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I’ve been following the current debates about sexualization with a lot of interest, both because I want to live in a sexually healthy world and because these sorts of discussions often have a direct impact on my work as a sex educator. And while I’ve been sitting with the question of what a sex-positive response to the topic might be, especially after reading Renee Randazzo’s post on the Good Vibrations magazine and Peggy Orenstein’s post on mommyish.com, it wasn’t until I received a link to Onscenity that it came together for me.
My understanding of sex-positivity rests on the notion that the only relevant criteria for assessing a sexual act or practice is the pleasure, consent, and well-being of the people who choose it …
Continue reading Sex-Positivity and Sexualization
We’ve heard plenty from people who say that porn is giving people unrealistic ideas of what sex is supposed to be like. And I’ve been saying for a while that I think that a lot of media also skews our notions of sex, romance and relationships. So I was interested to read a reuters.com post reporting an Australian survey showing that romantic comedies are affecting relationships.
Apparently, “[o]ne in four Australians said they were now expected to know what their partner was thinking while one in five respondents said it made their partners expect gifts and flowers ‘just because’.” The idea that we’re supposed to be able to read our partners’ minds is one of the most difficult and challenging hindrances that people face …
Continue reading Porn or Rom-Coms. Which Damage Relationships More?
The Vancouver Sun has an article today about the potential impact of the mainstream media on safer sex practices in which they quote an editorial by researchers at the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania:
The media is influencing their normative beliefs about sex: whether or not they think everyone around them is having sex, kids like them are having sex,” Bleakley says. “Risk and responsibility accounts for a very small proportion of the sexual content that’s out there, whether it’s teens being portrayed or shows that teens watch. Using a condom, having someone get pregnant and have to make those decisions, transmission of an STI — those things just don’t really come up.
There’s some evidence …
Continue reading What Responsibility Does the Media Have Around Safer Sex?
I received a link in my in-box today to an article in the Boston Globe about polyamory. It’s a good read and I highly recommend it. The writer includes a nice overview of some of the common problems poly folks face, including jealousy, managing new relationship energy, the lack of legal protection for partners, and such. It’s also really great that the article discusses things like the sexual double standard that many people have around folks with multiple partners. Men with more than one partner don’t face the slut label that women do, and it’s wonderful to see that mentioned in a mainstream news magazine. I’m also glad that there was some discussion around poly folks being in the closet, for all of …
Continue reading Polyamory in the News
CNN.com had an article the other day about some research that suggests that sex in movies doesn’t necessarily make them more popular. This seems to fly in the face of the movie industry’s common practices, which assume that putting a hot and steamy love scene is de rigeur. But I have to say that I’m not all that surprised.
For a long time, movie makers have been operating under the belief that sex sells. And I think that used to be more true in the past. After all, when movies and TV were much more strictly limited in terms of showing anything remotely resembling sex, there were more ways to provide titillation. Back then, actors in a bedroom scene needed to keep at least …
Continue reading sex in movies is like salt in cookies
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