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We usually hear about sexual health in very cisgender-normative language. Men need prostate exams, women need gynecological exams. But transgender people have just as much reason to get sexual health medical care as anyone else. So I’m thrilled to share these public service announcements from the amazing Buck Angel. It’s about time that someone started getting the word out that medical care is about your anatomy, not your gender.
Please pass these along and help get the word out.
Continue reading Buck Angel’s PSA: Sexual Health for Trans Folks
This post also appeared on the Good Vibrations Magazine.
For years, safer sex advocates have been saying that self-esteem has a huge effect on how much people engage in risk-reduction and harm-reduction behaviors. That’s why many of the most effective intervention programs & organizations, whether online like Scarleteen.com or in-person like the StopAIDS Project, offer counseling and support, in addition to information.
So I was really interested to read this post on ScienceDaily.com about research showing that among the 1,000 HIV-positive and negative gay and bisexual men surveyed:
Almost 10 percent of the participants reported that they had been victims of childhood sexual abuse and nearly 30 percent had experienced gay-related victimization between the ages of 12 and 14, including verbal insults, bullying, threats of
Continue reading Shame as a Public Health Issue
This post also appeared on the Good Vibrations Magazine.
via Violet Blue
ScienceBlogs has an amazing writeup about some excellent research on the clitoris: “The Clitoral Complex: A Dynamic Sonographic Study”. Scientists conducted sonograms of the vagina and vulva and have confirmed something that sex educators have been saying for ages: the clitoris is shaped like a wishbone, with a lot more going on inside the body than most people realize. Here’s the sonogram, along with an anatomy drawing to make it easier to see what you’re looking at. All of these images came from ScienceBlogs.
The clitoral bodies (CB) are clearly seen along the sides of the vagina (V). Even more interesting is this photo, from a slightly different angle (in these, the participant
Continue reading Amazing New Research About the Clitoris
The New York Times has an article about yet another pharmaceutical intervention to “improve” sex. This one is for premature ejaculation (aka PE), a notoriously difficult-to-define situation
Throughout the history of sexology, different researchers have tried to come up with a good working definition of the term. Masters and Johnson (that’s a photo of them, BTW. Click on it for more info about them) used it if the guy came before his (female) partner. Others have set the minimum sufficient time for intercourse at two minutes, while Sciele Parma, the folks who are manufacturing this new drug peg it at one minute. By comparison, many sex therapists say that premature ejaculation is when the situation causes distress for either or both partners.
Now, I want
Continue reading Another Step Towards the Medicalization of Sex
At Good Vibrations, we regularly have people ask us about the “herbal” pills, creams and other products available at most sex stores. I’m proud to say that we’ve never carried them because we’ve never had confidence that they were effective and safe. I think it’s worth unpacking this a bit more, especially in light of the fact that the Food & Drug Administration has issued a warning about Stiff Nights, one of many such products.
There are a couple of risks that you take when you start looking for pills that haven’t been tested. First, there’s the question of effectiveness. Some products don’t contain anything that actually does any good. Others contain so little of it that there’s no real effect. That can be hard
Continue reading The Risks of Erection Pills
Via @clarissethorn
Orgasm Inc. is a new film that premiered at the Hot Docs Film Festival, Toronto, Ontario about the ongoing trend to medicalize female sexuality. As we’ve seen over and over, there’s a lot of money to be made by promising better sex. But a female equivalent of Viagra has yet to be developed. Instead, there are a multitude of companies promising to help women have “normal” sex lives. Ick.
Here’s a link to more info about the film and a trailer.
Related Good Vibrations Products:
I Love Female Orgasm America’s War On Sex Healing Sex
It seems like there’s a spa for everything these days. I just found out about Phit, a vaginal spa that opened up in New York. Phit stands for “pelvic health integrated techniques” and their goal is to help women develop better pelvic health. (Note- that photo is just one I found online. It’s not a photo of Phit.)
Now, I think that’s a great thing to support. The pelvic floor is, quite literally, the foundation of our bodies. And since it’s not really designed to support the weight of our bodies, what with the whole evolutionaru shift from walking on all fours to going upright and all, pelvic floor problems are quite common. For women who need expert advice around pelvic floor health, working with
Continue reading there's a spa for everything
I read a lot of sex research- both the sorts of stuff that makes a splash on the blogs and the stuff that most people never hear about. And I often see research become sensationalized in the media. OK, that’s nothing new, but can I just say this? CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION!!
Just because two or more things happen at the same time doesn’t mean that one causes the other. One might cause the other, each might cause the other, they might both be the result of some other factor, or it might simply be coincidence that they both happen at the same time. One of the reasons for using the scientific method in conducting research is that it’s a systematic approach to inquiry that
Continue reading sex research and fuzzy thinking
The National Coalition for Sexual Freedom has set up a petition to get the American Psychiatric Association (APA) to take kinky sex out of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder. The DSM is the guidebook for mental health professionals and at the risk of oversimplifying the issue, if something is listed in it, it’s considered a mental health diagnosis or illness.
There is no empirical evidence that people who engage in kinky sex are any different from anyone else, other than their sexual desires. Of course, people who face stigma, ostracism, loss of their jobs, housing or children, or who just have to be in the closet because of sex-negative people deal with stresses that have an impact. But that’s the result of
Continue reading petition to revise the DSM
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