Posts Tagged ‘Sex’
The Lure of the Vampire
Julie Steinberg for the Wall Street Journal:
If you step out of your house late Thursday night, you’ll witness an overwhelming scene. At 12:01 a.m., movie theaters will release “New Moon,” the next film in the “Twilight” series. Anxious viewers will finally discover whether mortal Bella Swan will choose Jacob’s werewolf den over Edward’s sparkly coffin. Clearly, creatures of the night have returned to societal consciousness.
As a testament to their adaptability, vampires are front and center on the pop-culture stage. Television shows such as “True Blood” and “The Vampire Diaries” feature titillating exchanges between fanged supermodels. Movies like “Twilight,” “Let the Right One In” and “Blood: The Last Vampire” explore vampirism through teenage, independent and gore-tinted lenses, respectively. Even the BBC can’t withstand Bram Stoker’s lure, and has come up with “Being Human,” a show that focuses on three housemates who happen to be ghost, werewolf and vampire.
What accounts for this 21st-century obsession? …
United States Has Highest Rates of Sex Diseases In Developed World
Maggie Fox reports on the continuing spread of sexually transmitted diseases in the United States for Reuters:
American squeamishness about talking about sex has helped keep common sexually transmitted infections far too common, especially among vulnerable teens, U.S. researchers reported Monday.
Latest statistics on chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis show the three highly treatable infections continue to spread in the United States.
“Chlamydia and gonorrhea are stable at unacceptably high levels and syphilis is resurgent after almost being eliminated,” said John Douglas, director of the division of sexually transmitted diseases at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“We have among the highest rates of STDs of any developed country in the world,” Douglas added in a telephone interview…
Bees Fight to Death Over Females
By Matt Walker of BBC Earth News:
It is rare for any species of animal to regularly kill its own in combat. However, male Dawson’s bees, one of the world’s largest bee species, are so aggressive that they kill each other en masse in a bid to mate with females.
The bees enter a frenzy of fighting, and by the time their deadly combat is over, every male bee is either killed or has perished. The extreme behaviour, which can lead to even females being killed, is caught on film by a BBC natural history crew.
Video on BBC Earth News
Evangelist Sentenced to 175 Years for Taking Child Brides
JON GAMBRELL writes on the AP via Yahoo News:
Evangelist Tony Alamo used his stature as a self-proclaimed prophet to force underage girls into sham marriages with him, controlling his followers with their fears of eternal suffering.
But the judge who sentenced Alamo on Friday to 175 years in prison for child sexual abuse warned of another kind of justice awaiting the aging evangelist. “Mr. Alamo, one day you will face a higher and a greater judge than me,” U.S. District Judge Harry F. Barnes told the preacher. “May he have mercy on your soul.”
Barnes leveled the maximum sentence against the 75-year-old, who preyed on followers’ young daughters and took child “brides” as young as age 8. A jury convicted Alamo in July on a 10-count indictment accusing him of taking the…
Florida Man Arrested for Calling 911, Asking for Sex
On the AP:
Florida police say a man arrested for repeatedly calling 911 looking for sex claimed it was the only number he could dial after running out of cell phone minutes. Tampa police said 29-year-old Joshua Basso made sexual comments to the 911 dispatcher and asked if he could come to her house. Investigators say she hung up, but he called back four more times.
He was arrested about 15 minutes later at his home late Wednesday and charged with making a false 911 call. Basso reportedly told officers that he didn’t think he would get in trouble for calling 911.
Tampa jail records show Basso is being held without bond but don’t indicate whether he has an attorney. He is listed as unemployed with arrests for theft and other crimes dating…
Scientist Announces that she is Call Girl and Blogger Belle de Jour
From the Guardian:
One of the best kept literary secrets of the decade was revealed last night when 34-year-old scientist Dr Brooke Magnanti announced she was the writer masquerading as call girl Belle de Jour.
The author behind the bestselling books detailing her secret life as a prostitute decided to come out to one of her fiercest critics, Sunday Times columnist India Knight, after claiming anonymity had become “no fun”. “I couldn’t even go to my own book launch party”, she said.
Until last week, even her agent was unaware of her name. But now Magnanti, a respected specialist in developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology in a hospital research group in Bristol, has spoken of the time six years ago she worked as a £300 an hour prostitute working through a London escort…
“Restless Vagina Syndrome”: Big Pharma’s Newest Fake Disease
From Alternet:
It’s not your fault, ladies (and certainly not your partner’s), that you don’t orgasm every time you have intercourse, or that you lack the libido of a 17-year-old boy. You have a disease: female sexual dysfunction (FSD), and the pharmaceutical industry wants to help.
You are among the “43 percent of American women [who] experience some degree of impaired sexual function,” according to a Journal of the American Medical Association article. The FDA’s evolving definition of FSD includes decreased desire or arousal, sexual pain and orgasm difficulties — but only if the woman feels “personal distress” about it.
So, convincing women to feel distress is a key component of the drug company strategy to market a multi-billion-dollar pill that will cure billions of women of what may not ail them.
By promoting…
New Warning on ‘Perfect Vaginas’
From the very staid and proper 
BBC:
Women are undergoing surgery to create perfect genitalia amid a “shocking” lack of information on the potential risks of the procedure, a report says.
Research published in the British Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology also questions the very notion of aesthetically pleasing genitals.
Operations to improve the appearance of the sex organs for both psychological and physical reasons are on the rise.
But surgeons said the report overplayed the risks of an established procedure.
Researchers from University College London reviewed all the existing studies on cosmetic labial surgery – which generally involves reducing the amount of tissue that protrudes from the lips which cover the vagina. They found there had been little work to document any longer-term side effects…
Artificial Penis Tissue Proves Promising in Lab Tests
A perfect prurient story for Fox News:
One day artificial penis tissue could be grown to help men, new findings in rabbits now suggest.
After implantation with replacement tissue, lab rabbits that once had damaged penises had working organs and could produce offspring.
“Further studies are required, of course, but our results are encouraging and suggest that the technology has considerable potential for patients who need penile reconstruction,” said researcher Dr. Anthony Atala, director of Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center’s Institute for Regenerative Medicine in Winston-Salem, N.C.
Such methods could potentially aid men who just want to enhance their normal penises, rather than repairing any damage.
“Our intent and the goal of our work is to provide a solution for men who need penile erectile tissue for medical reasons,” Atala told LiveScience. “Of course,…
British Women Claims to Have Two Vaginas
Darragh Worland writes on Tonic:
This story is so peculiar and conjures so many images and questions that we just couldn’t resist mentioning it. Model-turned-talk-show host Tyra Banks had what she called an “international exclusive” interview on her Tyra show Friday with a woman who says she was born with two vaginas.
Yes, you heard right!
Banks opens the interview by saying, “It’s already tough enough having one vagina, and you have two. So, OK: two of everything?”
Lauren, 29, whose last name isn’t mentioned, seems to have a good attitude about her double trouble. She answers Banks’ questions without embarrassment, admitting that she “thinks” she has two periods given that hers last a whopping 21 days. Yikes! (More on Tonic)
In Defense of Porn
Nick P at Black Sun Gazette
I’ll preface this article by saying that I’m not a huge fan of porn. Seeing a Max Hardcore movie when you’re twelve years old will do that to you. That said, I’ve always been a little bewildered at the degree to which otherwise rational adults become reduced to the level of (prepare for hard trolling) feminists calling for Roman Polanski’s blood or whatever metaphor you prefer. Despite the repeated protestations of self-described “progressives” who claim that not everyone opposed to porn is an uptight, anti-sex, self-loathing bigot, I really can’t think of any reason other than morality that one would oppose (this is different from simply not enjoying it) pornography per se.
The Sex-Housework Link
A surprising report in the Wall Street Journal of all places:
Housework may seem like the ultimate romance-killer. But guess what?
A new study shows that for husbands and wives alike, the more housework you do, the more often you are likely to have sex with your spouse.
Earlier studies have hinted at this connection for men; the sight of a husband mopping the floor or doing dishes sparks affection in the hearts of many wives. But the more-housework-equals-more-sex link for wives, documented in a study of 6,877 married couples published online recently in the Journal of Family Issues, is a surprise.
Scrubbing the floor is no aphrodisiac, and seeing your spouse doing it usually isn’t either. “My husband loves doing laundry, yet I don’t get any thrill out of his doing it,” says Chicago…
For and Against Foreskin
In what might just might be the most comprehensive glossy magazine coverage devoted to foreskins ever, New York Magazine includes a slew of articles including:
- Would You Circumcise This Baby? Why a growing number of parents are saying no to the procedure.
- Anatomy of a Circumcision: What, precisely, does the procedure entail?
- What Your Sex Partners Think: Uncensored thoughts on the pros and cons of cut versus uncut lovers.
- One Man, Both Ways: The real difference, according to someone who’s been cut and uncut.
And, believe it or not, a whole lot more about foreskins. In New York Magazine…
