy Miuse, a researcher at the University of Toronto who has the fun job of studying couples and sex, asked in a recent report. “All of the research on perceiving desire has been done on initial encounters; people meeting for the first time. In those studies, men tend to over-perceive the amount that a woman is sexually interested in them than the women tend to report. What we were interested in is what happens when people enter into an established relationship,” Miuse tells Broadly.
Muise and her team asked participating couples to complete individual background surveys about their sexual desire and subsequent surveys over a period of 21 days. For the most part, the lovers could accurately assess if their partner was in the mood or not. But the researchers discovered—surprisingly—that men in relationships consistently tend to think that their partners want to have less sex than they actually do. The reason for this, Muise said, is that latent under-perception of desire could have long-term benefits. While believing that your partner doesn’t want to have sex with you (accurately or not) could be a bummer for you in the short term, the researchers found that the partners of under-perceiving men reported higher relationship satisfaction and commitment.
It’s not entirely clear how under-perception bias explicitly leads to these positive associations, but Muise speculated that aside from the fact that it could lessen unwanted pressure on women to have sex, Muise says under-perception bias could also stop men from becoming complacent. “There’s still some more work to be done to figure out exactly what’s going on there. But one possibility is that perhaps when men are under-perceiving, they’re much more motivated to do things to entice their partner, make their partner feel good, and express their love and commitment to the relationship. And women are feeling more satisfied and committed as a result,” Muise says.
“For example, taking it outside of sexual desire, if I overestimate how much my partner loves me, I might just think that I can sit back and I that I don’t have to put in a lot of effort into the relationship because they’re already so much in love with me that it doesn’t really matter what I do. But if I were to under-perceive that slightly then maybe that can keep me a little bit more motivated to keep my partner’s interest,” she says. Under-perception bias could also serve to help minimize the risk of rejection.
Importantly, however, Muise explains that the tendency to under-percieve sexual desire isn’t gender specific. In most cases it corresponds to the partner with the higher sex drive. “The bias occurs in who tends to be more interested in having sex,” she says. Because of this, Muise theorizes that under-perception bias could be a mechanism to balance conflicting levels of sexual interest and maintain harmony in the relationship. “Theoretically, this would help to maintain the relationship overtime, but to have that evidence we would need to follow couples for a longer period of time,” she says.
Complete Article HERE!
Sex and the Nursing Home Resident
By Stacy Lloyd
A medical ethicist and a team of Australian researchers say nursing homes should not discourage residents from having sex.
Research by the Australian Centre for Evidence Based Aged Care, published in the Journal of Medical Ethics (JME), stated that sexual freedom is considered a fundamental human right by most Western societies.
While laws regarding consent and coercion must be abided, in general, people should be able to engage in sexual behavior whenever, and with whomever, they choose.
Nonetheless sexual relationships are often a no-no for many competent and healthy elderly people in residential aged care facilities, reported the New York Daily News.
Art Caplan, a medical Ethicist at the New York University Langone Medical Center, told Medscape that one of the reasons for this is that nursing homes are set up to give people very little privacy for legal and safety reasons.
FoxNews added concerns about “duty of care, anxieties about potential repercussions from relatives and ageism are other reasons nursing home staffs deny privacy or separate potential partners, according to the Australian researchers.”
New York Daily News said that nursing home staffs receive little training on the sex lives of the elderly, focusing primarily on their ability to make decisions and provide consent.
Many simply don’t look at the elderly as mature adults, but as children who must be policed.
For older people with dementia living in residential aged care facilities the issue becomes more complex, wrote the researchers in the JME.
However, the JME article added that even elderly people in the early stages of dementia still enjoy sexual relationships.
Researchers argued that even when a person receives a poor score on a mini mental state test which assesses cognitive impairment, they are often still capable of expressing preferences for a friend or lover, wrote FoxNews.
Intimate relationships can help lessen feelings of loss and loneliness that come with age, Robin Dessel, director of memory care services and sexual rights educator at the Hebrew Home at Riverdale in New York, told ABC News.
The good news is, in response to the topic of geriatric sex, some facilities such as the Hebrew Home are establishing policies to ensure staff support for residents’ rights, wrote AgingWell.com.
“Clinical staff needs to understand that elderly long-term care residents have very real sexual needs that might exceed what staff would consider their clinical needs,” Dessel told AgingWell.com.
Caplan believes this awkward topic of geriatric sex should be discussed by doctors with patients and families as someone prepares to enter a nursing home because, as he stated, sex is a part of old age.
Complete Article HERE!
But to be young was very heaven!
This is the first time I’ve asked a question and my boyfriend said this is a great place to go, soo here goes…
I recently went off of the anti-depressant medication Lexapro, and what’s fantastic about it is that my sex drive has gone way up. The downfall is since I started that, it’s hard for me to get hard and to come. Now that I am off of the medication, I can come easier and everything feels better and my boyfriend is happy, but it’s still really hard to get hard and stay hard. My boyfriend says he doesn’t mind when I know he does, and it is a really big hit on my confidence and self-esteem. Here’s the kicker, I am a 17-year-old teenage boy.
Is this permanent? Will it, in the future, be easier to get and stay hard the longer I am off the medication? I don’t know if this is normal or not, but I remember before having absolutely no problems. Help? Thank you so much!!
-Very Shy
Well, Very Shy, what I can say for certain is that anti-depressants, as well as a host of other commonly prescribed medications, and even some over the counter meds, can and do have a major impact on a person’s sexual response cycle. Let me begin by asking you; how familiar are you with the concept of a sexual response cycle?
Considering your youth, you may have not heard of it at all. So ok, here’s the 411 on that. We all have a sexual response cycle, each person’s is unique, but everyone’s follows a similar pattern of phases.
Phase 1: Excitement — this phase, which can last from a few minutes to several hours, includes the following:
- Muscle tension increases.
- Heart rate quickens and breathing accelerates.
- Skin may become flushed.
- Nipples become harden or erect.
- Blood flow to the genitals increases, which swells a woman’s clitoris and labia minora (inner lips), and a guy’s cock bones up.
- Vaginal lubrication begins.
- A woman’s breasts become fuller and her vaginal walls begin to swell.
- The man’s balls swell, his scrotum tightens, and he begins secreting precum.
Phase 2: Plateau — this phase, which extends to the brink of orgasm, includes the following:
- The changes begun in phase 1 intensify.
- A woman’s vagina continues to swell from increased blood flow, and her vaginal walls turn a dark purple.
- Her clitoris becomes highly sensitive and retracts under her clitoral hood.
- A guy’s nuts further withdraw up into his scrotum.
- Breathing, heart rate and blood pressure continue to rise.
- Muscle tension increases.
- Muscle spasms may begin in one’s feet, face and hands.
Phase 3: Orgasm — this is the climax of the sexual response cycle and it generally lasts only a few seconds. It includes the following:
- Involuntary muscle contractions begin.
- Blood pressure, heart rate and breathing are at their highest rates, with a rapid intake of oxygen.
- Muscles in the feet spasm.
- There is a sudden, forceful release of sexual tension.
- A women’s vagina contracts. She may experience rhythmic contractions in her uterus.
- The muscles at the base of a guy’s dick will rhythmically contract resulting in an ejaculation of his jizz.
- A sex flush may appear over one’s body.
Phase 4: Resolution
- The body slowly returns to its normal level of functioning, and swelled and erect body parts return to their previous size and color.
- There’s a general sense of well-being, enhanced intimacy and, often, fatigue. Women are capable of rapidly returning to the orgasm phase with further sexual stimulation and can experience multiple orgasms.
- Us men folk need recovery time after our orgasm. This is called a refractory period, during which we cannot reach orgasm again. The duration of the refractory period varies among men and changes with age.
With that behind us, I can turn my attention to your specific questions. At any point in this cycle there can be an interruption or break down. Like I said at the outset, some pharmaceuticals, as well as lots of over the counter remedies, can and do impede our sexual response.
You don’t mention how long you’ve been off the Lexapro, but I’ll wager it’s not long enough for it to have completely cleared your system. In that case, a little patience with yourself and perhaps a sense of humor about the whole thing will be the best therapy for you. I suspect that you will regain your sexual footing in time. However, a cockring may help you gain and retain an erection till that happens.
Good luck
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