Changing the Way People, Politics & the Media Look at Sex

‘internet’

Sex Ed & China: Ambivalent to the Core

by on ·Sex Around the World, Sexual Intelligence Blog

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…

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What Kind of a Sick Mind Calls This Child Porn?

by on ·Sex & Culture, Sexual Intelligence Blog

The internet has given anti-sex lawmakers the opportunity to create entire new classes of crime. Predictably, petty bureaucrats are seizing these laws to go after an assortment of “perpetrators,” no matter how trivial, petty, or pointless their “crime.” America has always aspired to have laws which punish the actual harming of actual people. Admittedly, we haven’t always attained this ideal; examples include criminalizing interracial marriage, arresting people who burn the flag, and banning grocery stores from operating on Sundays. But the biggest legal bonanza of digital technology is that it offers a virtual world in which activity that doesn’t harm…

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America’s War On Sex: Second Edition?

by on ·Sex & Politics, Sexual Intelligence Blog

You may have read my most recent book, America’s War On Sex. It’s won a couple of awards, and I’ve lectured on the subject in dozens of cities. I’m pretty proud of it. The publisher (Praeger) has asked me about doing a second edition—updating it and perhaps adding other material. In some ways, it would be more complicated than just writing a whole new book. So I’ve been thinking about how to do it. How’s the War on Sex been going since the book was published? My initial answer is: “mixed.” Here’s the initial scorecard for the four years since…

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The Myth of “Racist Pornography”

by on ·Pornography & Porn Addiction, Sexual Intelligence Blog

In our continuing commitment to being timely, today we honor Black History Month—by discussing the question of racism in pornography. The criticism that pornography is racist comes from the Left—from publications like Ms., university departments of Women’s Studies, and groups who believe that all sex work is male violence against women. Their current champion is author Gail Dines, whose recent book “Pornland” blames every one of America’s evils (except the Social Security mess) on pornography. In the chapter titled “Racy Sex, Sexy Racism!” she makes the nonsensical assertion that porn “racializes the bodies and sexual behavior of the performer” by…

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Giving Thanks for Sex…With a Bit of Melancholy

by on ·Sex & Culture, Sexual Intelligence Blog

It’s Thanksgiving, so let’s give thanks for sex. Not just the huffing and puffing, the in-ing and out-ing, the sloshing around and drying off. Let’s give thanks for all the sexual rights we enjoy here in the U.S.—which billions of people in Russia, the Arab world, and many parts of Asia and Africa will never enjoy in their lifetimes. Most of these rights have to do with privacy and autonomy. These always look dangerous to repressive or religiously-driven regimes. Science and technology look pretty frightening to such regimes when they can be applied for sexual purposes—which they inevitably are, throughout…

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Science Shows What Sexual Repression Actually Looks Like

by on ·Sexual Health, Sexual Intelligence Blog

With the recent election still echoing in everyone’s ears, and pundits pundificating about how conservative the country really is, this is a good time to remember the major study done about online pornography subscriptions just 18 months ago. As reported in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, * The rates at which people buy pornography are not wildly different from state to state; * States where people vote for conservative candidates buy more porn than states in which people vote for progressive candidates. And yes, this is after adjusting for factors including broadband access, income, and population. According to credit card…

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