Lifestyle

The 3D Vulva has been sent to me from several different sources. I'm finally going to post it with my suggestions on how I think it could be made more informative.

As an artist and clinical sexologist, I've often dreamed of creating a 3D vulva instead of just drawing one in two dimensions. This particular 3D vulva example comes close, but it leaves much to be desired. However, I'm going to post it along with what I'd like to see changed. If I am ever able to reach the person who created this, I'd like to work with them. We could do it again with my additions and deletions. Instead of using medical terms, I would dump them in favor of regular terms. Then I'd add my many years as a clinical sexologist working with women and combine that with my trained artist's eye to make the following changes:

I get upset when I'm 3 to 4 New Yorkers behind. When I finally got around to the March 2nd issue I was delighted to read the article on the Lesbian Nation by Ariel Levy (you have to register to read the article but it's free). So many of the names were friends of mine at one point or another. For me, the eighties was a time when America's Sexual Revolution moved over to the Gay Women's Community. That's when I joined a support group of lesbians and bisexual women who were into fantasy role playing with BDSM. Thanks to these outrageous women, I was entertained with all kinds of new things as well as learning about the exchange of power in sex.

PS. Now I gotta publish the story in my memoir about the time Sheila and I went to show the Cunt Slides to a group of lesbian sepratists living near Woodstock, NY.

After 10 years of abstinenence-only sex ed and the constant assault on pro-choice healthcare clinics, it seems that back alley abortions are back in vogue.  This time young women in the mid-west are self-inducing abortions by drinking chemicals intended to abort livestock jeopardizing their health and their lives. 

There have been several cases in Wisconsin reported by veterinanrians and confirmed by "influential" pro-life organizations (I read it in one of my mother's pro-life propaganda magazines I found in the bathroom and I'm not linking to them here).  The most striking piece of this story is that these pro-life groups criticized the veterinary community for not locking up these chemicals.  There was no dialogue about better sex ed, opening access to contraception or, god forbid, making safe non-surgical abortions available to these young women.  There was no sentiment that the desperate act of ingesting poison - that may end up killing you - signaled any failure on the communities part to support a woman's right to choose.

Why does our culture insist on making women responsible for every sex act?  Why must we pubish our young women with unwanted motherhood?

I'm loving the photos on beautifulcervix.com showing a woman's cervix on each day of one month. Finally after all these years of explaining to my women clients that the white discharge, mucous or my favorite term, "pussy juice" does NOT indicate there is a problem or that she has an infection.

It's the normal cycling of our menses that allows us to get pregnant and give birth. The following photos show the fertility cycle very clearly. The amazing female body is wondrous to behold.

PS Thanks David Hersh for the link ;)

Betty, take a breath - Ladies, hold on to your panties.  O Magazine (yes I mean Oprah) has a feature entitled "Why Women are Leaving Men for Other Women" tracking the phenom of straight women opting for lesbian relationships later in life.  This was our experience in Cuba and in LA.  Women who had been married and had children opted for a sapphic relationship mid-life.  Here's some of the thinking behind the "why":

...experts like Binnie Klein, a Connecticut-based psychotherapist and lecturer in Yale's department of psychiatry, agree that alternative relationships are on the rise. "It's clear that a change in sexual orientation is imaginable to more people than ever before, and there's more opportunity-and acceptance-to cross over the line," says Klein, noting that a half-dozen of her married female patients in the past few years have fallen in love with women. "Most are afraid that if they don't go for it, they'll end up with regrets."

Women clearly understand that there are many lifestyle and sexstyle choices available to them.  Wonderful!

This is a very interesting piece on the decriminalization of prostitution in New Zealand by the BBC.  While the rest of Europe including Amsterdam is looking to regulate and criminalize sex work, New Zealand stands out as the perfect case study on this controversial topic having decrimimalized sex work back in 2003.

Betty and I believe that sex work should be legal, regulated, and taxed.  What I loved about this article is that it featured several women who loved being sex workers.  There are people out there with the capacity to share their divinity with others and do so without guilt or shame.  Not all sex workers are drug addicts or abuse survivors.  

There was a time when sex wasn't driven underground by the religious right yet capitalized upon by corporate Amercia creating contempt and disrespect for this most basic human need.  There was a time when sex work was exalted and we went to the temples to seek such comfort.  And thank you, Annie Sprinkle, for this amazing picture ;)

Thanks Betty for inspiring so many and reigniting the sexual urges that all to often get buried deep under all the business in our lives. Our sex life was growing stale until my husband read some of your information. We sat down and talked.

I used to be very sexual. I was frankly in love with my orgasm and so you can probably guess where I spent most of my free time. Before we wed, I also enjoyed masturbating with a number of girlfriends, quite often in fact, who shared my interest. It's much easier now to connect up friends with similar interests than it was then. Even with this going on, my husband and I had intercourse and oral sex almost daily.

After we married, I ocassionaly indulged with my girlfriends behind his back but I didn't feel right about it so I got busy with work and my girlfriends and I eventually drifted apart. Sex with my husband also went down to twice a week so did masturbation. Then I lost my job due to the economy. Fortunately, he earns plenty now so we're OK but depressed with all the free time to dwell on things.

We talked after reading your material and he encouraged me to take advantage of this time to rediscover myself and explore my needs. A real "economic stimulous" we joked. I got back in touch with my girlfriends and even made a few more friends and started getting back into what I used to enjoy so much. I feel so much freer now with his consent and interest. My orgasms are back even stronger than ever.

We made it fun for us both as he loves me to call him at lunch every day while I'm indulging with a girlfriend or even just plain masturbating on my own. Sometimes it makes him so excited he has had to cum also, over the phone in his office. On those days, the first thing he does after coming home is make love to me. We do it almost every day again and love it. Perhaps the free time forced on people from this economic slump can be used in positive ways to get us all re-focused on our sexual needs which had become so buried.

This is Cumbio the teenage flogger who's the new sensation in Argentina. If you didn't catch the piece in the NY Times, a flogger posts pics of themselves, their friends, and everything else about their lives - it's like social networking with just pictures. 

What I love most about this intelligent young woman is that she's openly gay and it's only added to her stardom.  A virtual unknown, Cumbio made herself into a household name in Argentina by sharing her life and celebrating her orientation.  She just filmed a Nike commercial and her flogging site gets millions of hits.  I know this isn't the last we'll hear from her.

This story makes me want to shave my head and throw out all my Manolos.  Betty always talks about how she was treated in the 70's when she shaved her head and stopped wearing skirts.  It looks like things haven't changed at all:

A 17-year-old Boone County girl has sued Lebanon Schools after her high school principal told her she could not wear a tuxedo to the school's April 25 prom but would have to wear a dress.

The Lebanon High School senior, whose name is not revealed in the lawsuit, is a lesbian and does not wear dresses because she sees them as expressing a sexual identity that she does not embrace, court filings said. Her attorney at the American Civil Liberties Union of Indiana has asked a federal court to issue an injunction that would require the school to let her wear the same formal attire to the prom as male students at the school.

In the filing, ACLU of Indiana legal director Ken Falk argued that the district's policy violates the stipulations in the U.S. Constitution that the government treat a female student the same as male students and not limit students' freedom to express beliefs.

I think this is the most romantic thing I've ever heard of ever.  Imagine your partner pregnant with you - understanding everything that you're feeling - and they're carrying each other's embryos *sigh*

Iron Chef America" star Cat Cora and her wife Jennifer Cora are both pregnant, she announced. Both are expecting boys, which will double their brood. They are already parents to older boys, Caje, 22 months and Zoran, 5, from the same donor as the two who are coming.

On her MySpace blog, Cat posted the following message:

"Iron Chef's Cat Cora has a bigger surprise than the unveiling of her secret ingredient on her hit Food Network show; She's expecting her third--and fourth--sons! "It's really crazy!" the chef, 41, said. Cat will give birth three months after her partner, Jennifer Cora, 37. "We decided that having them a year apart is harder than having kids as infants together," Cat says of their planned pregnancies. Their four children have the same sperm donor but Cat says," [Jennifer] carried my embryo and I carried hers. It's like surrogating, but obviously all of our kids are equal."

You've heard us bash Barbie before but I think a picture is worth a thousand words.  If Barbie was a real woman, this is what she'd look like - 7 ft tall with a 28 inch waist and size 5 foot.  I've never seen a woman that looks like that.  Have you? 

Thank the BBC for this wonderful piece on body image.  Shame on a culture that perpetuates an impossible body ideal including the fashion industry.  The simple act of playing with a Barbie doll and later pouring over fashion magazines is creating misery, body dysphoria, self hatred and eating disorders among our young women.

A man who refused to take his clothes off at a raunchy party has been blamed for a mini-riot at an Australian nudist resort. Police were called amid threats of violence and ordered the Brisbane man and his wife to leave the "anything goes" sex party, reports the Courier-Mail.

It happened at the White Cockatoo resort, near Port Douglas, Queensland, which is promoting a month of hedonism to boost sagging tourism figures. Owner Tony Fox said the "mini-riot" erupted when four naked female guests protested when confronted by the fully-clothed man.

"They felt uncomfortable with him eyeing them up and I asked him to show some respect and take his clothes off," he said. "He then threatened to bash me, there was some argy-bargy and I ordered him off the premises and police were called."

Back in the nineties when I was on the advisory board for Xandria, the second largest sex toy company, they sent out a questionaire to learn more about their customers. Turned out that the most sex toys were bought by young Christian married couples who were Republicans. Go figure:

Americans may paint themselves in increasingly bright shades of red and blue, but new research finds one thing that varies little across the nation: the liking for online pornography.

A new nationwide study (pdf) of anonymised credit-card receipts from a major online adult entertainment provider finds little variation in consumption between states. 8 out of 10 Porn-consuming states voted Republican in the last election!

"When it comes to adult entertainment, it seems people are more the same than different," says Benjamin Edelman at Harvard Business School.

However, there are some trends to be seen in the data. Those states that do consume the most porn tend to be more conservative and religious than states with lower levels of consumption, the study finds.