Category Archives: sexuality

medical, science, sexuality

Fact of the Week

Because fit is so important in the effectiveness of condoms, World Health Organization guidelines specify different sizes for various parts of the world: a 49-millimeter-width condom for Asia, a 52-millimeter width for North America and Europe, and a 53-millimeter width for Africa (all condoms are longer than most men will ever need) … According to an article published in Nature, Japanese and Chinese men’s testicles tend to be smaller than those of Caucasian men, on average. The authors of the study concluded that “differences in body size make only a slight contribution to these values.” Other researchers have confirmed these general trends, finding average combined testes weights of 24 grams for Asians, 29 to 33 grams for Caucasians, and 50 grams for Africans.
[Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá, Sex at Dawn]

So there you are girls … Negroes really do have larger equipment. And the Chinese remain inscrutable. Not exactly PC but then that’s science for you!

food+drink, memes, personal, sexuality

Listography – Guilty Pleasures

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I haven’t done Kate’s Listography for the last couple of weeks — one has to have a break sometimes! One of the weeks I missed was because the subject (kid’s films) does nothing for me at all: I don’t have kids and I don’t do films. The other I just never got round to doing. So I’ve come back in this week on a really difficult topic: guilty pleasures.

What makes this the more difficult is to interpret what the topic means. Kate’s definition of a guilty pleasure is something that you shouldn’t really like but you actually do. But that isn’t quite my understanding, which is more like something you like (regardless of whether you should or not) but which you don’t normally talk about in public (for whatever reason).

So my five choices are going to be a mix of the two. Here goes …

Fried Food. Bad. Hideously bad. Both in calories and cholesterol. Just what is it about fried food that make it so good, and means it’s comfort food? There’s nothing quite like good fish & chips, or sausages, or full English breakfast. Then again there’s … chips! I do try to resist. Honestly, I do! But I usually fail. It’s no wonder I’m the size I am!

Dr Alice Roberts. Well if all you girlies are going to drool over a half-baked men like Tom Jones and Andrew Marr, then I can have a girlie. A real, sexy and frighteningly bright one at that: Dr Alice Roberts. Formerly of Time Team and latterly of Coast. As I say, not just sexy and frighteningly bright, she’s a talented artist, a medic, teaches anatomy and is no mean anthropologist and archaeologist. There seems to be nothing this girl can’t do! Geek girls are definitely sexy.

Plane Crashes. Yeah, ghoulish. Well no, not really. I would never wish a plane to crash nor for anyone to be involved. But they do. And I take a forensic interest (albeit from my armchair) in why they crash; what happened. I do the same with train crashes and other disasters like the demise of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power facility in Japan. I like working out what happened and why.

My PA. [NSFW warning] No idea what I’m talking about? See here for an explanation. And no you don’t get a picture — not publicly anyway.

Onanism. This is squarely in the “we all do it but guiltily we never talk about it” category. Why don’t we talk about it? Why is it such a taboo? It’s normal, natural and healthy. We all do it, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, relationship status etc. So where’s the problem?

So what would you own up to?

amusements, current affairs, quotes, sexuality, thoughts

Quotes of the Week

Some odd bedfellows this week …

Politics is perhaps the only profession for which no preparation is thought necessary.
[Robert Louis Stephenson]

Your car is Japanese. Your vodka is Russian. Your pizza is Italian. Your kebab is Turkish. Your democracy is Greek. Your coffee is Brazilian. Your movies are American. Your tea is Tamil. Your shirt is Indian. Your oil is Saudi Arabian. Your electronics are Chinese. Your numbers are Arabic, your letters Latin. And you complain that your neighbour is an immigrant? Pull yourself together!
[Seen on Facebook]

‘chav’ (vogue label of 2004, originally a traveller’s term of address or endearment, from a French nickname for a young fox), who represents an imagined social grouping, a troublesome, truculent, feckless, shameless underclass delighting in petty criminality and conspicuous consumption (of, inter alia, illicit substances, electronic stimuli, pimped technology and ‘bling’).
[Tony Thorne, Jolly Wicked, Actually]

An eye for an eye makes the world go blind. A tooth for a tooth gums up everything!
[Thoughts of Angel]

Sex was an expression of friendship: in Africa it was like holding hands … It was friendly and fun. There was no coercion. It was offered willingly.
[Paul Theroux quoted in Christopher Ryan & Cacilda Jethá, Sex at Dawn]

I had a friend at university who used to propound this latter theory that sex was (and should be seen as) not necessarily more than an expression of sincere friendship and that why should one not have sex with ones friends just as one might have a beer with them. Not sure he ever managed to put it much into practice though.

beliefs, current affairs, medical, science, sexuality

Sex and Religion in Public Life

Jeana over at MySexProfessor writes an incisive post about why it is more important that we know about the religious lives of public figures than their sex lives — albeit the article is built on the words of one of my hate figures, Richard Dawkins. It isn’t that I disagree with the sentiments behind much of what Dawkins says (I don’t), but the bigoted and intransigent way in which he says it — he is just as fundamentalist as any of the religious believers against whom he rails.

As so often others have said what I think so much better than I can, so here are a couple of seminal extracts.

[O]ur society has so many hang-ups about sex that we’re practically responsible for creating an environment in which any sexual expression could potentially be deviant […] even fairly innocuous acts (which one could argue, taking pictures of one’s genitals counts as) are made out to be of huge significance because so many people are hung up on the idea that ANY sexual expression outside the norm is automatically inappropriate or gross or bad.
…
Dawkins asserts that it does matter what a public figure’s religious beliefs are, since those beliefs, far more than their sexual acts, may determine how they pursue public policy. He gives these examples: “[…] George Bush has publicly boasted that God told him to invade Iraq […] To push to an extreme, who would deny Congress’s right to ask whether a candidate for Secretary of Health is a Christian Scientist or a Jehovah’s Witness? Or take a Christian sect that fervently desires the Second Coming of Christ, and believes the key Revelation prophecies cannot be fulfilled without a Middle East Armageddon. Would you wish the nuclear button to be made available to a follower of such a creed?” This is scary stuff.
…
[W]e must grant people the dignity of privately pursuing things that oppose the sexual mainstream.** Just because a politician likes unconventional sex doesn’t mean they’re going to try to force it on everyone through legislation. Unfortunately […] politicians have done much to make anything that deviates from heterosexual monogamous reproductive sex a crime.

** And not just the sexual mainstream. People must have the right to deviate from and oppose mainstream thought and opinion on anything. For that is how opinions are changed, new ideas formed and progress made. But this doesn’t give anyone the right to force or attempt to force (violently or otherwise) their opinions on others.

people, personal, sexuality, thoughts

Of Men and Boys

In the still ongoing process of clearing out the toot from the study the other day I came across an article from 1989 (Carol Lee, “How We Hurt Our Sons”, Sunday Times Magazine, 22 October 1989, 54-58) in which the author maintains that we are continuing to screw up our boys by not allowing them to understand and express the full range of their emotions, fears, during adolescence.

In re-reading the article I realised the author is right. I realised that I too had been blighted by this – despite having relatively bohemian and enlightened parents. That what Carol Lee was saying was true in the 1980s. And it is still largely true today.

Moreover because this is important (and because Times newspapers are now behind a paywall) here are a few salient extracts of what was for a Sunday magazine article well written, thoughtful and useful.

Time and again when working in schools … I have come across boys who go through agonies … They suffer particular pain because of a strong sense of being alone in whatever they’re feeling. Unlike girls, they are not encouraged to share their problems and more intimate fears. They think they will be laughed at if they show weakness. This leaves them fewer outlets for discovering that their particular “shame” is shared by most of us, and is of human rather than monstrous proportions … The strongest impression they gave was a sense of isolation, guilt and anxiety. Feeling isolated and afraid is a painful experience at any age. It can be devastating during adolescence.

[…]

The loss of “normality” is experienced by both girls and boys as they leave childhood for the difficulties of puberty. Both sexes suffer the loss of the intimate, gaily-coloured world of their primary schools with their own familiar teacher, and classrooms decorated with their own pictures. This Garden of Eden is suddenly replaced at the age of 11 with a large secondary school which is frightening for many children. Then, at the same time as nice, cosy “Miss” or friendly “Sir” has been replaced by a bewildering stream of different subject teachers, children’s bodies suddenly start becoming hostile territory, too. This affects boys more than it does girls … Girls are given positive images of womanhood: menstruation is no longer a “curse” and libraries contain an array of books on young women’s health, rights, body-images and on issues like self-assertion. They do not seem to have similar material for young men.

[…]

Girls are taught to be articulate, to express emotions like anger and to be proud of being female. They are no longer wrapped in cotton wool. Boys are still brought up to be tough … Notions of maleness have changed considerably in the past two decades, but the bringing up of boys has not kept pace. There is little in the way of a rite … of passage which takes them from childhood to the increasingly complex business of being a man.

[…]

[P]uberty for boys is not seen as a positive experience, but a negative one. Mothers withdraw from boys because they are afraid of making cissies of their sons, and also because they are uncertain how to treat developing male sexuality … The confusion is experienced by boys, too. Their bodies are now prone to hydraulic uncertainties called erections. Boys are fearful in case unwanted erections happen in front of – or because of – mothers. Mothers, aunts and other concerned females have the same problem. So boys suddenly find themselves pushed out in the cold.

[…]

When given the chance to discuss such issues … teenage boys will say how abandoned, neglected and anxious they feel. They will tell you that their mothers avoid them “like the plague” and that their fathers don’t talk to them anyway. They will also express envy at the way girls are more mature and self-sufficient than boys of the same age.

[…]

A boy’s journey from childhood into manhood is dictated by his ability to be unemotional, to bear pain and also to die for his country … Why should they be any less hurt when their first romance ends? Do we want them to be human or inhuman? … Man is no longer a slayer of dragons or a knight in shining armour. But this change in attitude has left a vacuum in the condition of being male.

[…]

We hurt boys by believing they are ‘alien’. We deny them their ability to nurture. That’s why they end up different, because we believe they are, and make them so. And fathers still don’t nurture their sons in the way women do their daughters.

[…]

[B]etter adjustment is achieved by allowing boys a full range of emotions instead of the traditional “stiff upper lip”. What goes wrong is that boys are not invited, as girls are, to be sensitive, caring and considerate.

[…]

Society praises youth for the way it flings itself into life, romantically, impetuously, protected; yet this same society offers youth no room for spontaneity, for improvisation or sincerity, for relationships that are irrational or non-utilitarian, either in its social structure or in its everyday routine.

If anyone out there especially wants a copy of the full article, then ask me nicely and I’ll send you a PDF.

sexuality, thoughts

Healthy Sexual Development

It is important that we all develop our sexuality and our attitudes to sexuality in healthy ways. But it seems this ain’t easy especially as this is a many-sided coin. However at last a diverse group of experts have codified what healthy sexual development means. There’s a summary with commentary/interpretation over at Scarleteen.

I commend the reading of this summary to all parents – and indeed anyone involved with the development of children.

Like many of these things it is little more than common sense. It is thus something all good and thinking parents will intuitively know. Nevertheless it is useful and important it is all brought together as a coherent whole especially as large swathes of it often get swamped by the excesses of both our tabloid and religious sub-cultures.

As the author of the summary observes, this is “an excellent framework for working towards cultures which are sexually healthier than most are and have been”.

amusements, current affairs, history, natural history, photography, quotes, sexuality, thoughts

Quotes of the Week

This week’s collection …

Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.
[Mark Twain]

Now I know foreigners do things strangely but …

The 31-year-old king of the tiny Himalayan country of Bhutan announces his intention to marry this October.
[BBC News report]

Oh, that’s alright then. As long as he’s not marrying last October. That would be necrophilia.

I masturbate because it makes me feel warm, embodied, juicy, alert, calm, self-possessed, and fulfilled. I masturbate to celebrate my body and my sovereignty. I masturbate and am not ashamed to do so. There are other things I do when I’m alone that are far more embarrassing.
[Allison at http://thesexpositivephotoproject.blogspot.com]

One really shouldn’t laugh at other misfortune, especially in wartime …

9 May 1941 … We’d just got down to the Victoria in Turners Hill when there was a whoosh and a bang as a [250kg high explosive] bomb fell where the Fire Station is now – it was old Bertie Simpkins’ junk yard then. Mrs Whiddon who lived opposite had an old lavatory pan come in through her front bedroom window!
[Peter Rooke, Cheshunt at War 1939-1945]

Flowers always make people better, happier and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine to the soul.
[Luther Burbank]

Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.
[Dorothea Lang]

Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?
[Monty Python and the Holy Grail]