Blogs

Here's a very interesting article on how Japanese women are utilizing dating agencies to connect with highly-educated western husbands. Primary reason: it's a well to do demographic that these days, treats their wives more like equals and romantic companions. Japanese men, according to the article, are comparatively conservative and view women (helped along by the culture) as maids, homemakers, and child rearers. Period. I remember hearing about the first Japanese female office manager in Japan and how that was a big deal. I took a east Asian culture studies class in college. My prof. was a Japanese woman and she said how if you're a woman with a Ph.D. or Dr.

After infiltrating an event at the pole dance school, I decided that the only way to really understand the phenomenon was to engage in it. I have studied various dance forms my entire life and have performed professionally as well.  Over the last 5 years I have dedicated myself mostly to Middle Eastern belly dance. Belly dance is another form of dance that women have reported feeling self-esteem, body image and sensuality benefits from - I figured if I could shimmy on my toes and writhe on by back in a dance studio and on stage I could handle a pole dance class.

I signed up for an intro class. The intro class is basically an orientation that includes a full class. Since I have had a lot of experiences taking dance classes I figured the whole thing would be very familiar territory only with different movements. I was wrong.

As a woman who does not wear a bra, one might ask why I'm interested in this art bra exhibit. Ah yes, art is art and some of these nifty bras qualify as art. Just remember sisters, those underwire bras are now suspect for cutting off your circulation and that just might be one cause for breast cancer.

Why I don't wear one? Well, back in the day, I used to draw bras, hundreds of bras for catalogs and ads putting myself through art school. The popular ones back then had cups that were stitched in a circle and I was working with pen and ink. Stitch, stitch by stitch with each row after row after row.

Thank you nooneknow1028 for the link. George Carlin's rant about anti-abortion conservatives is right on the money.

A year ago, Jezebel writers Tracie Egan and Moe Tkacik were invited to appear on Lizz Winstead's show "Thinking and Drinking" to discuss their unabashed sexual adventures and the explicit recounting of such on their popular blog. Both ladies showed up to the set inebriated and ready to speak with Winstead.

As a unnecessary lush (nursing a hangover as we speak), I must say that to watch these lasses slur their way through a conundrum-fuck was mildly entertaining. Also, I completely and utterly understand what they were trying to say. But, the fact that they were drunk and can't even solidify their statements makes it a failed attempt to offer a new and controversial approach to the sensitive issue that is rape.

According to new research, children raised by lesbians are more aspirational than those with opposite-sex parents.  The suggestion is that same-sex couples make better parents because children cannot be conceived accidentally - parents must make an active decision to adopt or find a sperm donor.  

I say beware of research conclusions that favor one gendered group over another. There exists too much within and between group variability to help us really understand human experience. This holds true regarding comparisons between gay/lesbian parenting and heterosexual parenting.

Father Ksawery Knotz's book, entitled In Sex as you don't know it: For married couples who love God, has been described as a "Catholic Kama Sutra".  The Franciscan friar has raised eyebrows by going into graphic detail about how married couples can spice up their sex lives.

"Every act - a type of caress, a sexual position - with the goal of arousal is permitted and pleases God," he writes.

"During sexual intercourse, couples can show their love in every way, can offer one another the most sought after caresses."  Sex in marriage, Father Knotz explains, should not be boring but "saucy, surprising and fantasy packed".

New guildlines for cervical cancer screening say women should delay their first pap smear until they're 21 years old. Hasn't anyone heard of HPV?

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius reaffirmed that women SHOULD get mammograms at 40 defying those BS recommendations of that bogus task force. The American Cancer Society must be pleased.

Kate Moss takes the heat for saying, "nothing tastes as good as skinny feels". Betty, Christina and I debated this last night and we get her point.

I saw, like everyone else does, in my early observations of how sex works most often in our culture that a woman's menstrual cycle is a time of shunning women in one form or another, and definitely no sex. I saw the looks on women's faces, the sound in their voices. It was a mix on a spectrum of hurt from the treatment and coping by holding her menstrual time in as much contempt, if not more, than men around her did. Then there were other women who always said, "What's the big deal?" Like they were oblivious to the issue. Of course, we've heard lots of quips on PMS from men. The trauma most women go through as adolescents when their periods start. At every turn it's a negative. Something in me wanted to see if that could be reversed with different perspectives.

The US Department of Health and Human Services commissioned a task force to study mammograms.  Their findings: women don't need mammograms until their 50s and even then we only need a mammogram every two years.  The cherry on top: we don't need to do self breast exams either.  Why would you discourage people from examining their own bodies - something that takes no time and no money - when it could mean the difference between life and death?

And they're promoting their findings all over the place - The Today Show down the line.  The argument is that for every 1900 women who undergo a mammogram only 3-4 will have breast cancer.  In other words, 3-4 female lives aren't worth the expense.

Dear Betty,

I am a 40 year old woman. I have never been able to have an orgasm from oral sex. I was married for 15 years to someone who didn't like to go down on me, so I have limited experience with it. But I have a partner right now who loves giving oral. So I'd like to take advantage of it but I can't seem to do it. I can orgasm from masturbation without a problem. Can you help? Thanks so much.

The first pics from Levi's Playgirl pictorial have hit the web.  He looks kind of hot - the best he's looked yet.  You so know that this issue is going to sell like hotcakes.  Who doesn't want to see the penis that knocked up Palin's teenage daughter. 

And Playgirl timed Levi's spread to dovetail with Palin's book release.  That's what happens when you deny someone's paternity rights after parading him around in your unsuccessful bid for the White House.  Levi has been quite vocal about Palin blocking him from seeing his son.  He also made claims that Palin makes fun of her special needs child (I believe it).  Hell hath no fury like a teen dad scorned.  This 19 year old has successfully inserted himself into every interview Palin has had on her book tour....even with Oprah:

The U.S. Constitution grants an absolute right to free speech. Until recently, it was one of the best protected rights in the United States, as ruling after ruling by the Supreme Court determined that sexual speech is protected in a wide diversity of circumstances. The obscenity protections in a famous 1973 decision called Miller vs California. This decision made it nearly impossible to be prosecuted for obscenity. Everyone from Allen Ginsberg to Larry Flynt benefitted from this - and as a result, so did we. Many other forms of speech were protected under this safe umbrella.

Then came the Internet. Restricting sexual speech in a series of incremental rules and regulations, that right is being tightened like a noose.

A real government agency has finally said it...the emperor has no clothes on...10 years of abstinence-only sex ed hasn't kept kids from having sex at all.  They still have sex, it's unprotected, and sex infections are spreading rapidly. 

The latest statistics on chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis show that these three highly treatable infections continue to spread in the United States.

"Chlamydia and gonorrhea are stable at unacceptably high levels and syphilis is resurgent after almost being eliminated," said John Douglas, director of the division of sexually transmitted diseases at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.