We Be Gellin'

I love sex-related twofers, and there's yet another one in the works. This one is fantastic because it looks like it will not only help to prevent the spread of HIV (in conjunction with various medications), but will also be available cheaply—and quickly—to people in poorer countries.

It's applied topically to the vagina, and gives women the opportunity to protect themselves in areas of the world where they don't usually have the right to deny sex or the power to insist on a condom. It's a very sad truth that this is the case for some women in the world, and anything that empowers them or gives them means to protect themselves deserves attention and resources.

Read the story from the Washington Post here.

There's a Club For Everything

Some of you may have heard about this chastity club that a group of students at Princeton have set up. It's called the Anscombe Society, and their aim is to promote the choice to save themselves until marriage.

Fark.com labelled this story as "silly".

Okay, now what I think is silly (worse than silly, really), is that most of the members of this group are homophobes and pro-lifers. That's what bothers me. However, the idea of a chastity club doesn't. Though I'm not necessarily someone who would encourage saving yourself until marriage, and I think that it's important that everyone be sex-positive, we all have to remember that chastity or abstinence is a choice, and one that everyone is free to make.

Anything like that only becomes a problem if it's forced onto others through, say, government-funded sex education programs.
I should really call them lack of sex-education programs.
Oooh, snap! Take that government.

Anyway, don't be all judging the people who don't want to have sex. Let them do what they want to do.

Read the story here, from Yahoo.com.

Image from www.beaublue.co.uk, where you can buy this cute little chastity bear.

Flipping Fetishes

Did you know that a kleptophiliac is someone who is aroused by stealing?
Or that claustrophilia is getting pleasure from being confined in a tight space?
I didn't either (sexuality works in mysterious and fascinating ways).

But you know who does know this and many similar facts? Sue Johanson! The Canadian queen of not-blushing-while-talking

-about-all-things-blushable has a great fetish flip 'n match game on her Oxygen network website. You can play it here.

What's better? Playing, learning AND fetishes all rolled into one!
Miraculous.
It's like the PayDay of online games (PayDays have chocolate, caramel AND peanuts).

And, may I just say that her expressions in the pictures on the site are fantastic.
Sometimes she looks like she's thinking "I don't know how the hell I got here..." and other times she looks like she is still figuring out how to smile. I love her though. She, and what she's doing to bring safe and fun sexuality into the spotlight, is great. It makes me warm inside to know that when she was working as a nurse, she was encountering young people (and adults) who were so clearly confused and misinformed about sex that she felt compelled to try and help educate them.

Good on her. And good on anyone else who tries to do the same.

ps: Thanks Reader S for pointing out that I really should be posting more. I apologize to those of you who come looking for new content when there is none. I will do my best to improve my posting habits.

Tiny image from www.oxygen.com.

You Say You Want a Revolution?

Though I don’t think I’d say that girls having sex younger is necessarily a ‘revolution’, an interesting study is claiming that teenage girls are leading the way when it comes to breaking down sexual taboos.

Based on data gathered from the 1940s to 1999, the authors of the study have concluded that girls are having more pre-marital sex, the average age of first intercourse (for girls) is 15 and that oral sex is more common now than ever before.

I think there are a number of factors involved in this stuff, more than are outlined in this story from NBC, but I’m glad to see, for once, an article that discusses this issue (even if briefly), without pressing the panic button repeatedly.

There’s an instinct to believe that because things are happening younger, our culture is clearly on a moral decline. I don’t think that’s true. I think the fact that puberty is happening younger has something to do with it. I think pornography has something to do with it (and not a bad something either). And, as the researchers point out: birth control and cultural acceptance also play a role.

If you ask me, the first thing that should come to mind when looking at these figures is: why the heck, then, aren’t we more adamant about extensive sex-education? I’ve said it before, I will say it again: young adults are going to have sex. The best thing adults can do for them is make sure they know how to do it safely. And, guess what? Abstinence-only sex-ed ain’t going to cut the mustard here folks.
No mustard will be cut.

Also interesting to note: study researcher Jean Twenge points out that TV (shows like Dawson’s Creek and OC) hasn’t been much of a factor in encouraging teens to have sex younger. Rather, it’s a case of TV reflecting what’s going on in the world of teens. Here, here.