In the meantime…

British woman taken to court AGAIN for noisy sex

48-year-old Brit Catherine Cartwright ignored a court-ordered ban on her noisy sex, and has pleaded guilty to making love with sounds described as “murder,” “unnatural,” and capable of drowning out her neighbors’ televisions.

Cartwright had been banned from her noisy romps after hundreds of complaints. Even her postman and a women who walked her child to school past Cartwright’s house complained.

The Press Association reported that Cartwright claimed to not realize she was being so noisy:

Giving evidence Cartwright said she was unable to control the noise she made during sex. “I did not understand why people asked me to be quiet because to me it is normal. I didn’t understand where they were coming from. I have tried to minimize the situation by having sex in the morning – not at night – so the noise was not waking anybody,” she said.

However, the BBC reported a neighbor’s statements about the lovemaking:

At an earlier hearing, next door neighbour Rachel O’Connor told the court she was frequently late for work because she overslept having been awake most of the night because of the noise.
She said: “The noise sounds like they are both in considerable pain. I cannot describe the noise. I have never ever heard anything like it.”

and via tonic:

Etch-A-Sketch: Condom Edition
Do you love art almost as much as you love (safe) sex? Well, if so, there’s a contest for you!

New York City is sponsoring a contest for the best condom wrapper to remind people to be safe about sex. The city health department will debut the winning look in the fall and the wrapper will be the latest in a string of colorful designs the city hands out for free.

The contest is open to people over the age of 17 and entries (of a non-raunchy and non-copyrighted variety) can be submitted until January 22.

And did you know that there is indeed a Facebook page called NYC Condom that you can refer to for all manner of prophylactic information?

Hey whatever it takes, because it’s no joke, what with the spread of HIV/AIDS and STDs not abating anytime soon. What would be an image that would most be most effective in getting people to play it safe? Keep in mind that the city has given out over 40 million free condoms a year to places such as bars, beauty salons, restaurants, gyms and hospitals, according to the release.

You can submit your ideas here:

New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
Bureau of HIV/AIDS Prevention and Control
ATTN: Director of Condoms and Materials Distribution
40 Worth Street, CN-A/2, Room 1602
New York, NY 10013

]]> http://tlrhj.wordpress.com/2009/12/16/sex-in-the-news-such/feed/ 0 napd0531 http://tlrhj.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/finally-an-update/ http://tlrhj.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/finally-an-update/#comments Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:44:50 +0000 napd0531 http://tlrhj.wordpress.com/?p=170 ]]> First and foremost, I must apologize for neglecting to keep this site up to date. Truth is the school semester started–between school and work I’ve been flung out into the abyss and I’m just now fighting my way back. Simply put, life became all kinds of busy.

The latest update on the anthology, since things have been on hold due to my packed schedule: I’m putting it out myself. I’m also going to make it a reoccurring venture, a zine-type format I do believe. I’m not completely sold on how the material will be presented(although I’m brainstorming hardcore on that), but I do know that I want to make it a stretched out venture, as opposed to a one-time thing. Many people have contacted me post-deadline expressing interest in contributing, and I want to give their work a place in all of this. So yes. Contributions will be ongoing. Publication will be ongoing.

To contribute, contact me with submissions and/or questions to: honeydunce@gmail.com and remember: you can submit anonymously if you’d like.

This site will continue to evolve and grow(I hope!). I’m going to add more personal entries and stories, as well as progress on various research projects I’m tackling in(and out of) class. So hang in there, folks. I promise to be a more consistent presence!

]]> http://tlrhj.wordpress.com/2009/11/11/finally-an-update/feed/ 0 napd0531 http://tlrhj.wordpress.com/2009/08/25/168/ http://tlrhj.wordpress.com/2009/08/25/168/#comments Tue, 25 Aug 2009 19:24:56 +0000 napd0531 http://tlrhj.wordpress.com/2009/08/25/168/ ]]> Some men see STDs as a badge of honor or rite of passage. Wowza.

Click here to read the article.

]]> http://tlrhj.wordpress.com/2009/08/25/168/feed/ 0 napd0531 http://tlrhj.wordpress.com/2009/08/25/porns-last-taboo-protected-sex/ http://tlrhj.wordpress.com/2009/08/25/porns-last-taboo-protected-sex/#comments Tue, 25 Aug 2009 19:18:10 +0000 napd0531 http://tlrhj.wordpress.com/2009/08/25/porns-last-taboo-protected-sex/ ]]>

You won’t find “Debbie Does Condoms” or “Jenna Loves Prophylactics” on offer from any of the major porn studios, but that could all change thanks to an ongoing campaign to require rubbers in hardcore flicks. From the outside, it seems a rather admirable way to protect porn actors from the consumer push for risky bareback porn, as I wrote a couple months back. The approach seems basically humanist – or even feminist, considering that female porn actors are most at risk for contracting HIV in straight porn. But, I’m finding that there are actually some Magnum-sized issues with such legislation.

Late last week, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation filed an official complaint against 16 pornographers for producing films featuring unprotected sex and promised to raise hell until condoms are mandated throughout the industry. This is just the group’s latest war cry: Earlier this summer, shortly after a performer tested positive for HIV, the organization staged a protest and once again called for legislation. They say the industry’s voluntary testing program leaves open a dangerous window: Once a month, actors take the PCR-DNA test, which can detect HIV within two weeks of infection. Since 1998, the Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation has reported five HIV cases among actors in straight porn. That’s a relatively low number, industry insiders point out, given the cosmic amount of condomless sex that has gone on in that time — but many, myself included, are disturbed by the idea that five infections over 11 years is considered adequate (particularly with regards to the four cases that were a part of a 2004 outbreak, in which it seems clear there was on-the-job transmission).

It isn’t that the industry as a whole is opposed to tightening its voluntary prevention system — plenty of people in the biz actually support a transition to twice-monthly testing — but there has been an overwhelming outcry against mandating condoms. It isn’t just the bigwigs, who know that condom porn makes much less money, either. Some female porn stars argue that condoms make their job tougher: Belladonna wrote on Babeland’s blog, “If I were required to use condoms, my performance would most likely suffer, and in the end I would suffer.” For others it can be an issue of comfort: “For the women, there are just four words: rubber rash/friction burn,” veteran performer Nina Hartley wrote on her Web site. Remember, porn actors don’t get down like most folks; the sex they have is more like a three-ring acrobatic act that lasts for hours on end. Ernest Greene, a longtime director and Hartley’s partner, explains on his blog:

–[A single scene amounts to] over two hours of intercourse in various positions with constant stops and starts during which male performer’s erections rise and fall, condoms frequently tear or unravel and the degree of latex abrasion on the internal membranes of female performers’ vaginas lead to micro-abrasions that make them more vulnerable to all kinds of STIs. Most condom-only female performers eventually abandon condom use, not under pressure from producers, but rather because of the constant rawness and end-on-end bacterial infections produced by countless hours of latex drag.]–

Add to that the issue of enforcement. There isn’t any practical way for the state of California – which, maybe you’ve heard, is in pretty bad shape – to monitor such a requirement. You might say: No biggie, at least more companies would use condoms more often, right? Only, industry insiders worry that an unenforceable condom mandate made from the outside could potentially undermine the voluntary testing system that the straight side of the industry currently has in place.(The gay side of the business is condoms-only, testing optional.) They worry that unreliable condom use paired with less testing — not to mention the previously mentioned “micro-abrasions” — could potentially put performers at greater risk.

I could spill a couple thousand words about ways to make sure that a condom mandate didn’t undermine the current testing system, but the truth is that so much of this debate simply comes down to the very unsexy issue of California state employment code. Most porn performers are considered contract workers, but in order to be supervised by California Division of Occupational Safety and Health, they would have to be reclassified as employees. As Greene told Adult Video News, “Under California law, it is illegal to require – I cannot underscore this heavily enough – it is illegal to require HIV testing or in fact any knowledge of the HIV status of any potential employee as a condition of employment. In other words, no producer would even be able to ask a performer if they had been tested, if such a law were to be enacted.” To do so would be considered employment discrimination. “It’ll be testing or condoms, take your choice,” he says. Unless, of course, the industry voluntarily adopted a condom-plus-testing policy, but that’s unlikely to happen unless consumers demand it.

That brings me right back to the same conclusion I came to before: It’s all about the audience. For those ethical porn consumers out there — and I’m convinced they do exist, despite past reader comments to the contrary — it’s possible to vote with your dollars. (Of course, much of what gets traction online is pirated material or free teasers for for-pay content, in which case the consumer vote is less direct.) The best middle ground solution I’ve come across is one suggested by Adult Industry Medical Health Care Foundation founder Sharon Mitchell shortly after the 2004 outbreak: Why not promote a “seal of approval” that advertises a porno’s ethical production values? The gold standard might be requiring rigorous two-week testing and actively defending workers’ right to perform with or without a condom. It would be a disclaimer of sorts — essentially, “no porn stars were harmed in the making of this movie.”

I can already hear some of you heaving exasperated sighs. Surely, you think I’m being a Pollyanna when it comes to the general porn audience: They want fantasy, not politics! But I see it as an issue of keeping the rather unerotic reality of disease from getting in the way of fantasy.

― Tracy Clark-Flory

A socially-conscious video-production class in Chicago created a video on rape culture “to spread awareness and get people thinking about how and why rape happens.”

Lisa Wade, via contexts.org, notes: “I noticed also that the message is aimed exclusively at girls. “You” is implicitly a guy…The responsibility for keeping teens abstinent and for preventing teen pregnancy, then, falls solely on girls.

Campaigns like this frustrate me. Perhaps the intention is good but to me?

Not good enough.

Make the shirts for guys too! Promote more than just abstinence while you’re at it–promote safe and smart sex.

Ugh…yeah. This campaign is frustrating and downright one dimensional to me. Go back to the fucking drawing board(pun intended).

I started this blog to maintain updates on the sex anthology I am editing. By the way, I’m still editing, and hope to meet with the potential publisher this week/coming weekend. I’m very nervous about putting the work out there–more nervous than I’ve been in the past when releasing my own material. I just want to do the outlet justice, and make the contributors proud. This is my first time putting together an anthology, and it’s definitely tough. From simple things such as page layout, order of works to more difficult aspects–like how to afford publishing, how do I acknowledge the various anonymous contributors, etc. I’m working through it, so don’t you worry.

Something I find entertaining about this site as well: I really have no idea who is tuning in. Sometimes I feel like I’m simply archiving sex topics for myself, which is fine. It will be interesting to look back and see how “the times” have changed, plus it keeps me in the habit of staying educated myself.

Exciting news–I’ve been contacted by Planned Parenthood in Pasadena, California to contribute to a website they have started called http://www.betterthansexed.org. The purpose of this website is to cover various topics of sex education and positive sex health to the younger folks–primarily ages 18 to 25. I’m quite honored to be asked and I’m brainstorming/jotting notes for articles as I type this. So yes. I’ll let you know when I get one up(ba-dum-dum Psh! Pun very much not intended, but welcomed).

That’s my news for now. More coming soon.

Young, fast and totally confused
When it comes to sex, today’s teen girls must have it easier than their mothers’ generation… right? In an essay for RH Reality Check, Heather Corinna takes apart one of the so-called “post-feminist” era’s most pervasive assumptions. Her conclusion? Teens don’t have any fewer sex-related issues to deal with than their parents did; theirs are just different.

And if anyone should know, it’s Corinna: As a founder of the excellent Scarleteen, she has been helping girls (and boys) access good information about sex and reproductive health since 1998. The site’s frank, comprehensive, nonjudgmental approach to teens’ most intimate queries has made it an invaluable resource at a time when so many school sex ed programs fall short.

“I can understand why it can seem like young women have it easier when it comes to sex and sexuality,” Corinna writes, citing improved access to birth control, abortion and information, as well as increasing acceptance of LGBT youth and a livelier cultural conversation about sexuality, as examples of this generation’s advantages. “But,” she continues, “all those benefits can also pose some not-so-beneficials, and some very real challenges. Young women now have some extra bags to carry that we before them may not have had to.”

To illustrate her point, Corinna tackles the idea that learning “no means no” has stopped young women from falling prey to unwanted sexual advances:

[M]any grow up also experiencing that while no may mean no, they don’t always have an easy time saying it or feel the permission to. Too, many young women are more frequently, and at earlier ages — which for some is due to sexual development happening earlier historically than it ever has for women before — finding themselves in the position of responding to sexual invitations and situations. Statistically, the earlier young women become sexually active, the more frequently they report those very early experiences are coerced: saying no in a highly loaded situation, no matter what generation we belong to, tends to be something that is a lot more difficult the younger we are. As well, the younger women are when they become sexually active, the older their partners tend to be, and the less likely it is that contraception or safer sex practices are used.

Corinna goes on to remind us that there have been few advances in birth control since the early ’90s — and the improvements that have been made to existing methods may be teaching girls to be disgusted with their bodies. “[T]he use of hormonal methods for menstrual suppression is becoming more popular,” she writes. “With more older women talking about how awesome not having a period is, women in their teens having a hard enough time already accepting the adult changes in their bodies get another message that those changes are as awful and gross as they feel.” The only momentous, fairly recent birth-control development — emergency contraception — has it downsides, too. Many teens don’t have access to it (although, thanks to a judge’s order, it will soon be available without prescription to 17 year olds), and those who do may feel “those same sorts of pressures to provide sex to wanting partners my mother’s generation experienced with the popularity of the pill.”

At the same time, the endless supply of information constantly bombarding teens may be causing problems of its own. Girls receive so many contradictory messages about sexuality that confusion is inevitable. “Let’s bear in mind,” writes Corinna, “most of us my age also did not grow up hearing about the virginity pledges on the same night we casually flipped the remote past an ad for Girls Gone Wild.” Meanwhile, in our media-saturated culture, the pressure to conform to unrealistic beauty standards is having a greater effect on younger girls.

Even in the realm of education, “more information is not always better information, nor information that’s really about them, which is accurate, information they can contextualize soundly or even know how to look for in the first place.” And without proper guidance, “navigating it all can sometimes leave young people feeling like they know less, rather than more. Very few young people have had education in determining credibility or bias in media, after all.”

Where Corinna really nails it is in her analysis of what older generations’ assumptions may be doing to teens: “The very expectation that young women today should or do have it so much easier, in and of itself, can be a pressure. Many older women expect younger women to be apt at managing all of these issues and more in ways that they themselves were not and may still not be.” When we assume that kids already know everything they need to know about sex — that they’ve learned it from the Internet, or TV, or even school — we ignore the likelihood that they are dealing with the same kind of confusion we once did. And that can lead not only to isolation, but also the perpetuation of myths over real knowledge.

― Judy Berman

Withdrawal Method Finds Ally
By PAM BELLUCK
Published: July 20, 2009

Which birth-control method is more effective: condoms or withdrawal?

For sex educators and others, the answer is glaringly obvious. Withdrawal before ejaculation, the so-called pullout method, is a last resort, they say — something to be used only if there are no other options. The effectiveness of condoms, on the other hand, is well known.

So reproductive experts were taken aback by a paper in the June issue of Contraception magazine. Based on an analysis of studies, the paper pronounced withdrawal “almost as effective as the male condom — at least when it comes to pregnancy prevention.”

“If the male partner withdraws before ejaculation every time a couple has vaginal intercourse, about 4 percent of couples will become pregnant over the course of a year,” the authors write.

For condoms, used optimally, the rate is about 2 percent. But more significant, the authors say, are the rates for “typical use,” because people can’t be expected to use any contraception method perfectly every time. Typical use of withdrawal leads to pregnancy 18 percent of the time, they write; for typical use of condoms 17 percent of the time.

(There are other, more effective methods. Failure rates for the pill and the patch are about 8 percent; for Depo-Provera injections, about 3 percent; and for diaphragms, about 16 percent. Intrauterine devices fail less than 1 percent of the time.)

The lead author, Rachel K. Jones, a senior research associate at the Guttmacher Institute, which studies reproductive health matters, said she and her co-authors were motivated to write the paper because it seemed to them the pullout method was getting short shrift.

“We had all noticed that social science researchers and health care providers just kind of dismiss withdrawal and don’t seem to realize that it can prevent pregnancy,” Ms. Jones said. “Most people seem to be under the impression that you might as well do nothing.”

Even she used to think of withdrawal as “cheating,” she said. But “most women have used withdrawal at some point in their lives” and it seemed logical to compare the method to condoms, because health care providers “have no problem advocating the use of condoms as a method even though those are flawed.”

Some educators and physicians said they worried that putting out a message that withdrawal is effective would just give teenagers encouragement to have unprotected sex. And many underscored what the authors themselves point out: that unlike condoms, withdrawal does not protect against sexually transmitted diseases, a strong reason to encourage condoms.

But Ms. Jones said the intention was not to advocate withdrawal, but to advocate talking about it.

“Health care providers and health educators should discuss withdrawal as a legitimate, if slightly less effective, contraceptive method in the same way they do condoms and diaphragms,” the authors write. “Dismissing withdrawal as a legitimate contraceptive method is counterproductive for the prevention of pregnancy and also discourages academic inquiry into this frequently used and reasonably effective method.”

Ms. Jones and her co-authors said they were dismayed to see that withdrawal had not been exhaustively studied.

“Despite its role in the European fertility decline, and relatively high levels of use, acceptability and effectiveness,” they write, “most studies of withdrawal since that time have been small in scale (e.g., married Turkish men), or have focused on specific populations (e.g., Israeli Jews or Chinese Canadians obtaining abortions).”

The authors say there has been a bias against studying or legitimizing withdrawal, partly because of “preference for modern methods and the strongly held belief that pre-ejaculate fluid contains sperm, despite the lack of supporting evidence.”

Studies may underreport withdrawal use “because respondents do not consider it a ‘method,’ ” they write. “One study found that only 3 of 62 Turkish factory workers reported on a questionnaire that they used withdrawal. However, in face-to-face interviews, an additional 17 reported current use of this method.”

Two of the authors also conducted their own interviews to gather anecdotal information on people’s sexual practices. The interviews indicated that many people did not consider withdrawal a serious method. One woman, said she used no birth control, adding: “Sometimes we use condoms. But for the most part just the withdrawal method. Which I know is, like, the worst thing.”

Many people preferred withdrawal to condoms. As one said, “you can still have sex, it doesn’t smell bad, it doesn’t have chemicals in it.”

The research convinced the authors that “it is unfortunate that some couples do not realize they are substantially reducing their risk of pregnancy when using withdrawal, as these misperceptions may cause unnecessary levels of anxiety. More speculatively, if more people realized that correct and consistent use of withdrawal substantially reduced the risk of pregnancy, they might use it more effectively.”

Some experts said they did not dispute the findings but worried that young people would construe the article’s conclusion’s too liberally. “Those data don’t necessarily translate to youth today,” said Dr. Melissa Gilliam, chief of family planning and contraceptive research in the University of Chicago’s Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, who is on the board of the Guttmacher Institute. “In terms of a reliable method used over and over again, the risk of failure is quite high.”

Martha Kempner, vice president for information and communications at the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, said withdrawal, while less problematic for married or long-term monogamous couples, is not as acceptable in other circumstances because “well-intentioned young men can get it wrong, or somebody can just not do it after they said they would.”

Spirited comments on blogs largely agreed. “I wouldn’t want to trust a dude to get it right every time,” read one comment on the blog CollegeCandy.

Still, Ms. Kempner said: “It has made some classroom teachers nervous to give out the truth in this instance, but we do have to tell the truth. People, kids in particular, they’re using it. It is better than nothing, and it is always available. You can’t say, ‘Oh, I didn’t have one.’ ”

A National Health Service leaflet is advising school pupils that they have a “right” to an enjoyable sex life and that regular intercourse can be good for their cardiovascular health.

The advice appears in guidance circulated to parents, teachers and youth workers, and is intended to update sex education by telling pupils about the benefits of sexual pleasure. For too long, say its authors, experts have concentrated on the need for “safe sex” and loving relationships while ignoring the main reason that many people have sex, that is, for enjoyment.

The document, called Pleasure, has been drawn up by NHS Sheffield, although it is also being circulated outside the city.

Alongside the slogan “an orgasm a day keeps the doctor away”, it says: “Health promotion experts advocate five portions of fruit and veg a day and 30 minutes’ physical activity three times a week. What about sex or masturbation twice a week?”

Steve Slack, director of the Centre for HIV and Sexual Health at NHS Sheffield, who is one of the authors, argues that, far from promoting teenage sex, it could encourage young people to delay losing their virginity until they are sure they will enjoy the experience.

Slack believes that as long as teenagers are fully informed about sex and are making their decisions free of peer pressure and as part of a caring relationship, they have as much right as an adult to a good sex life.

Anthony Seldon, master of Wellington College, Berkshire, who introduced classes in emotional wellbeing, said the approach was “deplorable”.