Exploring Sexuality

As a guy, I instinctively know that when girls join sororities, their initiation must include some variety of lingerie-laden pillow fights. I mean, you see them on television, read about it in magazines…it’s become a popular myth alongside perpetual sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll during first year residence. Thanks to the guys who are in charge of encoding and disseminating culture, we see girls, especially in early years at university, as the avant-garde movement within sexual exploration. Ironically enough, these girls always explore within the same set of restrictions, namely homosexual and masturbatory endeavors.

What strikes me the most about women being in charge of exploring something as amorphous as one’s sexuality. In popular culture lore, it is often the men who go out into the public sphere and conquer new and foreign territories, while women are the ones who stay within the same private sphere, keeping it tidy for the exploring man to come home to. Examples of male explorers are plentiful – actually, off the top of my head, I can’t think of a single female explorer, except for the saucy sorority gals.

So, what does this mean for men who enjoy pontificating about the goodness of sorority exploration? Well, in a sense, it just ends up agreeing with Green Day’s frontman, Billy Joe, when he said that, deep down, we’re all bisexuals, and it is only heteronormative cultural processes that make us dig foxy girls. This is evident throughout closer analysis of the Pillow Fight scene, so prevalent in popular lore and fantasy. As men, we enjoy this scene because we identify with the women in it, though at a safe distance. Much like we identify with the Final Girl in horror movies, and through her, are able to satiate our masochistic tendencies (who wants to watch a killer beat on a guy? That’s just weird…), we are able to play out our deeply homoerotic fantasies by watching women beat on each other with pillows in skimpy bras and panties. In addition, should the exploration and experimentation go well, it is not men who are being gay. Popular culture would never allow for two phalluses to touch – however, were to women to touch, we can just chalk it up to penis-envy. So, if women are allowed to touch, and more importantly, feel good because they are touching in “new” ways, it is culturally ok. It is only through women that men can explore their homoerotic instincts.

Lost in Transition

Since the 1950’s when women were allowed to frequent bars without a male escort the lesbian community has grown in prominence and become more widely accepted. At the time, the typical lesbian couple consisted of a clearly identified butch with a femme counterpart, essentially mimicking a heterosexual couple in matters of dress, actions, and customs.
This trend has slowly started to die out as we try to rid society of such rigid stereotypes, and lesbians today identify as everything from butch, to sorority sister, to suburban housewife. Why is it then, in this seemingly more enlightened world that some members of the lesbian community condemn their predecessors as sell-outs?
A recent article in the New York Times raises the issue of “butch” lesbians who opt to transition into males, thereby identifying as straight. This trend has not been met with great support in the lesbian community that feels that by “crossing over” you are betraying your lesbian identity. Some have even gone as far as to raise the question of whether or not someone who transitions was ever really a lesbian to begin with. The criticism however is not only reserved for butch lesbians who transition to straight males; their femme counterparts have also been accused of not being truly gay if they are attracted to a masculine persona.
In a community that has struggled for acceptance for so long it is unfortunate that some of their harshest criticisms are coming from within, is selling out really such a bad thing if everybody gets off?

Would you trade sex for money?

No, this isn’t about prostitution. A study by women’s rag Company and Durex condoms discovered that 3 in 10 men would rather roll in riches than roll in the hay. 30% of the British men taking the survey confessed that they would give up sex for life if paid $2 million…with 1% pledging the celibacy oath if offered a lifetime supply of alcohol. The study fails to mention whether “no sex” would include masturbation or not, a factor that would clearly influence the upshot of the commitment.

Surprisingly, these results contradict another study recently undertaken, with research showing that sex makes people happier than money does. Economists David Blachflower and Andrew Oswald found sex to be a strong determinant of happiness; just increasing sex from once a month to once a week produces the same effects as gaining $50 000!

It then seems odd that some men would pick money over sex, but I think the choice is largely personal. Who wouldn’t pick money if they’re not getting any (anyways), or if their past experience has been, well, dry? Which leads me to the question: cash or ass?

links:
earthtimes
webMD

No Need to be Ashamed of Self-Love

Review: The Guide to Getting It On!

I mean it as a compliment when I say that The Guide To Getting It On! is the ultimate coffee table book. While it doesn’t have glossy, full-page photographs or even the requisite hard cover, everyone wants to flip through it. Even when inconspicuously placed on a bookshelf, my visitors can’t help but be drawn to its cheerful, neon-green lettered spine. They tend to pick a chapter – say, “Orgasms, Sunsets and Hand Grenades” – and sit for the next twenty minutes, pausing occasionally to laugh or read out a particularly fascinating excerpt.

The best little sex guide in the whole wide world?

Its refreshing premise is that “humour is the sexual lubricant for the soul”, and although Joannides’ writing might be too glib for some (in his “Gnarly sex germ” chapter, he asks, “Do you really believe that the cute fraternity guy you are about to go to bed with is going to say, ‘Oh, by the way, I’m totally low-risk except for that little butt-fucking incident last month with the captain of the wrestling team’?”), he does take pains to be accurate and instructive. Rather than selling you sex secrets guaranteed to drive your partner wild, his point is that you need to work hard at communication (verbal or physical) and learn to approach each partner with different expectations.

One major flaw is that it is heavily biased towards heterosexual couples, and there is often the implicit assumption that the reader is in a committed relationship, or wants to be. It’s clearly marketed towards the demographic of straight college students and young professionals (if the title doesn’t make it obvious, the fact that Urban Outfitters stocked it certainly should), and only discusses issues of race, poverty and culture in passing.<!– D([“mb”,” The\ndecision to relegate same-sex relations to a separate chapter instead of taking\na wholly inclusive approach also seems to imply that queer people belong in a\ndistinct category, along with bondage freaks and men who ejaculate prematurely.

\n\n

\n\n

This isn't to say that it completely fails to\nthink outside of the box – the "Sex when you are horny and disabled" chapter is\na great start, and left-wing soccer moms might find the "Explaining Sex to\nKids" section useful. I understand the\nneed for brevity – as it is, the guide clocks in at 854 pages – but surely hot\ntopics like abortion deserve more than two pages. Then again, this might be a bit much to\nexpect from a coffee table book; after all, it is a fun, mostly insightful look\nat sex, which definitely beats worn issues of People and Cosmopolitan.

\n\n\n”,0] ); D([“ce”]); //–> The decision to relegate same-sex relations to a separate chapter instead of taking a wholly inclusive approach also seems to imply that queer people belong in a distinct category, along with bondage freaks and men who ejaculate prematurely.

This isn’t to say that it completely fails to think outside of the box – the “Sex when you are horny and disabled” chapter is a great start, and left-wing soccer moms might find the “Explaining Sex to Kids” section useful. I understand the need for brevity – as it is, the guide clocks in at 854 pages – but surely hot topics like abortion deserve more than two pages. Then again, this might be a bit much to expect from a coffee table book; after all, it is a fun, mostly insightful look at sex, which definitely beats worn issues of People and Cosmopolitan.

The Guide To Getting It On! is available on Amazon.ca ($17.33) and Indigo Chapters ($18.15).

Jay’s History of Sex – Part I

Sex in Antiquity No one can say with certainty just when people started having sex, but it stands to reason that it must have been quite early-on. A more interesting question might be, ‘when did we start jerking-off?’ To answer that question, one need look no further than the woman who first discovered that she didn’t need to have sex every time her partner grew a stiff one.
Little is known of this important historical figure; her name might have been Eve, or possibly Lilith. This Eve or Lilith (Lil Eve?) appears to have been the first woman to discover that withholding sex from her partner could be a useful and productive tactic. Scholarly sources suggest that it is here, in ancient antiquity, that the term ‘pussy-power’ finds its origins. According to the same sources, the first act of this original ‘liberated woman’ was to demand that her mate, before he could go anywhere near her ass, “Go and pick me one of them apples!”
Of course, upon passing her the apple, he proceeded to flip her over and ‘give her the banana’ as a bonus. Nevertheless, Lil’ Eve’s experiment constituted a roaring success for womankind; gender relations would never be the same.

Further Along in Antiquity It wasn’t long before men realized that, if they were going to get any pussy at all, they were going to have to work for it. Suddenly, with everyone ‘working for it’, a sort of competition-based culture began to emerge. For more information on this ‘competitive sexuality’, look for my forthcoming article, ‘Jay’s History of Warfare’.
It wasn’t all about fighting for it, though. Men quickly understood that being the last man standing (“If I were the last man on earth and you were the last woman, then would you…?”) wasn’t the only pre-requisite to getting laid. He learned that, while ‘getting some’ was one thing, ‘getting more’ posed greater challenges. For example, if his performance was lacking, not only would his woman refuse to fuck him, but she would invariably tell her friends about his sexual ineptness, thereby hurting his chances at getting laid outside his cave or hovel.
This ‘kiss and tell’ strategy employed by the industrious women of antiquity gave rise to many new challenges for sexually inept men. Eventually, these challenges birthed a whole new way of life. For more information on these unfortunate souls, see my forthcoming article called “The History of the Nomadic Tribes.” It is a harrowing tale of lackluster sex, boredom and anguish; don’t miss it!
Luckily, not all men were as quick to despair as were the ‘nomads’. In fact, a large number of men decided that they should instead stick it out and adapt to the new sexual climate. This resulted in the birth of two new great movements: ‘The Search for the Female Orgasm’ and ‘The Golden Age of Homosexuality’. Stay tuned for more exciting history…

© 2007 Jay M. Smith

The Four of Us

Did I ever think I would ever be in a situation like this one?No.
Did I ever think I could?No.
But I did.
I spent ten months(uh, and four days) in, most likely, the oddest relationship I could have ever imagined.
I “came out”(ok, I was never really “in” the closet: I basically told all my friends I was gay the moment I realized it!) about four years ago and due to my extremely shy side(or so I think), I spent the first three years being single. One day in November I hooked up with one of my good friends. It was great and marvellous and wonderful but only one thought came to me: “Uh, isn’t she married?”
So this is how it started. I began going to her place five times a week and soon enough, my girlfriend’s husband also hooked up with a girl friend. It was the four of us. We brought in a second twin matress in their room and made it as cozy as possible for all of us.
I know it must sound weird, all of this, but after a couple months, it stopped being bizarre or out of the ordinary. Waking up to people having sex beside me became a regular occurence and making out with my girlfriend in front of her husband became totally normal.
To answer your question, no, we didnt all have sex with eachother; we were like three couples. There were some times when the husband was there but all the attention was directed towards the girlfriend(hello, I’m gay!).
It worked really well for a while–way longer than I could have dreamed of–but at some point it had to fizzle. The husband was totally infatuated by the other girl and my girl didn’t want to hurt her husband the way she was hurting her. Then there was me, in love with my girlfriend who was forcing herself not to love me. Sure, it hurt, but I understood. My “goal” was never to break them up and I knew my girlfriend was feeling hurt by her husband. Nevertheless, I had to think about my mental health and on a rainy day in november, I broke up with her. It was terribly hard for the both of us–all of us, really–but it had to be done. We cried and hugged and slept together one last time. After that we talked on the phone but I made a point of not seeing her for at least two weeks to kind of try to get her out of my mind. The thing is, I always knew we were going to stay good friends because this wasn’t a normal breakup: I didn’t break up with her because I was sick of her or I hated her. I did it because I loved her too much and it hurt too much. She was well aware of it so she gave me the time I needed. She was wonderfully understanding.

It’s been three months since we are no longer together and things are still great, maybe even greater than before. I go chill with them(the ex and the husband–the other girl got herself a “real” boyfriend) at least once a week and have occasionnal booty calls; just enough to keep ourselves satisfied without actually going back to “that place”.

So that’s the story of the four of us–or a small fraction of it anyway.

I Hope Montreal is Next!

The ‘City that Never Sleeps’ just got one more reason to keep playing. New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg is about to reveal the city’s own “NYC” brand of free condoms.

“The condom packets will be modeled after the New York City subway system. Every foil will have a color,” said Carol Carozza, spokeswoman for Ansell, the firm producing the NYC condoms and also the parent firm of LifeStyles condoms.

“Brands work, and people use branded items more than they use non branded items, whether it’s a cola or a medicine even,” Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden said, “Brands add value and they increase use.”

The city distributes 1.5 million free condoms each month adding up to about 18 million a year. This allows hundreds of organizations the opportunity to receive free condoms that they then distribute at various locations such as health clinics, advocacy groups, bars, nightclubs and even prisons.

According to health officials, New York negotiated a deal with the maker of the LifeStyles brand for 4 cents per condom, putting the expense to the city at just $720,000 annually.

When you’re the AIDS capital of the United States, I suppose it only makes sense that you would sponsor an opportunity for free lovin’ to all.

The Ride (part 2)

“We’ll be late for work”

“It’s our last day here!”

“True.”

“No more talking. Let’s do…. other things now,” teased Emma.

“Good idea. Come here, then”, whispered Sophie, while she pulled on Emma’s jeans.

“Wait! How long do you think we have?”

“I thought I just heard someone say ‘no more talking’! Was that you?” Sophie curled her lips into a very sexy, irresistible half-smile.

“OK, I’ll shut up now.”

“Good!”

Sophie reached over and tugged on Emma’s jeans with much more force this time.

Feeling exceptionally aroused, Emma reached inside Sophie’s sexy, black lace panties and cupped her round ass.

Sophie jumped and said: “Cameras?!”

Emma flashed a big smile, pressed her lips against hers for a mere second, and said: “Let them have their last party. We’re never setting foot in this building again!”

“Oh my, you’re right again!” Sophie let out a little giggle.

“Now, you know I can’t resist you in these panties,” Emma said while she oogled her barely- there panties. She repeated the phrase she had uttered countless times before: “You’re way too hot!” With that, Emma leaned in and licked the contour of her lips lightly. Her hands slowly moved up Sophie’s shirt without giving too much away to the unseen men watching the security footage. Emma’s wandering fingers played with Sophie’s erect nipples while she anticipated the moment her tongue would be doing the playing instead.

She heightened Sophie’s pleasure by gingerly licking and sucking on her earlobes. Once again, as she’d predicted, Sophie purred with pleasure. Emma smiled at the thought that she could make her feel so hot. Lips were sucked and bit with an intensity that alternated from passionate to tender, and culminated into a frenzy of dizzying kisses. Both girls were now feeling very hot in their winter jackets. As they made a move to shed their wooly layers, they heard a loud beep, followed by another a mere two seconds later. The girls turned to the doors just in time to see them spread wide open. They instantly noticed that one of their managers was standing right in front of them.

As the girls sheepishly stepped off the elevator, Emma loudly exclaimed: “I can’t believe I actually elbowed that stop button by mistake! How ridiculous!” Sophie quickly turned, and raised an eyebrow.

Having successfully avoided any awkward confrontations, both Sophie and Emma fixed their slightly dishevelled hair with mischievous grins on their guilt-ridden faces.

“Pfff…work”, sighed Emma, with a disappointed look on her face.

“Actually, not for another seven minutes and…twenty seconds”, said Sophie as she looked up from her cellphone’s glowing screen.

“OH, you are bad! Just the way I like it!”

Sophie shrugged playfully and, with her smile spread wide, whispered: “I know”.

They headed to the door leading to the vacant part of the eighth floor. As they were about to close the door, they peeked out to make sure that no one was in sight. Relieved, the girls knew they were about to enjoy a short but very intense end to their interrupted elevator ride!

I Want to Have Sex with Music

I love music. Spending five minutes around me will make that painfully obvious. I love my iPod simply because it does what it does – provides my entire library at my disposal whenever my capricious nature craves it, which basically means that I am always plugged in to something. This proposes an obvious problem when engaging in more intimate activities, where I may be plugged into a more organic form. I have yet to meet a girl that would let me have sex while I listen to my own earphones. That’s not to say that they don’t want to listen to music while doing it; what’s more, they too agree that it often creates a mood way better than any combination of flowers, incense, candles or lingerie. The right song can turn a faltering moment into a touching orgasm, or it can just as easily turn the best sex of your life into a cheesy, third rate porn knock-off.

Yet, in spite of the endless possibilities of a shared musical experience, I really just want to listen through my earphones – at least once. I have spent a lot of time and money in turning my little white box of joy into something that is both high-fidelity and intimate. For instance, my earphones attenuate the world around me by various decibels, to the point where I can’t hear any extraneous noise when in my own personal world; all I hear is my personal playlist with beautiful clarity. This kind of perfect intimacy is what I want to transpose into the sexual realm, and, so far, have failed miserably. Also, my musical tastes, as restricted as they may be, are mine alone, and what sets the mood for me may not set the mood for my partner.

When goofing around the internet one day, I happened to stumble across the answer to all my prayers. This little toy is nothing if not a miracle. It basically allows me to listen to my own music while avoiding the pitfalls of stereotypical male selfishness, so prevalent in the minds of hyper-sensitive post-feminists who believe that sex is more a chore than a pleasure. Well, get ready to have your panties blown right off. This combination headphones/vibrator is just what everyone who likes music really needs. The guy (or girl really, let’s not draw gendered lines – we’ve got attachments galore here) can listen to his favourite music while the attachment vibrates pleasurably, keeping up with the tempo of whatever the iPod happens to be channeling.

Now, I have yet to personally try this; it’s a little out of my very limited student budget for something which may have limited approval under the sheets. Plus, I can just hear my girlfriend now: I know I’m going to get distracted from one aesthetic beauty just to look at another, admittedly smaller, thing of beauty, as I decide which track to play next, you know, all in the name of providing a pleasurable experience.

Who wants to drool?

If anyone else here is involved… nope.. oops.. i meant in LOVE (hehe) with Scarlett Johansson, here’s a link that will most likely occupy you for many hours, days even. Just make sure no one’s around 😉

http://www.kontraband.com/show/show.asp?ID=5198&rtn=index-topten

The Ride

As soon as the elevator doors closed, Sophie and Emma looked at each other and
smiled. Their smiles quickly faded though, as a foot suddenly wedged itself between the elevator doors, forcing them to open once again. Emma, unable to hide her irritation, mumbled under her breath. A big smile lit up her face, however, upon noticing that the obtrusive stranger was set to get off on the first floor. Ten seconds later, the man stepped off the elevator and onto an artificially lit floor, with light too harsh for the eyes. The two girls were quick to recover from the brief interruption though, as the elevator doors shut behind him.
Emma, being the one closest to the doors, turned around and faced Sophie, who was resting against the mirrors at the back of the elevator. With wild abandon, she lunged forward and pinned Sophie up against the wall. She transferred her weight to her toes to get herself a couple inches closer to Sophie’s lips. She quickly glanced back and noticed that they were already heading for the third floor. There was no time to lose; precious seconds were being wasted.

“We’ve got five floors”, she said almost breathlessly.

“Ya?” said Sophie in a convincingly demure tone.

“Yeah,” she huskily replied.

Emma’s lips softly touched Sophie’s as her hands reached for her ass under her bulky winter jacket. “God I love your ass,” she whispered in her ear. Sophie simply smiled and gave her a knowing look. With one hand on Sophie’s small, but fantastically round behind, Emma reached up with her other hand until she felt her tight ponytail. She gave her long mane a hard tug knowing full well how much Sophie loved that. As Emma predicted, a little moan escaped Sophie’s perfectly shaped, pouty mouth. The mere sound drove Emma mad with desire.

“Crap! Only one more floor left to go”, Sophie exclaimed.

She leaned in for one last urgent kiss before the elevator delivered them to work. While it was their very last day at this place, Emma didn’t want this moment to end. These devious escapades with Sophie in the elevators, and even in the empty stairwells before work, had been her salvation. They ultimately provided her with some goose-bump inducing daydreams – many of which she had grown to count on to help pass the workdays. She glanced over at Sophie and saw that they were both having the same wicked thought. “Fuck it,” she thought. Without a moment’s hesitation, she threw herself at the big red emergency “X” button, and felt the elevator come to an abrupt stop. A big smile lit up her face once more as she turned to look at her accomplice.

“Umm, I tripped?” she said with a devilish grin.

“You naughty, naughty girl!” replied Sophie, returning the grin.

Emma pulled Sophie by her jacket pockets, looked into her deep brown eyes and said:“We should have some time now.”

(to be continued)

On Nudity With Politics

At the turn of the first millennium Lady Godiva rode naked through the streets of Coventry to demonstrate the sincerity of her convictions; namely that her husband Leofric, the earl of Mercia, was overtaxing his peasants. In an act of defiance, she demonstrated that her body, stripped of all modern coverings was a powerful socio-political tool. Lady Godiva, strikingly beautiful and confident, is rumoured to have caused the first voyeur (aptly named Tom) to become instantly blind and in certain extreme cases of the legend die on the spot, so overcome is he with the intoxicating loveliness of her naked body as she rode astride her horse through the town square.

While this is perhaps not the first case of nudity being used to further subversive political views, it is certainly one of the widest circulated legends on the matter. What’s especially interesting to note is that Lady Godiva is by no means presented in a promiscuous light, or even a particularly sexual one (remember that this is the early 1000s and thus this is quite an event onto itself). To a certain extent she stripped her body of its sexuality while using it as a political vessel. What I mean to say is that Lady Godiva’s act of contrition was one in which her role as a woman and her sexuality came secondary to her beliefs (although, the blind Tom might argue this point, having lost quite an important sense at her unwitting hands… or breasts).

I love the idea of nudity and sexuality as a form of political protest. Stripping down for a cause is daring, original and extremely effective. The animal right’s activist group PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) has more that once demonstrated it’s willingness to “bare skin rather than wear skin” and whether or not you agree with them and their occasionally aggressive tactics you have to admit that when Pamela Anderson goes topless in front of a store-front you sit up and take notice. PETA takes sexuality as a form of protest one step further in their “State of the Union Undress” in which a radiant young woman outlines PETA’s past and present goals while slowly removing her clothing until she stands, wonderfully naked, in front of the camera. All this goes to prove that nudity and intelligence do not necessarily have to cancel each other out.

In case you go looking for PETA’s “State of the Union Undress” you won’t find it on YouTube, it was banned due to the nudity. Also, just so you know directly after she gets naked you see a bunch of injured animals, so if that’s not your thing you might want to skip that.
P.S. note the old men cheering her on

Watch more PETA videos at PETATV.com.

What’s in a name?

According to a study by M.I.T., the first name of a person has a large influence on their perceived sexiness. The attraction associated with names is said to be determined by the vowel sound – so before you go changing your name to popular strippers’ personae like Candy, Paris, and Valentine; you should first verify whether your name contains a “front vowel” or a “back vowel.”

Names with front vowels (tongue positioned to the front of the mouth, such as “a” in Matt) are most appealing to women, while back vowels (think “aw” in Paul) were displeasing. For men, results were much the opposite with preferences tending towards back vowel names (Jordan and Rachel), while front vowel names like Katie or Emily got the cold-shoulder.

Linguist Amy Perfors examined name-sexiness by showing pictures of people labeled with different names on the “Hot or Not?” site, and consequently measured how attractive strangers thought they were (as determined by ratings).

If you’re a Katie or Paul out there now feeling like a hideous ogre, don’t despair. Perfors’ name-game was carried out using the same picture of a person and how their name influenced their own desirability – ignoring that the person’s appearance formed the basis of the ratings to begin with. As stated by Perfors, “An attractive person with a bad vowel name is still more attractive than an unattractive person with a good vowel name.” This explains why celebrities such as Nicole Kidman and Kate Beckinsale (both front-vowel first namers) are still not considered ugly.

So unless whoever you’re dating is blind, or has a vowel fetish -hey, never underestimate the importance of tongue-positioning! – rest assured, this study should not in anyway influence your sex appeal.

links:
newscientist
bbc