Sexuality Study: Why Every Amanda and Erica Is Friskier Than A Claire or Kate – TIME NewsFeed

From the "it's just dumb enough to share" department, the French paper 20minutes reports that "women whose names end with the letter 'a' reported having more than the average 4.4 sexual partners most women had during their lifetime." Their source is a French dating website called Smartdate, whose survey of its user base revealed that names like Laura, Tania, and Lola were given to the women with the most sexual partners.

It sounds to me like Smartdate is trying to be something of an OkCupid, whose OkTrends blog is actually interesting because they talk about rape fantasies, sexuality and aging, and a lot more. That said, this is a story I'd like to see headed towards debunktion junction.

Read brief source…[kot-contrib]. (Thanks, maymay!)[/kot-contrib]

Rev. to NJ church leaders: Thou shalt not Facebook

In a story that highlights the absurdity of religious ignorance about sex and relationships, the Rev. Cedric Miller is urging his congregation to delete their Facebook accounts because, he says, "the temptation" that the website offers to commit adultery "is just too great," AP writer Wayne Parry reports. "I've been in extended counseling with couples with marital problems because of Facebook for the last year and a half," Miller, whose previous preachings advised Church members to share their Facebook password with their spouse, said. Since apparently, "If your spouse won't give you his or her password, you've got a problem," according to Pat Dawson, a minister at the church.

No word yet on whether Miller will also urge deleting your email account, disconnecting your phone, or turning down invitations to high school reunions. Because, y'know, the temptation to fuck one of your exes is just too great, and so clearly the problem in your relationship is the technology you use to meet.

Read brief source…[kot-contrib]. (Thanks, maymay!)[/kot-contrib]

Update: As it so often happens, you are what you repress the most. In Rev. Miller’s case, that means you have extramarital sexual relationships, on multiple occasions. In 2003, Miller testified in court to having group sex with his wife and a Church assistant, testimony he confirmed this Saturday. Yup, not surprised.
Update: AP reports today that Miller will take a leave of absence following a vote by the Church regarding his position as a senior pastor. Miller says it was a “vote of confidence” that apparently also included “some restrictions that he wouldn’t list.” Sounds like he’s not just a hypocrite, but a liar, too. It seems to me like he would fit right in with the Church he’s being temporarily expelled from.

Female orgasm ‘overwhelms’ | Perth Now

In a news article that has amazingly managed to put the most obvious and the most awesome thing ever said about orgasms in a single sentence, the Australian Sunday Times reports professor of psychology at Rutgers University in New Jersey Barry Komisaruk and his colleagues produced the first film of women's brains as they approach and achieve climax. Okay, so what's both simultaneously obvious and awesome about that? Says the Times:

A woman not only experiences longer and deeper orgasms than a man, but they so overwhelm her nervous system that they leave her temporarily impervious to pain, the film shows.

That's right, orgasms may leave women temporarily impervious to pain. Impervious, as in "invincible", in the words of Newser's Evann Gastaldo. During climax, 30 parts of the brain are affected. And the duh part: men's orgasms, also studied, are "not as strong." Le sigh.

Read brief source…[kot-contrib]. (Thanks, maymay!)[/kot-contrib]

Study: What the Risky Sex Lives of NYC Teens Reveal – TIME Healthland

Data from New York City's health departments from 2005 to 2007 "suggests that the focus of public-health messages about sex may be outdated: it needs to shift from kids' self-identities ('I am homosexual,' e.g.) to their behavior ('I have homosexual sex')," Meredith Melnick reports. One strong reason for this is because, according to the data released as part of a study on Monday, 39% of teens who identified as heterosexual or straight had sex both male and female partners, yet very few sex-ed classes deal with bisexuality.

Additionally, "36% of girls with both male and female partners were assaulted by a date in the previous year and 35% of boys with partners of both sexes reported the same thing." Although this article's headline implies the problem is "risky sex," the real problem is intimate partner violence, exacerbated by a stigma of homosexual acts, especially for men.

Read brief source…[kot-contrib]. (Thanks, maymay!)[/kot-contrib]

CDC finds stark regional disparities in teen-pregnancy rates – The Hill’s Healthwatch

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released yet another report yesterday finding grave differences in pregnancy rates of teens educated in States pushing abstinence-only sex education versus States offering comprehensive, evidence-based sex education. As Mike Lillis reports, "In Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Vermont, for instance, 2008 birth rates were less than 25 per 1,000 teens aged 15 to 19, CDC found. In the same year, Arkansas, Mississippi, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas all had rates topping 60 per 1,000 teens."

Meanwhile, another report from the Guttmacher Institute shows "All five states with the highest teen birth rates have adopted policies requiring that abstinence be stressed." This isn't new news, yet anti-sex ed, abstinence-only hypocrites remain willfully ignorant.

Read brief source…[kot-contrib]. (Thanks, maymay!)[/kot-contrib]

Councilors mull virginity as criteria for enrollment | The Jakarta Post

A seriously misguided Indonesian legislator, Bambang Bayu Suseno, has proposed that access to public education be restricted only to girls who’re virgins. I wish I were exaggerating, but I'm not. According to a report by Jon Afrizal, Suseno asked, "Why are girls who lose their virginity allowed to go to public school?" Clearly, Mr. Suseno is suffering from a poor education in the matters of basic human rights, which guarantees every human being the right to access public education whether they are a virgin or not.

His rationale? "Parents are obviously afraid of their daughters being deflowered before the time comes, so [girls] can undergo the virginity test and automatically protect their dignity." Um. What about boys? And, human rights violations aside, exactly how virginity will be determined is unsurprisingly undefined. This is yet another example of the harm caused by sexist notions of purity.

Read brief source…

Law.com – N.Y. Records May Help to Answer the Question: When Is Bondage Prostitution?

The march towards sexual freedom is laborious, slow, downright unglamorous, and fundamentally necessary. Thanks to the work of Sienna Baskin and others at the Urban Justice Center, NY County Supreme Court Justice Carol R. Edmead ordered the New York Police Department "shine a light on the hazy legal line separating bondage, domination and sadomasochism from prostitution," Mark Fass reports. The decision comes as sex workers demand "a right to know what the NYPD considers to be prostitution," a crime that has been plagued by imprecise language in legislation and arguably arbitrary enforcement for decades on end.

Enforcement of New York Penal Law 230.00 is what the Sex Workers Project wants insight into. Penal Law 230.00, enacted in 1969, is a "single-sentence statute that prohibits engaging in 'sexual conduct' for a fee, but fails to define 'sexual conduct.'" Edmead granted only partial disclosure of NYPD documents in the Freedom of Information Law case, siding with NYPD objections.

Read brief source…

Mojowijo Lets Users Turn Their Wii Remotes Into Vibrators for Virtual Sex – San Francisco Music – All Shook Down

With games like "Wii Sports" and other family-friendly titles, the Nintendo Wii isn't the console most people think of when they decry video games for "corrupting the youth." (That's what Sony PlayStation or PC-based first-person shooters do.) Nevertheless, the Wii's controller, the Wiimote, offers exciting possibilities for reinterpretation, kinda like Disney.

That's what Mojowijo has done: they took the computerized, vibrating capability of the Wiimote and turned it into an Internet-controlled cybersex toy that's turning heads, opening minds and thighs, of course! The company's website touts "Mojowijo's patent pending Motion2Vibration technology, the device is able to transform the varying motions of the control into appropriate vibration signals and send them to another selected device – in the same room or over the Internet […e]ssentially turning your Wii remotes into shared, remote controlled vibrators…!" Well then. I'm game!

Read brief source…

Victory for Free Speech: Third Circuit Strikes Down University of Virgin Islands’ Speech Codes – FIRE

Can you be punished for saying something that made others uncomfortable? Stephen McCauley was, after speaking with a college rape survivor. But this week, the Third Circuit court of appeals struck "down unconstitutional speech policies maintained by the University of the Virgin Islands…on First Amendment grounds."

The case, brought against the University's "regulations prohibiting 'offensive' or 'unauthorized' signs and conduct causing 'emotional distress'" and provisions in the University's Code of conduct prohibiting "any act which…tends to injure or actually injures, frightens, demeans, degrades or disgraces any person" was ruled overbroad, affirming prior legal precedent distinguishing college students from lower education students as having greater First Amendment protections than their counterparts. "[L]et me be clear," Robert Shibley explained. "Maintaining speech codes [in public institutions] violates the law."

Read brief source…

Is sex a human right? (via early to bed)

Early To Bed has a great rundown of a recent controversy:

In England, a 21 year old man with learning disabilities is receiving government funding to take a trip to Amsterdam for the purpose of losing his virginity to a prostitute. … This is just one of the many people receiving sexual services funded through a £520million scheme introduced to empower those with disabilities.

[A social worker] claims, "Refusing to offer him this service would be a violation of his human rights." Jezebel points out the sobering point that this is similar to language used by misogynists to defend rape. … [D]oes any one else find it odd that a country where prostitution is illegal has no problem sending a young man to see one elsewhere?

So, is sex a human right? No, but sexuality is. … Should taxpayers foot the bill for a 21 year old's sex holiday? Hell no.

This sheds some much-needed light on debates over acceptable sex and, more importantly, personal sexual responsibility.

Read brief source…