‘personal is political’

Two Kinds of Sex—Enjoyment and Identity

People have sex for many different reasons. The more obvious reasons are pleasure and closeness (and for a few people, conceiving). The covert reasons (which a person may or may not be aware of) include feeling attractive; feeling powerful; feeling normal; wanting something in return; and getting revenge on a third party.

This is all pretty standard stuff.

But for many people these days, sex seems to be about something else entirely—not so much about sex as an activity, but as an idea. An identity. A statement of self, of tribe, of belonging. Maybe as a focus of civil rights activism.

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Moral Outrage Is a Poor Substitute for Debate

In America, sex is always in the news. (Note: it’s actually not like that in most other countries.)

That news provides a chance for sincere, well-informed people to disagree. But these days, unfortunately, people are using the day’s sex news more as a chance to choose up sides—to define what your opinion means about you and all your other opinions.

~ “I disagree” has been replaced by “You’re misogynist”…

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Rule 34: What It Says About Your Sexuality

Rule 34: If it exists, or you can imagine it, there is porn of it. No exceptions. Rule 34 summarizes everything about sexuality. It says that human sexual fantasy is limitless. It says that anything can be eroticized, can be arousing, can be life-affirming. It reminds us that any ideas we have about what’s normal sex are about us, not about sex. I’m always telling patients “don’t blame sex for your ideas about sex.” Rule 34 reminds us exactly what pornography is: a library of human eroticism. Pornography is a celebration of how humans can stretch their erotic imagination—sometimes in ways…

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Should Prison Inmates Have the Right to Masturbate?

I was interviewed about this on Public Radio yesterday. Since it’s a subject I hadn’t given a lot of thought, I prepared by reading up on it just a bit. And I was shocked. It’s actually against the law to touch yourself sexually—in private—if you’re in jail. Sounds barbaric, doesn’t it? OK, you’re behind bars, your body is no longer your own. But if you’re not allowed to masturbate, neither is your soul. Worse, if there’s any disagreement about whether you’ve done it, you automatically lose the argument. There are many cases in which guards either misinterpret prisoner activity and…

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Abstinence Sex Ed? “I’m Baaack…”

Like a bad penny—or like an abusive ex-husband, or a public policy cancer—abstinence is back, just when we thought it was gone. Through the 1970s, U.S. policy was to reduce teen pregnancy. In 1981 the goal was changed, to funding programs to reduce teen sexual activity. During the Bush Administration, $1.5 billion was spent trying to get kids to have less sex. These programs failed completely (other than transferring federal case to Bush supporters). In 2009 the federal government ended most funding for abstinence (although states and school districts continued funding abstinence programs locally), and began funding comprehensive sex ed.…

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When a Chicken is Too Sexy, We’re Really in Trouble

Here’s an old therapy joke: A new patient comes to see a psychiatrist. The doc decides to give the patient a Rorshach Test, and shows him a series of cards with different inkblots on them. “What do you see on the first one?” asks the shrink. “That’s a man and a woman making love.” “And the second one?” “That’s a couple who just finished making love.” “And the third one?” “That’s a man asking a woman to make love, and she’s deciding what to do.” The shrink asks, “Don’t you think it’s interesting that you see sex in every card?”…

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