We don't like to talk about teenage girls and sex. Sure, we see it everywhere. Teenage girls in provocative clothing flood the media. They have sex on Gossip Girl and Glee. And they definitely have sex on reality shows like the The Real World and 16 and Pregnant. But when we discuss adolescent girls and sex, it is only in one way: don't have sex. This is easier than anything else. We tell teenage girls to stay away from sexual behavior and to practice abstinence. Don't have sex, we say, because we don't like to imagine them having sex. If they do, then we have to think of them as sexual creatures, and that makes us squirm.

In fact, much of the promiscuity among young women, both heterosexual and homosexual, is likely to go undetected because it makes therapists uncomfortable. When I appeared on Dr Phil to discuss two teen girls whose parents were unhappy they were having sex, the tagline next to the girls' names when they were on screen was "sexually active," as though that was a disorder or a crime of some sort. Read More >>

The author of Better Than I Ever Expected is back with a new book, Naked at Our Age: Talking Out Loud About Senior Sex (Seal Press), inspired by the many readers who wrote to her asking about how to deal with issues ranging from vulvar pain to breakups, illnesses such as cancer and Alzheimer’s, as well as “dating while older,” erectile dysfunction, divorce, grief, even hiring people for sex or erotc touch. The tone of the book is supportive but realistic; Price isn’t telling seniors to expect to have the exact same kinds or frequency of sex, but instead that if you’re adaptable, sex can continue (with yourself and others) for one’s entire lifetime.

Throughout the book, Price and a series of experts such as Charlie Glickman, Lou Paget, Carol Queen, and Candida Royalle offer tips related to specific queries in concise, practical responses. Price is a big sex toy advocate as well. “When I review a sex toy on my blog, I concentrate on what it does well (or is supposed to do well!), and how well it works from a senior perspective. e.g. It shouldn’t hurt arthritic wrists; it should last as long as we need without overheating or turning itself off, and more.” Read More >>

Sex after kids: The art of the quickie

Of 10,000 new parents surveyed by Babytalk, 66 percent report they were happy with their pre-baby sex life; only 24 percent are happy with their post-baby sex life. In response, sex educator Ian Kerner at Good in Bed advocates "the art of the quickie:"

Quickies don’t necessarily have to lead to orgasm, and they don’t even have to be wholly sexual. [...]

“Little quickies are a great way to get our adrenaline going,” writes Naughty Mommy blogger [and author of Confessions of a Naughty Mommy: How I found My Lost Libido], Heidi Raykeil: “From handjobs to frisky playful exhibitionism, to just taking a moment to feel each other up, quickies are a way of re-connecting and building up a reserve of sexual anticipation. Taking the big O out as a ‘goal’ really leaves more room for playful, fun stuff - as long as we know we can get that other fulfillment later.”

Smut Capital of America (Trailer) from Michael Stabile on Vimeo.

"When the climate of the sexual revolution was at its most heated, catching a porno flick was as natural to the dating ritual as the man picking up the check ... Smut Capital of America is about this very phenomenon" (SF Appeal).

In 1969, as the sexual revolution gathered steam, San Francisco effectively decriminalized hardcore pornography. It was the first city in the US to do so, and it turned San Francisco into a boom town for sex, and eventually launched a theatrical revolution that stretched form Times Square to Hollywood Boulevard. Smut Capital talks to the theater owners, film producers, and stars in an attempt to recreate a revolution that wasn't televised, but screened. (Smut Capital of America)

The film features candid interviews with among others John Waters. The filmmakers are looking to make Smut Capital of America into a full length documentary about the birth of hard core in San Francisco by talking to the people who were there.

Sexuality education programmes can be highly cost-effective, especially when compulsory, adapted from existing models and integrated into the mainstream school curriculum. This is the major conclusion emerging from a seminal study released by UNESCO during a meeting of the UNAIDS Inter-Agency Task Team on Education in New York on 27 April 2011.

The study, Cost and cost-effectiveness: Analysis of school-based sexuality education programmes in six countries, examines a range of programmes in Estonia, India, Indonesia, Kenya, the Netherlands and Nigeria. It highlights significant cost savings in a number of settings. It also shows that compulsory programmes are more cost-effective as they reap the benefits and greater impact of full coverage of the student population. Read More >>

Midsummer "mayhole" revolution

During this weekend's Midsummer celebration in Sweden, a growing number of feminists will be dancing around a "mayhole" instead of the traditional maypole. Rejecting the latter as a symbol of the sexist phallic penis, the movement seeks to replace it with a feminine symbol.

Kinsey Confidential

The Center for Sexual Health Promotion is recruiting participants for their new study examining attitudes toward bisexual men and women.

Explains the project coordinator for the Center about the background for the survey:

Alfred Kinsey was the first to acknowledge that sexuality may be fluid rather than simply dichotomous ... However, attitudes toward bisexuality have been varied, with some believing it is just a transition period before one comes out as gay or lesbian and others strongly disagreeing with this idea and being more accepting of the range of sexual and relationship preferences that exist.

Ever read the sex tips in Cosmo and thought “seriously, I am not a yoga master, how the hell am I supposed to do that position” or thought “wow, are the only people who have experimental sex skinny?” I know I’ve certainly scoffed at sex position cards that suggested acrobatics that would qualify me for the Olympics!

It’s really sad when you look up “fat sex how to” or “bbw sex guide” it only takes about 5 entries before you get to either degrading porn or weight loss tips. Ugh. And then, of course, there’s all the body-negative bullshit to wade through. Way to remove sexual agency from fat people! Read More >>

Why is the art of removing cool home-made outfits to retro music so rarely performed by men? Burlesque writer Claire Doble investigates the emerging male burlesque scene, and examines the issues it faces....

Burlesque, at its best, is cheeky, entertaining and in an increasingly airbrushed world, real. The wobbling thigh, the dodgy tattoo, the home-made costume – something we can each identify with as human beings. Nude human bodies are both beautiful and fascinating, and it seems about time that both women and men are becoming increasingly bored with the cliché that the male form is silly-looking and awkward compared with the female form.
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Marilyn Monroe, who would have been 85 years old today and arguably still the most iconic sex symbol, apparently had a very surprising secret: The inability to orgasm! ... She was rescued from this horror by learning how to masturbate. Difficult to believe, but I actually have something in common with Marilyn! ... Sadly, masturbation has been much maligned in our society, especially when it involves its practice by women. As a disabled woman with a progressive disease, I can assure you that I have ONLY been able to hold onto my sexuality — at all — because of masturbation.

Solo sex (and it is REAL sex) allows me to function when partner-sex is too physically difficult, if not downright impossible at times because of my disease, and some of the medications I take. Masturbation protects and reinforces my Divine birthright as an honestly sensual, sexual woman. Read More >>

One of the most common questions that sex educators hear is “am I normal?” A lot of people feel incredible amounts of anxiety when they imagine that they aren’t normal, especially when it comes to sex. That has plenty of consequences for people’s sex lives and relationships. Ironically, it’s rooted in what I call the Myth of the Normal, rather than how things really are.

I’m sure you’ve seen the magazines that offer articles with headlines like “Am I Normal Down There?” I’ve lost track of how many sex advice columns and books I’ve read that talk about sex as if there’s one way to do it or experience it. And of course, many of the ongoing debates arguments about homosexuality, polyamory, BDSM, and gender diversity are fueled by the difficulty some folks have with people who are “abnormal.” Read More >>

Teen Sexuality in a Culture of Confusion

Teen Sexuality in a Culture of Confusion is an online text and photo documentary profiling eight young people who share their personal experiences and outlooks on body-image, gender identity, peer pressure, family, religion, and their decisions about how and when to act on their own sexuality. Two of the eight talk about living with AIDS.

The personal stories are a moving means of growing awareness about the complex issues that surround sex. As Raphael says:

Sexuality is a very powerful and important thing, whether we like to believe it or not, and it's important to find out what your sexuality is, to find out who you are, how do you fit into this vast salad bowl of life.

Raphael

!Women Art Revolution elaborates on the relationship of the Feminist Art Movement and the 1960s anti-war and civil rights movements, featuring women daring the cultural establishment with place settings depicting vaginas, and creating political organizations and protests, alternative art spaces, publications, and landmark installations of public art that ultimately developed new ways of thinking about the complexities of gender, race, class, and sexuality.

!Women Art Revolution is made by director Lynn Hershman Leeson who has collected hundreds of hours of interviews with visionary artists, historians, curators and critics who have shaped the beliefs and values of the Feminist Art Movement.

In a post that’s (hopefully) due to hit the mainstream press and cause public outrage, Reddit user Pixel8 posted the horrifying first-person story of a teenager named Xandir who was forcibly abducted from her home, publicly restrained, and transported to a program for “troubled teens” where she and others were psychologically and physically threatened and tortured as “treatment” — solely, or at the very least primarily, because she is gay. Read More >>

"Chicago State's Attorney Lets Bad Cops Slide, Prosecutes Citizens Who Record Them," reported the Huffington Post earlier this month. The article refers to the case of 20-year-old Tiawanda Moore who was arrested last summer after reporting to internal affairs investigators that an officer, who was called to her apartment on a domestic-violence complaint, groped her breast and handed her his personal phone number. Her crime? Recording her conversation with the investigators.

At least 1 in 6 women in the U.S. will be raped in their lifetime. An estimated 1 in 10 rape victims are male, and studies have suggested that 1 in 2 transgender people will be sexually assaulted. But unless a rape fits the FBI’s 82-year-old definition, “The carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will,” it will never be counted in the FBI’s annual Uniform Crime Report (UCR).*

Ms. Magazine has launched a No More Excuses! campaign to update the definition of rape used by the FBI, which still uses "an impossibly narrow and outmoded definition of 'forcible' rape to gather its statistics."

Barcelona Sex Project (2008) by Barcelona-based Erika Lust affirms the natural joy and sexiness of women and men masturbating. Shot as a documentary featuring three women and three men, we first get a sense of their everyday lives and likes through one-on-one interviews, before we see them masturbate individually for the camera. Both the interviews and the masturbation scenes are shot in a more subdued style than Lust’s short films, further emphasized by the white backdrop and minimalist furniture used for this documentary.

Lust is among a new generation of women creating films that feature women masturbating. Read more about them here.

The United States is one of the most sexually conservative countries in the industrial world. In 2002, 42 percent of Americans told pollsters that homosexuality was morally wrong. Only 16 percent of Italians, 13 percent of the French, and 5 percent of Spaniards felt that way. (Marriage, A Historyby Stephanie Coontz, 276)

That said,

even in America attitudes toward homosexuality have changed immensely over the past fifteen years ... And ironically, as views have polarized over the question of whether gays and lesbians should be able to use the word marriage to describe their relationships, the once-radical demand for same-sex civil unions has become a compromise position. "Let them have the same rights as me and my wife," one businessman told me. "Just don't call it marriage." (274-75)

While teaching women’s studies at a college in town a few years ago, and discussing genital self-examination with my female students, I remember several saying they would never do that; they would never look at themselves “down there,” – why would they?

As Suzann Gage who runs Progressive Health Services in San Diego, California, explains, there are in fact many important reasons for young women to know their bodies, in particular in a culture where women are bombarded by ideals for how their bodies—including their genitals—should look. Where women beneath the gynecologist’s white sheets can be made to feel bad for the way even their cervix appears.