Kendra Wilkinson expects the leak of her private sex tape to be “really hard” — “probably the hardest time” of her life. That might seem surprising from a woman who has already posed naked in the pages of Playboy and co-dated Hugh Hefner with two other women. Such a woman is expected to gamely catch the wave of publicity and ride it out to her own benefit. It’s what she’s been working toward all along, right?
via The legal secrets of sex tapes – Broadsheet – Salon.com.
This week, everyone is talking about young women’s sex lives. Sure, that’s pretty much always the case — but this week saw the birth of an interesting debate about whether young sex-positive women are shunning the drunken one-night stands of yesteryear and reconsidering (whispers) abstinence.
via Everyone’s an expert on girls’ sex lives – Sex News, Sex Talk – Salon.com.
PORTLAND, Ore. – Pornography on the Internet is almost as old as the Internet itself. That said, there is a new wrinkle in the online skin game, and it has a dark side.DIY Do It Yourself porn, also known as amateur porn, is a fast-rising genre that is attracting more viewers – and often desperate participants.
via DIY XXX: The thrill – and the dangers | KATU.com – Breaking News, Sports, Traffic and Weather – Portland, Oregon | Special Reports.
Last week, the media was worked into a breathless frenzy over the potential discovery of a “female Viagra.” The results of a new study showed that a prototype drug made by Pfizer, the maker of Viagra, successfully increased blood flow to the genitals — of female rabbits. That was all it took for news outlets to trumpet the imminent arrival of a sex drug for the ladies.
via The quest for the perfect female orgasm – Sex News, Sex Talk – Salon.com.
Let me get this out there right upfront: I do not want to take your porn away. I am against the exploitation and objectification of women, but I am also against censorship and Puritanical bullshit, and porn tangles all of those issues up in such a way as to make me feel uncharacteristically dispassionate about the whole mess. My official position on porn: Whatever.
So if I saw a compelling argument that porn is good for society, I would probably not go out of my way to nitpick it. But Milton Diamond‘s article at the Scientist, in which he discusses data that shows more porn is correlated with lower sexual assault rates, is not that argument. “[I]n every region investigated,” he writes, “researchers have found that as pornography has increased in availability, sex crimes have either decreased or not increased … Surprisingly few studies have linked the availability of porn in any society with antisocial behaviors or sex crimes. Among those studies none have found a causal relationship and very few have even found one positive correlation.”
Interesting. And if you’ve been going around saying that increased availability of porn causes an increase in sex crimes (or at least, that it did through the 1990s; Diamond doesn’t cite more recent findings on this subject), maybe you should stop. But speaking of the difference between correlation and causation, isn’t it kind of a big leap from that to “More porn equals less rape”?
via Stopping rape with smut – Broadsheet – Salon.com.
When Tiger Woods checked himself into the Gentle Path sex addiction clinic, many women writers and activists reacted with suspicion and rancor. Lemondrop asked if the treatment is “merely a way for philandering men to pay lip service to their outraged wives?” Tracy Clark-Flory of Salon found the diagnosis “nothing short of maddening.” A group of female protesters in Australia showed up at a golf tournament carrying photos of Tiger with a purple pimp hat and a scepter, implying a certain winking noblesse oblige. Our own Amanda Marcotte wondered whether Woods had a disease or a “fairly typical set of attitudes about women coupled with a lot of opportunities.” Or, as she succinctly put it, are celebrities such as Woods who rack up the mistresses ” ‘addicts’? Or just pigs?”
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It's hard, admittedly, to sympathize with a man who asks his mistress to change her voice mail because his wife has stolen his phone. Especially when that man is a millionaire golfer who has profited from his clean, good-boy image. But with some historical distance, the situation seems less suspect. Not so long ago, there was no easy way at all to publicly shame a celebrity pig or even any ordinary pig. The term “sex addict” does some of that work, and its introduction into the psychiatric idiom could be considered an important moment in feminist history. Suddenly, certain brutish behaviors that used to be overlooked were exiled as abnormal. And in the clinical literature, the word promiscuous came to primarily describe not hysterical women but rather predatory men.
The term “sex addict” was popularized in the late 1970s, when Patrick Carnes, who founded the Gentle Path clinic, published Out of the Shadows: Understanding Sexual Addiction. The book opens with a description Woods would find painfully familiar: the moment when every addict must admit his life is out of control because a “squad car has pulled into the driveway and you know why they’ve come,” and now millions are reading the “steamy news accounts.” The book’s first example is “Del,” a dastardly combination of Roger Sterling and Eliot Spitzer. Del is a lawyer who slept with his secretary and her boss at the same time. He “exploited relationships,” Carnes laments. He stalked women on the street. Carnes lays on the kind of scolding that would earn him applause if he were a guest on The View. No, you cannot tell someone you love her just so you can go to bed with her. No, you cannot tell her you love her if you love two other people as well.
via Sex addiction is a feminist victory. – By Hanna Rosin – Slate Magazine.
For the past several decades, a debate has raged as to whether or not pornography yields deleterious effects at the individual and/or societal levels (e.g., increased negative views toward women; increased rate of sexual crimes against women). In many instances, those who have sought to link pornography to countless ills have been ideologically motivated, as the aggregate scientific evidence hardly supports such conclusions. See chapter 6 of my book The Evolutionary Bases of Consumption (p. 228-235) for some relevant references on pornography.
In today’s post, I’d like to briefly report on two recent studies that shed light on the matter. In a paper published in 2009 in the International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, Milton Diamond reviewed a very broad number of studies that have explored the supposed ill effects of pornography. Subsequent to his extensive review, Diamond concludes (p. 312):
“Indeed, the data reported and reviewed suggests that the thesis is myth and, if anything, there is an inverse causal relationship between an increase in pornography and sex crimes. Further, considering the findings of studies of community standards and wide spread usage of SEM [sexually explicit material], it is obvious that in local communities as nationally and internationally, porn is available, widely used and felt appropriate for voluntary adult consumption. If there is a consensus against pornography it is in regard to any SEM that involves children or minors in its production or consumption. Lastly we see that objections to erotic materials are often made on the basis of supposed actual, social or moral harm to women. No such cause and effect has been demonstrated with any negative consequence.”
via Pornography: Beneficial or Detrimental? | Psychology Today.
Dallas police are treating sex workers as victims. Will it work?
By Tracy Clark-Flory
A woman is arrested for prostitution and given a choice: Jail or rehab — take your pick. It sounds like a far-fetched scenario — especially in the United States, where decriminalization attempts have been resisted — but it’s one that is playing out right now in Dallas. Call it a sex worker‘s get out of jail drug-free card.
Once a month, police round up prostitutes at local truck stops and take them to nearby “mobile command units” in the form of 18-wheeler trucks, the Associated Press reports. They are pressed for vital intel (for example, whether any local pimps are trafficking underage girls) before undergoing a social services screening and being offered various medical tests and treatment. Then it’s off to a courtroom-on-wheels.
“If the women have no felony warrants and seem sincere, the judge gives them the opportunity to avoid jail and enter rehab,” according to the AP. “After 45 days of inpatient counseling, they receive help with education, child care and housing.” There is no doubt these women are desperately in need of the help: The truck stops are the “bottom rung of prostitution,” according to Dallas police Sgt. Louis Felini. “They are trading sex for survival needs: food, a place to sleep,” he says. Not to mention, the vast majority are users, crack being the drug of choice.
via Broadsheet – Salon.com.
As it turns out, men are pretty much hard-wired to like watching — or reading about — other people having sex. Here’s why they do it — and why it’s probably ok.
By Matt McMillen
WebMD the Magazine – Feature
Reviewed by Louanne Cole Weston, PhD
Most nights, after his wife, Kate, had gone to bed, Tom surfed the Internet for porn. Kate learned about this during their second session of couples therapy. Despite Tom’s claims that his nocturnal habit had nothing to do with their love life, she worried he preferred porn to having sex with her.
That’s a common reaction. “Often, one partner has a porn interest, and the other thinks that’s a problem,” says Russell Stambaugh, PhD, an Ann Arbor, Michigan-based psychologist and sex therapist. “It rarely is. The best studies suggest that only about 5% of porn users have a problem that interferes with their daily life.”
That’s good news, because a lot of people look at porn. According to the May 2004 Tracking Survey by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 26% of male Internet users visited adult websites (only 3% of women went to these sites). In 2006, the porn industry raked in nearly 13 billion dollars.
via Why Men Like Porn.
It’s spawned a VH1 show and an excuse for Tiger Woods. But some experts balk at the idea of being hooked on nooky
By Tracy Clark-Flory
iStockphoto/Salon
After surrendering their vibrators and porno DVDs, the stars of VH1′s “Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew” have chain-smoked their way through three long, sexless weeks of treatment. The motley crew of pseudo-celebrities — including a porn star, a beauty queen and an obscure rock musician — have stripped their emotions bare in nationally broadcast group therapy, tearfully sharing stories of past abuse, anonymous sex, hours upon hours of smut surfing and, above all else, consuming shame. But here’s a question that the show, which ended its first season Sunday night, never bothered to ask: Are these people really addicts?
Since the term was coined in 1983, “sex addiction” has become so embroidered in our self-help vocabulary that most of us stopped questioning it. The term gets bandied about whenever Bill Clinton logs extracurricular time with an intern or Eliot Spitzer gets caught having sex in his socks or David Duchovny separates from his wife. Recently “Sex Rehab” host Dr. Drew Pinsky made headlines by suggesting that Tiger Woods has a sex addiction. It’s become the go-to defense for extramarital affairs (I’m not an asshole; I’m an addict!) and been sold to “Oprah” viewers eager to diagnose their porn-loving husbands as both addicts and assholes.
Patrick Carnes, the leading expert in sex addiction, defines it as “any sexually related, compulsive behavior which interferes with normal living and causes severe stress on family, friends, loved ones, and one’s work environment.” But here’s the tricky part: What’s the difference between the symptom of a compulsive disease and a disease itself? Repeatedly lathering up in the sink is a sign of OCD. We don’t call those people hand-washing addicts, now, do we? Unlike most addictive substances, sex can’t be smoked, snorted or mainlined. The term isn’t recognized in the DSM (the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), the bible of therapists everywhere (although along with other controversial diagnoses, like those relating to gender identity, sex addiction is being debated for a new version). But for many sex educators and sex-positive experts, hearing the term spoken about so casually, so frequently, is nothing short of maddening.
via Sex – Salon.com.
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