Web Log Archives: February 16, 2003 - February 22, 2003
Saturday, February 22, 2003
At Scarlet Letters, Anna Mills writes about writing and sexual identity.
Julie Burchill writes, I'm fat. So what? "My friend, because she's single, self-disciplined and hard-working, has lost loads of weight and now looks quite like Reese Witherspoon. Me, because I'm smugly attached, terminally self-indulgent and bone idle, I've lost half a stone in the whole two years and still look quite like the After photograph in an imaginary and self-defeating advert demonstrating the effect of too many Reese's Peanut Butter Cups on the middle-aged female human body. But we are equally happy with our progress, for different reasons. My friend's happy because she can get into size 12 jeans; I'm happy because I'm still only a size 18."
A sex education row has broken out in Great Britain. The Times reports on the debate in this widely-linked article, tendentiously and inaccurately headlined "Government urges under-16s to experiment with oral sex." Inside the article, we read:
The scheme, which has been pioneered by Exeter University and is backed by the Departments of Health and Education, trains teachers to discuss various pre-sex “stopping points” with under-age teenagers.
It aims to reduce promiscuity by encouraging pupils to discover “levels of intimacy”, including oral sex, instead of full sexual intercourse.
More than 100,000 children are now taking the course at one in every thirty secondary schools. It forms part of efforts to tackle Britain’s teenage pregnancy rate, which is the highest in Western Europe.
So the headline might just as well read, "Government urges under-16s to wait on intercourse." Nothing in the article suggests that sex education teachers using this program are "urging" kids to have oral sex. The Guardian article about the controversy quotes the program's director.
But John Rees, leader of A Pause, which is now running in 100 schools across the country, defended the project, saying it empowered young people and enabled them to understand their relationships and make better decisions.
He said: "Once you get past the titillating headlines, there is solid support for our programme. We shouldn't lose sight that amongst all this furore this is the only programme in Europe that has actually worked."
Research published in the British Medical Journal in 1995 showed that the programme had cut the rates of unprotected sex a year after pupils had completed the course.
"We want to promote the positive aspects of relationships - emotional and physical," added Mr Rees. "It's very easy for young people to presume that all 16-years-olds are sexually active; the important thing is to get them to talk about what makes a good relationship. We show them how to stop being swooped along in a tide of passion, or assuming that everyone else is doing it. We want them to resist unwanted pressure."
Sounds reasonable to me. Pretending that teenagers are asexual beings, who must be kept ignorant of sex lest that information corrupt them, is stupid and cruel.
Friday, February 21, 2003
The Sydney Morning Herald has a short interview with Eve Ensler about the Vagina Monologues/V-Day phenomenon. Later this year, Ensler "will start performing her new work, The Good Body, another series of monologues, this time based on interviews with women about the ways in which they shape, mutilate, hide and fix their bodies." (Link snagged from Evie's Erotic Miscellanea.)
Josey Vogels talks sensibly and nostalgicly about sex and pot.
Oh baby, run don't walk to check out:
Reverse Cowgirl Nude!!!
If that doesn't send my search engine hits through the roof, nothing will.
A Montana state legislator has introduced a bill that "would accord gay couples all the legal privileges of heterosexual couples and remove the requirement that marriages take place between a man and a woman." Alas, it has very little chance of passing.
Naked kidnap fantasy sparks police raid. "Canadian police in a frantic search for an abducted woman dispatched a SWAT team to her home before officers on a routine patrol across town found her naked and bound in the back of a car. But police in Edmonton, Alberta, soon realised they had a problem -- she did not want to be rescued."
A new study finds that dating among American teenagers has declined over the last decade. One expert quoted here says, "Teens may not be hanging out any less, but doing things they are less likely to call dates."
Thursday, February 20, 2003
Take the "despot or sexpot?" quiz. "Can you tell the difference between a selection of murderous, human rights-abusing dictators and some Hollwood porn legends, simply by examining their moustaches?"
Very cool, kinky, surreal drawings by Yoshifumi Hayashi currently on display at Mondo Bizzarro. Check out their gallery section for very cool, kinky work by other artists. (Link via Six Different Ways and Reverse Cowgirl.)
Rachel Kramer Bussel reviews Betty Dodson's new book, Orgasms for Two: The Joy of Partnersex.
The men at Ask Men ask, Has porn gone mainstream?
The state of Nevada is weighing a tax on legal brothels as part of a proposed new 7% tax on "entertainment and admissions." The bill currently does not list brothels under either covered industries ("movies, professional sporting events, adult cabarets, strip clubs, art galleries and beauty contests") or exempt industries ("massage, yoga, recreational rentals and golf"). A brothel lobbyist argues that they should be exempt: "I don't look at sex as either an amusement or an admission. It's a needed social service that I think falls in the same category as therapeutic massage or physical therapy or is in the same class as chiropractors."
Oliver Willis has put the first two chapters of his unpublished novel Valley Girl online. According to the author, "Valley Girl is a thriller about what happens when an adult film star becomes the object of affection for a diabolical senator. It's not based on a true story, though it could be."
Very interesting New York Times article about crossdressing in Iran. "In a country where girls and women are required to cover their heads and conceal the shape of their bodies from the age of puberty, some girls have taken to disguising themselves as boys. They cut their hair short, wear loose-fitting clothes and speak as little as possible. It is not an act of rebellion by Westernized feminists determined to buck the system and cast off the headscarf. Rather, it is a growing phenomenon mainly among lower-class runaways who believe that the disguise gives them a degree of freedom and protection they could not enjoy as girls."
Forbidden Love Challenges Rules in China. Two college students were expelled for violating a ban on sex before marriage. "Instead of breaking up and returning home in shame like countless young couples before them, Ma and Lin decided to fight back. They called reporters and took their college to court. In doing so, these 19-year-old sophomores at the Chongqing University of Post and Telecom touched off a rare public debate about sex, privacy and traditional values in this rapidly modernizing society. On television and the Internet, in newspapers across the country, people in China have been discussing what one sympathetic commentator described as 'a simple story of love and courage.'" (Link snagged from Amygdala.)
Wednesday, February 19, 2003
GirlScent — "Sexy vagina aroma in a bottle!" (Link snagged from Attu Sees All.)
Three Jordanians from the newspaper al-Hilal have been sentenced to jail terms for publishing an article about the Prophet Muhammad's sex life. This BBC article lists the specific charges as insulting Islam, damaging the prestige of the state, destabilising society, propagating perversity and circulating false rumours. "The article, entitle Aisha in the Prophet's Home, focussed on the Muhammad's relationship with his wives, and Aisha in particular. . . . The article said Aisha was the only virgin among the prophet's many wives and mentioned that with her the prophet had attained the sexual vigour of '40 men'."
Comic book shocker: Wonder Woman will lose her virginity after sixty years in an upcoming issue. Writer/penciller Phil Jimenez, who took over the title recently, says, "The character is almost 30 years old and if she is supposed to exemplify a certain type of woman or idea, I certainly think that empowering her when it comes to sexual choices is important. If it's still allowed to happen and all goes well, it will happen in the summer and I think that it'll be less of an event than people think it'll be." Found via Metafilter.
Moxie breaks down the Joe Millionaire finale.
Petra Zebroff and Kelly Wanika list the most common sexual fantasies among men and women.
Tuesday, February 18, 2003
Interesting AP article on whether aphrodisiac foods really exist. "They're known as the foods that get you in the mood. But experts say dark chocolate, chili peppers and raw oysters have no more power to arouse than a heap of cooked broccoli."
Penn State students held their fourth annual Sex Faire over the weekend. Two years ago, a state legislator protested the use of university facilities for Sex Faire and proposed cutting state funding to the PSU because of the event (more here if you're interested), but the annual event has continued without incident since then.
The Guardian runs a special section on AIDS in Africa, in particular the growing pressure on drug companies to make treatments more accessible in poor countries. Also, these articles appeared in American newspapers recently:
A continent in crisis. "As AIDS and HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, become more common, the effects of the disease in Africa are spreading into virtually every aspect of society. Education is diminished, poverty is increased, health care systems are ravaged and economic development is stymied."
In S. Africa, health and hope grow. "This clinic offers a rare glimmer of hope in South Africa, which has more people infected with HIV than any other country. The vast majority of AIDS patients die here because they cannot afford the life-extending medicines more common in the West. But over the last two years, the number of private initiatives offering free or low-cost AIDS drugs has slowly but steadily increased."
AIDS took their parents, then their childhoods. "Across southern Africa, a generation of parents is dying. Many of their orphan children are heading families. Others are growing up without the traditional lessons passed down from parent to child, including the farming skills that could help them cope with future emergencies."
Focus on sexual 'hubs' helps Senegal control its HIV rate. "Prostitution was legalized in Senegal in 1969, and today the government tolerates it as long as each prostitute registers with the state, is 21 or older and regularly visits a center run by the Ministry of Health for checkups, education and medical treatment. And that's a big reason why this West African nation of 10.5 million, according to the World Health Organization, has an HIV infection rate of about 2 percent while many of its nearest neighbors face much higher rates."
HIV researchers assess work. "The world's top HIV researchers ... find themselves in 2003 working on two, sometimes contradictory, tracks. They are trying to push the intellectual envelopes of biology to find better treatments, a vaccine, even a cure. At the same time, they are trying to figure out how to use imperfect drugs invented nearly a decade ago to save their patients and millions of the world's poor. The longer AIDS clinicians treat American and European HIV patients, the more complicated their care becomes. New side effects, such as heart attacks and strokes, have emerged. The virus' ability to mutate and escape drug therapy is presenting endless challenges and controversies."
Redefining masculinity in era of HIV/Aids. "What does it mean to be a man in Southern Africa? How do young men perceive themselves as single men, husbands, fathers and breadwinners? How do these perceptions interact with the HIV/AIDS pandemic in a context of poverty and unemployment? These and related topics were discussed at a regional conference on men and HIV/AIDS held last week in Pretoria, South Africa."
Elizabeth Manus asks, "Dating demographics increasingly favor women -- so where are all the books about the lonely single guy?"
In The Sun: It's Christina Ogle-rear-a!
Monday, February 17, 2003
The San Francisco Chronicle ran a two-part feature yesterday and today about international efforts to thwart child sex tourism.
Lakshmi Chaudhry writes about the difficulty of maintaining a sex life after marriage, especially with young children. "Married couples are the designated losers in our hormone-obsessed culture. Our sex life seems to be in perpetual jeopardy, in danger of dwindling into either mechanical routine or total extinction. Various experts periodically issue dire warnings about the dismal state of affairs, often proposing a number of daring and spectacular measures to avert the looming crisis. Alas, the prognosis is grimmer than ever."
Cynthia Plaster Caster has a scrolling thumbnailed gallery of notable casts from her brilliant (and ongoing) career memorializing rockstars' equipment.
The descriptions on individual item pages are great.
Jimi's pubes got stuck in the mold because I didn't lube them enough. I spent the next 15 minutes pulling out each individual hair one by one, while he had intercourse with just the right sized repository — his negative impression! This unexpected delay made him late for his show that evening, where he was seen scratching his crotch a lot onstage.
Big! Bold! Bountiful! Beauteous! What we're talking about are the bazookas of Margaret Doll Rod — just begging to be — beholden. Her casts are so enormous that it's advisable to use extra-strength picture hangers when mounting. I really don't know how the petite Margaret gets around without a crane. Much less, rocks out onstage the way she does. All I know is that her tits are for real, and that I didn't cast plastic in plaster. The girl's got SuperBoobs!
More about Cynthia Plaster Caster. (Link snagged from Geisha asobi.)
Excellent collection of vintage cowgirl pinups.
Everyone loves cowgirls. (Link snagged from
Presurfer.)
48 sexual positions demonstrated by Barbieish dolls. The pixellation masking is a touch of genius. (Link snagged from the superfabulous Geisha asobi.)
Sunday, February 16, 2003
Last Valentine's Day link — Mark Morford explores the holiday's decidedly unhallmarkesque origins. "Hot pagan sex and lustful gods and ancient wolf goddesses and potential marriage and more sex and more than a little crazed giddy divine animal blood sacrifice."
