The recession, the medical debate and the balloon boy aside, it time to take a moment and enjoy a few images of the basics that are important in life.
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October 26, 2009
October 21, 2009
Bisexuality well defined
Bisexuality
Statistically, a vast majority of people have experienced some form of erotic attraction toward both sexes, no matter how brief, whether acted upon or not. Kinsey, et al., stated that exclusive homosexuality and heterosexuality represented end points on a spectrum of human sexuality, with many people falling somewhere in between. Basically, sexuality lies on a continuum and bisexuality is one point on that continuum.
Bisexuality is the potential for sexual and/or romantic involvement with members of either sex. Bisexual people are no more promiscuous than any other group of people, and are just as capable of making a long-term monogamous commitment to a partner as anybody else. It’s myth that bisexuals are non-monogamous.
Bisexual people tend to favour one sex over another, recognizing that they are attracted to both sexes. This does not mean that bisexual people need to have two lovers, two-timing, in order to feel fulfilled. Bisexual people live a variety of lifestyles, as diverse as either the heterosexual or the gay lesbian community. Bisexuality is an orientation that allows for people to be open to immense possibilities, whether acted upon or not.
Biphobia
Bisexual people are discriminated against for supposedly being more sexual, more confused, and indecisive. They are accused of being fence-sitters who want the best of both worlds. These myths, or biphobia, force many bisexuals to conceal who they are, hoping to protect themselves from intolerance from both the gay and lesbian and heterosexual communities.
October 18, 2009
Nude Volleyball
From: ESPN The Magazine
The Body Issue: Nude Volleyball
This column appears in the October 19 Body Issue of ESPN The Magazine.
The meal is just plain awkward. On a gray September Friday, we sit in a western Pennsylvania pizzeria, sharing appetizers and uncomfortable conversation. A bartender, a trainer, a teacher, a college kid and a couple of hack writers — six disparate souls with little in common except the dawning reality of what is about to come. We are the Breakfast Club, only this is dinner.
“Anybody wanna split that stuffed mushroom?”
“Anybody know where the bathroom is?”
“Anybody ever done this before?”
Not hardly.
A couple of months earlier, one of my editors had called with an assignment. He told me about a wildly competitive volleyball tournament held each September not too far from Pittsburgh at a resort called the White Thorn Lodge. The event has been luring quality athletes from all over the country for 39 years: D1 players, national team members. The comp is of such a high caliber, they call it the Super Bowl of Volleyball. “Anyway,” he said, “we want you and Struby to round up a team and write about playing in the thing.” (Struby is fellow Mag writer Tim Struby, whom I’d met a few times but knew nothing about other than that he’s more than a half-foot shorter than me, used to model and didn’t seem the volleyball type.)
“Sweet,” I replied. “Sign me up.”
“One more thing,” the editor said. “White Thorn is a nudist lodge.”
Legend has it that nearly 3,000 years ago, a Greek runner named Orsippus won an Olympic race after losing his loincloth. And now I’m being asked to follow his lead, to proudly continue the legitimate if under-the-radar tradition of nude competition. Now, I may never have had a proper nudist experience, but I will admit to being a bit of an exhibitionist. I spent the first couple of years after college working at a Club Med resort, where I was approximately 8 percent clothed during the day — and even less so at night. But finding four others who are both good at volleyball and willing to take nudism for a spin — in front of millions of readers, no less — seemed a nearly impossible task. Making it harder still was a mandate from The Mag to field two female pros (for gender equity’s sake).
October 14, 2009
A Marvelous Take on Male Bisexuality
In his witty writing style, Mark Simpson nails the male bisexuality dilemma.
Curiouser And Curiouser: The Strange ‘disappearance’ Of Male Bisexuality
The recent spate of media reports of the commonness of female bisexuality and the ‘non-existence’ of the male variety inclines Mark Simpson ‘father’ of the metrosexual to wonder why we seem to be kidding ourselves about the real, red-blooded nature of the ‘bi-curious’ times we’re living in.
(Originally appeared on marksimpson.com Feb 15, 2006)
Male bisexuality doesn’t exist. Or it’s very, very rare. Or it’s really just gay men in denial. Yeah, it’s official: bi guys are freaks and liars as well as non-existent.
Female bisexuality, on the other hand, is almost universal. It’s as natural and as true as it is wonderful and real and… hot!
Or so you would be forgiven for thinking if you had read the effusive reports in the papers about California State University’s recently published sex-research which claims that women are 27 times more likely to become attracted to their own sex than men.
I haven’t yet been able to study the research quoted, but any sex survey that claims to have interviewed 3,500 people and show that 0.3% of men are attracted to the same sex compared to 8% of women (as quoted in the Independent on Sunday 12/2/06) is difficult to take seriously – except as a measure of social attitudes rather than sexuality.
Maybe it’s because some of my best shags are bisexual men, but I’m beginning to get a bit teed off with this drive to make male bisexuality disappear, either into statistics smaller than a micro-penis or obscured behind a flurry of girl-on-girl action. A few months ago the New York Times published an article ‘Straight, gay or lying?’ which seemed to be a press release for the hilariously cranky research of Dr J. Michael Bailey at Northwestern University, which apparently involves wiring up people’s genitals and showing them dirty pictures and then claiming to have ‘proved’ that male bisexuality ‘doesn’t exist’ and that most women are bisexual. Which seems a much more tenuous conclusion to reach, rather than, for instance: most psychologists at Northwestern University are very strange indeed. (Amongst other extraordinary omissions, the article neglected to mention that Dr Bailey has more than one ‘previous’ in his area: he thinks transsexuals are also ‘really’ gay men and, in a coup-de-grace of his tidy-minded thinking, advocates eugenics to solve the problem of homosexuality).
I hate to break it to you guys, but most of the evidence, historical, anthropological and sexological, suggests that if anything, male ‘bisexuality’ – it’s a terrible word, almost as bad as ‘heterosexual’ and ‘homosexual’, but it will have to do for now – is much more common than the female variety. After all, entire civilizations such as Ancient (and according to many accounts, Modern) Greece have been based on it. Not to mention public schools, the Royal Navy and Hollywood….
October 13, 2009
An Interesting Article on Human Sexuality
You heard quite a lot about this young woman. This article expands the issue and provides a view of the bigger picture.
From greenleft.org
By Farida Iqbal
The Caster Semenya case: sports and sexuality
Eighteen-year-old South African athlete Caster Semenya has done nothing wrong. Yet she has been accused of deceiving the world about her gender. There is nothing wrong with Semenya’s body. Yet her body has been paraded in front of the world by the mass media as if she were a sideshow freak.
Semenya is a talented athlete. Yet her career is at stake.
Semenya won the 800 metres in the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) World Championships on August 19. She was accused by the international media of having won the race due to her unfair disadvantage of “really” being a man.
Semenya, like many other female athletes, has been subjected to sexist judgement of what a female body is supposed to look like.
Semenya is an intersex woman. But intersex women are not the only women who have been subjected to such scrutiny. The accusation of looking “too masculine” has always been used to degrade female athletes, including Martina Navratilova. For years the media focused on her highly developed biceps.
Semenya was subjected to invasive “gender tests” (actually testing biological sex, not gender). The test results were leaked to the international mass media. Australia’s Daily Telegraph was the first to run the story, revealing Semenya has internal testes and no womb. This may or may not be true.
If it is true, it is a discovery that would prompt any 18 year-old to do some profound soul searching about their identity, their relationship to their body, and their relationship with the world.
Ideally this soul searching would be done in the person’s own time, in their own way.
Yet for Semenya there was no question of privacy. The most intimate details of her body were revealed to the world in lurid headlines in the international mass media: “Semenya has male sex organs” (September 11 Sydney Daily Telegraph) “a woman… and a man!” (September 10 NYDailynews.com) “Is SHE a he?” (August 19 Melbourne Herald Sun).
October 8, 2009
Erotic Lactation
I recently ran across a stunning nine minute film clip that absolutely captivated me, thus this post. But more on this clip later.
It’s called erotic lactation (adult enjoyment, in one form or another, of human breast milk). I have to say most fetishes leave me scratching my head, not all, but most. And this particular erotic practice is categorized as a fetish. I’m not sure I would call it that.
To me it seems more like an extraordinary form of intimacy between a man and a woman, or perhaps between two women. Since it has to be done regularly in order for a woman to keep producing milk, it would almost have to be something shared between a committed couple. The act is so uniquely intimate, I can see where a couple would bond on a level very few human beings achieve.
Such couples often refer to themselves as in and adult nursing relationship (ANR). No one doubts or denies the fact that female breasts are a seualized part of her body. She attracts male attention with them. She is sexual stimulated when they are massaged, held, sucked or kissed. Her nipples are especially sensitive to sexual stimulation. Men are attracted to them, enchanted by them, turned on by them. Nothing else looks like a woman’s breast, nothing else feels nearly so compelling in your hand. Simply put; they are delightful to look at, hold, squeeze or have in your mouth.
Given these wonderful facts, why not look beyond aesthetics of the female breasts and consider their main biological intent: they have the capacity to produce milk. Since that’s the case, why should an intimate partner not share this beautiful aspect of his or her lover’s body? Why, if a woman is producing milk, stop at looking at, caressing or kissing her breasts? Why not nurture yourself and your relationship with them? Why not suckle them, or for that matter, why not give the both of you a shower with her milk. Wow!
October 7, 2009
October 3, 2009
What’s Average?
(see where you fit in on the survey at the end of this article)
From www.altpenis.com
by Paul Aitken
Admit it. You’ve done it. Most likely in your adolescence when you first noticed it was getting bigger, or maybe later when you noticed everyone else’s was big and yours wasn’t. At some point almost every guy measures himself if only as an act of reassurance. The first ruler was invented in 1675 and I’m guessing it was measuring some guy’s dick before 1676.
Most of us have a number in our heads, no doubt rounded up to the nearest quarter-inch of where the end of our dick sits next to the ruler. Most of us when pressed as to what this number is will jack that figure up another quarter or half inch. If asked, I would answer quite truthfully, “Oh I don’t know, somewhere between 6 and 8 inches.” And then with a grin and a shrug I’d admit that it was probably closer to six. In truth, my maximum skin-busting erection never exceeded a hair’s width over six inches.
So there’s a lot of misinformation out there about dick size. Most porn stars list their dicks in the 10″ to 13″ range. In truth, hardly any of them exceed 10″ inches. Even the legendary dick of Ron Jeremy topped out at 9.75″. Most adult film actors measure somewhere around 8 inches. Now, don’t get me wrong, that’s still one hell of a dick. Hold up a normal sized sheet of paper. Its width is 8.5 inches. Imagine something that size sticking out from your loins. Now imagine something the length (11 inches) of that paper. Ever seen any dick that big on-screen or off? I sure haven’t. And I’m betting if you whipped something like that out of your pants more women would be running away than coming forward.
Most of us, whether from watching porn or listening to friends brag about their imaginary seven-and-a-half inches, have been left with a pretty misguided notion of what the average sized dick actually is. But what is average? If we were to add up the length of every erect adult penis in the world and divide the total by the number of penises, what would that result be? Well, the answer is anywhere from 5 to 6.5 inches, depending on which study you want to rely on. That’s right; after dozens of rigorous scientific studies conducted in every part of the world, the only thing we can tell you with certainty is that if you’re less than 5 inches you’re smaller than average and if you’re larger than 6.5 inches you’re bigger than average. But what if you’re in between? An inch-and-a-half is a big variance. In any particular study it’s roughly the difference between the 10th and 90th percentile. How, you may ask can there be such a discrepancy between results? Well, it turns out that it’s damnably hard to accurately gauge the size of the average erect dick.
Why is it so, er, hard? It certainly seems simple enough: get a stiffy – whip out ruler. Ah, but as any man can tell you. There are stiffies and then there are stiffies. The difference between a half-ass erection and a raging hard-on can be as much as an inch. Then there’s the methodology. Where do you measure from? Along the top? Along the side? From the bottom? Each method gives a different result.
