I’m finishing up a week in Hong Kong, training psychologists and sex education teachers. In some ways, Hong Kong is similar to India—part Asian, part Western/British. They drive on the left here, almost everyone speaks English, and the street names recall Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, the Duke of Connaught, the Prince of Wales, and other […]
Welcome me back, mate. I’ve just spent two weeks in Australia training psychologists in sex therapy and couples counseling. (Insert your favorite joke here about the Land Down Under.) The people there are wonderful, the food is great, and the beaches are gorgeous. I learned that in Australia adult prostitution is mostly LEGAL, and adult […]
I’ve now been in Brazil for over a week. And after blogging (with photos) every day about history, culture, architecture, or nature, it’s time to mention the women. Everyone knows they’re gorgeous, so let me say a little more than that. For starters, Brazilians are a mix of three races: the indigenous Indians, European settlers, […]
Today I had the great pleasure of watching the masterpiece “Amarcord” again. The film is a charming series of vignettes set in Fellini’s seaside hometown during his childhood in 1930s Italy. A warm and gentle comedy, it lovingly skewers the platitudes by which everyday people manage their daily lives. Although Fellini is ever the romantic, he is also honest. And so a film about early adolescence includes story after wry story of adolescent sexual fantasy. We see daydreams of erotic conquest, braggadocio that cannot be fulfilled (including the largest breasts on this earth), boys lovingly tailing the town’s glamorous hairdresser,…
If you’ve been following my travel blog, you know that I’ve been in China, training sex education teachers and psychology graduate students. China has 1.35 BILLION people (4 times the size of the U.S.), and has been involved in policy debates regarding family planning and sexual behavior for decades. They’re currently reevaluating their “one family, one child policy,” and of course sex education is part of the policy debate. The other night I lectured for two hours to sex education teachers-in-training at Chengdu University, in south-central China. The topic was “Teaching Sexuality Education: How? Why?” About 100 students, most between…
Iceland, the world’s oldest democracy, is now heading in exactly the opposite direction. And they’re doing it in a familiar way—by eliminating choices regarding sex. Iceland has now criminalized all strip clubs. And forget even something as quaint as a topless bar; the repression of the 1950s is looking positively progressive, as the law even makes it illegal for a business to profit from the nudity of employees. What makes this law particularly repulsive is the crowing of self-proclaimed “feminists” and “women’s advocates,” who seem unable to grasp the simple idea of adult choice. Member of Parliament Kolbrún Halldórsdóttir says,…