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The NY Times reported today that anyone working out at a gym needs to be really careful to avoid skin infections such as MRSA, impetigo, jock itch, or athlete’s foot from contact with other people’s skin or from gym equipment. These Gym Transmitted Infections (GTIs- a term I just made up) can be annoying, in the case of athlete’s foot, or life threatening, in the case of MRSA. [As an aside, a great way to avoid jock itch is to put your socks on before your underwear. When you do it the other way round, you can transmit the fungus from your feet to your genitals.]
The article offers some great tips, such as assuming that you are being exposed to skin infections, washing
Continue reading GTIs vs. STIs: Notice the Difference?
Ever since my post the last week about resentment, I’ve been thinking a lot about why so many people allow resentments to build and what we can do to avoid them. And it seems to me that one of the easiest things we can do is to tell the people in our lives what we appreciate about them.
I’ve noticed how often people seem to have difficulty being appreciated. In fact, I used to have a hard time of it myself. I was amazingly skilled at deflecting compliments, even when (looking back on it now) I genuinely deserved them. For a few different reasons, it was really hard for me to believe that the other person meant what they said and that I deserved their
Continue reading Using Your Words, Offering Appreciation
Sexual shame is one of the most difficult pieces of sexuality for many people. Yet in my experience, talking about it and exploring it is also one of the most rewarding. Unlike many educators, I don’t see any value in trying to create a shame-free world, any more than I see a reason to create a world without anger, sadness, joy, or pleasure. Like all of our other emotions, shame is simply part of the human experience and I prefer to explore constructive ways that we can work with it. After all, I don’t think there’s any shame in feeling shame.
I’m really pleased to announce that I’ll be offering a workshop on the topic through San Francisco Sex Information. This workshop is open to
Continue reading Upcoming Workshop: Sexuality and Shame
One of the most common responses to the anti-porn critiques of pornography is that they’re sex-negative and all too often, that ends up creating a “no we’re not/yes you are” argument. And yet, whenever I read the anti-porn side of things, I’m struck by how often sex-negativity is woven into their claims, although in all fairness, that’s not always the case.
I couldn’t figure out exactly what it was that bothered me by the way that Gail Dines keeps talking about gagfactor.com, a website that focuses on men facefucking women. And then it hit me- there are two parts to it. First, Dines is trying to foment a moral panic. And second, she simply doesn’t understand sex.
I can explain the first point better
Continue reading 7 Ways to Create a Sex-Positive Critique of Porn
This post also appeared on the Good Vibrations Magazine.
One of the most important ways to help foster positive changes in peoples’ behaviors is to use a risk reduction approach. Rather than requiring 100% compliance with an unyielding rule, this philosophy says that any movement in a more healthy or safe direction is a good thing, whether it ultimately leads to completely letting go of risky behaviors or not.
While it may seem counter-intuitive at first, risk reduction consistently works better than a rigid rule. After all, if a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, then we need to help ourselves and others take that first step. That’s a lot easier to do when we stop expecting people to somehow
Continue reading Risk Reduction and Sex Positivity
There’s been a flurry of articles recently about the shift on college campuses and within feminism about casual sex, hooking up, and abstinence. According to these stories on Salon.com, the Atlantic.com, the New York Post, and others around the internet, women are discovering that casual sex doesn’t work for them and are embracing celibacy and abstinence. And I think that most of these articles are missing the point.
First, though, I want to be very clear about what I think sex-positivity has to offer when talking about abstinence. From a sex-positive perspective, it doesn’t matter how often you have sex, or how many people you have sex with, or what kinds of sexual activities you do. What matters is that your decisions are coming
Continue reading What Does Sex-Positivity Say About Abstinence?
I received a comment recently from someone that I think brings up some really important topics:
Unfortunately I found that there’s this binary in the feminist and/or sex-positive worlds: either you are against all porn and BDSM etc or you are sex-positive and therefore are unwilling to admit that sexuality all too often has a truly sinister side.
I really wanted to figure out more about sexuality but found it hard to read most of the sex-positive sites, where making fun of people for being uptight is common. As a certifiably uptight person, these supposedly sex-positive people are (no doubt unintentionally but still) sending me a message loud and clear – they are not there for me.
I have certainly seen this sort of thing
Continue reading Sex-Positivity, Feminism, Arrogance, and Shame
There’s a great piece on HuffPo about our continuing reluctance to deal with preventing sexually transmitted infections. Here’s the opening:
Among the many vital health issues not addressed by healthcare reform is the state of our sexual health. There are 19 million new sexually transmitted disease (STD) infections in the United States each year according to the Centers for Disease Control. What does our government spend to prevent this pandemic? One hundred and fifty-one million dollars. That is less than 50 cents per person.
Some of you may already be thinking this doesn’t affect me. Think again. Half of all STDs are among young people ages 15 – 24. They are your child, grandchild, sister, brother, cousin or friend. (And by the way, STDs cost
Continue reading Are We Too Afraid to Deal With STIs?
Greta Christina has a great piece on the Blowfish blog (note: the original link is broken) about asking for what you want from a lover. And I think that, for the most part, she’s right when she says:
“Oh, I don’t know. What do you want to do?”
It took me way too many years to learn that this is not always a nice thing to say. That, in fact, it’s usually not a nice thing to say. It took me way too many years to learn that, although “I don’t know, what do you want to do?” may seem like a good way to be polite and accommodating and easy-going, much of the time it’s actually a gigantic buzz-kill. It’s a great way to
Continue reading What Do You Want?
CNN posted an article today called “The Downside of ‘Friends with Benefits,’” which is another example of someone writing about sex without taking a look at their own assumptions about sex, relationships, and how people work.
The focus of the article is the increase of STIs and the claim that having more than one partner at the same time (“concurrency” if you want to get technical) increases one’s risk for sexually transmitted infections. I can buy that- if you’re exposed to more people (everything else being equal), you’re at a higher risk, just like you’re at a higher risk for the flu if you’re around lots of people than if you stay home.
According to the article The Contexts of Sexual Involvement And Concurrent
Continue reading Love, Romance, Fidelity, and FWBs
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