Wine, Rorschachs, and naked rugby

Posted by lilech on September 4, 2011

Angie Dickinson

“Tumblr, as a user-directed medium, releases porn from those traditional visual cues. It allows the viewer to look at porn without feeling like she is, you know, looking at porn.”

“San Francisco … is the perfect home for an institution like the Center for Sex & Culture [CSC]. I spoke with another institution, its co-founder, Dr. Carol Queen.”

“Spermatorrhea (an excessive discharge of semen) was such a source of panic in the mid-19th century that there were even cases of suicide among those who had convinced themselves – or been led to believe – that they were suffering.“

Declining sperm counts? “According to their results, global sperm counts had dropped by 50% in the five decades before the report.“

Male infertility and the missing coat: “Sperm wears a protein coat that helps it sneak past the female immune system – or it should. Going coatless could be a major cause of male infertility.”

“In this video from the University of Surrey … the first research project Hegarty discusses is … on the categorization of homosexuality as a mental illness, including the inclusion of homosexuality in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association from 1952 to 1973. Hegarty’s interest is in how the rise and fall of the Rorschach test as a psychological instrument related to efforts to detect and diagnose homosexuality as a mental illness during this period. “

“Waxing . . . is the most common method for extensive depilation, and complications include burns, mechanical folliculitis, infectious folliculitis, other infections of skin and soft tissues, and contact dermatitis and/or vulvitis. Removal of hair causes skin microtrauma, with inoculation of pathogens and subsequent mechanical spread of infection.“

“The finding that regular moderate intake of red wine is associated with higher FSFI scores for both sexual desire, lubrication, and overall sexual function as compared to the teetotaller status is intriguing. While this finding needs to be interpreted with some caution … it nevertheless suggests a potential relationship between red wine consumption and better sexuality.”

Photo by Chema Madoz

pdf: “Right Orbitofrontal Tumor With Pedophilia Symptom and Constructional Apraxia Sign”

“It’s what women have been telling men for decades: stimulating the vagina is not the same as stimulating the clitoris. Now brain scan data has added weight to their argument.“

“For the peahen, choosing a mate who has a beautiful long tail increases the chance of her male offspring growing one, and so also be attractive. Of course, for her there is very good reason to be choosy. Males can and want to spray their sperm around willy‑nilly, but producing an egg and offspring levies a prohibitive tax upon her metabolism.”

“The monkeys live in groups of three to nine, in which multiple adult males mate with a single breeding female and then cooperate to raise her young. This mating system, called polyandry, occurs in less than 1 per cent of bird species, and is even rarer in mammals.”

“Spider sex is unusual in that males transfer their sperm to the female on small limbs called pedipalps. … Dr Aisenberg and Dr Barrantes observed the process 17 times in pairs of Leucauge argyra. On the 14 occasions a sexual plug was made, the female produced it without assistance from the male. On ten of these occasions the male’s pedipalps then seemed to get stuck while he was transferring the sperm … and he had great difficulty freeing himself. In two of those ten instances, he was eaten as a result.“

“Some male insects also give females what’s called a spermatophylax to increase their chances of mating. A spermatophylax, which can weigh up to 30 percent of a male’s body weight, is essentially like a really good snack attached to their sperm.”

“Pornography, Society, and the Law in Imperial Germany“: “The view of human sexuality that surfaces in a society’s pornographic subculture is often a reflection, however distorted or reversed, of officially sanctioned attitudes toward sex. Likewise, the extent to which a society seeks to control a popular phenomenon like pornography is an indication of the fears, both conscious and unconscious, harbored toward that object.”

Uschi Digard

New Zealand vs. Fiji in a game of naked rugby

Bert and Ernie are not gay (according to a press release).

Transhumanists discuss sexbots for women.

Sex in the stands at a Red Sox game, captured on film by an ESPN cameraman.

“Mistressdom, like celibacy, is a crucial lens through which to explore how women relate to men other than in marriage; mistressdom is, in fact, an institution parallel and complementary to marriage. Mistresses, it seems, are everywhere.”

A gallery pinup collection of Bettie Page

A catch-all catch-up post

Posted by lilech on April 7, 2011

Gina Lolabrigida

“In the earliest records of human religion, castration was regarded as an act of devotion. Moreover, the ritual of circumcision is still followed by many modern religions. … CONCLUSION: The ritual of castration evolved into circumcision as a less-invasive and bloody procedure than castration.“

“Tally is short for Tallywacker, a British nickname for penis. It is also the nom de Internet of a 55-year-old, heterosexual, happily married attorney in Tennessee who is at the vanguard of the foreskin restoration movement. With evangelical zest, he shares his story, and a sequential series of photographs of his penis.“

“According to the original commitment–skepticism hypothesis, women err on the side of underestimating prospective mates’ commitment to avoid the high costs of pregnancy without support. … Confirming our predictions, … postmenopausal women did not show a bias toward underinferring men’s commitment intentions.“

“The current study demonstrates that exposure to a sexily dressed woman increases single men’s likelihood of noticing status products in a visual display.” (pdf)

“[We used] one of the most compelling visual cues of female sexual attractiveness (low waist-to-hip ratio) to test the influence of news anchor sexualization on audience evaluations of her as a professional and their memory for the news that she presents. Male participants saw the sexualized version of the anchor as less suited for war and political reporting. They also encoded less news information presented by the sexualized than her unsexualized version.“

Marisa Berenson

“Previous research had shown that a woman at the fertile stage of her menstrual cycle seems more attractive, and that same effect was observed here — but only when this woman was rated by a man who wasn’t already involved with someone else.“

“Resource control was associated with preferences for physical attractiveness over good financial prospects and greater maximum partner age tolerated. … The results implicate the role of constraints on female access to and control of resources in sex-differentiated mate preferences and highlight differences between resource control and wealth.“

“Although neuroticism was negatively associated with marital satisfaction on average, it was unrelated to marital satisfaction when couples had engaged in relatively frequent sex over the past 6 months.“

“So when news broke this week that the FDA had approved Viibryd, a so-called sexy-friendly antidepressant, it caused quite a stir. Far too often, people are forced to choose between their mental and sexual health — as though these were entirely separate categories.“

Damage to amygdala disinhibits two women: “For one to two hours after each seizure, she would engage in a wide variety of unusual sexual behaviors, such as masturbating in public and trying to seduce family members and neighbors.“

“There are at least 11 different sex-related sleep disorders, collectively referred to as “sexsomnia” or “sleepsex,” that affect people who are otherwise psychologically healthy—causing them to unknowingly engage in various sexual activities during the night.“

Photo by Rudolf Koppitz

“Now, we know that females of many nonhuman primates and maybe even some nonprimates experience orgasm. But we still don’t know why.” (pdf)

Spermatologist Tim Birkhead recommends five books, inc. some on sperm competition

“7 fascinating new findings” in sex science

“We summarize in this review recent results showing that both the main and accessory olfactory systems are able to process partially overlapping sets of sexual chemosignals and that both systems support complimentary aspects in mate recognition and in the control of sexual behavior.“

“Olfactory systems in mate recognition and sexual behavior“

“Semen allergy suspected in rare post-orgasm illness“

“The mice showed the same scent preferences for male and female mice and vocalized for male and female mice equally. When the serotonin in these animals was replaced, they preferred female mice over male mice.“

“During contests between males, full eunuchs that had lost both pedipalps were better fighters than half eunuchs and intact males …. The scientists think that, once a male has lost his means of procreating, he protects his investment further by becoming a superwarrior.“

“It was From who told her it was her “scientific duty” to study homosexuals and promised her access to all the subjects she needed. Initially she demurred but eventually, with the encouragement of From and her colleague Bruno Klopfer, [Evelyn] Hooker began an investigation that would ultimately result in the removal of homosexuality as a form of psychopathology from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual III of the American Psychiatric Association.“

A review of New York Hustlers: Masculinity and Sex in Modern America

Dr. Petra on a lap-dancer study: “The problem with writings about lap dancing in the past have been either they’ve focused on entirely positive accounts, or been overtly negative and often hostile to/about dancers. … This research is different as it takes the experiences of dancers and discusses their lives in a way that doesn’t flinch from the problems they face when dancing, or the positive (and mundane) parts of their work.“

“Music for Wanking: Brian Eno discusses his porno collection with Chrissie Hynde, 1974“

“Drugs, drag queens, nude psychotherapy, tutorials on stripping, trepanation, women wreastling (sic), disco churches and a soundtrack by Piero Piccioni, a suspected murderer who himself would be a suitable subject for Naked England, is an irresistible mix that makes this flick a perfect candidate for restoration and a digital release.“

Flaccid in Flanders — Belgian senator calls for a sex strike until political deadlock is broken

American Nudie Classics — “Your Grandpa’s Porn”

Genital microflora, pessaries and mean oxytocin

Posted by lilech on January 26, 2011

Hung like a … bull: “This is a report on advances in the field of penile prosthesis surgery for the fibrotic penis through the years 2006 to 2008. In that time, bovine pericardium was added to the choices of graft materials used to expand the corpora to accommodate the implant alongside the fibrous tissue.“

From an article called “Management of Penile Implant Complications”: “Avoid the penile dorsal nerve complex at all costs …. A cut across the dorsal nerve with electrocautery cannot be reasonably repaired, and the patient will be left with distal penile numbness—a recipe for a tough-to-defend malpractice case.“

“The Malassezia yeasts are … reported as part of the microflora of male genital region, mostly in uncircumcised males. The prevalence of Malassezia yeast colonization on the glans penis of circumcised males is discussed in multiple studies. We report the case of a male patient with extensive pityriasis versicolor that does not involve the preputial space.“

“We present a comprehensive account of clitoral anatomy, including its component structures, neurovascular supply, relationship to adjacent structures (the urethra, vagina and vestibular glands, and connective tissue supports), histology and immunohistochemistry. We related recent anatomical findings to the historical literature to determine when data on accurate anatomy became available.“

Six experts review the evidence and disagree about whether the G-spot is real: “Although a huge amount of data (not always of good quality) have been accumulated in the last 60 years, we still need more research on one of the most challenging aspects of female sexuality.“

“Development of pelvic surgery finds its roots in the Ebers papyrus (1550 BC) and evolved from Hippocrates (400 BC) who used pessaries with pomegranate to reduce uterine prolapse. Other maneuvers were also used. Vesalius was the first to provide a detailed description of the entire female genital tract. Adolf Retzius defined the boundaries of the prevesical space in 1849. The current concepts regarding the etiology of cystocele were proposed in 1912.“

Dickless wonders: “Though male wasp spiders have testes that produce sperm, they lack penises. Instead, the arachnids ejaculate into a small web and then store this sperm in special forelegs called pedipalps, which “look like boxing gloves,” said Schneider.“

Female damselflies turn butch to dissuade pesky males

Whale threesome!

Women more aroused by monkey sex than men are

“Oxytocin turns out to be the hormone of the clan, not of universal brotherhood. Psychologists trying to specify its role have now concluded it is the agent of ethnocentrism.“

Bless their hearts o’ gold: “Still other prostitutes, such as Klee herself, focus on providing sex for seniors in retirement homes or for the disabled – an area the BSD spokeswoman said she expects to grow swiftly as Germany’s population ages.“

Major League Whore (such a harsh word) trading cards

Oregon State has some odd values

Ladies in red, scary mothers, more sex cannibals and cabaret

Posted by lilech on October 11, 2010

“When a lady wears red it prompts men to ask her more intimate questions and to sit closer to her.”

“A percentage-point increase in the male-to-female ratio of a man’s graduation class led to a percentage-point increase in his likelihood of dying before the age of 65.”

“Following all three election cycles, individuals located in states voting for the winning political party tended to search for pornography keywords relatively more often than individuals residing in states voting for the losing political party.”

A review of porn.com, an edited collection that examines porn as a driving force behind tech (esp. internet) innovations

“The Old Pornographers: Richard Nash and Mike Edison on Banned Books“

“Fifty of those women … were randomly chosen to receive a placebo instead of a drug treatment for low sexual arousal. … The findings … show that on average, one in three of the women who took a placebo showed an overall improvement.”

Bayer’s new vaginal atrophy drug

A skeptical challenge of the notion of a porn-addicted brain

A skeptical challenge directed at recent waist-to-hip ratio research

Twiggy

A neat post about Twiggy, the too-thin, not-very-curvaceous 1960′s super-model

“According to the researchers, reduced contraceptive use is most likely the result of a decade of abstinence-only sex education.”

Psychologists at Temple University find “no evidence that the initiation of sexual intercourse is hastened by exposure to sexy media.”

Lindsay Beyerstein rounds up some sex ed links and takes a recent study to show that “nearly half of teenagers are already having sex, and many others are doing their best to get in on the action. It’s hard to imagine a more perfect audience for comprehensive sex ed.”

Simon Baron-Cohen wrote of the autistic mind as an “extreme male brain,” and now Mark Brosnan et al ask, “Can an ‘Extreme Female Brain’ be characterised in terms of psychosis?”

These researchers went looking for male-female brain differences but found none in the ‘resting’ state, using fMRI

Canada tosses most of its laws restricting prostitution: “Judge Himel found that laws set up to protect prostitutes actually endanger their safety, forcing them to furtively engage in hasty transactions conducted in shady locations.”

“The well-known eastern Munich bordello told Bavarian daily tz on Thursday that taxi drivers are paid up to €120 for every ‘John’ they bring to their rivals during the annual autumn beer festival, when hundreds of thousands of visitors are in town for a good time.”

Matt Ridley on hard-wired sex differences: “In virtually every mammal and nearly all birds, males are more aggressive, females more nurturing. It is a distinction that goes right back to active sperm competing for stationary eggs. … Wombs are worth fighting over—and granting to favored applicants only.”

“Females produce only a few, large gametes while males produce a greater number of small gametes. Because females invest more, and because their productivity is not usually limited by the availability of male gametes, females should be the choosy sex. … There are only a few examples of organisms that have reversed the usual relationship, and the [seahorses and pipefish] are one such group.”

“Jacobus Boomsma … has argued that strict monogamous behavior, such as an ant queen mating for life, spurred the evolution of cooperative breeding in some social insects. Monogamy helps fulfill Hamilton’s conditions, because all siblings are equally related to each other and to each parent. Promiscuity, on the other hand, leads to many half-siblings and lowers the relatedness of individuals in a group.”

“We hypothesized that men’s relationship satisfaction and investment would predict interest in their partner’s copulatory orgasm, and that sperm competition risk would moderate the association between relationship satisfaction and interest in partner’s copulatory orgasm.”

The 2011 German farm-girl calendar is out

“This study clarifies the adaptive significance of infertile sperm castes, which has remained elusive in Drosophila. … We suggest that spermicide and male countermeasures against it are more common than is appreciated and discuss how spermicide could drive the evolution of several key male traits, including sperm size and number.”

“By varying the adult sex ratio of populations of the Indian meal moth … we altered the frequency of male and female copulations, and thus the level of sperm competition experienced by males. As predicted by theory, males evolving under higher levels of sperm competition increased investment in sperm production and differed in their sperm allocation patterns across matings.”

“We assess this key assumption in seed beetles where genital spines in males physically injure females. We demonstrate that male spine length is positively correlated with harm to females during mating but also that males with longer spines are more successful in sperm competition.”

Otto Dix's painting of Anita Berber

On sexual cannibalism in black widows, red-back spiders, etc.: “Why not eat him; he’s not much use later anyway. Mating success is so variable among males, there’s no guarantee that living another day will pay off for him. Most males fail to mate at all and some research suggests that males become functionally sterile after mating. So, why not?“

“Penis captivus describes an event that occurs in rare instances during heterosexual intercourse when the muscles in the vagina clamp down on the penis much more firmly than usual (a form of vaginismus), making it impossible for the penis to withdraw from the vagina.”

“Information from species in which females remain in their natal group … shows the importance of kin support, especially from mothers, on the reproductive success of their daughters. Therefore, one might expect a similar effect on sons in species in which males remain in their natal group like bonobos.”

Bare naked 1960′s psychotherapy: “Perhaps most notable was an exercise called “crotch eyeballing”, designed to dispel guilt about the body, in which participants were instructed to look at each others genitals and disclose the sexual experiences they felt most guilty about while lying naked in a circle with their legs in the air.”

Joey Heatherton

“Humans in the highest economic bracket leave more grandchildren through sons than through daughters. Therefore, adaptive variation in sex ratios is expected, and human mothers in the highest economic bracket do give birth to more sons, suggesting similar sex ratio manipulation as seen in other mammals.”

“Results showed (a) that greater maternal harshness at 54 months predicted earlier age of menarche [and] (b) that earlier age of menarche predicted greater sexual (but not other) risk taking“

Piper Laurie plays the mother of Carrie (Sissy Spacek) in the 1976 movie Carrie

“A talk with Museum of Sex curator Sarah Forbes“

The Museum of Eroticism in Paris — 7 floors of erotic art inside an old cabaret

The strippers of Shoreditch

A neat blog: Cabaret Berlin — “exploring the entertainment of the Weimar era”

Ducks, spiders & gluttony

Posted by lilech on August 9, 2010

Raquel Welch

“Sexsomnia was reported by 7.6 percent of patients at a sleep disorders center, researchers report today. Starting sex while asleep was more common in men (11 percent) than women (4 percent).“

Australian authorities forbid soft porn from depicting the labia minora protruding outside the labia majora, which has stimulated a market for cosmetic surgery down under.

“During the normal mating season, the penises of Lesser Scaup ducks grow about 4 centimeters longer than average, and those of Ruddy Ducks grow about 15 centimeters longer. But when the team made several Lesser Scaup males compete for just a few females, their penises grew up to 25% longer than normal.” More here

“Women and men could do that more quickly when the face had exaggerated sexual characteristics. ‘Women were quickest to classify gaze direction when they were looking at hunky, masculine-looking guys. Guys were quicker when they were looking at pretty, feminine women,’ says Jones.“

Bernadette Lafont & Serge Marquand in Sophie's Ways

Are the women thereby honing in on the gaze of the guys with the best sperm? “A previous study of Spanish men reported that facial attractiveness was positively associated with semen quality. We aimed to determine whether this effect was widespread by examining a large sample of Australian men.“

In Slate, William Saletan vented his disgust at the dangerous and grotesque display of gluttony that is competitive eating, likening it to pornography (esp. in the article’s title — ‘Deep Throat: the Depravity of Major League Eating’). At Jezebel, Katy Kelleher dismissed his concerns. “Enjoying huge amounts of food or copious amounts of sex,” she says, “does not make one self-destructive, gluttonous, or depraved.” She’s right about sex but wrong about eating competitions. Since sex (safe sex) in large quantities doesn’t carry such a big health risk, there’s nothing wrong with it. In fact, it might even have the added value of boosting brain growth. Kelleher sets aside the health risks resulting from overeating by comparing them to the risks that stem from other sports. She suggests that we should just let people assume these risks if they choose to. But what about the other extreme for eating, namely, anorexia? Would she allow people to cultivate this condition, too, as long as they were aware of the resulting health risks?

For some people, good sex involves copious amounts of food: “Feederism is a fat fetish subculture in which individuals eroticize weight gain and feeding. Feeders are individuals who claim to become sexually aroused by feeding their partners and encouraging them to gain weight.“

For male spiders, the health risks in mating are pretty steep. “Nephilid spiders are known for gigantic females and tiny males. Such extreme sexual dimorphism and male-biased sex ratios result in fierce male-male competition for mates. Intense sperm competition may be responsible for behaviors such as mate guarding, mate binding, opportunistic mating, genital mutilation, mating plugs and male castration (eunuchs).”

“To curtail competition with their own sperm, males of several spider and insect species mutilate their genitals or sacrifice themselves entirely using their genital parts or their whole dead bodies as mating plugs. The orb-web spider, Argiope aurantia, is a species characterized by both male self-sacrifice and extreme female-biased sexual size dimorphism.“

“Sexual cannibalism is common in the Australian golden orb-web spider (Nephila plumipes), in which the tip of the conductor typically breaks during copulation. … The likelihood of the conductor breaking depends upon the copulatory history of the female insemination duct: males were more likely to break their conductor if they inseminated a ‘virgin’ rather than ‘mated’ insemination duct.” (pdf)

“Once he’s inseminated her, he’ll break off his genitalia in hers, thereby plugging her up. The male, which is left sterile, then drives away other males until he dies. This strategy should stymie other males’ mating attempts—though some females have been found with several dismembered male organs lodged inside them.” Very sadistic.