How to Have Sex in Texas

Fun With Math: Perry's Abortion Policy

2012-02-13T06:02:00.000-08:00

Politifact Texas is reporting that the always semi-truthful Rick Perry is trumpeting to other half-sentient Republicans that legislation he signed last year, which contained a variety of mechanisms to defund/fuck Planned Parenthood, has "closed 12 abortion clinics."

What really happened is that, since the clinics that actually provide abortion weren't eligible for state or federal funding anyway, none of the abortion-providing clinics Planned Parenthood operates were closed. The shuttered clinics were those providing state-subsidized family planning services, STI treatment, and cancer screenings. You know, stuff that could actually reduce the number of abortions.

Ever flexible with the truth, Perry staffer Josh Havens said that while yes, it is a so-called factual statement that the closed clinics did not provide abortions, he would "make the argument that a Planned Parenthood clinic is an abortion clinic."

That's like arguing that a regular dentist's office is also by category definitely also oral surgeon regardless of what services are actually provided by the dentist but whatevs.

Reducing access to birth control and passing restrictive, nonsense laws like the mandatory ultrasound bill do not somehow miraculously make women decide that the best thing to do with their sex partner is to stay home and work on joint needlepoint projects and abstain from sex because, you know, Jesus. People have sex, sometimes they get pregnant, and some of those people want to have abortions.

The simple math formula works like this:

Sex + Birth Control = Not Pregnant (like 90-98% of the time)

Sex - Birth Control = Pregnant (like 85% of the time, over the course of 1 year)

Unplanned Pregnancy x Likelihood of abortion = 40% chance of abortion

Population(Sex - Birth Control) = Lots of Unplanned Pregnancies

Lots of Unplanned Pregnancies x Likelihood of abortion = Huge Increase in Abortions!

Way to go, Perry! Your signing of that dumb-shit bill will increase the number of abortions.

Gentle readers, why not make a small donation to the Lilith Fund, which helps Central Texas women directly affected by Perry's craptastic policies get abortions.

2012 Birth Control Price Check

2012-02-08T05:59:00.000-08:00

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Just over two years ago I wrote a post about the increase in price for contraceptives following the implementation of the healthcare reform law which, at the time, was still not final. A high school classmate of mine (Hi, M!) alerted me to a segment on Rachel Maddow last night discussing the availability and cost of contraceptives based on Republican vs. Democratic proposals, and I thought it was time to do another set of price checks.

In the segment, Rachel claims that if a Democrat is president, your birth control will be covered by your insurance or, if you don't have insurance, you can go to a subsidized clinic and get your contraceptives for cheap or free. If a Republican were president, she says, your insurance may not cover it, there won't be any subsidized clinics, and you may have to pay out of pocket. What Rachel doesn't mention is that individual states, like Texas, can still do exactly what our state did and go after Planned Parenthood locally. Our wildly successful Women's Health Program has been defunded, which will leave thousands of poor women without access to health services or birth control.

The perverse way that prescription drugs are priced is the opposite of many healthcare services, which are often priced lower for those patients paying cash ("self-pay") and higher for those using insurance, with the assumption being that the amount of money the healthcare provider ultimately receives is the same for both patients. However, with rx drugs, the list price is what you pay if you don't have an insurance company negotiating with the manufacturer to reduce costs for a large patient pool. The large patient pool of uninsured women have no leverage, and the prices they will pay have gone up staggeringly just since 2009.

Below are the out of pocket prices women are paying now for contraceptives, with the 2009 price in parenthesis and the % increase:

Yasmin: $85.99 ($76.99) -- 12%
Ocella (Yasmin generic): $71.99 ($59.34) -- 21%
Yaz: $92.99 ($85.60) -- 9%
Nuvaring: $86.99 ($77.35) -- 12%
Ortho Tri-Cyclen Lo: $94.99 ($67.99) -- 40%
Tri-Lo Sprintec (OTCLo generic): No longer available ($55.99)
Plan B One-Step: $47.99 ($47.99)

The price of every method, other than Plan B One-Step, has gone up significantly. Perhaps this explains the buzz I've been hearing about Depo-Provera, the 3-month progestin only shot, which seemed to have gone out of popular use after 2000. One syringe costs just $100.78 on drugstore.com, by far the cheapest of the hormonal methods.

The Planned Parenthood clinics in Austin are still offering free birth control under the WHP, trying to use up the rest of their funds. There are income limits, but click here to see if you qualify. Better get it now before it's gone.

Previously on How to Have Sex in Texas: the $2.99 birth control app, iCycleBeads.

Review: iCycleBeads App

2012-02-01T20:17:00.000-08:00

One doesn't grow up in a household with a women's health self-help educator, a woman who moonlighted as a Gynecological Teaching Associate, and not have an underlying acceptance of so-called "natural family planning."

I became used to seeing speculums around the house and I vividly remember large spiral-bound notebooks describing the Sympto-Thermal Method, which seems like an incredibly complicated way to avoid using the pill. But in the 80s, IUDs were off the market in the US because of the Dalkon Shield, and some women, distinct from those who learned about natural family planning for religious reasons, were looking for other options.

The Sympto-Thermal Method, which relied on both basal body temperature measurements and an examination of cervical mucus throughout the menstrual cycle, is labor-intensive, complicated, and unpopular.

Fast forward to 2007. The Institute for Reproductive Health at Georgetown University (a Catholic school) won a contract from the USAID to teach people in certain target countries how to use fertility awareness methods methodically and correctly as a way to help women avoid pregnancy when an absence of national infrastructure makes the consistent use of condoms or other methods difficult.

Though the beads have been around for several years (I first wrote about them in 2009), Time published an article last fall that ginned up criticism from American feminist bloggers because of the IRH's association with Georgetown and the Catholic Church's anti-contraception stance.

Claims that the method is ineffective because of IRH's alleged ideological stance are not borne out by the data. Research published in 2001 in Contraception, the most authoritative journal on the subject, confirmed that the method, when used consistently and correctly, is 95% effective at preventing pregnancy. The method is also in use by PSI, UNFPA and other partners which are definitely not influenced by Catholic restrictions on family planning.

The reaction from many outside the granola/natural parenting arena has been resoundingly negative, but I wanted to find out how it actually works from a user perspective, leaving aside the debate about whether a Catholic institution can be trusted to advocate effective birth control.

Cycle Beads are not actually sold by Georgetown, but a private company called Cycle Technologies that holds the license from the University. In response to the popularity of the method among Western users, Cycle Technologies released an iPhone app, iCycleBeads,in February 2011, a Spanish version in March, and an Android version in July.

So how does it work? The Beads are a strand of 32 beads that represent the days of the menstrual cycle, color-coded to indicate the risk of pregnancy on a given day. On the brown days, sex is low-risk; on the white-bead days, it's higher risk. Users are instructed to use condoms, withdrawal, or abstain from vaginal sex on the white bead days to prevent pregnancy. The app sends you notifications when you're in the no sex or backup method days so you don't have to keep track of it yourself.

Not everyone can use Cycle Beads--you have to have regular menstrual cycles that are between 26 and 32 days in order to use the method, but the cycles can vary in length as long as they're in that timeframe.

I downloaded the app on my iPad so I could review it, but I have an IUD so I haven't relied on it for pregnancy prevention and instead examined the actual user experience. But my friend Carol, a 30 year old married friend of mine who always refers to me as her "hippie" friend, asked me about the app last year when she decided she was ready to go off the pill.

I asked Carol to tell me about her experience, negotiating the use of this method with her husband, and whether they had had any "slip-ups," the main concern with using a method that depends on your ability not to have them.

Carol's experience, she said, has been good. For nearly a year of use, she and her husband have had maybe 4 slip-ups (they use condoms instead of not having sex on the white bead days) where they have used withdrawal instead. She hasn't had any pregnancy scares.

Her husband was onboard. "Jesse had used condoms all the time with his college girlfriend who wasn't on the pill, so he was used to it. He's always been really good about that stuff."

The only hiccup came last summer when she had a visit with a healthcare provider who had never heard of the standard days method and scared her back into using the pill. She rapidly gained five pounds and after two months, went back to the app.

After moving and changing jobs and health insurance, Carol's plans to get pregnant have been pushed back and she plans to continue using the app until she and her husband are ready to start trying for a baby in a few years.

My only technical complaint with the app is that while it sends you notifications telling you when the fertile period begins and ends, it doesn't tell you when you're likely to get your period. As someone who also uses Monthly Info for period tracking (Carol does,too), I wish that the two things could be combined. The app is obviously tracking your menstrual cycle and it seems that it could be jiggered to predict when I need to buy that box of tampons I've been putting off. It would also be nice if the beads could somehow lay over Google calendar or another calendar program so you wouldn't have to look in two places to find out what day you're on.

Regardless of ideological objections to a method developed by a Catholic university, Cycle Beads are cheap, effective, and easy to use, characteristics largely absent from the modern contraceptive landscape. And no, the Beads don't protect against STIs, but neither does any other method--except condoms.

Highly recommended for those in monogamous relationships with known STI risk who can, with their partner, commit to using a back-up method or abstaining from vaginal sex for 11 days a month.

Cost: $2.99 in the iTunes Store or Android Market, plus the cost of back-up method, if applicable.
Free online screening tool can help you figure out if you're a candidate for the method and teach you how to use it correctly.

New Condom from Okamoto, Makers of Crown

2012-01-26T18:13:00.001-08:00

How to Have Sex in Texas loves Crown condoms. Crown is made by Okamoto, a Japanese manufacturer, and Julie Sunday was heartbroken to learn that their factory in Thailand is currently undergoing maintenance and thus she won't be able to visit on her March trip to the far east. However, Okamoto sent us exciting news--they have launched a new condom, the 004.

The 004, so named because of its 0.04 millimeter thickness, is Okamoto's resoponse to Trojan's Bareskin, which, also at 0.04 mm, is thinner than Crown.

They generously offered to send us samples, so a review will be forthcoming.

Their commercial, below, recalls the infamous Belgian condom ad from Zazoo.

Shopping for Vibrators in Clarendon

2012-01-10T17:21:00.000-08:00

Occasionally I'm out with friends on a Saturday night at a douchey, post-UVA bar like, say, Spider Kelly's in Clarendon, and I get an urgent "Can u help me pick a vibrator???!??" text (Hi, R!). As a totally committed sex educator, I always try to help a friend in distress, so I responded first with "Ina!!" [at left] because that's the vibrator I would buy if I were in the market for a dual-action product that costs more than $150. But I'm not and I'm on the "Going to Thailand in 2 Months" austerity plan, so I had to do some research to help my friend sort through the plentiful Rabbit-style options and find a vibe that would work.

My friend was rebuffed by the staff at Good Vibrations when she said she wanted something that provided both clitoral and internal stimulation but didn't have "antennae" and she turned to me for help finding a vibrator that didn't also look like a gentle meadow creature. Of course, I'm a Babeland gal, so I went to their site to see what's new in the dual-action category.

The two main design features I pay attention to in looking for dual-action vibrators are the curve of the larger, internal piece and the angle between the two vibrators. Internal toys that have a dramatic angle (like the Mustang from Vixen) are good for people whose G-Spots are harder to reach; if you or your partner have to dramatically curve your fingers in that "come here" motion to get that powerful sensation, a toy with an obvious curve will be much better than one that is more straight. For people who don't need that "come here" motion, a straighter shaft toy like the Bandit will do the trick. Second, the angle between the two pieces should be very narrow if your vaginal opening and clitoris are close together; if they are farther apart, a larger angle is okay. If the small, external piece (the "rabbit") is too far away, you'll have to hold it against your clit with your other hand, which could get tiring after awhile.

Of course, the Ina is where I went first. Made by Lelo, this product is gorgeous, rechargeable, mostly waterproof, and has no irritating animal characteristics. The angle between the larger bulb (for internal stimulation) and the smaller, clitoral vibrator is pretty tight, which is good for people whose vagina and clitoris are close together. Also, the internal piece is more "bulb" shaped, which is good for a feeling of fullness as opposed to an in-and-out motion. The Ina has been on my Christmas list since 2009. Santa, are you listening? $159.

Next up was Soraya [at right], also by Lelo, but with a very different design and significantly different angle between the two arms. Soraya comes in purple and black and is freaking gorgeous. The hole in the base is to slip your fingers through for a more secure grip [coughlubehandscough]. The clitoral piece is flexible, so you can apply it where you want it, but that also means your fingers could get tired from holding it in place. Big ups to Soraya for being completely waterproof which means easy cleaning. Soraya made the How to Have Sex in Texas 2010 gift guide. $199.

The last vibe I checked out is the Happiness & Joy, which, like the Ina, is rechargeable and splashproof. This toy is part of a brand new joint venture, Bedroom Kandi, between Kandi Buress, one of the Real Housewives of Atlanta and OhMiBod. OhMiBod's vibrators sync up the vibration of your toy with music from your iPod, which obviously means that you would have to download a bunch of R. Kelly albums immediately after purchase. The internal arm isn't angled very dramatically, which could make G-Spot stimulation more difficult for some women. More on H & J [haha] below. $129.

Of course any real habitues of Clarendon know that you can't shop for vibrators there, at least not yet. I'm taking applications for investors in Arlington's first full-service sex toy store. Holler!

Teen Pregnancy: It's the Birth Control, Stupid

2011-12-28T14:05:00.000-08:00

In a rigorous new analysis published in the journal PlosONE, Professors Kathrin Stanger-Hall and David Hall, both from the University of Georgia, have assessed the relationship between a state's sex education policy and its rates of teen pregnancy and birth.

In a conclusion that comes as a surprise to absolutely freaking no one, states with teach-only-abstinence policies had higher rates of teen pregnancy, and the effect remained significant even after controlling for confounders such as overall education level (as measured by the % of high school graduates who took the SAT); Medicaid waivers (an indicator of how easy it is for uninsured/poor people to get birth control and other health services); racial composition of the teen population (black and hispanic teens have higher rates of teen pregnancy and birth, so states with higher % of those groups have higher rates); and income.

The conclusion drawn is that, obvs, we need to be providing better (read: any) sex education to teens. But the Professors Hall mention a factor often neglected by researchers looking at abstinence programs: the often total absence of formal preparation for those teachers in public schools who actually might teach sex education, be it abstinence-only or comprehensive. As someone who teaches future teachers, I know that even those who are in kinesiology/health education programs and are likely to be responsible for sex ed as health/gym teachers and/or coaches, that the courses offered by the department at my University are limited in scope and not mandatory.

One point of disagreement I have with the Halls' conclusions is their claim that the cause of wildly disparate rates of teen pregnancy in Europe and the US is due to sex education. On the contrary, teens in [some] Europe[an countries] are provided with excellent sex education and have access to the full spectrum of reproductive health services, including birth control, often at clinics in their schools.

Sex education matters, yes, but access to services is more important. Teens do not have sex for the purpose of avoiding pregnancy--they have sex because sex is fun. If adults and policymakers want teenagers to use birth control, they will--but we have to teach them how to use it and help them figure out how to get it instead of erecting [heh] insurmountable barriers to keep them from avoiding pregnancy and spreading STIs.

Teen sexuality is like the Titanic--no matter how much distracting music we play on deck, the ship is definitely going down. No amount of abstinence education can stop teenagers--who are (for the most part) at their peak reproductive capacity--from having sex. But considering that the House's recent budget proposal included renewed funding for the terrible, horrible, no good very bad Community Based Abstinence Education program (Read: federal government gives money to religious organizations to provide "education" in public schools and make cheesy PSAs), this country is still letting the ship sink without enough lifeboats for everyone.

-----------------------------

A great resource that provides education and links to services is Bedsider, which features interactive tools about birth control methods and a clinic finder.

How to Get Your Wife to Have Sex With You

2011-11-07T05:48:00.000-08:00

This just in: Married people never have sex anymore! Seriously though. My friend Dr. Logan Levkoff, PhD, who I met in my Trojan days, has a new book out called How to Get Your Wife to Have Sex With You. The project comes from Good in Bed, a digital sex advice publishing house founded by Dr. Ian Kerner.

The site features works by a number of qualified, intelligent professionals and I really like it. This eBook is Logan's first full-length work for the site, and while I'm not married and probably not a good person to judge whether sex advice for married people is good or not, I asked her if I could review it.

Our culture perpetuates a trope that women, once snugged into the marriage they're supposed to spend their entire young adult lives gunning for, never want to have sex anymore. Maybe that's true. Married people do tend to report greater sexual satisfaction, but the frequency of sex in the majority of long term relationships does actually decline.

Of course, our culture directs a tremendous amount of sex negativity and judgment towards women and when a woman has played all her cards right and engaged in the right amount of sexual subterfuge and has scored the win, she might feel like her job is done and that sex is something she no longer has to deliver because maybe she never really wanted it in the first place. Who knows.

So I read the book on my fancy new iPad and asked Logan some questions.

JS: You seem to agree with Dan Savage's sentiment that sex--to the extent that both partners want it--is a right that people have in marriage, and if one partner refuses to (or can't) meet the other's reasonable sexual needs, they have the right to get their needs met elsewhere. Christopher Ryan, who wrote Sex at Dawn, would argue that women also have a need for excitement and sexual variety, when our culture tends to assume women's interest in sex just naturally wanes over time. Do you think that men who can't get their needs met by their wives have the right to go outside their marriage?

LL: It’s funny, I’ve never really seen myself as being in agreement with Dan on this particular subject. Yes, I think that sex is part of a relationship - an important part of a relationship. However, I don’t think that people in committed, monogamous relationships have a “right” to have their needs meet elsewhere. Relationships take time and while they shouldn’t feel like “work,” you have to work at enhancing (even managing) them. When I say that marital sex is a “right,” I mean it in the larger cultural sense. We have no problem talking about sex within the context of marriage, however, sex outside of marriage (premarital, teen, etc) is still so fraught with negativity and judgment. We don’t feel guilty about having sex if we’re married; it’s our “right.” That being said, I think that Christopher Ryan is on to something very important. Women do have a need for excitement and variety; we don't always want to act on it, but we fantasize all the time. Sadly though, our society hasn't exactly been supportive of women's desires and explorations of their sexuality.

JS: To what extent do you think sexism and gender roles affect women's ability to continue to feel 'sexy' as wives and mothers? What can we do about this? Basically, do women feel like great sex/being a 'sex goddess' is something they have to do to get a man but then once they're married are like, 'fuck it, don't have to do that anymore'?

LL: I think that there are huge pressures on women to be sexy - and in one particularly narrow minded image of “sexy.” This is definitely not how men see women - unless they’re fifteen years old and don’t know any better:) In truth we (women) are often our own worst critics. We stand in our own way. But I definitely don’t think that women go into a relationship thinking that once they’re married they don’t have to be sexy anymore. Rather, I think that the time and energy women have to devote to maintaining their “sexiness” changes. Once you’re taking care of everyone else, you forget to take care of yourself - you may not even have the time. It’s definitely not deliberate.

JS: A recent Huffington Post article highlighted a study that showed that husbands' sexual satisfaction was a strong predictor of marital disruption and divorce, but a wife's wasn't. Shouldn't women be more concerned with keeping their man sexually satisfied so he doesn't cheat to get his needs met?

LL: I think that all people should be concerned with having their sexual needs met, regardless of their gender. Sure, sex changes in a relationship, but there should still be physical intimacy. Otherwise you have a roommate. And well, eventually someone starts to wonder...and potentially wander, too.

JS: Why don't women want sex?

LL: Women want sex. Women miss the sex that they used to have -- we miss the desire we used to have. In many ways we are amazing multi-taskers, but when it comes to sex, we have a hard time prioritizing it. For some reason if we haven’t had it in a while, we start to forget that it was ever important. And it is, important.

JS: Describe, as a professional, your ideal married sexual relationship.

LL: I don’t think that there’s one ideal. However, I do believe in some guiding principles: Don’t buy into all the magazine hype. 425 New Ways to Drive Him Crazy? Have Sex Like it Was the First Time? It’s all bullshit. You can never have sex like you did in the beginning (when it was all new), but that doesn’t mean it can’t be great. The magazine covers contribute to a “Grass is Always Greener” attitude - that’s not good for any long term relationship.

Talk to each other as soon as something comes up - before it becomes a bigger issue.
If you miss having sex, talk about it. If you are frustrated by lack of desire, speak up about that, too. If you don’t share your feelings, your partner thinks you don’t care or aren’t interested in him/her anymore.
Get a vibrator. To use alone and with your partner. Pleasure is important and the more pleasure you have, the more often you’ll want it.
I’m less concerned with the number of times a week or month you have “intercourse.” Any physically intimate act that has the potential to end in orgasm counts as sex to me. If we stopped focusing on quantity, maybe we’d get some high quality sex, which actually leads to more high quality sex. See where I’m going with this?

You're going to have to buy the book to get the rest of Logan's advice, people. Download it here.

Condom Review Part 2: We Tried Fire & Ice So You Don't Have To

2011-10-24T18:04:00.000-07:00

Trojan is the Captain College of condoms. The hometown hero. The old standby. The one you probably carried around in your wallet in high school and used when you lost your virginity.

Those of us who came of age in the '90s remember Trojan Man, the straightforward radio commercial character who showed up at just the right moment with the condom some horny young people needed to get laid.

But sometime in the last 15 years or so, after the brand was acquired by Church & Dwight, makers of Arm & Hammer baking soda, they started experimenting with novelty. Where once there was only Enz, Ribbed for Her Pleasure and the deceptively named "Thin," suddenly it was hard to keep track of the multitude of boxes on the drugstore shelves carrying the iconic helmet logo.

The new approach worked--Trojan always dominated the US condom market but eventually Magnum, a mere subbrand, itself had 15% of all domestic sales. But there were some missteps along the way. After market research revealed that women buy half of all condoms and wanted to find them somewhere else besides the "family planning" section, the company introduced Elexa, a female-oriented line of condoms and other accouterments that featured glamorous looking ladies on the boxes and were found with the "feminine hygiene" products. Despite customer loyalty from those who did find them, Elexa was a flop. Turns out, customers were really confused by condoms in the tampon section.

In the last few years Trojan has reinvented the condom yet again with the Ecstasy, which introduced the first non-reservoir tip condom and an "UltraSmooth" lubricant. The prices went up, too. The boxes now contain 10 condoms instead of the usual 12, and they cost $10. But how do the new products stack up?

Tested: BareSkin and Ecstasy with Fire & Ice

Ecstasy Fire & Ice

Fire & Ice first came out a few years ago and it has received solidly mixed reviews. Some people make the connection that the lubricant is basically Icy Hot and that sensation sends some people's genitals into a total panic. Others enjoy the feeling. Trojan describes the new Ecstasy shape as: "Revolutionary design lets you and your partner feel the pleasure, not the condom." In theory, a condom that isn't tight around the penis makes sex feel more "natural." Ecstasy condoms also feature ribs at the base designed to stimulate the sensitive outer bit of the vagina.

She says: The Fire & Ice wasn't nearly as scary as I thought it would be. I confess I went into our first trial fully expecting an "OMG BURNING!" reaction, and what I got was...pleasant. I don't think the lube was pleasurable per se but I could definitely feel an acute "icy hot" sensation. That was cool, especially after drinking when you lose some of that focused feeling. The condom was baggy though and the ribs were too far down the base because I didn't notice them. Definitely didn't need extra lube, but my hands felt greasy and smelled like menthol afterwards.

He says: Much like the name, my feelings are hot and cold about this product. I wasn't pleased with the poncho-like fit of the condom and the smell was a little stronger than I would have liked. It's really well lubricated, and perhaps a bit too much. The hot and cold sensations alternate and are at times indiscernible, but for some reason every time I came I felt only cold. It's worth a try if you're looking to switch it up, but probably not a go-to condom.

Overall rating: 3/5

BareSkin

BareSkin is giving Crown a run for its money. Made in Japan, BareSkin is significantly thinner than any other Trojan condom and is actually thinner than Crown, making it the thinnest condom available. Made from a "low odor latex" this condom is meant to be the least condom-like of all.

She says: I like this condom. It is really thin, though it doesn't feel as thin as Crown. It definitely smells more latex-y than Crown, but less so than the Ecstasy. Didn't need extra lube at all. I love the color of the package, which is the same subtly metallic aqua of the Dallas Cowboys' spandex pants. Considering that these are easier to get than Crown, they might become a standby. Memo to Trojan: make BareSkin Fire & Ice!

He says: The biggest appeal to this condom is how thin it is--the bareskin almost makes it feel like a bare-back sexual experience. The result is the sensitivity is better than any other Trojan I've tried. The lubricant is sufficient, but not overwhelming which lessens the strength of the latex-like smell. The only drawback is that it was too tight at the base.

Overall rating: 4.5/5

Q & A: Houston, We Have a Lube Problem

2011-10-17T06:07:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I get a phone call from a friend telling me they've given my phone number or email address to someone--a stranger, to me--in urgent need of advice. It's a nice reminder that most people don't live in a world saturated by Dan Savage, Tristan Taormino, and the rest of the worth-their-salt sex advice gang, and that people still have problems and questions that need help and, somehow, Dr. Drew's 'Oh, you like anal sex? You were probably molested as a child weren't you?' bullshit isn't working.

Dear Julie,
I am in a long-distance relationship of a year now. My boyfriend goes to U of H, so we see each other about once a month. We both like to have rough sex, but it really tears me up and causes me to be in pain afterwards. This usually isn't a problem because we're only together for a weekend or so, but I didn't heal up normally after this past weekend and got worried.

He became really upset when I first suggested that we not always have rough sex and try other things, saying that style is what he liked most and he didn't want to change anything. I told him that I don't want to change anything either, but I will not continue having sex through the pain because, well, I don't like the association of sex with pain. It may be one of those situations where he thinks since the sex is good, why change anything?, but I come away from it all with rips and tears for days at a time.

Emily

I emailed Emily back to find out what 'rough sex' meant for her and she said that it meant just kind of pounding away, not anything that was intended to cause injury. Also, I wanted to make sure Emily didn't just have a case of the Red Raider Rash. She said they'd both been tested (yay!) and were clean.

Dear Emily,

My guess is that the 'fit' between you and your boyfriend is too tight, and that your lube gets pushed to the base of his penis during sex and doesn't reduce the bad friction between his skin and yours. You also might be allergic to an ingredient in the lube you're using, which could cause irritation in the (very sensitive, easily abraded) skin of your vagina which makes having sex insult to injury.

Water-based lubes can be a challenge because the water they contain is absorbed by the body over time, leaving behind the base the water is suspended in--often, glycerine. Many people are allergic to glycerin and other people may not be allergic to it but are irritated by it when it becomes sticky.

I recommend using a silicone-based lube, like Sliquid Organics Silk, which doesn't contain glycerin and since it's silicone-based, it doesn't get absorbed by the body and get sticky. If the problem is the 'fit' between you, a thick silicone- or oil-based lube designed for anal sex, like Boy Butter, might stay in place better (but don't use it with latex condoms). Paul Joannides, author of The Guide to Getting it On, suggests olive oil, which is used often in Europe.

When you 'apply' lube, make sure you put it all over both his penis and your vulva and inside your vagina, especially at the bottom of the vaginal opening--that little area gets a lot of pressure during sex.

All of the lube in the world, however, won't make your boyfriend any less of an asshole. I'm confident that any sex with you is better than no sex at all and the fact that he, at 21, only likes the 'rough sex style' is ridiculous. Most people that are not sadists do not want sex to be painful for their partners and good sex comes in a variety of flavors. If, the next time you're having sex, your boyfriend slips back into pounding mode, stop, get up off his dick, and walk away. He'll come around.

Julie

*not her real name

Austin LifeCare Advertising in 6th Street Bars Now

2011-10-15T09:26:00.001-07:00

I've got to hand it to Austin LifeCare: first they came out with a truly hilarious series of abstinence PSAs and now they've taken out an ad for their crisis pregnancy center on a large LCD screen at the Chuggin' Monkey, a bar firmly wrapped up in 6th Street's Jello Shot Curtain.

Maybe there was a mix up or something, because the ad on the small LCD screen in the ladies room was for Austin's best drunk-dial DUI defense lawfirm, 777-7777. You might think that the gender neutral DUI ad would be a better fit for over the bar placement and the OMG YOU SLUT YOU'RE PREGNANT AREN'T YOU ad would resonate with its audience more in the fucking ladies room.

Of course, advertising to women who have an (un)planned parenthood (I see what you're doing there, ALC! Cute!) IN A BAR seems like maybe a bad idea. Either the ladies are already pregnant and, um, they're drinking IN A BAR or they're about to do something that might make them pregnant and instead of, say, a billboard encouraging them to USE A CONDOM FOR CHRISSAKES SERIOUSLY IT'S NOT HARD Austin LifeCare is suggesting they save the number so they can call it later when they inevitably wind up pregnant.

So, ladies, have some Jell-O shots, drive home drunk, get a DUI, have unprotected sex, get pregnant, call Austin LifeCare. You have options! There is hope! They care about your life*! You're not alone! Need to talk? Call them! They've got a great sense of humor.

*the "life" you are carrying inside you, that is. Offer expires after birth.

Review: The Secrets of Great G Spot Orgasms and Female Ejaculation

2011-10-06T19:07:00.000-07:00

Lordy was I excited at the invitation to review Tristan Taormino's new book, The Secrets of Great G Spot Orgasms and Female Ejaculation! I've been covering Tristan for ages now, and I'm always excited when the prolific writer, pornographer and sex educator comes out with something new.

Though her seminal work, The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women [buy this book, seriously] defined her more than a decade ago (!) as an anal devotee, her writing and porn runs the gamut from erotica to anal play to rough sex to open relationships, all of it top quality. You can read my reviews of Tristan's work here and here and an interview I did with her in 2006 (!!) here.

I expected no less from this latest book, and I'm happy to say that Tristan delivers, as always. Tristan reviews the historical development of the G Spot, the controversy that continues to surround its very existence, and recommends ways to explore it without freaking out and winding up feeling inadequate.

The book includes soft core photos of super hot pornsters, both male/female and female/female couples, and I love the one on the very first page--Tristan has fucking great taste in porn. The toys and lube she recommends are all totally lustworthy, from the Njoy Pure Wand to the Luna Beads to the Annie-O Strap-On Harness.

As one would expect from Tristan, the book includes a section on anal sex and the G Spot and a super helpful strap-on tutorial. But the best part of the book is something I've not seen before--three topical "Erotic Interludes" to get you hot and bothered to inspire you to, you know, do the how-to's.

In short, this is a great book that gets right to the point. It gives G Spot orgasm tips for solo and partnered play and provides options for hands, toys, or both. Highly recommended.

Review: Does Luxury Latex Deliver?

2011-10-03T06:24:00.000-07:00

Ever since 2007 when I worked for Trojan and discovered Kimono Textured (neé Type E) I’ve kept up with developments in the condom world. This year several new brands have joined the latex market and I felt it was time to review what's out there and fill the gaps left by Consumer Reports’ rankings, the most recent of which came out in 2009 and includes no, um, "field testing."

This multi-part series will review a wide selection of condoms available right now--some luxury brands and others late night, drugstore stand-bys. This first post will focus on specialty brands, some of which are fashion-forward and others focused on ethical sex.

The original fashion condom, of course, was Proper Attire, which features wrappers by famous designers like Alexander Wang and benefits Planned Parenthood. Other companies have packaged their condoms in gorgeously creative boxes, like OOO Boutique, which has a variety of inspirational packaging, like the “Try Me” and “Kung Fu Sutra” collections featuring condoms with suggested positions to try. The website even has animated gifs of each position, in case you need a little inspiration (see above). Top that, Cosmo Kama Sutra.

But two brands have emerged lately that combine luxury brand positioning with a charitable mission. This first review will focus on two such brands, Sir Richards and French Letter, each of which donate a portion of purchases to charity. Sir Richards has a TOMS-esque mission and donates one condom to Partners in Health for every one sold. French Letter, which is the world’s first fair trade, carbon-neutral condom, works with Cecily’s Fund to educate Zambian children orphaned by AIDS.

The condoms are do-gooders, yes, but how good are they to actually, you know, do it? Our testers compared them to two standbys--Crown and Kimono Textured.

Criteria: our testers used each condom featured (some more than once) and rated them on:

lube: was extra lube required?
sex-feel: did it feel like they were using a condom or not?
reliability: did it break?
special features, where applicable: were the ribs/studs even noticeable?
other: did the condom smell like latex? cause irritation? was the package hard to open?

Sir Richards Pleasure Dots
She says: The raised dot pattern is definitely intense, but I didn't feel it because the dots started several inches up the shaft of the condom, which is too far to really stimulate the most sensitive outer inch of the vaj. Well-lubricated but they had a rubbery smell. Bonus: I love the magenta geometric pattern on the package.
He says: They aren’t too lubricated, but they don’t dry easily, and they aren’t too thick either. The pleasure dots protrude more than any other condom I’ve used, which doesn’t affect me but is a nice feature.
Overall score: 3.5

French Letter
French Letter offers three varieties--Sheer Caress, Linger Lust, and Stimulating Massage. Our testers tried all three but are reviewing the Sheer Caress.
She says: The Sheer Caress was thin, but not as thin as Crown. And all of a sudden we had an "OMG, we need lube!" moment, which is never good. The round packages are pretty but kind of hard to open, especially in the dark after some adult beverages.
He says: French Letter does a great job of disguising the quality of the product (or lack thereof) with attractive packaging. In short, it’s as dry as Lubbock prior to 2009.
Overall score: 3.0

Kimono Textured
This Japanese condom is super thin, textured in the right places, and shaped to feel like the guy's wearing nothing at all.
She says: I love this condom, but it absolutely requires extra lube from the get-go. And it seems like they're shorter than other condoms, so I'm sometimes worried they're going to come off. They haven't, but it's just an anxiety.
He says: Kimono condoms have a more “intimate” feel, which is difficult to find in a condom. However, the downside is it tends to strangle my dick. For me, it’s just a little too tight, but on the plus side they will make you feel like you’re raw-dogging it.
Overall score: 4.0

Crown
Crown is another Japanese condom that is hard to find in stores but has gained popularity among pornstars and the sexerati--the thinnest condom available anywhere but larger than standard size condoms, Crown is the best of both worlds.
She says: As much as it pains me to give up on Kimono Textured, Crown has earned the top spot on my bedside table. They're so thin that I really don't notice them at all, and while I needed extra lube after a while, it wasn't a Texas Drought kind of situation.
He says: Crown is all about sensitivity, and the reliability can’t be overstated. It’s not uncommon to look down to double check that the condom is still on…and it always has been. Minor critique in that it tends to get dry after awhile—nothing a little lube can’t fix.
Overall rating: 4.5

If you need lube, and the more high-end the condom you're using the more likely you will, I recommend Sliquid Organics Silk, which is silicone-based and lasts forever.

Coming soon in the series: Lifestyles, Durex, and Trojan, or: We try Fire & Ice so you don't have to.

Whispered to Me Last Night: "I Give the Best Handjobs in Austin"

2011-10-01T09:18:00.000-07:00

Handjob, Bland Job, I Don't Understand Job - watch more funny videos

One of the joys of being a sex blogger is that when I go out, after a few cocktails people pull me aside to share their secrets with me. Sometimes these tell-alls start out like this: "Is it normal that I like to get, kind of, choked out during sex?" Other times they take a turn for the douche: "I don't want to sound like I'm bragging or anything, but I really just find Magnums more comfortable."

But other times people, feeling confident after a good experience, want to highlight their skills in some area. Last night I was dressed to the tell-me nines in a minidress and a tiara made of anal beads* and a friend asked, incredulously, how it was possible that yet another guy had told her she was the first woman to successfully make him come via handjob. "Is it really that uncommon, Julie?" she asked.

Most people think of handjobs as something middle school kids do before they're ready to get naked, I told her. "But you don't have to go down on them!" she said. "And everybody does it in New York City!" I can envision late nights home on the subway, trying to keep the bar-makeout-momentum going...but I never did it, and if I ever saw a handjob in my many, many late nights home on the A train, I don't remember.

The feeling many women seem to have about handjobs is epitomized by Garfunkel and Oates' song "Handjob, Bland Job, I Don't Understand Job." "Why would I do that when he can do it himself?" a married friend told me. "I would rather have sex or give a blow job any day." A single gal said, "I hate them, but it's because I don't really know if I'm doing it well."

My friend said, "While obviously I have magic hands, I wonder if girls aren't giving handjobs any more? And why not? It works, it's quick, it's in no way defined as 'sex,' and I have never found it to be remotely as challenging as a blowjob."

Handjobs can be fun in part because of the tease--as adults, alone in someone's own bedroom (or library, or subway, or wherever) you can just have sex if you want to. But there is a thrill in making someone experience pleasure in an unexpected way and making them wait a little longer for what they really want.

Assuming you weren't the Handjob Queen of North Texas in middle school, how do you give a good handjob? My friend last night said that a bottle of lube bedside is key; but not all lube will work well for handjobs. A water-based lube is likely to get sticky, so I recommend something silicone-based like Sliquid Organics Silk. Or if you're for sure not going to have sex later, a nice lickable massage oil will do the trick and since it's edible that means easier cleanup ;). But just remember that oils will degrade latex and anything flavored or scented will not make your vagina happy.

Don't grip too tightly unless the guy asks you to, and mind your nails and be careful of any rings or bracelets.

Here is one of the best How-To's from The Handjob Handbook (yes, I own this book):

Taint Misbehavin'
Shaping your hand like a C, massage his shaft. Go slowly.
Start massaging his inner thighs. This will encourage him to relax.
Tickle his rear entrance with your fingertips while continuing to stroke his shaft with your other hand.
He'll probably protest at first, but he'll let down his guard once he realizes you're just knocking and not entering. Note: Some guys might invite you in. Whether or not you accept the invitation is up to you. [ed. note: you'll need that lube if he does!]

Have fun! And remember, guys: handjobs--you deserve it!

*it was for a Lady Gaga party benefiting Equality Texas, so it was totally apropo

Breaking: Larry Flynt Offers $1M for Someone, Anyone, to Admit to Sex with Rick Perry

2011-09-22T10:39:00.000-07:00

Attention Aggies of a certain age! Did you have a secret, dirty liaision with the letterman sweater-clad Yell Leader in college? If you can provide "documented evidence of illicit sexual or intimate relations with the governor" Rick Perry could create a Texas Job just for you! Photos? Love letters? A telling yearbook inscription? Dirty Twitter dick shots?

With a full page ad in today's Austin Chronicle, Larry Flynt is offering Big Money for anyone, gay or straight, to come forward with proof that they've boned/been boned by Guvnuh Good Hair. Those Yell Leaders are damn near irresistible so I'm sure somebody put out for Perry over in College Station.

C'mon y'all!

Still-Not-Available-In-Texas Review: Trojan Triphoria

2011-08-26T05:48:00.000-07:00

I don't do reviews much anymore because the biz of sex toy reviews has grown by leaps and bounds since my days back at SexHerald.com; you can read dozens of user-generated reviews of almost any toy on Babeland's website and find out if the size, shape, and noise of a given product meets your specifications. Also, there comes a point when a girl just doesn't really need any more sex toys.

But the best review I saw of the Trojan Triphoria (which I mocked when it first came out last year) included lots of interesting history of the Big Two (SSL, former maker of Durex, and Church & Dwight, parent of Trojan) and their forays into the sex toy market. But the writer was a man who, if he used it with/on a female partner, didn't say anything about the clitoral stimulation the toy is designed to Blow One's Hair Back with.

So, I wrote to Babeland and asked if they'd send me one. And they did! I came back from my long summer vacation (during which I totally went to Babeland in NYC, obvs) to a surprise package.

Trojan does one thing impeccably well--they find out what their customer wants and they deliver it, inside and out. Triphoria's package is gorgeous. So shiny! So purple! No porno chicks! They even include the single AA battery you need so the first-time vibrator-using gal doesn't have to go through the embarrassing experience of buying a suspicious package of AA batteries and...nothing else.

The Triphoria has a couple of things going for it. First, it's waterproof. Second, the materials--medical grade plastic and silicone tips--are first rate. The tips are designed for external, clitoral stimulation and the toy, while it could be inserted, doesn't scream "pretend I'm a dick," which is a good soft landing for new vibrator users who are often intimidated by something too phallic.

But the toy isn't perfect. For a vibe with just one battery the Triphoria is surprisingly buzzy but not as much as, say, the Silver Bullet which has two. Second, the bulb that you're supposed to hold onto is good for the two slanted silicone tips, which are better when applied to the clit/vulva at an angle, but the pocket rocket-type tip (on the vibe in the picture above) needs to go head-on and it's kind of difficult to hold it that way.

At $47, the Triphoria is an indulgent My First Vibrator. But probably a great choice for, say, your mom or aunt or someone who might be grossed out by something too penis-like or unfeminine. The Triphoria, which comes in a pretty black and purple satin bag, has "You deserve this" written all over it. Just make sure to buy her an extra pack of batteries.

The bad news: if you order from Trojan's website,

TROJAN® VIBRATIONS products are available in the United States except for AL,GA, KS, LA, MS, TX and VA.

Bummer. But Babeland will send it anywhere.

In Defense of Hot Teen Sex: Paige Harden's Groundbreaking Study

2011-08-19T06:09:00.000-07:00

When I was a graduate student I suggested to my advisor, who was preparing a talk to the Society of Adolescent Medicine about the risks of early sexual initiation, that we do a study investigating whether the type of relationship the teen was in, as well as the school environment, mitigated the negative effects of early initiation. He demurred.

Fast forward 6 years to Austin and voila, somebody tested my theory and I was totally right! Paige Harden, a psychology professor at UT, tested this hypothesis with twin teens enrolled in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. She found that teens who were in relationships, as opposed to those who were hooking up, did not experience the negative outcomes or engage in "delinquent" behavior often associated with early initiation, particularly by abstinence people who are trying to scare the bejeesus out of teenagers.

This research is comforting because for those of us who are actually sex educators, not just commentators, bloggers, and Fox News talking heads who seem to think all problems would go away if Teh Ladeez would just stop having Teh Sex already, this confirms what we know: most problems associated with teen sex are actually problems of poverty and sex is pulled into the orbit because it provides a convenient way to blame women for being poor.

Those of us who do this for a living, like my friend Logan Levkoff, know from working with teenagers that it is entirely possible--and often, quite likely--for teens to have relationships that grow, become sexual, and end in a way that is perfectly healthy. Judy Blume's book Forever isn't an enduring classic for nothing.

Yes, teen pregnancy is a problem. Sexually transmitted infections are a problem. But the majority of teenagers who have sex--which is the majority of teenagers--successfully avoid both pregnancy and STIs, and yet the drumbeat about teen sex is negative, negative, negative [see: Dr. Drew, who never saw a sexually active teenager he couldn't pathologize]. There have been no episodes of "Teen Mom" or "16 and Pregnant" featuring teens who actually just had sex, used birth control, and everything is fine, really.

I'm guessing that's why my advisor didn't want to test the hypothesis, because demonstrating that good, healthy teen sex is totally possible (Hi, T and D!) could potentially decrease what little funding is available to provide sex education programs to teenagers in need. But we need to acknowledge that sex itself is not a cause or indicator of "at risk"-ness or a predictor of further bad behavior. Teens who are at risk are at risk, full stop. They may have sex for reasons directly related to their "at risk"-ness, like crippling poverty; trying to force abstinence on them does nothing to mitigate the circumstances in which they live, despite the supposed intentions of abstinence-only programs. But it does conveniently allow policymakers to blame them for suffering "consequences" related to sex and further cut programs designed to allow poor people--particularly women--to escape poverty. But hey! That's the idea. Just ask the Texas Legislature.

Happy Fourth of July

2011-07-04T08:06:00.001-07:00

Here we are again, another Fourth of July, another three day weekend during which we drink beer, lay in the sun, and celebrate what it means to be Truly American.

My pal Mark Regnerus has a piece in the New York Times about the "institution of marriage" and the "peril" it's in. This comes on the heels of the long form article about my hero Dan Savage that was printed in the NYT Magazine this week detailing Dan's approach to saving marriage: eliminating obligatory monogamy in favor of an approach that allows couples to actually do what works for them. Which, for some married couples, might mean lifelong monogamy. But, for many others, successful marriage looks different. Like a tweeted picture of a boxer-clad boner, for instance.

But really, who cares what married people are doing behind closed doors? Why is it anyone's business whether Bill and Hillary have an open marriage or not, as long as their marriage functions for them? When we see examples of people like the Clintons [allegedly] flouting social norms--and #winning in spite of it--people get pissed because marriage is supposed to be a monogamous, Sisyphean life course. Women are supposed to save sex for marriage and, failing that, to sell at the high price of a relationship [women don't like sex for pleasure, obvs]. Children are supposed to be conceived in marriage because, dammit, well, that's what we think.

But what if we're wrong? Our social norms are more about protecting the patriarchy and the rights of men to collectively dominate women and children and the so-called nuclear family is a key part of that goal. But some women like to have sex because sex is fun. Many single mothers do a bang-up job of raising kids, actually, and gay couples can be just as breeder-y as Ozzie and Harriet. So why do we care how people structure their personal lives?

This is not freedom. This is not justice. Freedom happens when consenting adults discern what will work for them, communicate about it with partners, and get what they need. Justice happens when people who want to have children can have them and raise them with respect, support, and care, regardless of what the Census says about the family structure in which they live.

So considering that here in Texas there are no fireworks today because of the risk of fire, make some fireworks of your own by supporting America and exercising your freedom in the best way you can: by fucking the shit out of someone, tonight.* Or don't. But make the choice yours.

*I'll be watching fireworks, actually. Sorry fellow Texans.

GRE Spot: Declivity

2011-06-30T19:31:00.000-07:00

Today's word is DECLIVITY.
ADJ: downward slope.
"The more Natty Lights a bro drinks the more extreme the Declivity of his erectile function."

GRE Spot: Accretion

2011-06-20T16:36:00.001-07:00

Today's word is ACCRETION.
N: a growth in size; an increase in amount.

"The impressive accretion of Chase's member lent new meaning to the phrase 'a grower, not a show-er.'"

GRE Spot: Cossett

2011-06-16T06:34:00.000-07:00

Image via.

Today's word is COSSETT.
V: to pamper or treat with great care. "John is a foot fetishist and his greatest fantasy was to cossett Sarah's feet all night with a massage and pedicure."

PlentyofSyph.com: Greatest STI Education Website Ever

2011-06-15T19:30:00.000-07:00

CANADA FOR THE WIN!

Frequent readers will know that syphilis is totes my fave sexually transmitted infection (why? because syphilis is BAD ASS). The Alberta Health Services program in Canada has a new website, PlentyofSyph.com, meant to educate internet daters about the risk of syphilis. And be hilariously awesome.

Of course, PlentyofFish.com, a legit online dating site, is all pissed that a stuffy health department came up with such an epic idea, but whatever. It's not often that a public health agency has the wherewithal to do something so cool, so let us have this one, internet dating. Follow them on Twitter, please. You'll learn about how syphilis can cause blindness, body rashes, and brain-eating craziness. Not necessarily in that order.

This campaign is 100 times cooler than the Texas, "So you've gotta sore...down there..." commercials that started airing in Austin this year after a successful (?) run in Dallas in 2009 and 2010. You win this round, Canada!

PlentyofSyph.com TV Spot - Boy from Plentyof Syph on Vimeo.

GRE Spot: ABSTEMIOUS

2011-06-15T06:11:00.000-07:00

Today's word: ABSTEMIOUS.

adj. moderate in appetite.

"Kelly and John are totally going to break up," said Jenny. "His sex drive is so abstemious that they only do it, like, once a month and that's not keeping Kelly satisfied."

New Feature: Sexy GRE Words

2011-06-14T16:56:00.001-07:00

When I took the GRE many years ago I wrote sexy sentences to learn the top 500 words. Now that I have a bunch of students who are studying for the GREs themselves, I thought what better way to help bored study-ers than to share some of my knowledge. So, without further ado, today begins a new feature: SEXY GRE WORDS.

First up: ABDICATE.

During a 3-way after the Tri-Chi party, B-rad ABDICATED his position behind Kaytee to his dude-bro, Chase, who assumed rawdog behind her.

Texas has a Slutwalk In It-- Lord Have Mercy On Our Souls!

2011-06-11T13:48:00.000-07:00

Click here for an interview with Julie Sunday on YNN Austin.

Yes means winning!

Julie Sunday with a Moto Slut/Biker Against Sexual Assault. Slut Walk + ROT Rally = BEST WEEKEND EVER

This man is so full of win!

Official How to Have Sex in Texas cat Blazer Sunday definitely prefers consent.

Erectile Dysfunction in Young Men: No, You Don't Need Viagra

2011-06-07T06:08:00.000-07:00

Erectile dysfunction is one of the most common reasons guys consult with me and I thought it was time to put together a post about boners. Most erectile dysfunction experienced by guys in the 18-24 age group has a few simple causes. I've seen a few blatant medication-seekers but for the most part, the guys I see don't understand how erections work and how they can be affected by things going on in their lives. I usually discourage the use of medication, because most young guys don't have the type of ED that would be fixed by big pharma, and most of them can make a few simple lifestyle changes and be good to go. Below are the main causes of erectile dysfunction in young men.

1. Drinking too much. Alcohol affects the circulatory system (which is why your cheeks get flushed when you drink), and there is a point for every person where the brain will prioritize the continued operation of the lungs and heart over a dick getting hard. This point is different for everyone, and it can vary based on things like how tired a person is, how stressed out they are, or what they're drinking. Drinking at, say, a tailgate is a recipe for boner-disaster. Even if you don't feel drunk because you've been slowly drinking all day, the amount of alcohol in your blood is high and the effect is the same: no hard dick. Similarly, playing beer pong for hours or drinking a 12 pack of beers is a good way to overwhelm your blood flow and stay frustratingly soft all night. Le sigh.

2. Prescription drugs. The two main categories of drugs that affect young males' erections are antidepressants (which can inhibit erection altogether, delay orgasm, or both) and stimulants like Adderall which, like cocaine, doesn't usually keep a boner from happening but will inhibit orgasm effectively. And no, the girl you're having sex with isn't psyched that you can go for an hour at a stretch. Also, if you're not prescribed a drug like Adderall and you're taking it anyway, the side effects may be worse.

3. Stress. I see people all the time who are experiencing some incredibly stressful event--writing a dissertation, just found out they have herpes, parent illness or death--who have erectile dysfunction. The brain can only focus on so many things at a time, and overwhelming stress is a sure-fire boner-killer.

4. Condoms. Penises come in all shapes and sizes, but condoms are almost all the same: a cylindrical tube that is the same circumference at the top and bottom. Some, like the Magnum, are more baseball-bat shaped for those guys who are wider at the top, but no condom out there is designed for the guys who are really wide at the base. The ring at the bottom of the male condom should be snug, but not uncomfortably tight, and definitely not painful. This isn't an excuse to not use condoms, but if a guy suspects that condoms are the problem because he has can stay hard when he's masturbating or during oral sex, trying a few different condoms is key.

5. Feelings. I get all mooshy inside when guys come in and they're all emotional about their new partner and can't stay hard because they're so nervous about where the relationship is going. I've seen this happen with guys from all over the map--gay, straight, religious, fratty--and it's always devastating (but also kind of endearing!). The last thing you want when you have a new partner is for the sex to not work the way you envisioned. This problem has a pretty easy solution: redirect and wait. Don't lie and say it's never happened (if it has), just be honest and say that you really like the person, you're nervous about wanting to impress them, and then impress them with your other skills. If you don't have any other skills, develop them now.

6. Unhealthy lifestyle. This can include all of the above factors or it can stand on its own. Remember that the dick is part of the circulatory system, and remember from 4th grade health class that the cardiovascular system is made stronger through exercise and weaker by its absence. Guys who are totally sedentary, overweight, eat junk food, sit in front of a computer for 16 hours a day (sound like any PhD students you know?) are setting themselves up for erectile failure. An erection is not a crucial body function and if you're not taking care of your heart, you are not guaranteed hard-ons when you want them. Go to the gym.

7. The Heterosexual Closet. Guys I see are frequently stuck in a "good girl/bad girl" rut--they can get hard and have great sex with "bad girls" but when they get the "good girl" that is socially acceptable girlfriend material, they don't respond the same way. Sometimes it's not the partner but a particular type of sex a guy wants to have but is afraid to ask for with a longer term partner with whom he's emotionally vulnerable. It can be scary to ask for something you want sexually, especially if you discovered you liked it under casual circumstances; asking a one night stand to choke you is easy, because you might not see them again. But telling your girlfriend that you like to be hit during sex could make things awkward. The only way to get the sex you want is to ask for it. If you're not getting what you want from "good girls" then, guess what? You're trapped in the heterosexual closet and it's time to come out.

So if you're panicked about your boners or just want to try Viagra because you think it'll be awesome, save your money. You don't need it, it won't do anything, and how emasculating to depend on a medication to get a hard-on anyway.

Happy Boner Summer, everyone.

Throat Cancer, the New Oral Sex Freakout

2011-06-01T16:39:00.000-07:00

BACKGROUND: I've been writing about HPV and Gardasil for the past 5 years and with this piece in 2006 I was one of the earliest critics of Merck's aggressive "public health" campaigns pushing vaccination for young girls. That was long before a New York Times expose about the profit motive behind the HPV vaccine market and JAMA's publication of a scathing indictment of ACOG and ACHA for naively following Merck's money down the HPV rabbit hole.

Evidence of the increase in HPV-related oral cancer in men keeps showing up in my inbox, and I'm steeling myself for a new oral sex panic. The initial reports described men in 'high risk' categories [read: gay] showing up with the disease, but the more recent studies have suggested that "HPV prevalence in cervical rather than penile tissue might boost the chances of HPV infection when performing oral sex on a woman, contributing to the higher rate of HPV-associated oropharyngeal cancer in men."

Is this a reversal of the so-called biological disadvantage women face when it comes to sexually transmitted infections? Maybe. But it's hard to know, because most of the surveys that investigate sexual behavior at the population level don't ask about the number of partners individuals have had for oral sex. The studies that do, like the one quoted above, usually include only people who already have cancer, and the number of partners at which the risk of oral cancer is said to significantly increase--just 6 or more--sets a bar that cannot be compared to the general population, because studies don't treat oral and anal sex the same as vaginal. This begs the question that some sex educators assume is an answered one--whether or not oral sex is "sex."

The National College Health Assessment, which I have implemented twice and analyzed extensively, asks about the total number of partners in the past year for oral, vaginal and anal sex--but taken together, a gross number of partners including everyone with whom an individual has engaged in any of these behaviors is not helpful (p. 10). A person who has had 7 oral sex partners, 1 vaginal sex partner, and 0 anal sex partners would wash out the same as someone who has had 2 oral sex partners, 1 vaginal sex partner, and 5 anal sex partners, though this distribution of activities paints a vastly different risk portrait than the first.

Similarly, AddHealth and the National Survey of Family Growth fail to ask about number of oral and anal sex partners individually. Knowing the total number of sex partners for oral, vaginal and anal assumes overlap between the behaviors between partners, which may not be accurate, especially for younger cohorts. Anyone who works with college students knows that oral sex is a feature of "hook ups" far more frequently than vaginal sex.

The leading population-level surveys don't ask about oral sex and anal sex individually, so we can't draw conclusions about the outcomes associated with these behaviors. Most data on oral and anal sex comes from intervention or target population data samples, which are not comparable to population level samples and can't necessarily be generalized. I do a survey that does ask about the number of partners for each of the OVA behaviors individually, and while my sample is generalizable to the population from which it is drawn, it can't be generalized to the entire population of 18-24 year olds in America.

Insisting that oral sex is sex IS relevant when we're developing survey questions, because we as researchers and educators need to know about these behaviors individually, because they mean different things to our populations and they pose differential risks. But lecturing young adults about how if they've had oral sex they AREN'T virgins alienates them and takes agency away from people to whom the number of people they've had sex with matters in a very tangible way.

With apologies to Dan Savage, I think it's completely inappropriate to tell young people unequivocally that "oral sex is sex," that mutual masturbation is sex, and whatever other "let's do everything but..." stuff teenagers do is actually sex and sorry kids, you're not virgins anymore. I don't care what people define as "sex," but I feel clear that individuals get to decide what is and isn't "sex" for them. Driving a car is not the same as riding shotgun, and just because you ride in a car with your boyfriend that has a license doesn't make you a driver. Teenagers are capable of understanding that they need to wear a seatbelt no matter where they're sitting in the car--can't we take that approach with oral and anal sex, too? Since virginity is socially constructed anyway, I'm in favor of letting people construct when they are and aren't virgins anymore.

Which means that we in sexual health need to be careful with the research and recommendations coming out about men and oral cancer, because I can give you 1000 examples of college girls who would report a significant number of oral sex partners (hello, prevalence of genital HSV-1) but no vaginal or anal sex partners and would never wind up in the traditional "high risk" categories in research. But even when we do ask about oral sex specifically, we don't ask about whether people performed or received, and if indeed performing oral sex on a female increases the risk of oral HPV, we need to ask about the number of partners on whom a respondent has performed and received oral sex, and not assume that it was mutual. It is our job as researchers and educators to make our work relevant to our population, not to try to fit their behavior into categories that make sense to us.

Bossing young people around and telling them what is and isn't sex exceeds the appropriate scope of practice for sex educators, full stop. Is oral sex a behavior which carries risks that are similar to but, by every measure, less than, vaginal or anal sex? Yes. But does that mean to college kids who get drunk at a party and hook up, it's "sex"? Not to hear them tell it. I believe in the power of the people I educate to accurately define what is and isn't sex for them, and my responsibility is to provide them with information about how to reduce their risk. The people who need to get the message about whether oral sex is "really sex" are the researchers whose surveys continually ignore the different types of sexual behavior in which people actually engage.

*BTW, oral cancers that are caused by HPV are much less likely to be fatal than those caused by tobacco and/or alcohol use. So oral sex is officially safer than drinking and smoking. Suck it, abstinence people.

OMG 45,000 Visitors and Counting! Also, Summer Sex Toy Must-Haves!

2011-05-17T16:41:00.001-07:00

OMG people! In just over a year this blog has miraculously received more than 45,000 visitors. I've covered everything from hilarious abstinence PSAs to sex toy billboards in Dallas to what's wrong with Midland to racist anti-abortion billboards in Austin and had a blast doing it. I gave a lecture at Austin's Nerd Nite called "Steers, Queers and Sex Toys," which you can watch below.

Julie Sunday - Steers, Queers, and Sextoys from Nerd Nite- Austin on Vimeo.

I write about sex toys and porn a lot less than I did on This is Go-To Girl, but I figured y'all and I could use a break from the constant barrage of bad sex news out of Texas and focus on something guaranteed to please--my summer sex toy guide.

I've been reviewing sex toys and writing about sex toy safety for going on 5 years now and I'm continually stunned with the increasing quality of toys available. I can still remember when I bought a bright red jelly dildo at Babeland to use in workshops. Now everything sold by my go-to toy retailer is phthalate-free, and silicone is a must in most soft-texture dildos and vibrators. This is great news.

In 2006, when I started my first babyblog Ms. Go-To Girl, there was no Jimmyjane, no We-Vibe, no Sliquid Organics. Once there was only Aneros and now there are dozens of amazing prostate stimulators, including Lelo's Earl which is made of gold for chrissakes. We have all come so far and so very, very hard.

Here are my picks for 2011.

While I don't need or want this for myself (sorry, Dad!) I expect to buy several sets of the Sex and Pregnancy Kit for my friends who are in the family way. With a single PC muscle ball to help the vagina get strong for birth and the return to sex afterwards, lube, a small vibrator and a book focused on having an "Orgasmic Pregnancy" I think several people can expect to get these from me at baby showers this summer. (Hi, J & B!)

I'm very excited about the new Fun Factory G4 vibrators, especially the Big Boss, which closely resembles my Sinnflut. Rechargeable, waterproof, and perfect for size queens, the Boss features a finger hole at the end for easier maneuvering. A word of caution: at 9.75" long and 1.75" in diameter, this toy isn't for the faint of heart. A good lube is a must.

Which brings us to Sliquid Sassy Formula, designed especially for anal play. I love the word Sassy (Hi, Baby D!) and the bottle is super cute, so this is my hands-down favorite. It's vegan, glycerin- and paraben-free (Hi, L!) and gluten-free to boot. (Hi, J & M!) My only hesitation is that the bottle doesn't have a pump-top; fewer lubes seem to have them now than in past years.

While you've got that lube out, consider trying the Njoy Pure Plug, which I boosted in my talk at Nerd Nite. Available in three sizes, which I'll call "Ted Haggard," "Rick Perry" and "advanced," the Pure is gorgeous, solid stainless steel that can be warmed or cooled and is totally sterilizable and shareable. This product can be used to strengthen PC muscles in the vagina as well.

If you're in the market for porn, try Speed, which has an awesome cast and features condom use in every scene! Honorable mentions for the Crash Pad vol. 6 (I remember the first one way back when!) and Rough Sex 2 (not for the faint of heart).

By the way, May is Masturbation Month and this Saturday is the annual Masturbation-a-Thon in San Francisco so get busy!

Texas Aggie Conservatives Outraged that "Only One Perverse Sexual Worldview" Being Taught at A & M

2011-05-14T08:00:00.001-07:00

I have never been to College Station. I don't know much about A & M. But the school has long been linked with the Chicken Ranch, the famous brothel profiled in The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas so it's got something of a ... reputation. So color me shocked when the Texas Aggie Conservatives this week released a covert video taken during a presentation on "Safe and Fun Sex" by San Antonio sex therapist and educator Cay Crow.

The video, which is so amateurish that it never shows Cay at all and manages to only occasionally capture the extremely bland how-to anal sex video she played for the audience, features captions trumpeting the outrage that the University would sponsor an event teaching the how-to's of GAY SEX OMG.

Of course, this presentation is declared indicative of A & M's "funding bias." A link to the group's Facebook page invites visitors to:

Sign the petition against funding bias on our website to help us end Texas A&M University's one sided institutional support for the GLBT. Taxpayer dollars and student fees should not be used in a viewpoint discriminatory manner, promoting only one perverse sexual worldview.

All perverse sexual worldviews deserve equal state funding! Perhaps they could bring back the tradition of sending Aggie boys to brothels to "become men."

The About page of the TAC says "we are not affiliated with any other organization," but the Facebook page for Texas Aggie Conservaties reveals the source of their piss and vinegar and boilerplate conservative writing: they're affiliated with Campus Reform, which is the college organizing arm of the Leadership Institute, the arch-conservative training organization founded by Morton Blackwell.

In a New York Times article in 2001 about the Leadership Institute, Blackwell claimed that they did not teach "family values" in their training events, that that was "someone else's job."

"Someone" has done a great job of teaching those kids at A & M that it's just not fair that the University sponsors events to teach the how-to's of anal sex but not any other "perverse sexual worldviews." They obviously didn't realize that since everyone has a butt, anal sex is the least "viewpoint discriminatory" thing you can teach!

Happy Birthday to Rick Santorum!

2011-05-10T06:06:00.000-07:00

If it weren't for NPR's daily "Happy Birthday to [insert marginally famous person]" announcements I would not have known that today was Rick Santorum's birthday. But now that I know, I thought it fitting to write a birthday post to honor the man who has tried so hard to make the sex lives of so many so miserable.

If you're new to Rick Santorum, the first thing to know is that he's a weird, super pro-life former Senator from Pennsylvania who spent the night cuddling with his dead son.

But in these modern times Google is the arbiter of the most important thing to know about a person, so we must share that several years ago Rick became famous for something entirely different. In an interview with USA Today, Santorum suggested that by overturning anti-sodomy laws [the decision that was later handed down, Lawrence v. Texas, did just that], the Supreme Court would be condoning incest, bigamy, and, most famously, "man-on-dog" sex.

In the same interview, Santorum expanded:

And if you make the case that if you can do whatever you want to do, as long as it's in the privacy of your own home, this "right to privacy," then why be surprised that people are doing things that are deviant within their own home? If you say, there is no deviant as long as it's private, as long as it's consensual, then don't be surprised what you get. You're going to get a lot of things that you're sending signals that as long as you do it privately and consensually, we don't really care what you do.

Nailed it, Rick! But wait, there's more:

This right to privacy that doesn't exist in my opinion in the United States Constitution, this right that was created, it was created in Griswold — Griswold was the contraceptive case — and abortion.

That's right: Santorum said on the record that he did not believe that the right to privacy exists in the Constitution. He went further to blame the Catholic church sex abuse scandals on the right to privacy, because liberals had damaged the so-called fabric of our society.

In retaliation, Dan Savage, hero of heroes, put out the call for sex-tolerant Americans to coin a new definition for "santorum" that would live in infamy and shame the Senator for his homophobic, hateful, and anti-sex ways. And how.

The first Google search result for "Rick Santorum" is not Facebook, a coy presidential "exploratory" site (#4), or a Wikipedia entry (#2); it is the page for Spreading Santorum, the front of which simply carries the word's jaw-droppingly gross definition: "The frothy mix of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the by-product of anal sex."

Mr. Santorum, I can't think of a better birthday tribute than to remind Americans what you really stand for. And also to suggest you hire a search engine optimization expert, post fucking haste.

UN Study of No Interest to Republicans: Sex Education Works, Reduces Costs, Duh

2011-04-28T08:33:00.001-07:00

But it's so much more fun to make young pregnant women live in fear!

Breaking news! According to a soon-to-be-released study from the United Nations Education, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), sex education totally works when it is mandatory and integrated into school instruction. This study comes as a surprise to absolutely no one who understands thing one about public health or educational policy.

The study included 6 different country sites around the world, nations as diverse as the Netherlands, Indonesia, and Nigeria. The programs were not abstinence based. Previous studies on the face-palmingly obvious ineffectiveness of abstinence education have been done in the US but have somehow failed to convince conservatives looking to keep poor people poor that teaching basic information about contraception and disease prevention is a good idea.

From UNESCO's press release:

The study highlights the cost-effectiveness, and potential cost savings in a context like Estonia, where a national sexuality education programme was rolled out alongside youth-friendly sexual and reproductive health services. Between 2001 and 2009, an estimated 13,490 health events were averted, including 1,970 HIV infections, at a potential lifetime cost of US$67, 825 per patient.

National sexuality education "programme"? "Youth-friendly" sexual and reproductive health services? This is socialism, obviously, and Not Right For America.

Mandating effective sex education and providing equal access to reproductive and sexual health services is all well and good if your goal is to increase the social status and economic prospects of women in your nation.

But if what you want is to keep vulnerable young women in poverty by denying them information and services that could prevent pregnancy and changing the laws to make abortion impossible to get so that the ones who do get pregnant have nothing but "Pregnant? Scared?" billboards to look at as they descend into unending economic despair, then the American approach is totally FTW.

Obviously UNESCO hasn't given any thought to the Texas approach, which includes teaching abstinence and eliminating cost-effective family planning services to fund crisis pregnancy centers instead. Rick Perry knows abstinence works from his "own personal life." Come to think of it, abstinence is fantastic cover for staying in the closet.

Furthermore, we don't have much use in Texas for an organization dedicated to promoting "education, scientific, and cultural" studies anyway. We're pretty busy promoting Tex-Western Civilization and Traditional Family Values, thank you very much.

The complete study will be released in May.

Watch live video from texastribune on Justin.tv

Slutwalk Austin Totally Asking For It On June 4th

2011-04-21T18:01:00.000-07:00

The SlutWalk is coming to Austin. June 4th. What a great way to recycle your slutty nurse, slutty construction worker, slutty cookie monster, or hilariously witty 'gold digger' costume leftover from Halloween on 6th Street!

After having had just about fucking enough of cops, legislators, religious figures, and just about everyone else blame victims of sexual assault for 'dressing like sluts,' women in cities around the world are throwing down the gauntlet with the Slut Walk.

The event's purpose is to remind everyone, particularly law enforcement responsible for fucking protecting citizens and fucking prosecuting criminals, that a woman is never 'asking for it' because she dresses in any particular way, even if the cops think that way is 'slutty.' Rapists choose to rape victims--victims do not choose rape. Period.

Texas ladies had their own semi-recent brush with police chiefs blaming victims for sexual assault last summer; we covered that story here, here and here.

I love this Scottish anti-rape video by Not Ever.

Considering the hilarious debauchery Austin is known for on Halloween, Mardi Gras, St. Patrick's Day, and basically every other drunk holiday, I hope to see you there June 4th!

Walgreens Encouraging Promiscuity Among Medicare Set

2011-04-12T17:08:00.000-07:00

Not that anyone assumes anything ever said on "Fox 'n Friends" is true, but the hilarious claim that women could get mammograms and Pap smears at their local Walgreens (what, not CVS?) went a little bit too far. Walgreens this afternoon released a statement gently correcting the fucktards at Fox. Stephen Colbert wasn't so generous.

What many Walgreens, including the one right down the street from my house, do offer is a small array of routine vaccinations, including flu shots and the shingles vaccine, Zostavax. The thing is, shingles is herpes zoster, and the vaccine was, until March 11 of this year, approved only for people 60 and over. Now the FDA has extended that to people 50 and up.

Is this what we really need to be doing, America? Providing a vaccine that will encourage promiscuity in people over the age of 50, which no one wants to think about? Considering that people over the age of 50 have the lowest rates of condom use of anyone in America, should we really be reducing the consequences of sex by offering a STD vaccine to these obviously irresponsible horny silver foxes?

I have a solution to your rampant STD problem, Medicare recipients: it's called Pants. Teenagers have recently figured out how to keep them on, and failing that, they use condoms more than any other age group. Get it together, gramps.

Oh, you mean herpes zoster isn't a STD after all? Fuck. Don't tell Fox 'n Friends.

Image via.

Inside Sadie's Open Marriage

2011-04-12T16:53:00.000-07:00

If you attend Bedpost Confessions, you'll hear Sadie Smythe, one of the organizers and frequently its hostess, read about her open marriage. Sometimes she reads about her relationship with her husband, Scott, and sometimes she writes about the men--or women--she dates outside their relationship. Sadie has just released a book, Open All the Way, which chronicles her journey into an open marriage.

I had the chance to interview Sadie and Scott together a few weeks ago about their relationship.

On the outside, Sadie and Scott a lot like other families. They've been married for 14 years and friends for 26. They have an 11-year old daughter, two cats, a house in East Austin and normal jobs. Scott works in the tech industry, and Sadie part time at a bakery while she works toward a psychology degree.

And they do the hard work of maintaining an open marriage.

When they got married, they knew they wanted to be open to being nonmonogamous. Before getting married, Scott felt he should allow Sadie to continue exploring her nascent bisexuality by making their marriage open to women only. Initially, they were certain that any outside relationships would be about sex only and not love, but they were soon proven wrong.
"You can't have interest in somebody and sex without there being emotion involved at some level," Scott said.

Originally a very traditional marriage, Scott worked in Silicon Valley and Sadie stayed at home and took care of the baby, did the cooking and the cleaning. Eventually, Sadie said, something "shifted." She continued, "We both come from divorced families and we were watching these other marriages fall apart all around us and so we thought maybe [opening up] was a solution."

After almost ten years, they agreed they had gotten to know each other and felt comfortable in their marriage and could carry the weight of something so significant. Sadie made out with a guy at a bar and told Scott about it when she got home. The next night they sat down with some drinks and made some rules for how their relationship would work.

In the beginning, things were easier for Sadie: "There are a million horny dicks that will have sex with a good looking woman regardless of her marital status. But the inverse is not true, really. There's such a stereotype of the cheating husband who's gonna say that it's okay or they have an arrangement so I almost felt like I had to have a hall pass," Scott said. When they moved to Austin, Scott got a lot more attention and found that when he told them about his marriage, women were more interested than they had been in the Bay Area.

Sadie met people on Craigslist, primarily through Casual Encounters, and Scott met people at parties. Each have had dating relationships that have lasted a year or more. Things have gotten better since with the advent of OK Cupid, which allows people to disclose if they're in a relationship or married and avoid feeling like they're doing something secretive, which is exactly opposite of what Sadie and Scott's arrangement is about: honesty and clear communication.

Sadie said, "When we did first start doing this, we operated on the same sort of assumption that we though it would be primarily about sex. One of our rules--number 17--was, 'If you fall in love, break it off.' We realized fairly early on that we needed to renegotiate."

Scott added: "It's a tricky thing when your primary partner tells you they have love feelings for somebody else. We make it very clear when we initiate new relationships that this relationship--Sadie and I--isn't going anywhere."

In terms of how they negotiate the time they spend with their outside partners, Scott and Sadie balance taking care of their daughter, going to her music recitals, and maintaining their primarily relationship with the needs of their outside partners. But family responsibilities come first.

Sadie describes the key to success as compersion, a concept that many people in open relationships use to describe how a person can experience joy based on the happiness that their partner is having with someone else. It's a way of deliberately redirecting jealousy.

"Love is not a finite thing," Sadie says. "Everyone gets to design their own relationship. Our open relationship and the way we do things isn't necessarily going to work for another couple. [But designing your own relationship is] the way people should be living their lives."

You can read more about Sadie and Scott's relationship and how they live their life as an open couple at Sadie's Open Marriage and in Open All the Way.

Texas to Require "Traditional Values Centers" at State-Funded Universities

2011-04-02T07:59:00.001-07:00

The Texas House late last night passed one of the more hilariously leotarded amendments in this year's budget session. The amendment belongs to Representative Wayne Christian (R-Center) (at left) and would require a university that has a "gender and sexuality center" to equally fund a center that teaches, ahem, "traditional values." The bill passed 110-24.

Presumably Mr. Christian isn't aware of "heteronormativity" and would surely be comforted to know that, in a heteronormative system, every center, course, and department at every university teaches and privileges "traditional values"--thus creating the need for a locus of support for students, faculty and staff for whom "traditional values" are exclusionary and full of hate.

The full text of the amendment is available here. But the meat is below:

It is the intent of the Legislature that an institution of higher education shall use an amount of appropriated funds to support a family and traditional values center for students of the institution that is not less than any amount of appropriated funds used by the institution to support a gender and sexuality center or other center for students focused on gay, lesbian, homosexual, bisexual, pansexual, transsexual, gender questioning, or other gender identity issues.

Perhaps the center could teach such vital skills as coming back strong from a scandal in which you claimed that you neither had sex nor smoked crystal meth with a male escort; finding the right "luggage lifter" to accompany you on a church trip to Europe; keeping women in their place by pretending that abortion is anti-feminist; and protecting traditional marriage from the gays.

Considering the terrible success rate of straight people at living out their "traditional values," such a center could surely do some good. But somehow I doubt Christian envisions a center that would tangibly help straight people build strong marriages and avoid divorce as much as it would disparage feminism, equal rights for non-straights, and be mean to trans people.

We can hope this amendment doesn't make it through the reconciliation process but it's still a dick move to pass it in the first place.

Racist Austin Billboard Taken Down, Replaced With Crisis Pregnancy Billboard

2011-03-29T06:01:00.000-07:00

Naral Pro-Choice Texas has started a campaign with SisterSong to fight Austin-based Heroic Media's racist "The most dangerous place for some [read: black] children is in the womb" billboard campaign.

The organization recently miscalculated Manhattan's interest in having such a billboard in SoHo, and the outcry was so loud that the billboard was taken down after New Yorkers, including the Reverend Al Sharpton, made clear their lack of appreciation for Heroic Media's tactics.

But the billboard, located on I-35 South close to the Capitol, was replaced by the same sign that usually occupies that space--Heroic Media's "Pregnant? Scared?" billboard featuring a racially indeterminate--but definitely not white--woman.

The billboard space in question is owned by CBS Outdoor, but they aren't the only corporate sponsor. Dillard's department store is holding a fundraiser in Houston to raise money for--you guessed it--more billboards. Other than billboards and the occasional TV commercial (which always seem to appear on CBS) Heroic Media provides no services--the phone number you call if you are actually Pregnant? and Scared? redirects to Option Line's crisis pregnancy center pushing hotline.

If you're going to be in Washington on April 30th, why not buy a $250 ticket to Heroic's fundraiser featuring Sarah Palin and Lila Rose? It promises to be the "Pro-life event of the year!"

If you haven't made a donation to a Texas abortion fund, please consider doing so now.

*While you're here, why not click over and take Heroic Media's online poll?

Move over Christ Wire! On Knees for Jesus is Hot, Ready and Waiting to Entertain You

2011-03-24T16:47:00.001-07:00

Move over Christ Wire! There's a new hilarious Christian game in town called On Knees for Jesus/Showing Christ's Love. The blog highlights all the ways that contemporary Christians seem to...how can I put this delicately...accidentally sexualize their religious devotion. Is that Christ's love in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?

The blog's headline says "Christianity: Ezekiel 23: 19-20," which is this: "Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses." (NIV)

Awkward!

They posted MyFoxHouston's video "Pole Dancing for Jesus," highlighting a born-again stripper in Spring, Texas who teaches a class on Sundays that requires a program proving you went to services to get in and the ladies dance to "upbeat contemporary Christian music."

The blog itself is a treasure trove of vaguely sexual charismatic Christian experiences like "Girl Finger Banged by Jesus," below.

On Knees for Jesus, indeed.

There ARE Condoms at SXSW!

2011-03-19T08:04:00.001-07:00

Thanks to my pal L who picked up one of these and let me take a picture. LifeBeat, an organization that uses music to educate young people about HIV, came out en force with cool ONE condom tins. (cough cough, I had them 2 years ago) Progress!

Breaking: People Have Sex During SXSW!

2011-03-18T06:10:00.000-07:00

What, no hard-to-find Japanese condoms in the hipster trap?

During SXSW Austin is like spring break for cool kids; all skinny jeans, fixed gears, and cheap beer. But not Bud Light, and no bikinis--those outre items belong in South Padre Island or Panama City with the rest of the college hoi polloi.

KUT did a story this morning on the "amorous vibes" created by all the tipsy hipsters--complete with a preamble that the story "acknowledged the existence of 'adult activity'"--without ever actually using the word "sex."

A quick interview with a staffer at the city's communicable disease unit disappointingly confirmed that no data supports a spike in STIs during SXSW, but that sex under the influence of alcohol (or drugs, fuck yeah!) and with unknown partners are also "high risk." So if you don't get around to asking, "Hey, have you been tested?" before you take your dizzy-legged pixie back to the tent you're renting on the East side, you're putting yourself at risk for STIs.

Unfortunately, despite the hundreds of brands in Austin vying for attention through official sponsorship or unofficial parties, not a single condom company (Trojan, cough cough) is here handing out much-appreciated samples. Maybe the hipster demographic doesn't use condoms? Herpes is cool again, after all...

Breaking: Operation Rescue "Exposé" on Texas Abortion Clinic "Abuses"

2011-03-01T16:28:00.000-08:00

Updated: Press Release from targeted clinic Whole Woman's Health.

Cue shitstorm. Operation Rescue has released a "special report" on "widespread abortion abuses" at a selected few clinics in Texas. With videos, "undercover recordings," and masochistic tactics like digging through abortion clinic trash, I smell Lila Rose.

According to an Operation Rescue press release I received, tomorrow Operation Rescue staff and activists will hold a press conference at the Texas Capitol at 10 am, then have a meeting with the apparently not busy Attorney General Greg Abbott, and then come back to the Capitol to lobby for "pro-life legislation," presumably the mandatory sonogram bill, which is set to be heard by the House tomorrow.

Obviously, the overwhelming majority of this "report" is basic information that anyone could learn from visiting the website of Whole Women's Health, like the fact that they have a PDF of the state-mandated information about the "risks of abortion" that patients can download and ignore at their convenience, so women don't have to make two visits to the clinic.

The "dirty, back alley" clinics they describe are incriminated by, and I quote, "Faucets were corroded and leaking. Poor lighting in the waiting and examination areas was the result of numerous burned out bulbs. A leaky roof had damaged the ceiling and created the possibility of an unhealthful mold infestation." Call the cops! A potentially unhealthful mold infestation!

The report also attempts to hold the National Abortion Federation, which provides funding for abortions for women who can't afford them, responsible for the "abuses" and calls for an investigation. Unfortunately, women who need to beg charity money for abortions are more likely to visit bare bones clinics, because these women are poor. Having a baby they can't support would make them poorer. The solution, obviously, is to make abortion more accessible, not less, so that poor women aren't forced into clinics that are less safe than those richer women can afford.

The report also claims that the clinic violated HIPAA by not properly destroying patient information, and that they did not properly dispose of medical waste. If any of the allegations stick, these are likely to be the ones.

In keeping with the extremist, individually targeted tradition of anti-abortion radical activism, the report contains a list of physician names. This is a violation of privacy and also an invitation for violence against these individuals, many of whom are listed in the report as not having a record of "abuses."

This report's "findings" are largely bogus, but Attorney General Greg Abbott is a big supporter of crisis pregnancy centers and Heroic Media, which made news last year for its misleading and racist anti-abortion ad campaign. If presented with violations of the laws that unfairly target abortion clinics, my guess is that he will act.

More on this tomorrow after the press conference.

Video: Julie Sunday's Nerd Nite Talk

2011-02-16T12:01:00.000-08:00

Check out the video from my recent Nerd Nite talk, "Steers, Queers and Sex Toys."

Nerd Nite - Sextoys from Nerd Nite- Austin on Vimeo.

Tucker Max is Armed and Douchey

2011-02-14T17:47:00.000-08:00

This crocodile-head boot holster oughta go real nice with my chaps.

TuckerMax Tucker Max

by mohawkjohn

According to my CHL class, deadly force can be used in TX for reasons ranging from "necessary to save ur life" to "that fella looked shady"

Good lord. Tucker Max has a GUN? Looks like I better be fixin' to git my Concealed Handgun License and start packing. One never knows when you could need to "save ur life" from a "shady" douchebag.

Frisco and Round Rock Full of Texans Who Love Romance Novels, Sex Toys

2011-02-10T08:41:00.001-08:00

Amazon.com released its list of the top 20 most romantic cities in America today, and two Texas towns made the cut. Frisco and Round Rock stood out for purchases of the following:

romance novels and relationship books (Kindle Books and print books)

romantic comedy movies (digital movies and DVDs)

Barry White albums (CDs and MP3s)

sexual wellness products

Only cities with at least 100,000 residents were considered, which ignores the widely recognized sexiness of the lone star state's sparsely populated cowboy towns. Hello, we have our own category of romance novels?

I love to imagine legions of Texans snuggling by the fireplace, reading "Texas Splendor" to eachother on their Valentine's Day Kindle, listening to Barry White's seminal album, "I've Got So Much To Give", watching "Romantic Comedy", and using one of the incredibly low-priced sex toys for sale on Amazon, like the We-Vibe for $55 , which includes many different vibration patterns to put you over the top, including "Rick Perry's Mustache Ride," "Texas Two Step," and "Rodeo."

Seriously though, I don't know anything about Frisco and maybe it's a really sweet place where the air is filled with the sounds of couples doin' it the Cowboy Way. And I do love the Round Rock Express, where I've seen at least one on-the-field marriage proposal happen during the 7th inning stretch tire pushing race, but I don't think that figured into Amazon's calculations.

Here's the complete list, which includes the city from which Julie hails, Arlington ("The ARL") Virginia. ITB, baby.

1. Alexandria, Va.

2. Knoxville, Tenn.

3. Orlando, Fla.

4. Miami

5. Ann Arbor, Mich.

6. Columbia, S.C.

7. Cincinnati

8. Murfreesboro, Tenn.

9. Gainesville, Fla.

10. Tallahassee, Fla.

11. Vancouver, Wash.

12. Round Rock, Texas

13. Pittsburgh

14. Salt Lake City

15. Arlington, Va.

16. Las Vegas

17. Clarksville, Tenn.

18. St. Louis

19. Dayton, Ohio

20. Frisco, Texas

Julie Sunday to Argue for the Missionary Position on Sunday

2011-02-08T11:46:00.000-08:00

Not just for Sundays, folks! I'll be appearing at The Best of Everything this weekend at the Highball making the case for missionary.*

From the event's Facebook invite:

For our inaugural show, in honor of Valentine’s Day, the debate will address which sexual position is the tops, even for bottoms. Stand-up Seth Cockfield, sexpert Julie Sunday, improviser Jordan T. Maxwell and Alamo Drafthouse superstar Henri Mazza will “nail” whether it’s missionary, doggy style, 69 or cowgirl that most hits the spot.

The video below just about covers it.

*it should be noted that, like any great advocate, I am arguing the case which I was given. This should not be taken as an endorsement of any one position over another.

Texas Teen Sexting Bill: Now With "Education" for Parents!

2011-02-07T11:59:00.000-08:00

Good news for armchair parenting experts: the bill sponsored by both the epically anti-sex Attorney General Greg Abbott and Austin's state Senator Kirk Watson (D) now includes a provision allowing judges to mandate "sexting education" for parents! The program will teach "about the detrimental social and criminal aspects of texting explicit images."

With all his tireless work shutting down prostitutes on Craigslist, ending teen sexting, and solving the problem of human trafficking, it's a wonder Greg Abbott has any time left to, you know, represent the legal interests of the state of Texas against all those sluts getting abortions or, say, the neverending scourge of drug violence at the border. But nevermind all that--putting a stop to teenagers sending sexy pictures is definitely priority number 1.

Look, I agree with changing the law so that teenagers who send pictures of themselves do not wind up getting slapped with child porn charges--but a mandatory education program? Hopefully it'll be about as much fun as the Texas-sponsored celebrity cartoon "comedy" driver's safety courses, which promise success despite "No Reading. No Writing. No Arithmetic."

But hey kids, don't send any dirty texts for Valentine's Day, y'hear? This bill hasn't passed yet.

Incoming Prostitute Army Not Coming Dallas, Actually

2011-02-04T06:15:00.000-08:00

The Super Bowl XLV host committee estimates that 150,000-200,000 visitors will show up for the Big Game, and the conventional wisdom is that every Super Bowl sees a convergence of prostitutes, both underage and not. I've been skeptical about the assumed "influx of human trafficking" cited by Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott since he announced last fall that the state was committing 12 (!) of his own staff to the Dallas/Arlington area to "combat" the apparently inevitable army of hookers, most of whom are probably underage, dontchaknow.

Except it's probably all a lie. The Dallas Observer ran a fantastic story debunking the "Super Bowl Prostitute Myth," and interviewed an official from the Tampa police department who said that there was literally no increase in prostitution arrests after Superbowl 2009. Same thing in Phoenix.

But it's not just sex negative conservatives who have jumped on the anti-prostitution train; progressive and feminist blogs have also rung the alarm bells about the increase in human trafficking and stripping in Dallas. Change.org claimed that the influx of child prostitution is "well documented" and, as evidence, linked out to a story about a single man who was arrested in Florida last year for bringing a 16 year old girl to work the Super Bowl.

In the same article, an FBI agent said the following: "Listen if any case exists out there in Hawaii it's one too many and fortunately it's not an epidemic problem here but we'd be lying to ourselves if we said it didn't exist." (emphasis added)

So what the hell is going on? Remember the bill, which passed the House and is waiting for Senate approval, which would authorize $15 million in grants for 6 states to provide services to combat child sex trafficking? That bill could be used to fund police officers' salaries and organizations that provide shelter and other services to victims and "outreach and education" programs. Texas is home to a variety of victims' services agencies.

But that bill hasn't made it to the president yet, so that money is hanging in the balance. Texas is surely positioning itself to receive funds and inflating the "influx of human trafficking" for the Super Bowl, despite evidence showing the panic is based on a myth.*

To be clear, I feel confident that the truth about prostitution and the Super Bowl lies somewhere in the middle. With a huge number of people with enough money to get to the big game converging on one location, it stands to reason that, considering the laws of supply and demand, that prostitution would increase. The XXX Bowl is one of surely many potentially sketchy parties happening during the week, but this event is advertised openly online, which makes me doubt that the AG isn't aware of it.

We need to be mindful that while helping women and girls who are trafficked against their will and forced into sex work are victims and deserve to be treated as such by the legal system, women who choose sex work are not and should not be forced to leave their livelihood in exchange for needed services. Those of us who support both the dignity of victims and the rights of sex workers need to be cautious about anti-sex public officials blowing the horn of "human trafficking" and not assume that they're on our side.

Enjoy the Super Bowl. I'll be at the movies.

*the "spike in domestic violence" during the Super Bowl is also a myth.

Nerd Nite Was So Rad!

2011-02-03T05:34:00.001-08:00

Thanks to everyone who made it out for the packed house at Nerd Nite last night--I had a blast giving my talk, "Steers, Queers and Sex Toys." If you missed it, you can check out my slides here.

Because I love nerds, I armwrestled both Babeland and Sextoy.com into giving me a discount code for Nerd Nite attendees. So if you were inspired to replace that old, crappy, phthalate-leaching dildo with something new and fabulous, check out Babeland and Sextoy.com and I'm sure you'll find what you're looking for. (Babeland code: TEXAS, 10% off) (Sextoy.com code: SEXINTEXAS1, 10% off)

The questions I got afterwards were so great, including someone who had been an animal science major in college and explained what all the parts of the Electronic Bull Ejaculator (!) can do. Someone from Deviant Leather even came up to me and offered to get the Njoy Pure Plug for me at wholesale! Nerds are so nice!

I was called out as not being nerdy enough by someone who asked about the chemical nature of phthalates, a question I couldn't answer. But I did some homework, and the chemical structure is below. Don't ask me to explain what it means, but I do know a double bond when I see one.

And because I'm fair 'n balanced, here's the information on phthalates from the American Chemistry Council, the hilariously biased industry group.

I'd be happy to answer questions and help you find what you're looking for if you DM me on Twitter at @missjuliesunday.

Thanks again to everyone who came!

(zing!)

What's Wrong With the Way We Think About Chlamydia

2011-01-30T13:39:00.000-08:00

The New York Times reported this week on a study in Pediatrics that found racial disparities in the likelihood that a woman received chlamydia testing. The authors reviewed medical charts and while all of the more than 23,000 women included met the CDC's criteria for routine chlamydia testing (i.e., under 25 and sexually active), black and hispanic women were significantly more likely to have been tested for chlamydia than white women.

Even more likely to have received testing were those who had public insurance (i.e., Medicaid) and those who were eligible for--but not enrolled in--public insurance programs. Basically, women who are poor. What this shows is that healthcare providers are less likely to screen women who are white and/or have private insurance.

The article's authors suggest the following:

...clinicians may simply be less likely to consider white women in association with a stigmatized STI such as chlamydia. An inference regarding this “reverse health care disparity” is that white women, who typically are more likely to receive routine health screening tests such as mammography, are not considered for chlamydia screening because of the stigma of STIs. (p. e341)

But here's what's wrong with this picture: the Chlamydia trachomatis bacteria is transmitted by infected fluids, meaning that in order to contract it, a person's mucosal tissue (vagina, rectum, urethra, eye, or mouth/throat) has to come into contact with (read: receive) infected semen or vaginal secretions. If a woman is tested, diagnosed with chlamydia, and receives treatment, her infection goes away--but the person who infected her, unless he's also received treatment, still has chlamydia.

In 2008, the CDC reported 1,210,523 Chlamydia infections, the majority of which were in women. We can fairly assume that the overwhelming majority of these cases were the result of sex with men who may not have not been tested or treated. To wit, the CDC says: "The lower rates among men also suggest that many of the sex partners of women with chlamydia are not being diagnosed or reported as having chlamydia." This is one explanation for the frequency of reinfection. In contrast to the often self-resolving HPV, chlamydia doesn't go away unless a person receives antibiotic treatment so the majority of the men who infected these women are still walking around none the wiser.

While far fewer men than women with untreated chlamydia will become infertile as a result of their infection, if the majority of men with chlamydia are not getting tested we should anticipate male infertility will become more common and that the disease burden related to chlamydia--in both men and women--will not decrease if we only increase testing among women. So if our plan as sexual health professionals is to routinely screen all sexually active women under the age of 25, but we're not aggressively targeting men for screening, we are literally missing 50% of the chlamydia picture.

Article citation:
Sarah E. Wiehe, MD, MPH, Marc B. Rosenman, MD, MS, Jane Wang, PhD, Barry P. Katz, PhD, and J. Dennis Fortenberry, MD, MS. "Chlamydia Screening Among Young Women: Individual- and Provider-Level Differences in Testing." Pediatrics. Online early release 1/27/11. http://pediatrics.aappublications.org.ezproxy.lib.utexas.edu/cgi/reprint/peds.2010-0967v1 (accessed 1/30/11)

Round Rock Man Gets 2xLife for Child Porn; Priest Sex Abuse Hit Man Case Settled (for now)

2011-01-26T11:34:00.000-08:00

via the Statesman.
A Round Rock man pleaded guilty to two counts of promotion of child pornography and was sentenced to two life sentences, Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley said in a statement.
Judge Ken Anderson ordered that the sentences for Kevin Charles Baley, 35, run consecutively.
According to the statement:
“In April 2010, a New Hampshire undercover investigator contacted Round Rock Police Department and reported that Baley, a Round Rock resident, had been corresponding online with the investigator, who had been pretending to be a 13-year old boy. The investigator explained that he met Baley on a website frequented by pedophiles. He also reported that Baley had sent sexually explicit messages and e-mailed pornographic photos. Based on this and additional information, Round Rock officers obtained a search warrant for Baley’s house and seized several computers, digital storage devices and printed materials. A subsequent forensic examination revealed over 1,500 photographs and 50 video clips of graphic child pornography. Police also found printed child pornography materials in Baley’s bedroom.
During an interview with Round Rock police, Baley confessed to communicating with what he thought was a young boy. He admitted was a pedophile and preferred contact with prepubescent children. He explained, “I know it’s a messed up way of thinking, but looking at the pictures keeps me from reoffending or finding another victim.” Baley had previously been convicted of indecency with a child in Williamson County, serving 10 years in prison for molesting a 10-year old girl in 1994.”

Also from the Statesman:
A lawsuit against a Roman Catholic priest — who is set to appear in court this week on criminal charges of soliciting a hit man to kill his teenage accuser — has been settled for nearly $1 million.
John Fiala was a priest in the West Texas community of Rocksprings in 2007 when, the lawsuit says, he began molesting a then-16-year-old boy.
The Archdiocese of San Antonio announced last week that it had settled a lawsuit brought by the youth for $946,000.
In November, the 52-year-old Fiala was arrested near Dallas on charges of trying to hire someone to kill the youth.
He is charged with one count of solicitation of capital murder and is being held on $700,000 bail.
Fiala is scheduled to appear in a Dallas County court Thursday.

Dallas Mom Forced to Explain Billboard, Masturbation with Vegetables, to Children

2011-01-23T15:37:00.001-08:00

Heads up to S for the tip! On I-35 north to Dallas this billboard, from Metroplex-area sex shops Sara's Secret and Condoms To Go, has put "parents in a pickle" over how to explain to their kids what in the sam hell this ad is trying to convey.

The ad's contention that "thousands of cucumbers are assaulted every day" is, perhaps, true, but the use of vegetables and other household objects for masturbation is sometimes a necessity for those who can't purchase actual vibrators for lack of funds or, you know, age of majority.

Fortunately, Sara's Secret and Condoms To Go have thirteen locations in DeSoto, Kaufman, Corsicana, Frisco, McKinney, Plano, Lewisville, Carollton and Dallas for all of your non-edible sex toy needs!

NBC DFW quotes Rebecca Blake, an Angry Christian Mom, as saying: "We saw a big billboard with a cucumber on it and a face and it said 'Stop vegetable abuse.' My daughter Sara said, 'What's that? Stop vegetable abuse?'" Blake doesn't say how, or if, she explained to her daughter what someone might do to a cucumber that could count as abuse, particularly considering "the Christian values she teaches her children," and NBC DFW's article is similarly coy.

Surely any parent could come up with the lie that parents tell their kids every day: "I don't know, honey." But if one were to watch the video version of the commercial from Sara's Secret, below, the mystery is mostly gone. You're welcome.

Review: Tristan Taormino's Expert Guide to Female Orgasms

2011-01-21T05:50:00.001-08:00

Tristan Taormino, a hero of women sex writers everywhere, has been in the news a lot this week. Invited to speak at a conference on "Modern Sex" at Oregon State University, the grown-ups in charge at OSU canceled her keynote appearance at the last minute when they figured out a little too late that Tristan, in addition to being an amazing writer of such must-reads as The Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women and Opening Up, also makes great porn videos.

I've been reviewing Tristan's work since the original Ultimate Guide to Anal Sex for Women (I would totally lend it to you but I broke the DVD!) and many women who dislike traditional porn may appreciate Tristan's humanizing approach to erotica.

Every video features interviews with her carefully chosen cast members who describe what they want to perform. This is different from almost all other porn I've seen--Tristan gives the stars the reins, and doesn't push them to perform scenes they don't want to do.

Her latest film, part of her Vivid Ed series, boasts a phenomenal roster of stars: the smoking hot Jiz Lee, from the Crash Pad series; Mr. Marcus, a favorite of mine who has appeared in several Tristan films, including the Chemistry series; and Dylan Ryan, also a Crash Pad veteran.

Tristan's educational approach is to intersperse her teaching with action illustrating her points. This might be kind of tiresome for someone who doesn't really feel like they need to learn about the female orgasm, but after 30 minutes the film transitions to full length scenes.

As always, studying Mr. Marcus and his tongue should be required for anyone who wants to learn about great oral sex. His style is worlds away from the "flicking" and "divebombing" common in most porn, which maximizes camera visibility and but does little for female pleasure. His scene with Dylan is hot yet tender, and he has the uncommon ability among men in porn to seem like someone you might actually want to have sex with.

Jiz and Madison Young have a great scene together with Madison's well-loved Hitachi Magic Wand, and Tristan-favorite Adrianna Nicole demonstrates the utility of a stainless steel butt plug. Lots of the scenes incorporate toys, most impressively Dylan's use of the HUGE Njoy Eleven. I saw this thing in person at Good Vibes in San Francisco and seriously, it's giant.

None of the performers ever express disappointment at using a toy, a lesson that would be well-learned by lots of guys who feel intimidated by their partner's interest in using a vibrator during sex. I think it was Mr. Marcus who said, in Chemistry, that sex toys aren't "competitors, they're teammates."

Tristan's real talent is showing how hot sex can be without the boner-killing aggression and misogyny present in so much porn. It is possible to show slapping, spitting, and running the fuck and still be appealing to female viewers and therein lies Tristan's gift. Because of its focus on female pleasure and orgasm, this DVD would be great for couples looking for porn to watch together. Highly recommended. Buy it here.

From blenders to bakeries, Bedpost Confessions pulls the covers off Austin’s sexy underground.

2011-01-20T17:51:00.000-08:00

cross-posted from Republic of Austin.

"Have you ever cum so hard and for so long that you couldn’t breathe, and you were sure you were going to pass out?" Cheering replies and hell yeahs resounded throughout the room. The January edition of Bed Post Confessions had just begun.

Last summer four women, Sadie Smythe, Rosie Q, Mia Martina and Julie Gillis, decided to organize Bedpost Confessions, an erotic reading and performance series showcasing a diversity of sexual perspectives--the bulk of which would make most anybody blush.

-

image via Kitchenaid-mixers.com

For example, one woman read a piece about the erotic intensity she experienced from the KitchenAid mixer she received as a wedding gift. And then there was the story about a husband and wife whose erotic encounter was interrupted by an unexpected shift at the husband's bakery. The scene climaxed with hot, panting telephone conversations paused by passing coworkers and, "Hold on, I need to check the baguettes."

The first show, held in September at the smaller bar inside the United States Art Authority, was standing-room only. And since moving to the larger main space in October, each show has been increasingly more packed. There isn't any other space in Austin where people can gather and talk about sex in this type of setting--good lighting, no nudity, intimate seating, and a friendly, enthusiastic and supportive audience.

Small index cards at each table invite those in attendance to share experiences anonymously. The "confessions," read by the hosts in between acts, range from the endearingly innocent to "OMG, really?" Among my favorites: "My friends and family don’t know this: I met my darling (incredibly considerate boyfriend) on CRAIGSLIST – the 'casual encounters' section. 4 years strong! Ya!!" and, "So, you know that train bridge that goes over Town Lake? Turns out that if you crawl down through the tracks to one of the big concrete pillars, if you can somehow manage to time it with the train going overhead… well, it’s pretty fucking awesome!"

The audience at Bedpost boasts great age and physical diversity, something which our culture often ignores. It celebrates the idea that being sexual is not actually confined to those who are young and hot, despite the almost exclusive media focus on people who fit into body norms. Looking around the audience, you might spot a couple in their sixties exchanging wry glances during a reading about fisting, or a man in an open marriage stand at the back of the room with his girlfriend while his wife reads onstage.

I'll leave you with one of my favorite performers, Big Poppa E, a well known slam poet who performed a number of pieces but this one, about what he would tell his (hypothetical) son about sex:

EXPERIENCE: You can catch the next show, a special event at the new lesbian bar Lipstick 24, on February 3rd. Or see the full Bedpost at the USAA on February 10th.

Racist Anti-Abortion Insert in Daily Texan

2011-01-18T07:22:00.000-08:00

Yes, you can!

Another semester, another 12 page, full color insert in the Daily Texan from the Human Life Alliance, the same organization that published almost the exact same supplement last spring semester with a pretty white girl on the cover.

This time, presumably in coordination with all the other anti-abortion groups in America, they're focusing on black and brown people, and how Planned Parenthood is trying to kill them all by setting up clinics in their neighborhoods. Or something. One of the advisors to the Human Life Alliance is Dr. Alveda King, a niece of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and a vehement anti-abortion activist.

The content on the inside is the same as last year, with the usual: hooking up is bad for girls (but dudebros, don't you worry about it), abortion causes breast cancer, abortion is reproductive racism, birth control doesn't work and is probably really abortion, abortion makes rape worse, and so on.

But the real focus is a vague concept of "injustice." The center article's headline is "Social justice begins in the womb." No mention, of course, of the injustices faced by women who have unplanned pregnancies and carry to term--disappearing social services, housing discrimination, lack of affordable childcare so they can work, etc etc. But the important thing, ladies, is that social justice begins in the womb--and ends as soon as you come out of it.

Today Is Awesome: FailBlog Introduces Dirty Site!

2011-01-14T12:39:00.000-08:00

If you're like me, you wish there were a place online to aggregate all of those hilarious porno outtakes and terrible novelty vibrators. Now there is! Below are just a few of the great examples of funny coming from Failblog After Dark. Beware, craigslist casual encounters posters: there is now a site for you to be systematically mocked. They will post cock shots.

Good reminder not to divulge that you've been cheating via text message, ever:

see more Failblog After Dark

Engrish vibrators!

see more Failblog After Dark

Maura Kelly: "Like Anorexia, but for Sex"

2011-01-13T11:04:00.000-08:00

Believe me. Not as sexy as it sounds.

Remember Maura Kelly, the formerly anorexic Marie Claire blogger who wrote a total piece of shit article about how fat people shouldn't make out in public or on television? Well she's back, this time in the Guardian (UK), claiming that there's another thing women should deny themselves for their own good: sex.*

The inspiration for her article is a book by my friend Mark Regnerus, Premarital Sex in America: How Young Americans Meet, Mate and Think About Marrying . One of Regnerus's central arguments is that, in college, the "price" of female sex has declined due to a variety of factors, which makes women who would prefer to "charge" the "price" of a relationship in exchange for sex less able to do so, because men in college can get sex for "cheaper" very easily through the so-called hookup culture. Unlike Kelly, I've actually read the book--there are copies both on my bedside table at home and on my desk at work. Mark and I had hours of conversation over coffee about the subject matter and you'll find my name close to the top of the acknowledgements--but not because I agree with him that casual sex is bad.

Here's how Kelly starts out:

I often feel like an amateur sociologist myself, conducting interviews about the amorous exploits of friends and acquaintances – and occasionally sacrificing my own body for the social sciences. My data leads me to conclude that casual sex leaves plenty of women feeling awkward or dissatisfied – if not downright miserable – whereas most men don't experience a similar psychological hangover.

Emphasis on amateur. I've written about Mark's work and about the sexual marketplace theory and how it affects women before, and I agree with its premise that sex is a female resource that men "buy." But the thing that people like Kelly don't realize is that part of the reason women research subjects report "regretting" casual sex is because they are punished for it. The "value" of sex has declined and so the "price" women can demand has lowered, too. But does that mean women don't want casual sex? Not necessarily. I think it means that women are shamed for having sex (whether casual or not) in our sexist system, and they don't like it. If you ate pizza with clams and threw up afterwards because you're allergic to shellfish, you might "regret" eating the pizza, but that doesn't mean eating pizza is bad.

She goes on:

I'm glad that women can now, mostly, do as they please sexually, without (too much) cultural opprobrium; we should have the option of acting like men. But casual sex has come to seem more of a necessity or an expectation. Young women – and older ones, too – feel significant pressure, from their peers and a culture in which girls who go wild are minor celebrities and Samantha Jones is cast as a role model, to have rollicking sex lives.

Kelly says that "legit" research backs up her claims that "deferred gratification makes sexual politics sense" but she would do well to read Sex at Dawn, which challenges much of the "standard narrative" this "legit" research is based on in the first place. And I question the claim that women engage in casual sex because of a "culture" that occasionally postively portrays women who like to have sex, because there are actually far more portrayals of women suffering the consequences of sex [see: Teen Mom, 16 and Pregnant, the Pregnancy Pact, and virtually all other media].

An overwhelming majority of sex research, including Mark's book and every other study Kelly cites, uses college students as its subjects. For a book like Regnerus's, which is actually about college student sexual behavior, using student subjects makes sense. But research that uses college students as subjects and attempts to generalize to men and women overall [see: Buss, David; everything ever written] is inherently flawed, because as anyone who's woken up without shoes in a strange sweatshirt after a frat party can attest, sex in college is different than sex after college.

If sex researchers were able to pull together samples of, say, late twentysomethings and ask them about their desires for and experiences with dating, hooking up and casual sex, they would likely get very different answers because having sex when you're older is different. But it's very difficult to sample people who aren't in college, because they aren't sitting in your classes, eager for the extra point or two on their final exam you're offering them for taking your survey or submitting to your interview.

Allow me to indulge in a metaphor. When I was in college, I worked at a coffee shop that had a pizza oven in the back. As employees, we were allowed to make ourselves pizzas anytime we wanted, whether we were working or not. As a semi-broke college student, I took advantage of this benefit with extreme frequency, even sometimes when I might really have preferred to eat something else. Because of this free access to unlimited pizza of my own design, I have experimented with a wide variety of pizza types, of a great diversity of sizes, crust thicknesses, and topping combinations.

Having had such depth of experience with pizza in college, I am very clear about what I am and am not interested in eating. If offered a pizza that I don't want with, say, clams, I will turn it down rather than eat it, because I really fucking hate clams. But I don't regret the pizza with clams that I have tried, and it certainly doesn't cheapen the experiences I have with the pizzas I really prefer. Now, as an adult with all that "promiscuous" pizza under my belt, I am willing to hold out for the pizza I really want. But if I hadn't tried all the different kinds I wouldn't know to avoid the ones I don't like, and I could be married to a clam pizza right now.

It's a metaphor. But it really happened.

The reality is that women are not publicly shamed for eating lots of different pizzas [Coming soon to TLC: My Strange Addiction: Lots of Pizza!], but the feeling of "Given the opportunity to eat that pizza/fuck that person again, I think I'd decline" is the same. And trying things, deciding we don't like them, and choosing not to do them again is okay. It's called growing up.

*As an aside, she posted on the Marie Claire blog last week about how playing hard to get is "never a good idea." In one ear out the other, I guess.

Midland Superintendent Shocked --Just Shocked!-- by Teen Pregnancy Rate in Public Schools

2011-01-11T12:25:00.000-08:00

Oh yeah, drill me baby, drill me! via mywesttexas.com.

Apparently fair little Midland, the "tall city" in the middle of nowhere from which George W. Bush (sort of) hails, has found itself between a rock and a big, throbbing, hard place. Just 4 months after a weekend swinger's convention was cancelled, fully 120 girls in the district, including one as young as twelve (!), are in the family way so far this school year. And more shocking, of those who were in "pregnancy services" in 2009, 90% tested positive for an STI. Which kind of makes sense since Midland has higher rates of Chlamydia and teen birth than the state of Texas overall.

Considering that Texas is widely known as a contender in the teen pregnancy national championship every year, this is bad news for Midland. While 120 pales in comparison to Austin ISD's 375 pregnant girls in 2009-2010, Midland only has 21,374 students enrolled in its school district as compared to Austin's 84,676. But in 2009 Midland was rated "academically unacceptable" by the Texas Education Agency, so something bad is going down up in oil town.

The Superintendent, Ryder Warren, promises action, and is working with a local crisis prengnacy trap, The Life Center, to "educate students on abstinence and safe sex as a stop-gap measure." Wait...a "stop-gap" measure? What have they been doing all along? Oh, this: "Health advisory council member Mike Mills said research conducted by the council revealed only two days were devoted to sex education." It sounds like Midland may join the other two lonely Texas districts who plan to dump abstinence education for OBVIOUSLY NOT WORKING.

Just in case you're wondering, here's what the Life Center's website says it offers for its MPACT Character-based Sexual Integrity Program for grade 6, the goal of which is "to equip sixth graders to abstain from premarital sex and other risk-taking behaviors through education":

• Defining sexual integrity [abstain or you're a slut, confusingly demonstrated by a piece of tape]
• Consequences of Sex before marriage vs. Benefits of Boundaries [hmm, wonder how this "compare and contrast" turns out]
• Basic Sexual Anatomy (gender specific) [penises and vaginas, folks]
• Self Worth and Personal Character Values [if you have sex you don't have these]
• Choosing friends based on your values [sluts make bad friends so it's ok to be mean to them]
• The Media Message: Fantasy vs. Reality [OMG PORN IS ADDICTIVE SRSLY]
• Healthy Affection vs. Inappropriate Behavior [if he wants to have sex with you there's no way he loves you]
• Making a Commitment [straight people only, please]
• Goal setting [rinse and repeat: don't have sex]

Warren said the district is evaluating a curriculum recommended by both the district Student Health Advisory Committee and the Life Center, but no word on which one it is. Maybe Big Decisions? Whatever program they choose, it won't go into effect before next fall. But Midland's motto is "The Sky's the Limit," so I'm confident with a lot of long, hot, hard work they can get up to Austin numbers before prom.

But then again, it could be like this.

Greg Abbott Gets Appellate Court Smackdown Over Lesbian Divorce

2011-01-08T06:31:00.000-08:00

image via Cafe Press

Color me shocked! The Statesman reports that Austin 3rd Court of Appeals ruled Friday that the divorce granted to two women married in Massachusetts was legal and, further, Abbott had had no standing to intervene to stop the divorce on the grounds that the women's marriage wasn't legal in Texas.

It looks like Abbott's aggressive pursuit of conservative causes through the legal system was challenged by the decision:

The opinion, written by Justice Diane Henson, noted that only under certain limited circumstances can the state appeal in a lawsuit where it was not a party.

Hear that, Abbott? This divorce was a party and you weren't invited. Dang.

The Attorney General can appeal, of course, but that wouldn't leave Greg much time to fight the raging triple scourge of teen sexting, Craigslist prostitution, and comprehensive sex education. And Spring Break is coming up!

The Year in Sex: Resolutions for 2011

2011-01-04T09:58:00.000-08:00

If you need to cry...go ahead, baby. And then STFU.

Things are looking down economically in Texas, and with a $25 billion budget shortfall we are on the fast track to getting totally fucked in all the wrong ways. So why not focus on growing and protecting what you can control this year: your sex life. Think of it as your, um, private nest egg. You can make some deposits to your, er, account that will grow in utility and provide payoffs even if you wind up living under an overpass in Austin.

So, honey...wanna try...anal?

I have some friends, who shall remain anonymous because How to Have Sex in Texas never names its sources (or subjects, wink wink), who made a New Years Resolution last year to have anal sex by New Years Eve 2010. I don't know yet if they did it, but I tried to coach them as best I could and even sent them some specially chosen preparative toys as an engagement present.

If you've always wanted to try something but have been too scared or too shy to tell your partner, make this year the year you're going to get your needs met. Want to try anal? Read this article on the 10 Steps to a Successful Anal Encounter. And proceed.

Get Over That Breakup Already

If you're nursing a broken heart, cry your tears, write your poetry, and get the hell over it. Read He's Just Not That Into You and then read It's Called a Breakup Because It's Broken. Watch the "Cry Baby" video above as many times as it takes and let.it.go. Some of the best advice I've ever received was from a friend who said, after a breakup, that a person has every right not to want to date you. But one thing is for certain: your friends are sick of hearing about it.

This is also a great time to cut the cord of that relationship that just won't die. If you read the books above and say to yourself, "Hmm, the asshole behavior they're describing seems a lot like the way I act and feel," get out now. One minute is too long to stay in a relationship that you know isn't working. DTMFA.

Replace that College Vibrator

If you're still using the vibrator that you bought at that sketchy 24 hour video store in college, please put the toxic toy down right now and get a new friend. I got to visit Good Vibrations while I was in San Francisco and see in person some of the incredible new vibrators that have come out. My personal wish list includes the Soraya by Lelo which, if you like a rabbit-style toy, is what you need. Gorgeous, waterproof, rechargeable, quiet, and no stupid animal faces that make it hard to clean. Whatever style toy you like, if you have a jelly toy that contains phthalates, replace it immediately. That shit is toxic and it smells terrible.

Protect Your Health...While You Still Have Insurance

The most important sex resolutions for 2011 concern preventative health. If you've never been tested for STIs, do it now. Especially if you're female. The firestorm in the feminist blogosphere about whether birth control pills cause infertility [they don't] aside, the leading cause of preventable infertility in American women is untreated chlamydia, which can hang out in the body for years and show no symptoms while causing irreparable damage to the fallopian tubes or seminiferous tubules in men. Testing for chlamydia is easy and painless--a simple urine test in men or vaginal swab in women will do it. You can find a testing site near you--which may do testing for free--here.

The other super important thing to do, if you're in a sexual relationship with an opposite-sex person and don't want a baby this year, is figure out how you'll prevent pregnancy and stick to it. "User failure" is the main reason people using otherwise super-effective birth control methods get pregnant, and "user failure" can mean anything from inserting a ring late to not using a backup method if you've been throwing up or having diarrhea, both of which can decrease the body's absorption of the pill. Using condoms "some of the time" or putting one on after sex starts isn't good enough, either.

If you want to track your cycle, check out CycleBeads. You can download an app for your iPhone or iPad that will track your fertile days, or you can purchase the physical beads.

You could also get a long-term method, like the IUD, before everything happening in healthcare goes to shit. One thing is for certain--abortion is going to be harder to get, and probably more expensive. So if you want to not be pregnant, it's going to be a lot easier and cheaper to avoid it on the front end.

Give a Gift to Those in Need

If you have health insurance, a killer vibrator, and a reliable birth control method and still have some money left over, this is the year to contribute financially to those who might not have the same choices as you. I haven't yet heard of a charity that gives sex toys to homeless women [Babeland, are you listening?] but one way you can help is to contribute to a local abortion fund. Cost is one of the hugest barriers for women who need abortions, and you can help a woman in desperate need by finding the fund that serves your area and making a donation. In Texas, the Lilith Fund, the Texas Equal Access Fund, and the Jim Wimberly Fund [just for Planned Parenthood in Austin] help women get the services they need.

Here's to a great year in sex.
xoxo,
Julie Sunday

Gay Dad in Dallas Removed as Scout Leader

2010-12-26T10:02:00.000-08:00

via the Dallas Morning News.

Don't know how this got past me in October but Jon Langbert, the father of a 9 year-old Cub Scout in Dallas, was removed as Scout leader after other parents complained. You'd think with the federal government being all concerned about "Promoting Responsible Fatherhood" that they would be psyched about, you know, an involved, responsible father.

"I just found out a few days ago that some of the dads are not happy about having a gay guy running the popcorn fundraiser," Langbert told his local CBS 11 TV station.

So some aggressively flaming heterosexual wants to run the popcorn fundraiser instead? The fucked up part is that the local organization's leadership told Langbert that his being gay was no problem, but when other parents complained Boy Scout higher ups got involved and said that no, being gay trumps all other good qualities.

Langbert said he's going to try to push for a change. Let's hope he does.

Marie Claire Interviews Woman Who Knows Everything About Closeted Gay Men

2010-12-24T11:52:00.001-08:00

Oh here we go. Marie Claire is featuring an interview with Kiri Blakeley, a writer whose nine year engagement ended when her fiance confessed he was gay. Fortunately, this allowed Kiri Blakeley to write a memoir of her experience which will surely sell hundreds of copies to women terrified that their sensitive man-toy is also hiding a secret desire for other men.

This being Marie Claire, the interview skews to the overly general and stereotypical:

This was a man who never even let me touch his butt! (and all gay dudes are into anal, obv)
He also grew a beard and refused to shave it. (have you ever seen the Village People? ever?)
The weird thing is, Aaron is a very masculine guy with a deep voice. (weird!)
He plays soccer, wears loose clothing, doesn't use loads of hair gel, and never reeks of Axe body spray. (she's confusing being gay with being a cast member on Jersey Shore)
There's no postcoital chatting. Gay men get right to the point. (because men don't have feelings)

So what happened next?

I became addicted to sex. It gave me a dopamine rush in the same way that drugs and alcohol affect your brain. Soon, I couldn't just sit home on a Sunday night and read. I would claw my skin in physical withdrawal. The only solution was to get dressed and go to a bar to find a guy.

If this isn't further evidence that homosexuality is chipping away at the foundation of our society, I don't know what is! If she needs support she might consider reaching out to Rick Perry's wife, First Lady of Texas Anita Perry, who's got years of experience being married to an allegedly secretly gay guy. But as I've always said, better to break up with a gay boyfriend than be married to a gay husband. Guess that's why I'm not promoting a memoir.

Second Bad Texas High School Sports News Story of the Day

2010-12-23T08:10:00.001-08:00

via the Houston Press. A high school softball player was outed to her mother by her coaches and then kicked off the team. Possibly because the player was dating an ex of one of the coaches. Girl and mother are suing the school district. For chrissakes Texas school districts, stop doing illegal shit to your female athletes!

Silsbee, Texas Cheerleader Appealing to U.S. Supreme Court

2010-12-23T07:44:00.000-08:00

Update on the case of a Silsbee, Texas cheerleader who was kicked off the team after refusing to participate in individual cheers for the basketball player who raped her. The girl took her high school to court and lost, and now she's appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court.

According to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle,

The case has drawn national attention since a federal appeals court in New Orleans ruled in September that the cheerleader was speaking for the school, not herself, and had no right to remain silent when called on to shout the athlete's name. Legal commentators said the ruling illustrated courts' increasingly restrictive view of free speech on campus.

How bad could the cheer have possibly been, you ask? Surely she couldn't object to something like, "Rakheem, Rakheem, you're so great, get that pitch over home plate?" (Okay, I know he was a basketball player and not a pitcher, but I'm not good at making up cheers) No, the cheer wasn't something innocuous at all. It was

2, 4, 6, 8, 10, come on, Rakheem, put it in

Not so hard to imagine now why the girl didn't want to participate.

Racist Anti-Abortion Campaign Comes to Austin

2010-12-21T05:45:00.001-08:00

"The most dangerous place for some children is in the womb."

The Majella Society, d/b/a Heroic Media, is Austin's own do-nothing anti-abortion propaganda provider and they're back in force with this new, racist billboard on I-35 south at 8th street near downtown. It appears that this billboard is part of a larger campaign targeting black women, like the one reported in Atlanta earlier this year, and this message represents an interesting change for Heroic, which has typically focused on "Pregnant? Scared?" messages.

Last year Majella ran the "I Am A Life" ad during the season premiere of CSI: Miami, which is a CBS show. RH Reality Check reported in February that the Atlanta billboards were owned by CBS Outdoor and that CBS, which broadcast the Superbowl this year, allowed the tacky Tim Tebow anti-abortion commercial paid for by Focus on the Family.

On the website mentioned in the billboard above, there are several videos, including the one below. While the video itself doesn't explicitly say that African American women are contributing to black genocide, the Youtube handle of the uploader is "PPAbortsAA." The video itself includes language like "baby daddy" and the woman and the child presented--who is not an infant--are both black. The rest of the ads on Dangerousplace.org feature non-white women and children, too.

The downloadable "fact sheet" is also clearly targeting black women, and includes several spurious "facts" about abortion among African Americans. The website also links from this factoid: "In 2007, one pro-choice organization made only 4,912 adoption referrals while performing 305,310 abortions" to PPAbortsAA.org, which has the below super-obvious image on the homepage.

The text on the homepage is below:

Planned Parenthood's actions are the ultimate exploitation of African American women and an assault on the dignity of life. Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger had a plan. She wasn't interested in removing the cause of poverty, illiteracy, illegitimate births, or other social ills, she just wanted to eliminate the result, the pregnancy, ...the innocent life. She wanted to, "stop the reproduction of the unfit". Please help us, provide another voice for African Americans to listen to, to choose. A voice that encourages the heroic decision to become a mother.

And so on. But the curious thing is that, according to Statehealthfacts.org, black women in Texas account for a lower percentage of abortions in the state (23.2%) as compared to the national proportion (35%), and this Guttmacher report shows that black Texas teens have an abortion rate less than half (20) that of the national rate of 44. This may be more of an indication of how hard it is to get abortions in Texas, but regardless, there is not a "black abortion epidemic" in Texas.

So why Austin? The Census Bureau shows only 8% of the population here is black, as compared to 18% in Houston and 20% in Dallas. My money is on the Legislative session, which convenes on January 11th. The billboard's proximity to the capitol suggests the target of these ads may not be black women at all, but those in power who have the ability to make abortion that much harder to get for all women.

How to Talk Dirty Part 2: Opening Your Mouth

2010-12-20T05:46:00.001-08:00

image from my great pals at Where is Your Line

"How do I talk dirty?" is a something every sex expert gets asked all the time. It's one of those questions that is easily answered--when in doubt, just narrate!--but people are so nervous about what they sound like during sex that they want to find a script they can memorize that will provide a Guaranteed Hot Sexy Time. But the thing is, everybody feels differently about how a hookup should sound: some people want a play-by-play, some want to be bossed around, and others prefer a kind of hot, tense silence. I think humans can generally be divided into three broad categories: breathers, moaners, and talkers.

Breathers might not make much noise but will breathe in ways that, if interpreted correctly, are totally hot. Especially if they're breathing heavily in your ear while sucking on your earlobe. Or whatever.

Moaners moan without having to try; they get hit in the right spot or licked in the right way and they can't not make noise.

Talkers can be good talkers or bad talkers. Good talkers say things that are hot and make you feel good; bad talkers make inappropriate comments and kill the mood.

Becoming a Moaner

If you're shy or just naturally quiet during sex, don't fake moaning; just try to identify the times and feelings that elicit heavy breathing and try to add a little bit of a moan to the mix. Eventually, moans will come to you naturally. But don't overdo it: not everything should make you moan like you're about to come. The person pleasing you wants to earn those sounds. There's nothing worse than hearing someone howl repeatedly like the star of "Cum Guzzling Cheerleaders Part 7."

If you're such a moaner that you do really sound like a pornstar, try gagging yourself or putting a pillow over your face. It will be that much hotter when you can moan again.

Talking Dirty to Get Consent

One of the most vexing issues around consent is that everyone assumes it's a total boner-killer to stop, negotiate, agree to Sex Acts A and B but not C, and recommence where you left off. But getting consent can easily be worked into your sexy talk. If you want to give consent, few things are hotter to a partner than hearing you say, "I want you to ____ me." And if you want to ask for consent, say, "I really want to ____ you. Is that okay?" wait for them to say "yes," and, voila! You have consent.

How to Talk

Talking dirty, for those to whom it doesn't come naturally, is an art form that can take an average sexual experience all the way to awesome. If your partner asks you to talk dirty to them, here are a few places to start:

"I can't wait to ____ you"
"Your ____ feels so fucking good"
"I love it when you ____ me"
"Your ____ gets so ____ when I ____ it"
"Your ____ is going to make me come"

What Not to Say

Some people are Directors and want to be in charge and running the show during sex. I would encourage you--particularly men--to use caution before being too bossy. For some women, hearing something that sounds word for word like what guys say in porn movies can be a turnoff, triggering*, or both. There is a world of difference between talking about the shared experience you're having with a partner ("It's so hot when you suck my cock") and making a partner feel like they're at the service of your sexual pleasure alone ("Suck my cock, yeah you love it you little slut, don't you?").

Dos and Don'ts

Do: the first time you hook up with someone, you should tell them they're beautiful/so fucking hot/gorgeous. Doing this a) makes clear to your partner that you think they're so fucking hot and b) is just good policy.
Do: Get--and give--consent. "I want you to ___ me" is one of the hottest things a person can hear.
Don't: Use porn-tastic language without clearing it with your partner first. Some women are going to be super turned on by hearing "Yeah, take my big cock you little whore" but others are going to reel back and punch you in the face. So ask.
Do: Ask for what you want. If it really turns you on to be called "Daddy," or "Kitten" or "Boy Scout" or whatever, say so.
Don't: Bite your tongue out of nervousness. Whatever sound you make, if genuine, will be hot.
Do: Give praise. "Yeah, that feels so fucking good" is a great thing to say under any circumstances and doesn't force you to say words that might be hard to say at first, like "pussy" or "cock."
Don't: Say the same thing every time. Your partner will remember if you said "I love it when your ____ gets tight when I ____ you" the last ten times you ____ed them.

I love it when you ____ my ____,
Julie Sunday

*A trigger is something that sets off a memory tape or flashback transporting the person back to the event of her/his original trauma.

How to Talk Dirty Part 1: The Narrator vs. The Director

2010-12-18T08:17:00.000-08:00

"Oh yeah, you like it when I whisper in your ear, don't you?"

It's been 3 years since I last wrote about talking dirty and last night ran into someone who reminded me of the urgency of clear guidelines on this subject. Suffice it to say, like the definition of "obscenity" itself, one may not know bad dirty talk until one experiences it. And by then it is too late.

There are two main styles for talking dirty: Narrator and Director. (There is also Mime, which I do not recommend.) A Narrator is someone who will describe what is happening as it is happening, giving a play-by-play of the various actions taking place and (usually) commenting about how good it feels, how hot it is, and so on.

A Director is someone who prefers to tell their partner what to do. This is common in mainstream porn where the fantasy is a man getting a woman to do anything he wants.

Here are some different ways a Narrator and a Director might communicate the same thing:

Narrator: "It feels so good when you bite my ear"
Director: "Oh yeah baby, bite my ear"

Narrator: "I love it when you suck my nipples like that"
Director: "Suck my nipples"

Narrator: "Your ____ tastes so good"
Director: "You think it's so hot when I suck your ____, don't you?"

Narrator: "Your ____ feels amazing in my ____"
Director: "Take all of my ____. You like that, don't you?"

And so on. Some people prefer the narrative style and others the directive and either way is fine, but one should avoid doing both. Nothing is worse than discovering that, when your own mouth is too full to talk, that you are going down on someone who wants to play the role of both Narrator and Director.

Just imagine: there you are, innocently pleasuring your partner, who proceeds to tell you what to do immediately followed by commentary on how good it feels. This might sound like someone following that old adage to tell your partner what you want them to do and then appreciate them when they do it. But what can happen rather quickly is that the person giving the instructions and praise doesn't ever stop fucking talking and you feel like you're watching Headline News where the newscaster is but a small percentage of the information being communicated: the talking head is saying, "This is the best blowjob since the 2008 election!" and the ticker is saying "You like that baby, don't you?" and the headline across the bottom of the screen says "Blowjob Significantly Better than those Given by Ex-Girlfriend, the Bitch" and up in the corner where the weather icon should be is a countdown to "I'm gonna come in your mouth in 5...4...3..." and you get so overwhelmed with information that you just want to change the channel already.

If you notice the person going down on you rolling their eyes, it's time to shut the fuck up and come already.

Instruction on what to actually say tomorrow.

He Comes Last: Ian Kerner Discovers Raunch Culture 5 Years Late

2010-12-17T13:03:00.001-08:00

Kerner: I'll make you come first, OR ELSE

If you've read "She Comes First" and "He Comes Next" you're well aware of the cringeworthy, self-hating* tone of Dr. Kerner's creepy female-worshipping works. To be clear, I'm not opposed to his core idea that women should come first, but Kerner makes clear that he wants to prioritize female pleasure to compensate for that facet of masculinity that can be, shall we say, uncooperative. All the pussy-eating in the world won't distract her forever from the fact that your dick won't get hard, buddy. Sorry.

So in his phoned-it-in blog post for CNN's The Chart Kerner has apparently taken his face out of the vag long enough to notice American "raunch culture." Kerner is Very Concerned:

In the age of Snooki, "Girls Gone Wild," and Tila Tequila, where on Earth is a young woman supposed to find positive female role models? And how are our boys going to grow up to respect female sexuality when the girls themselves seem to be throwing all sexual caution to the wind? From sexting to the mainstreaming of amateur pornography, a new culture of raunchiness has emerged, one in which women aren’t just participating—they’re often taking the lead.

Hear that ladies? Don't expect respect when women who aren't you are captured on video doing things they probably didn't want to do anyway. Apparently the apex of raunch culture is creating a perpetually throbbing hard-on in our nation's young men rendering them completely incapable of respecting women. And you know what ladies? It's all your fault.

Except Kerner has kind of missed the boat: the peak of raunchy public female sexuality that Ariel Levy wrote about in "Female Chauvinist Pigs" in 2006 has actually kindof passed. Joe Francis got married, Tila Tequila is adopting a baby and Jenna Jameson isn't even doing porn anymore. JWOWW's decidedly raunch fashion line, "Filthy Couture," never even shipped.**

What Kerner doesn't seem to realize is that Snooki and the Jersey Shore team are parodies of a raunch culture now so passe the only place those so five minutes ago Ed Hardy fashions can be worn is in an imaginary, retrograde South Jersey fantasyland. Bad for MTV, good for the rest of us.

And Kerner might take notice that two women were this close to the Oval Office two years ago and are in awesome or terrifying positions of power right now. Obviously heralding feminist achievement doesn't get CNN pageviews but Kerner ought to take his face out of the muff long enough to take notice of Hillary, Sarah, Nancy, Tina Fey, and any number of the tons of awesome female role models out there. Are there enough women in positions of real power? Of course not. But there are more than enough to provide real alternatives to parents who feel overwhelmed by the Snookis and Tila Tequilas of the world.

*"He Comes Next" doesn't even appear on Kerner's own website listing of books he's written. This guy really, really doesn't think you deserve blow jobs, guys.

**the link http://filthycouture.com/ automatically redirects to http://jwoww.com/ now.

The Anti-Gift Guide: Tajazzle

2010-12-16T08:08:00.001-08:00

Via Gawker.

Do you need a 3 step system (a $200 value) to make your vagina even remotely palatable to your greaseball boyfriend? Are you sure he isn't gay? Well, if you insist, I guess you could think about using Tajazzle, the knockoff, downscale, Jersey Shore version of LA "sensation" Vajazzling. It's the Ultimate in Personal Confidence!

But if you buy the Tajazzle sensational confidence-building system you won't have only a vagina with a cheap rhinestone tattoo, you'll also get some "powder" made with the "finest, all-natural ingredients" to "keep you dry when it gets hot." (I hate to be a curmudgeon here, but isn't being wet when things "get hot" sort of the point?) You also get Tajazzle Flavor roll-on, which I'm guessing are upcycled leftover roll-on lip glosses from the 1980s. If you order now you'll get raspberry and honey flavors to roll on all your...private areas. So...um...delicious sounding.

You can "live your fantasy as a Radiant Goddess" with Tajazzle and, I'm not making this up, "Put some bling in your fling." As they say, "It's totally empowering to be wearing so little and still have something very secret only someone special can see."

I think we clearly need to add "Tajazzle" to our lexicon. Anyone have suggestions for what the word should mean? Leave them in the comments.

Can't get enough of the horrible infomercial? Watch part 2!

The Electric Kool-Aid Syphilis Test

2010-12-14T11:06:00.000-08:00

How fortuitous that I happen to be reading Tom Wolfe's hallucinogenic masterpiece right now, because my first thought upon seeing this super weird 1970s cartoon syphilis video produced by the Navy is how incredible it would be to watch it on acid. Which, in the Navy in the 1970s, might have been just the state of mind in which many viewers saw this film.

The video sets up an award show in which Venereal Disease, and specifically Syphilis and Gonorrhea, win the award for "Communicable Disease of the Year" against such worthy adversaries as smallpox, the common cold, and scarlet fever. The show's MC explains that, while each of the other contenders has made their own splash, syphilis has stood the test of time and has been with us humans for centuries.

What follows is an accurate and entertaining (at least for sexual health nerds like me who love syphilis) history of the infection. Like many contemporary sex ed videos, the narration fails to mention that, you know, condoms help prevent syphilis and gonorrhea. But that's neither here nor there--this is a historical gem.

Of course Texas has been a trendsetter in the retro syphilis sensation of the past decade and we're real proud of that but we could all stand to learn a little somethin' about the syph.

Texas to Receive Millions in Federal Anti-Trafficking Funds?

2010-12-13T13:02:00.001-08:00

Texas is widely considered a hub for human trafficking and by some estimates, 25% of all human trafficking victims wind up in the Lone Star State. Dallas Cowboys stadium will play host to the Superbowl in 2011 and in preparation the state Attorney General Greg Abbott is committing funds to fight the "influx of human trafficking" expected to take place around the event.

From the Star-Telegram:

Abbott cited a report from a Florida task force estimating that tens of thousands of women and minors were trafficked in the Miami area during the last Super Bowl. The game is considered "one of the biggest human-trafficking events in the United States," he said. "We know that the sex traffickers and the girls they enslave are going to be out in full force," Abbott said. "We are going to be helping out by putting boots on the ground."

The lege has made efforts to increase punishment for "traffickers" (read: pimps) to 25 years in prison, at least half of which must be served before parole, among other consequences. Change.org called last month for more support for shelters for victims of trafficking and, lo and behold, a $15 million per year bill to establish support services for victims of trafficking sponsored by Our Fair Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) has just passed the Senate unanimously.*

If the bill passes the House, the grant program would provide funding for 6 states to pilot services for victims and to increase prosecution of pimps and traffickers.

Speaking of which, Youthradio.org's recent story on human trafficking revealed one pimp's "business plan" which, suprisingly, did not include any mention whatsoever of the Big Game this February. The Pimp Author did talk about setting up an "international operation" and attending the Players Ball in Las Vegas, so perhaps the federal prosecutors should go there instead of trying to use government money to score tickets to the Superbowl.

Or get in touch with Big Al in Florida.

*How interesting that a press release heralding this bill's passage appears on the cosponsor's (Wyden, D-OR) Senate webpage but not Cornyn's.

The Panopticon of Slut Shaming

2010-12-09T08:15:00.001-08:00

A panopticon prison at Presidio Modelo, Isla De la Juventud, Cuba.

Roy Baumeister, author of "Sexual Economics: Sex as Female Resource for Social Exchange in Heterosexual Interactions," which blew my mind when I read it on Mark Regnerus' recommendation a few years ago, has a new book out, Is There Anything Good About Men? I sure hope he answers that question, because I'm dying to know.

In a recent blog post on the Oxford University Press website, Baumeister writes that men incur more "costs" for sex, by which he means men "pay" more for it. Women suffer more "consequences" for sex, which can be measured in social "cost." Case in point: a woman's "value" goes down if she gets a reputation for "selling" at too low a price, i.e., being labeled a "slut."

Baumeister argues that by every available measure, men have a higher sex drive than women. While I agree that by the indicators currently available (including frequency of fantasy, sex, and masturbation) men do show a higher desire than women, he fails to note that we don't yet have a way of measuring how women are successfully curbed by our social system that promises punishment if they act out sexually and that they are collectively responsible for their own sexual regulation. He might want to check in with Cindy Meston about this question.

I can't imagine a more effective way of curbing sex drive than by the constant threat of disease, social ostracism, and possibly death(!!!). Patrick Carnes, the founder of the Gentle Path sex addiction treatment program, writes about the effectiveness of sex-negative culture at causing "sexual anorexia" in his book by the same name(p. 47). Sexual anorexia creates in its sufferers a fear of sexuality and its consequences so great that all desires are sublimated.

Baumeister (and Kathleen Vohs, with whom he has written about sexual economics) makes the clear case in his seminal article that women moderate their sexual behavior because they want (and need) to maintain their social and sexual "value" by selling at a high price to get men's "resources." Regnerus supports this finding in his new book on college student sexual behavior, Premarital Sex in America.

On college campuses, the fiercest guards of sexual behavior are women, not men. Women police eachother's sexual behavior and shame eachother for "selling" at too low a price: witness the number of girls who spread rumors about so-and-so's having sex under the wrong circumstances, with the wrong guy, or with too great a frequency. You see this shaming at its ugliest when women respond to another woman's sexual assault with questions about whether she was really raped at all.

The idea, of course, is that if a woman you associate with sells at a low price that affects your own value, so you can slut-shame her away from you and maintain your own high price. Men don't care--they'll take whatever sex they can get.

Foucault described the panopticon, a prison where the guard can see all inmates at once but they can't tell if they're really being watched, as the perfect way to create a system of self-enforcement to make naturally individualistic humans compliant for maximum profit. The panopticon of slut shaming puts women in a position of monitoring eachother while never being sure if the people in power--men--are really paying attention.

Trojan Makes Another Terrible Commercial for Tri-Phoria

2010-12-08T13:02:00.000-08:00

I mean seriously, who are these ads intended for? The last ad was cheesy as hell and this one is worse. Blow your hair back? For $39.99? Trojan is banking on the fact that women who watch infomercials have never been to a sex toy store, ever.

My favorite part is when the bride-to-be shares with her man that they got not one! not two! but three! Tri-Phorias and he slaps the counter and says "SAWEET!" Surely he's thinking, "One for each of my balls and one for the taint! Best bridal shower EVER!"

The ads for the Trojan Triphoria represent the first sex toy ads ever to screen during primetime, so for that we can thank our pals in Princeton who have the big money to get sex ads on TV.

Still not for sale in Texas though. Sorry, ladies (and gents).

Buy it here!

Most Important Holiday Gift of All

2010-12-08T12:51:00.000-08:00

All senior citizens deserve handjobs indeed! You tell 'em, grandma.

How could I have forgotten the Handjob!?! Fortunately my pal Lisa over at Handjob! Customer Service* sent me their brand-spanking [heh] new video just in time for the holiday season.

I'm actually expecting 8 handjobs any day now! Friends and family of Julie Sunday, check your stockings on Christmas morning!

Nothing says "I like you" like a genuine handjob. You deserve it!

* someone clearly won the crown for best business card ever

The Moment You've Been Waiting For: The Go-To Gift Guide!

2010-12-07T12:41:00.001-08:00

I think a 4:1 gift ratio is fair: 4 gifts for others, 1 gift for yourself. Check out Babeland's Sexy Holiday Gift Guides if you need more inspiration!

'Tis the season to buy gifts and, if you're like me, you worry over whether the gift you're picking out for your aunt or uncle is just right, and whether it'll actually be used or just wind up in the attic. I don't advocate buying sex-related gifts for family (not even my own family) but when it comes time to pick out something for your friends that will actually be used and enjoyed, sex toys can be just the ticket.

With that, I'd like to bring you some of my picks for this holiday season.

The Gift: The Honeymoon in a Box kit from Babeland.

Who's it for? The couple you still haven't gotten a wedding gift for despite having attended their nuptials months ago. Not long ago I went to a wedding and had a convo with the groom the night before the ceremony about how he wanted something that sounded an awful lot like a vibrating cock ring. This kit covers that base with a ring, a finger vibe, lickable oil, flavored lube, and dirty dice. After being married for 6 months, what better way to bring the Honeymoon back?

The Gift: A Fleshlight.

Who's it for? Your friend who's been deployed, just received a long away-from-home work assignment, or is otherwise in a long-distance relationship. But unless you're besties, don't get this one for someone who's single, becuase that's just awkward.

The Gift: The Lelo Soraya

Who's it for? The girl who has everything (cough cough, this is at the top of my list). This is the most gorgeous "rabbit" style vibrator yet and one-ups Lelo's last effort, the also-gorgeous Ina. The innovation here is the hole in the base, which gives more leverage in a situation where you need all the dexterity you can get. Also, rechargeable and totally waterproof.

The Gift: Jimmyjane Little Afterglow set of massage candles

Who's it for? The couple who's been together for a few years now and could use something fun. I'm a huge fan of massage candles and Jimmyjane's products always have high-quality, nontoxic scents so you can enjoy hot massage oil without the irritation of cheap, chemical smells.

The Gift: Moregasm: Babeland's Guide to Mind-Blowing Sex

Who's it for? Freakin' everyone (yourself included). I just looked at this book the other day and it's awesome. The printing is amazing, the models in the photos are diverse and hot, and the advice, of course, is excellent.

The Gift: Open Invitation (DVD)

Who's it for? That friend you have who watches too much bad porn who you think could really use some hot, high quality material that doesn't contain pop-up ads or crash their hard drive.

The Gift: The Bend-Over Beginner Kit

Who's it for? That couple you know who's been wanting to try anal sex for years but can't work up the nerve. With this kit the female partner can strap-on and bend over her guy, which ought to teach him a thing or two about how to be gentle and patient. Then maybe they'll be ready to try anal. Don't forget the silicone-based lube!

Happy Holidays!

Go-To Girl

Austin-based Fleshlight Totally Better than a Real Woman for Men's Rights Activists

2010-12-06T08:38:00.001-08:00

Picture of "better than a woman" Succudry via Gizmodo.

Look, I am all for the fundamental right to have both a partnersex life and a solosex life. Masturbation is key to figuring out what you like sexually and getting it when you have sex with a partner. And Christine O'Donnell is nuts, so no one should ever listen to anything she says, ever. Much of the objection some women have to pornography is that porn is a vehicle for arousal and masturbation--sexual release that doesn't require (and might very well preclude) a partner's participation. Not that we can't watch porn with our partners, masturbate together, and so on, but most of the time, masturbation is a solo activity. In our delusional, fidelity-obsessed, "save it til and for marriage" culture sexual release that falls outside that norm, whether by men (porn) or women (sex toys) is threatening and subject to regulation.

Over at ManBoobz they investigated weird anti-feminist "men's rights activist" blog The Spearhead's terror that The Women are coming for their sacred right to masturbate. Where they're wrong, of course, is accusing feminist women of being anti-masturbation. Indeed, the majority of anti-sex toy laws prohibit items that replace penises (dildos and vibrators, natch), and thereby allow women to achieve sexual satisfaction without a man, assuming that they ever got it from a man in the first place. If there's one thing feminists can agree on, it's vibrators y'all.

The MRA blogger had this to say:

When a man uses a fleshlight he is attacked for being a loser who can’t get laid. This is very similar to the anti-male masturbation shaming language used by religious conservatives. Both groups are worried that men may not be sexually dependent on women. That is what they are really afraid of.

I think I just threw up in my mouth a little bit. We're worried that men might not be sexually dependent on women? I don't think there's a single shred of evidence to that effect. Fleshlights are so popular because they more closely approximate a vagina than a dude's hand. More than a million of these miraculous, pussy- (or ass, or mouth, or vampire) substitutes have been sold and I have it on good authority from several men that I know and trust that they are well worth the hefty price tag. None of the guys I've known who cop to having Fleshlights have any trouble getting laid, nor would they ever choose their Fleshlight over a real, live female partner--they were just looking for a novel jerk-off tool.

But in the same way that men don't really need to fear being replaced by a vibrator, women shouldn't feel threatened by men's masturbatory habits. One million Fleshlights or not, most men who are otherwise sane and healthy are not going to replace a real-live pussy with a cyberskin substitute that comes in a giant flashlight case. I mean, seriously.

And with that, tomorrow look for Go-To Girl's Holiday Gift Guide which will present must-have sexy gifts for both men and women. And not because we're at war and need to "replace" eachother due to our neverending conflict over who will best "control" their "prey."

Watch a video of the thing an MRA might replace you with. Be afraid ladies. Very, very afraid.

Adam Reviews the Fleshlight Motion from Gizmodo on Vimeo.

How to Date a Feminist: Who's Running the Fuck?

2010-12-03T09:55:00.001-08:00

Gulity as charged! I dig you, Colbert. I dig you hard.

After yesterday's post I got a lot of comments from guys about their frustrations trying to date feminist women, and one in particular I wanted to include here.

The biggest obstacle I've encountered is preparing for the bedroom switch. You spend the whole evening minding your Ps and Qs and then as soon as those clothes come off, you're expected to be a bitch-slapping, play-choking, rough-fucking manimal. Not that all feminists are into that sort of thing, but in my experience, it's more often than not.

I totally get the frustration at having to be all feminist and shit ("Of course I'm pro-choice. I voted for Hillary in the primaries. I volunteer at the rape crisis center.") only to be expected to put on your Manny Manny Man skin when you get back to her place.

I think the flip side to this is that many feminist women (myself included) encounter men who assume that we are totally dominant and that they can kind of kick back and relax in the bedroom. But a female friend expressed her frustration with this attitude thusly:

Sex isn't life, it's an escape from life. I spend my entire life making my own decisions, telling my employees what to do, carefully apportioning my time, etc. When I get in bed, it's a huge relief to let someone else take charge and handle that.

I refer to this as running the fuck. Perhaps therein lies the rub of dating a feminist: men attracted to women who have their shit together might be hoping that they are in for a sexual rollercoaster ride of which they don't have to be the navigator.

Our sexual scripts are based on the "exchange" of women's sex for men's "resources," which puts the man in a position of power and allows for more "natural" male dominance of sexual encounters. Of course, not everyone--male or female, feminist or not--is into this script, but men who date feminists might understandably assume that a woman who subverts gender roles in her everyday might also be interested in subverting gender roles in bed, which might not be the case.

This is not to argue that feminist women are a bunch of pillow princesses who just want to lay back and be serviced (which can itself be a form of domination) but they might not be interested in being in charge, either. The best way to find out is to ask. Or just wrestle and see who comes out on top.

Today is the LAST DAY to vote for How to Have Sex in Texas for Best New Blog in Austin! Please please vote!

How to Date a Feminist

2010-12-02T07:09:00.000-08:00

Please take a second and vote for me for Austin's Best New Blog!

The original dried up, ball-busting career woman I might mention...who's a fashion editor for Vogue.

With the buzz around the hilariously awful International Herald Tribune (which is published by, but not the same thing as, the New York Times) article "Keeping Romance Alive in the Age of Female Empowerment" (or, "How can you possibly expect to find love, you dried up, ball-busting career woman?") I thought it was time to help the boys out with some tips on how to date a feminist.

Amanda Hess's original interview with Jaclyn Friedman and Jezebel's recent series "Fucking While Feminist" addressed the issues feminist women face when trying to date and have sex. Boys, we want to help you get some, promise we do. And in spite of what conservatives love to claim, plenty of men are doggedly interested in dating women who are independent and capable of thinking for themselves.

Many feminist women will be happy to roll with your inadvertently sexist flaws once you're actually dating, but when you're on a first or second or third date and trying to pump up the baloon of interest and desire, one wrong comment can pop it forever.

I asked my smartest, most successful friends to reveal how guys they've dated ruined their chances of getting laid. I should note that all of the women interviewed are professional, graduate-schooled women with their own health insurance. Most are married or engaged. Here are some helpful hints that can help you put your best face forward.

DON'T:

Presumptively rent a hotel room or ask if you can sleep over without an invitation. Maybe she does want to sleep with you on the first date, but you're better off not assuming.
Tell stories about the "house rats" who hung around your frat in college, "trying to get fucked." On a second date. Really? I can't wait til date #4 when you tell me the cutesy name you had for the girls who passed out and got raped.
Inform your wife that she hasn't cooked dinner all week. Unless she has the combination to the safe where all of your cooking supplies are located or both of your legs are in casts, you have no excuse for not getting yourself fed. Or cooking dinner for her, for a change.
Talk about how you don't need to get tested. You need to get tested.
Claim that nobody who isn't in college uses condoms anymore. Want to get fucked? You need to wear condoms.
Admit you think girls make up rape charges because they feel guilty about having sex. They don't.
Tell titty jokes.
Refuse to have sex with women without Brazilian waxes. Like shaving? Try it yourself.
Make comments about other hot chicks in the restaurant/bar/coffee shop where you're meeting.
Brag about how much money you make. Chances are good the woman you're going out with has her own job, her own insurance, and doesn't really care about how much money you make as long as you're self-sufficient. Talking about it excessively demonstrates that you think your money is one of your best qualities and, if that's the case, why are you going out with a feminist?
Talk about the anti-abortion protest you went to.
Refer to a woman you don't like as a "cunt," "ho," "slut," and so on.
Mention how big [you think] your dick is.
Point out to a woman that she is "opinionated" or "has a lot of opinions." Probably she got those "opinions" during her decades of elite education, and by pointing it out you're revealing that you actually prefer women who aren't opinionated. Which is fine, but then why are you on a date with a feminist?

We're not all negative here at How to Have Sex in Texas, and to prove it here are some Dos. I can't guarantee they'll get you laid but some of you guys need all the help you can get.

DO:

Carry condoms with you so if you get lucky, you don't look like a chump who assumes unprotected sex is okay. It's not okay.
Call on the phone. In the early stages of dating, texting in lieu of calling makes you look like a scrotum.
Be up front about any "history" you have. Divorced? No problem. Got herpes? Just disclose.
Be psyched if a woman tells you about her sex toys. They're not competitors, they're teammates.
Mention that you love going down on women. If you don't, either learn to like it or develop other killer foreplay skills.
Go down on her first. This earns you many, many sex karma points. Promise.
Ask for consent. Say "I want to fuck you. Is that okay?" And wait for her to say "YES!!!"

Good luck boys.

XOXO,

Julie Sunday

If reading is hard, this video of fellow Bedpost Confessions performer Big Poppa E pretty much sums it up.

Austin Public Clinics to Provide Opt-Out HIV Testing

2010-12-01T06:05:00.000-08:00

Great news via the Statesman.

Seventeen public health clinics operated by Travis County's CommUnityCare will begin providing opt-out HIV testing to adult patients beginning in January. The CDC recommended in 2006 that HIV testing be a part of routine health care for all adults, because the public health authority estimates that a large percentage of those infected with HIV are unaware of their status. Presumptive testing includes HIV in the regular battery of tests an adult receives at a checkup, like blood pressure, cholesterol, and so on, and a patient must "opt-out" not to receive the test.

Presumptive testing is controversial because in public clinics, where patients may have no access to other, expensive health care services (and in Texas, where Medicaid is incredibly restrictive, this is often the reality), an HIV diagnosis could be considered a death sentence. When the New York City health department and hospitals in the Bronx implemented opt-out testing in emergency rooms some HIV rights activists raised concerns that doing so reduced the likelihood that patients would undergo the informed consent process, which (though required by law) has been shown to reduce the chances that a person will get tested. The then-head of the NYC department, Thomas Frieden, is now the head of the CDC.

Considering that Texas has the 4th highest number of AIDS diagnoses in the country, behind epicenter states California, Florida and New York, moving toward presumptive testing is a good idea. I hope that a commitment to providing access to care for those diagnosed with HIV/AIDS will follow, because Texas has the highest percentage of the population without health insurance of any state, and HIV meds are expensive as hell.

Until there's a cure...

PS-Won't you please vote for me for Austin's Best New Blog? Thanks!!

New Use for Texas Social Studies Textbooks: Doggy Style for Short People

2010-12-01T05:39:00.000-08:00

Won't you take a minute to vote for me for Best New Blog in Austin? Thanks!

Why not put your Glencoe Health book under that pillow? (Cosmo)

Dear Julie,

I love getting fucked from behind, it's my all time fav position. Problem is, I'm 5 feet tall and my current partner is pushing 6 feet. So unless there's something (a bench or bed at perfect height for example) for me to "prop" myself up on, we find it hard to make it happen. We love switching up location as much as possible so we don't always have the right equipment. Any advice???

Kitty

Dear Kitty,

As a fellow lady of diminutive stature, I can totally relate to your height disparity problem. But in Texas we're fortunate that the State Board of Education earlier this year approved another mountainous set of textbook requirements, meaning that young'uns all over the state will soon be in possession of yet another 1000 page behemoth, useless textbook to make sex with a partner of great height that much easier.

If you'd prefer not to use textbooks (or, say, aren't in high school), there is a manufacturer making products designed for precisely this type of dilemma: Liberator. The Ramp is designed for just your purpose--and it can be used for other positions to boot. Check out the extensive videos on the website if you need some inspiration (NSFW, but hot). At $145 it's pricey for a pillow, but a good investment for a petite lady who likes it from behind.

If you don't have that much cash to blow on a piece of sex furniture, you may just need to get creative in your locations: find shelves, chairs, high heels, phone books, end tables, desks, counters, and more to get your legs to be as long as your boyfriend's.

Additionally, there are other ways to have sex from behind besides standing up; you can put your head on the floor, on the bed, on a stack of useless Texas-approved textbooks, on the desk, the stairs, whatever happens to be available. Give it a shot. And this one, too. And in case you like a little dose of Disney in your lovin:

The new Social Studies book should come in handy for this one. The "Magic Mountain" (Cosmo)

You can get the sensation of sex from behind at a variety of angles--remember also that you can sit on top of your man, facing his feet, and whatever he's hitting inside you from behind will get stimulated that way as well.

In case none of these tricks work, here's Cosmo's best advice for attracting hot dudes "like crazy"--maybe you can find someone closer to your own height.

Good luck!

Julie

PS-Won't you please vote for me for Best New Blog in Austin? Thanks!

Vote for How to Have Sex in Texas for Austin's Best New Blog!

2010-11-30T09:21:00.001-08:00

OMG SRSLY. Thank you SO MUCH to everyone who nominated me for Best New Blog. Now you can actually vote!

LAST DAY to nominate How to Have Sex in Texas for Austin's Best New Blog!!

2010-11-24T11:34:00.001-08:00

OMG SRSLY. There are these awards. The Austin Blogger Awards. For the best blogs in Austin. I think you know that in spite of the stiff competition from all the other great blogs in Austin, How to Have Sex in Texas clearly deserves an award. Please please please nominate me. Thanks a million, loyal readers.

Julie Sunday

New CDC STD Surveillance: Texas Doin' Its Part for the Dirty South

2010-11-23T10:36:00.000-08:00

In WWII we understood that condoms prevent STIs. Someone ought to tell Rick Perry.

Today is the day that public sexual health nerds like myself wait for all year: the new CDC STD Surveillance Report is out! In support of the "Most Sexually Active City in America" crown bestowed upon us by Men's Health earlier this fall, the CDC has confirmed again that the good men and women of Texas know how to get it on. Someone ought to tell Rick Perry, what with his embarassing video about the effectiveness of abstinence and all.

Take, if you will, Chlamydia. Of the 50 counties contributing most to the rate of chlamydia in the US, Texas has 5 counties* on the list, none lower than #31. Hook 'em, Gig 'em, and Guns up, y'all! Everyone in the state worked hard to contribute to this one.

For Gonorrhea, which fell to its lowest level nationally since 1941, Texas ranks #14, with more cases (29,295) than any other state. Harris, Dallas and Bexar counties are all in the national top 10 for gonorrhea. Don't mess with Texas!

The rate of my personal favorite, syphilis, puts Texas at #6, by far our most impressive showing. California does beat us on the raw number of cases but our rate is higher, so take that, Golden State! Texas represents more than 10% of the total number of cases in the US.

So, Texans, as much as we might want to win something (especially considering our absence from the national sports stage this year) let's all decide to use condoms and get tested, mmkay?

* #7: Harris County (Houston)
#9: Dallas County
#13: Bexar County (San Antonio)
#22: Tarrant County (Ft. Worth
#31: Travis County (Austin, WOOT!)

Repost: ACLU of Texas Takes Walgreens to Task for Refusing EC to Men

2010-11-18T05:30:00.001-08:00

I love the Walgreens down the street from me but according to the ACLU, not all Texas Walgreens are created equal:

Walgreens Continues Gender Discrimination at the Pharmacy

Couples who work together to make healthy decisions about contraception should be supported. So why is it that local Walgreens in Texas have repeatedly refused to sell contraception to men, despite corporate headquarters policy and federal guidelines to the contrary?

That is exactly what happened to Adam Drake, who tried to purchase emergency contraception from a Walgreens in Houston. He was shocked when the pharmacy unequivocally denied him the product because he is a man. When he complained to the store manager, she stood by the pharmacist’s decision....

To read the rest, click here.

With Hilarious New PSA, Austin Abstinence Organization Finally Gets In On the Joke

2010-11-16T17:50:00.000-08:00

Pants! Now why didn't I think of that?

You heard it here first, folks: our own Austin LifeGuard, the educational arm of Austin LifeCare Crisis Pregnancy Center has decided to spend some of its federal abstinence money making public service videos. The PSA above promises that wearing pants is "the only 100% guarantee to avoid the unwanted side effects of sex." They even come in a variety of shapes and sizes! I'm glad you finally get the joke, Austin LifeGuard.

Not satisfied with infomercials, Austin LifeGuard has created a website, IHeartPants.org, and is selling I Heart Pants t-shirts for just $12. They promise that pants will provide a variety of benefits, including a "revolutionary way to prevent: regret, jealousy, heartache, ended friendships, ruined reputations, and more!" Plus they can make your ass look great!

According to the SIECUS state profile for Texas, Austin LifeGuard/LifeCare will receive $582,900 in Community Based Abstinence Education (CBAE) funds for FYs 2008-2013. CBAE money goes directly from the federal government to "community based" (read: religious) organizations for abstinence programs that the state has no control or veto power over. Austin LifeGuard/LifeCare also received $70,245 as a Title V subgrant, funds to provide education in public schools. But what of the news that Austin Independent School District (AISD) will be piloting PREP funded-programs in partnership with Planned Parenthood?

With less business, perhaps LifeGuard decided to spend its funds on media campaigns, which are allowed under the grants. I can only imagine these videos are in response to the Texas Freedom Network's satirical videos which took their scripts verbatim from Pam Stenzel and other abstinence educators' presentations (see below).

The perfect Christmas gift for that irritatingly chaste member of your family could be the "I Heart Pants" t-shirt and the Original Handjob. While I doubt Austin LifeGuard would describe handjobs as safe, even the abstinence kids deserve some sexual gratification and, besides, if it's just your hand, you can't get pregnant!

In total, the PSAs have only garnered 1,965 views. Make sure to check out their other video about an awkward dad bragging that his son has genital herpes and the heartbreak that is fake social networking. While I appreciate this cheeky and novel approach, these ads are being paid for with federal tax dollars. And you know what's really hard if you never take off your pants? TEABAGGING.

Think this sounds ridiculous? Check out the original.

Atty General Abbott Goes After Teen Sexting, Still Seems Obsessed with Teen Sex

2010-11-09T05:41:00.000-08:00

image from Love, Niko

KUT reported this morning that Texas Attorney General and Craigslist world's oldest profession hater Greg Abbott is teaming up with Texas State Senator Kirk Watson (D-Austin) to...wait for it...crack down on teen sexting. I'm so glad these two venerable politicians are diving into the hot tub of bipartisanship to address this vitally important iss...oh, fuck it.

According to Abbott's website, the legislation would create a program to "educate" offending teenagers about sexting and how it's illegal because sending sexy pictures of an underage person is considered child pornography. It seems that being arrested for sending a grainy picture of one's dick would get that message across pretty clearly. But the law would also reduce the charges teens would face to a misdemeanor.

Back in February Abbott's website carried this "alert" to parents and teenagers about the dangers of sexting and the potential legal consequences, informing readers that:

Clearly, this dangerous technological trend can haunt children for years, and it is impacting schools and communities statewide. Of course, investigators and prosecutors consider the circumstances of each case before deciding whether – and which – charges charges may apply. By the time law enforcement has gotten involved, however, someone has already gotten hurt. Education and active parenting present the best way to ensure children avoid this dangerous activity.

This dangerous trend is impacting schools all over the state! Riiight.

The consequences those caught sexting would face would include forced participation in the "educational" program and "reduced cell phone usage." So what we've got here, in a time when Guvnuh Goodhair is downplaying our billions-big state budget deficit, is a proposed law that would create an educational program and require cell phone monitoring for teenagers who send pictures of their tits or whatever. Will this be a revenue-generating program or does Texas just have cash to throw at teenagers engaging in regular, normal teenagery sexytime?

While I'm all for eliminating child porn charges for sexting, really, Greg Abbott? First you try to eliminate prostitution by shutting down the "adult services" section of Craigslist and now you're going to go after teenagers for sending sexy notes? In my day we made paper dolls out of porn magazine cutouts and put our friends' faces on them. To think I could be a registered sex offender if I'd been caught in Texas with those materials.

Perhaps the "educational" component of the law would create a program like p.a.p.a., the Attorney General's mandatory "paternity and parenting awareness" program in place in secondary schools in Texas that focuses on the consequences of teen childbearing and the responsibilities of fathers, but fails, of course, to include any information about, say, how to wrap up one's dick to prevent pregnancy.

One thing is for sure--Greg Abbott spends a shit-ton of time thinking about teenagers having sex. You'd think a state with 23 million people and the largest border with Mexico might have some more pressing legal issues he could address than teenagers sending sex texts.

Virtual Book Tour: "Passion: Erotic Romance for Women"

2010-11-08T06:03:00.000-08:00

No one is a more prolific producer of erotica for women than the epic Rachel Kramer Bussel, who graciously sent me a copy of her latest book, Passion: Erotic Romance for Women to review. I used to read her column in the Village Voice when I lived in New York and saw her do an erotic reading at Happy Ending in Chinatown and this woman knows her stuff.

For anyone who has ever read Penthouse Forum and longed for stories that were less about fucking the pizza delivery guy, bartender, or husband's friend/boss and more about how hot sex can be between two people who really know and love each other, this is the book for you.

I haven't made it all the way through the book yet (it's not the kind of romance novel that you read at a single stretch) but so far the stories are excellent. Long enough for erotic buildup, not too long that you get bored reading them.

I don't read regular romance novels so I have no idea how explicit they are these days, but these stories are definitely "hard core" in that they use words like "fuck" and "pussy" and "cock," but not so hard core that they include irritatingly degrading language "Suck my cock, you little slut" or "He made me into his slut--and I liked it!" you often find in Penthouse's letters.

As always, Rachel has done a terrific job of editing this anthology and putting together a collection of stories with no duds. Definitely worth adding to your smut library.

Does Pubic Hair Removal Increase the Risk of Herpes?

2010-10-29T07:12:00.001-07:00

Could this excruciating process be increasing your risk for herpes?

In this fall's issue of the Journal of American College Health researchers from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst published research further raising the bar of the number of college student genital herpes infections caused by HSV-1, heretofore thought to be "oral herpes." (1) What the hell is going on? Are college students having drunken oral sex rainbow parties? Is this what all those Silly Bandz are for? Are kids who take abstinence pledges engaging in oral sex because they think it's "not sex" and/or "safe"? (It is, by the way) Or is the prevalence of shaved and waxed pubes putting these kids uniquely at risk for getting herpes if they come into contact with it?

Bob Horowitz and his coauthors did a chart review of students diagnosed with genital herpes at a campus health center. Of the 215 patient records reviewed, a whopping 78% of female and 85% of male genital herpes cases were caused by HSV-1. The standard suggestion for this finding is an alleged increase in oral sex. While I know that much of the 2000's has been spent panicking over the increase in oral sex among young people, I don't believe that sexual behavior changes significantly at the population level over time, so I don't believe that oral sex has really increased--we just ask about it specifically in surveys now, so we can measure something we couldn't measure before.

Case in point, the NHANES* didn't define sex as "oral, vaginal or anal" until the 1999 version; prior to that the term "sexual intercourse" was used. (2) But unless the questions are independent from each other, asking about each behavior individually, you are still fucking up your data collection because when you expand your definition of sex a greater proportion of people will report having had sex and with a greater number of partners without shedding any light on which type of sex might be presenting the greatest risk.

But here's my problem. According to the article referenced above, oral HSV-1 prevalence has been on the decline since the 1970s. Among 14-19 year olds (the age group of greatest interest to those of us who work in college health) HSV-1 seroprevalence declined from 45% in the 1988-1994 set to 39% in the 1999-2004 cohort. Among males, the prevalence declined from 43% to 36%, and among females 48% to 41%. (p 970) Between 36 and 41% of the population infected is nothing to sneeze at, but why would a decline in seroprevalence of both HSV-1 and HSV-2 make everyone freak out and conclude that oral sex is on the rise? If genital herpes infections in general were on the increase and HSV-2 was on the decline and HSV-1 on the rise then that idea would make sense. Are those people disproportionately having more oral sex than the rest of the population?

Horowitz suggests the following:

"Orogenital contact [oral sex] is a major factor in the transmission of genital HSV-1. Oral sex is commonly thought to be "safer" for prevention of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV disease, compared to vaginal or anal intercourse." (p 72)

Actually, there is no evidence that college students engage in oral sex because it is "safer" or because it presents no pregnancy risk. In fact, a breaking article by another college sex researcher, Sara Oswalt from the University of Texas - San Antonio, found that college students didn't report considering risk in making the decision to have oral sex at all. (3) Most people who engage in oral sex do so because they want someone's mouth on their junk or vice versa.

I have personally implemented the National College Health Assessment and am pretty damn familiar with the literature on college student sexual behavior, and I've never come across any data showing that oral sex is chosen based on a calculated risk assessment that ultimately favors oral instead of vaginal. I have also never, in my hundreds of conversations with students as a campus sexual health educator, heard a student say that they had oral sex for this reason. Most people are ready for oral--both in the macro [in their sexual development] and the micro [a specific relationship]--before vaginal or anal. Sexual behavior is a cumulative developmental process, like math. Horowitz doesn't include actual statistics from this data of what number of subjects have engaged in oral, vaginal or anal sex: he just notes oral sex as a "pattern." (p 72)

Horowitz mentions a few other "patterns" in those diagnosed with genital HSV-1: "a negative personal history of cold sores [i.e., no history of cold sores], having a sexual partner with a recent cold sore, orogenital contact, being an athlete, and cosmetic body shaving." (p 72) I have heard other college health providers suggest that women removing their pubic hair is associated with herpes risk.

I asked Horowitz for an interview and he declined. But hair removal is a risk for herpes and other skin-to-skin STI transmission in two ways. First, removing the hair eliminates a natural physical barrier between the genitals that could increase the amount of exposure a person would have to another person's junk during sex. Second, shaving and particularly, waxing, can compromise the integrity of the skin itself, leaving hair follicles open, exposed and susceptible to infection. Anyone who's had a bikini wax will remember those pin-prick sized dots of blood you get on your underwear and how your labia get all puffy--ladies, those are holes in your skin and the puffiness is a white blood cell response to skin trauma. Considering also that many people get waxed in anticipation of, uh, a "good time," those who wax could be particularly at risk because they may be more likely to go out and have a bunch of sex after getting waxed without allowing sufficient time to heal.

But this is a question that likely won't be answered soon, because of the Julie Sunday "What About the Fucking?!?" axiom. When researchers fail to actually consider the sexual implications of behaviors and diseases that are dependent on, you know, fucking, we fail to collect the right data or come to the right conclusions. If a healthcare provider notes a "pattern" of pubic hair removal occurring again and again in patients and fails to begin to keep track of who is doing what to their junk, we can't answer the question that might be the reason for the increase in genital HSV-1 diagnoses.

The answer probably isn't more oral sex but a change in the genital environment at the population level--i.e., less pubic hair--which makes oral sex a more efficient transmitter of HSV-1 from one partner's mouth to another's genitals.

Happy Friday.

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*National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, conducted by the CDC

(1) Horowitz et al. "Herpes Simplex Virus Infection in a University Health Population: Clinical Manifestations, Epidemiology, and Implications." Journal of American College Health. Vol 59, No 2. Pgs. 69-74.
(2) Xu et al. "Trends in Herpes Simplex virus type 1 and type 2 seroprevalence in the United States." Journal of the American Medical Association. 2006: 296: 964-973.
(3) Oswalt, Sara. "Beyond Risk: Examining College Students' Sexual Decision Making." American Journal of Sexuality Education. 2010.