‘ashley madison’

2015: The Year In Sex

2015 was a complicated year for sex. Americans won rights, lost rights, gained some products, lost (even more of) their innocence about internet privacy, found new ways to be entertained, and were horrified more than once. As I wrote about these and other stories, my heart rose, and fell, just like yours. I was glad to have you along for the ride. I’ll be here throughout 2016, too—promise. You can also follow my 3-times-per-week tweets at @DrMartyKlein. Caitlyn/Bruce Jenner Famous athlete Bruce Jenner became famous transgender role model Caitlin Jenner. And now it seems like every third person is transgender,…

Continue Reading
0 Comments

Has the Internet Really Changed Anything About Sexuality?

Nothing could be more modern than the rise and fall of Ashley Madison: millions of world-wide members linked by a single website, the central promise of cyber-confidentiality, millions of phony profiles generated by algorithm, and the whole thing brought down by hackers—exposing not just the criminal business behavior, but the email addresses and IP information for millions of accounts, both real and fake. This ultra-modern story is also a reminder that the human heart hasn’t changed. I’m not talking about the good old-fashioned greed of unethical businessmen. I’m talking about the customers. People still want to connect. People still find…

Continue Reading
0 Comments

Ashley Madison: Playing Around, or Just Playing?

We’ve learned two things from the Ashley Madison hack-a-thon: “Internet security” is an oxymoron—like working vacation, compassionate conservatism, science magic, free speech zone, and the one true religion. You can make a lot of money pretending to offer men a chance to meet strangers for extramarital affairs. What we have NOT learned is that tens of millions of men actually want to arrange extramarital affairs with virtual strangers. That’s because we don’t know how many men joined AM specifically to get laid (yes, of course many did), and how many joined for other reasons. These could include: “I wonder who…

Continue Reading
0 Comments

Is everyone on Match.com looking for a match?

In a word, no. The problem is, I see a lot of couples in which one partner is caught using Match, or Tinder, or Ashley Madison, or some other dating/hookup website. Partner B flips out, accusing partner A of cheating, or wanting to cheat. Partner A denies it, but doesn’t sound convincing: “Uh, I was um, you know, just looking around.” Sometimes that’s nonsense—A is cheating, just as B suspects. But frequently, A is window shopping. We all do it—we look at ads for things we can’t afford, look in shops at things we’ll never buy, look on EBay at…

Continue Reading
0 Comments