We know that if you think about the clitoris, or think about the G-spot, or think about the cervix that the corresponding part of the brain map for those parts of the body, those become activated. So, one question is whether women who can think themselves to orgasm, do they think their genital activation that the brain representation of the genitalia into activity and does that spread to the other systems that are involved in orgasm, how do they do it? We want to understand how they do it normally and then the question is what if we ask women to think about the genitals more intensively? Or, will they be able to intensify the response in their genital sensory cortex, and will that spread to other parts of the brain, will that facilitate their orgasm? I think it could be very useful in women who say that they don’t experience orgasms; it could be useful in women with spinal cord injury who can’t feel their external genitals. Can they think their brain into greater activation and will that facilitate their orgasm?...

Let’s shed a little educated light on the resurgence of this whole “Vampire Romance” genre. Now, before you justifiably click away, assuming I’m going to start talking about Twilight, let me assure you: This is not about Twilight. This is about vampires. Twilight is not a vampire book, it’s Hello Kitty caliber softcore pornography for First Level Goths. It is entirely unconnected to the true resurgence of the vampire, present in anything from True Blood to The Vampire Diaries to Anne Rice to Being Human and on and on. No matter how effeminate, emotional, romantic or just unabashedly gay the shows, movies, and novels featuring the modern vampire might be, they do undoubtedly contain actual vampires. Not pallid fairies that glitter when you tickle their anus: Vampires. They’re back. But why?...

Last week, jurors watched nearly an hour of "Milk Nymphos" in the federal obscenity trial against pornographer John "Buttman" Stagliano. Headphones were provided, two TV screens were directed at the jury box, and 14 strangers were asked to perform their civic duty by drinking in, so to speak, this decidedly unwholesome ode to dairy enemas.

The coverage of the case, which was dismissed late Friday thanks to sloppy work by the Justice Department, largely focused on the legendary "Buttman" — but I kept thinking about the women in the film. What must it be like to be the focus of a rare federal obscenity trial in Washington, D.C., to have your work broadcast for people who hadn't sought it out, to be evaluated in terms of "community standards," offensiveness and "serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific" merit?...

Today, sexuality still seems to be a territory as private and filled with fear as ever it was. You might argue the opposite, because so much about sexuality these days is fearlessly public -- and that's true, if by "public" you mean the merely visible. But privately, we haven't advanced far in our ability to talk of our own sexuality, one with another.

As in days of yore, we embark on our individual sexual journeys with minimal guidance -- zip, really. There's scant discussion about being a sexual being: how it feels, what we do, who we are sexually, and what that means to us as we go about our lives. We don't have much idea of what sex is for, even. (If it were only for reproduction, wouldn't we rut seasonally like other mammals?) Rarely can couples in long-term relationships expand the scope of their shared sensuality. Psychotherapy has gone from viewing sex almost mystically, like Freud, to making sex something so clinical it's almost boring, in the tradition of Masters & Johnson and their many descendants. Much of contemporary psychotherapy seems to have minimized sexuality to something that's no more than an element of relationship, rather than a force in itself, a realm all its own...

Teenagers who have sex in committed relationships do no worse at school than those who stay virgins, experts have said.

Sex in relationships is largely harmless to academic studies but can have an adverse effect on students who are not romantically involved.

Experts from the University of California Davis and the University of Minnesota in the US looked at teenage experiences of studying and sex.

While previous studies found a negative impact on schooling from having sex, they argued that no research looked at the context in which teenagers sleep together...

A beauty therapist, 25, has claimed to have slept with 5,000 men in just nine years - or 3,285 days.

Nikki Lee also boasts about having a ‘personal best’ of four men in one night and she claims she has never had sex with the same conquest twice.

In an admission that will shock most people, the blonde Essex girl has told how she has had casual sex in nightclubs, alleyways, parks, cinemas and teen discos since losing her virginity at 16...

Want to attract a good mate and ward off unknown relations? Secrete a smelly substance from that gland on your chest and rub it all over. At least that’s what a mandrill might do: A recent study suggests that the baboon-like primates may use their smelly secretions to distinguish compatible mates from family.

After taking swabs from mandrill sternal glands, researchers genotyped each sample to determine the monkey’s major histocompatibility complex (MHC)–a unique genetic signature related to the animal’s immune system. They also, using a sorting technique called gas chromatography–mass spectrometry, determined each secretion’s chemical makeup, and thus its stink bouquet.

As the study’s leader Leslie Knapp of Cambridge University told the BBC, more “genetically diverse” mandrills, i.e. unrelated, have different MHCs and chemically-speaking different scents..

The animal kingdom is filled with wild extravagances, and a lot of them have something to do with sex. Hermit Fiddler crabs wave their claws, swordtail fish flash their swordtails, manakins leap and buzz their wings. Darwin considered these displays so important and so puzzling (”the sight of a feather in a peacock’s tail, whenever I gaze at it, makes me feel sick!” he wrote to a colleague), that he dedicated half of a book to the subject.

Darwin argued that many extravagant displays in male animals were the result of a special kind of evolution he called sexual selection. Females preferred males with certain traits over other males, and so those males had more offspring, which inherited their traits. In recent decades, scientists have documented many cases in which females do indeed prefer males with certain traits over others. As I mentioned in my post on electric fish, for example, female bulldog fishes are more attracted to long electric pulses than short ones....

Modern girl-watching began in 1954, when Harper published The Girl Watcher's Guide. It is still the great text on the topic, a delightful and occasionally profound novelty book constructed on the model of birding manuals: "Although we believe that girl watching has it all over bird watching, we feel that these two hobbies do share one important feature. They are both genteel. They both respect the rights of the watched ... A girl watcher never leers, nor does he utter any sound which might betray his joy."
Author Don Sauers wrote The Girl Watcher's Guide during hours stolen from his job as—what else?—a New York City ad man. Indeed, there is a distinct Mad Men vibe to the production, much helped along by the va-va-voom illustrations from Eldon Dedini. In fact, Sauers went on to design girl-watching-themed ad campaigns for Pall Mall and Diet Pepsi. For nearly a decade-and-a-half—until about the time of the Miss America Protest of 1968—the author received invitations from the likes of the Tonight Show, Expo 67, and Life...

Anal – we’ve been having anal sex for thousands of years. It’s not particular new, but in this decade anal sex became far less taboo than in the recent past. The porn industry, ever eager to embrace new ideas (and under pressure to provide novel content) made anal sex part of most mainstream movies. While the media eager to seem a teensy bit transgressive (and also in need of novel content) celebrated bum sex. Myths abounded that if you were a straight guy who had anal sex with women you were automatically gay, and the focus of anal sex in the mainstream media was predominantly something men did to women (or gay men did together). We’re still not quite comfortable with straight men who enjoy anal penetration by women (although we know many couples enjoy this). Sex educators were keen to promote anal sex as a form of pleasure for couples, but were also anxious about those in developing countries using it as a form of contraception or maintaining virginity, and where folk were engaging in anal sex without condoms or lubricant. It’s great we’ve celebrated anal sex, but concerns remain about us doing it safely – and having it as a pleasurable option, not a mandatory box to tick on our sexual checklist....

- there is a focus on female pleasure
- the material is primarily (or solely) made by women
- the material has a mission, its primary goal is not to arouse, but to engage on a political level
- the content is made by someone who self-identifies as feminist
- there is a conscious effort to challenge traditional gender and sexual roles and stereotypes in the dialogue and action
- the production is “ethical” and considers the safety and dignity of the performers
- material that is as much about representation of identity and pleasure of the people in the production as it is about getting the viewer off...

Because I'm a feminist who enjoys domination, bondage and pain in the bedroom, it should be pretty obvious why I often remain mute and, well, pretty closeted about my sexuality. While it's easy for me to write an impassioned diatribe on the vital importance of "conventional" women's pleasure, or to talk publicly and explicitly about sexual desire in general, I often shy away from conversations about my personal sexual choices. Despite the fact that I've been on a long, intentional path to finally feel empowered by, and open about, my decision to be a sexual submissive, the reception I receive regarding this decision is not always all that warm.

BDSM (for my purposes, bondage, discipline, dominance and submission, sadism and masochism) makes a lot of people uncomfortable, and the concept of female submission makes feminists really uncomfortable...