Sex Positive

Snoop and Gorrie—who plays a reluctant dad—chat about fatherly responsibility and the birds and the bees. As the Lion so sagely puts it to the young man looking to shirk his paternal duty, "This is the part of the story where the bird gets pregnant, smart ass. But they don't teach you this sh-t in school."

The truth is slowly dawning on American women that those dear men, perhaps husbands, fathers, or grandfathers, are demonstrating a lack in their education, specifically in their sex-ed, whether it was taught to them by their own fathers, older brothers, or the big boys who stood out on the street corners of their home towns. The poor fellows simply don't know any better! However, they are more than happy to display their ignorance at every opportunity. All one has to do is to stick a microphone in their faces and start asking them questions about some of the foremost debates of the day.

Thus, this old lady, being immune to the fear of death and too jaded to worry about any retaliation, will undertake the task of informing them of those lessons they missed. First, they are not to blame. Traditionally, the sex education of boys has fallen to either fathers or gym coaches -- most of whom suffered from the same ignorance of the subject or were too embarrassed to discuss the topic with the wide-open and expectant faces of the pubescent boys who were so eager to learn. I'm not talking about the "how-to" of the subect. That comes naturally and few boys require any assistance in mastering it.

Where are people most unfaithful? Who uses sex toys? On a darker level, where is child rape more prevalent? French geographers have tried to answer these questions and others in a global atlas on sexuality.

From legislation and the dynamics of couples to prostitution and violence, the book maps out the evolution of sexual habits and acts around the world by collating various surveys, figures and reports already available.

“Sexuality is everywhere on our city walls and on our screens, in lighter news or in darker events,” said Nadine Cattan, research director in geography at France’s National Center for Scientific Research.

You mentioned having a feminist girlfriend which made porn a no-no. Most of us know the history of feminism and pornography — which most people prefer to describe in terms of “feminists say porn bad”. There were actually various distinctions (between porn and erotica, and between feminist thinkers as well), but in your case, you had a feminist girlfriend who actually said porn was a no-no?

"For too long these burlesque girls have been held down on the low rung of the entertainment ladder . . . but no more" declared Dixie Evans, the former Marilyn Monroe of Burlesque.

This is paper I wrote on lesbian visibility and eroticism for a class on Renaissance literature and history in 2011. It is very dense– but perhaps still enjoyable.

...What I argue is that this invisibility of female homosexuality is not merely a result of the historical distance from the period, but rather a consciously acknowledged component of the understanding of female same-sex erotic desire at the time. In “Sappho to Philaenis,” the secrecy and immaculateness of the title characters’ sexual activity operates as one of Donne’s central arguments for the superiority of a female-female sexual relationship.

I teach an undergraduate seminar on “Gender, Sexuality, and Popular Culture” with a unit on the romance genre. This year, for the first time ever, the class consists entirely of women. Also new this year is an exercise we invented of an online, collaborative romance narrative. One question that came up in our writing experiment was how, when, and why to include sex scenes. We talked a lot about depictions of sexuality in romance fiction, as well as in the sex-saturated corridors of popular culture. How are the love scenes in romance different from those in pornography or erotica?

...I’m interested in the notion that a feminist is a woman who writes—a woman who dares explore ideas and fantasies that run contrary to patriarchal scripts for feminine docility, submissiveness, and sexual passivity. These scripts are still alive in the impossible contradictions and double standards my students report: be sexy but also pure, demands the culture. If guys sleep around it’s a sign of mastery and control, but if you do it you’re a slut.

The Roman gold pendant in the shape of a phallus that was discovered in 2011 in Hillington, Norfolk, has become such a popular exhibit at the Lynn Museum that replicas will be sold at the gift shop.

Porn star Chanel Preston says that when she attempted to make a deposit into her new account, she learned it had been closed because of “compliance issues.”

She says that the manager who had helped her set up the account explained that the bank was worried about the live cam shows on her website and had decided to close the business account.

...Meanwhile, a former softcore porn producer in California is suing JPMorgan Chase after the bank refused to underwrite a loan for “moral reasons.”

The plaintiff — who actually sold his company several years ago — says it was the bank that had originally approached him about refinancing the loan, but after the refi got bogged down in months of delays, he eventually learned the truth.

In the suit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, the plaintiff states that Chase VP “finally informed plaintiff during a telephone conversation that plaintiff’s loan application was refused due to ‘moral reasons,’ because of JPMorgan’s disapproval of plaintiff’s former source of income and occupation as an owner of a television production company that produced television programs that dealt with the subject of human sexuality.”

He says the bank told him that Chase would be taking a “reputational risk” by going through with the loan.

“JPMorgan purports to be so ashamed of nudity and human sexuality that it cannot process a refinance of a home loan of plaintiff, secured by plaintiff’s house, because plaintiff’s source of income six years ago included production of television programs that contained nudity and human sexuality,” reads the complaint.

A newly restored print of the 1967 documentary comes to Chicago for a screening Wednesday at the Portage Theater (co-presented by the Northwest Chicago Film Society, Reeling and Black Cinema House).

Filmmaker Shirley Clarke (who shot the footage over 12 consecutive hours in the living room of her penthouse apartment in New York's Chelsea Hotel) has only one subject: Holliday himself, an otherwise anonymous raconteur who cannily subverts his outsider status — that of black gay man in the '60s who made his living as a houseboy (his term) — with a mirthful ability to spin a tale.

If you thought the matter of who makes art exploring the issue of abortion difficult, perhaps the following antique erotic artworks will be too upsetting. That’s your warning to leave.

For these works go beyond the issue of basic nudity in art, beyond even the matter of erotic art, to  explore sexuality along with religion and what appears to be the opulence of wealth.

Following a discriminatory act based on their sexual orientation, a lesbian couple of Isle of Man wishes an anti-discriminatory law for LGBTQ people.

The landlord refused the rental agreement with Kara Izzard and Laura Cull because they are lesbians.

They have had then the bad surprise to discover that there is no law in Isle of Man to protect them in this kind of situation whereas civil unions and adoption are possible for same-sex couples.

"I was so shocked to hear this and felt sick, said Cull.

"I didn't know where to go or what to do as I didn't have a legal leg to stand on so after speaking with my partner Kira we thought that the only thing we could do was to share our story with as many people as possible and try and raise awareness that on this beautiful island that we call home we can still be treated this way."

What if being bad could do some good? That's the question asked by Come4.org, which describes itself as "the first user-generated, nonprofit pornography site devoted to funding charitable and ethically driven projects."

The site is being unveiled with help from the Paris office of TBWA agency Being, which crafted an explicit 90-second short film, "The Lover," introducing Come4's first charitable initiative—helping to fund the Asta Philpot Foundation, which is committed to raising public awareness about the sexual rights of disabled people. (Philpot, an American living in Britain, advocates the right to an active sexual life for people with disabilities, even if it means paying for sex.)

Will the new definition mean we stop blaming addicts for their behaviors?