Sex

Your daily Tiger Woods

Mary Elizabeth Williams — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 10:16:00 PST

The Tiger Woods drama can't be bottomless -- or can it? Eventually we're bound to hit bedrock, but fear not, because that day is surely not this one. By the time you finish reading this sentence, another eight women will have come forward to say they tapped that PGA ass, and a lurid video or voicemail will have been released and reached eight million hits on YouTube.

Berlusconi is a boob

Tracy Clark-Flory — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 16:34:00 PST

Sex sells -- and it can also help build political empires. Media magnate and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi understands that: His popular television stations showcase a rotating cast of scantily clad beauties, and women are often promoted within his political party based on aesthetic qualifications alone. But while his perviness has helped him become one of the richest and most powerful men in the world, it increasingly seems like it could also cause his unraveling.

Nevada legalizes male prostitution

Kate Harding — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 08:15:00 PST

On Friday, one of Nevada's most important industries took a big step toward gender equality. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean men in leotards will now be serving cocktails on casino floors at 9 a.m., but it does mean that people who like to have sex with men will legally be able to purchase an opportunity to do so.

Adultery still crime in NH after 200 years

NORMA LOVE, Associated Press — Sun, 13 Dec 2009 00:01:00 PST

The original punishments -- including standing on the gallows for an hour with a noose around the neck -- have been softened to a $1,200 fine, but the unenforced 200-year-old crime of adultery still is on New Hampshire's books.

Hey, kids: Hookups don't hurt

Tracy Clark-Flory — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 13:42:00 PST

It turns out hookup culture isn't a sign of the coming apocalypse, nor is casual sex emotionally corrupting young adults. (No surprise here.) If there's something the matter with kids these days, don't blame it on sex.

Sexist female pigs

Tracy Clark-Flory — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 10:01:00 PST

Here at Broadsheet, we love us some earnest, academic talk about the sexual differences between men and women -- but this will not be one of those discussions. Sometimes, a girl needs a break from all the stuffy talk of nature versus nurture, and the satiric sketch "Are Women As Horny As Men?" (via Gizmodo) does just the trick. The skit opens with a man and a woman sitting at a bar debating that very question. Naturally, she argues that women are equal horndogs -- and he thinks she's insane. Then commences a dream sequence in which the world is turned upsidedown and men are sexually objectified by women. Without giving too much away, I can tantalize you with the fact that there is some beer gut on stripper pole action. As you might have gathered, it is extremely NSFW (or the faint of heart).

A hymen by any other name

Kate Harding — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 09:09:00 PST

"The mythical status of the hymen has caused far too much harm for far too long," begins a press release from RFSU, the Swedish Association for Sexuality Education. Indeed it has. Broadsheet has written before about the Artificial Virginity Hymen -- a kit that helps a woman fake bleeding when she has intercourse -- and hymenoplasty, in which the hymen is sewn up, so that any man still ignorant enough to believe a hymen can only be broken during sex and that a woman will always bleed the first time will be reassured that he is participating in a deflowering. The popularity of virginity faking highlights the devastating consequences of "the mythical status of the hymen," especially among religious fundamentalists. As Tracy Clark-Flory said in the former post, "If a woman in the Middle East fails to bleed on her wedding night, she can face shame, abuse and even death" -- and as Carol Lloyd said in the latter, "lest we get too high on our horse (equestrian sport being another common hymen-ripping recreation) we should invoke our own recent cults of the virgin -- most notably thousands of Christian youth pledging to become 'Reborn Virgins' and then pretending that they never took the oath." The importance of an intact hymen is a cross-cultural crock.

Becoming a piece of meat

Thomas Rogers — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 17:08:00 PST

On the surface, a lot of things seemed to be going well for Julie Powell in the past few years. Her Salon blog, in which she cooked her way through Julia Child's recipes, turned into a bestselling book, "Julie and Julia." Nora Ephron's film adaptation, starring Meryl Streep and Amy Adams as Powell, was released this year to considerable box office success. And, throughout it all, she remained married to Eric, the gentle husband whom she had been together with since her teens.

Coed cohabitation? Horrors!

Tracy Clark-Flory — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 13:49:00 PST

Columbia University students of the opposite sex will soon be allowed to share dorm rooms -- or, as the New York Post puts it in a 1950s time-warp of an article, "live in sin ... on their parents' dime." Horrors, kids these days -- et cetera!

New feline predator on the loose!

Mary Elizabeth Williams — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 09:30:00 PST

Hey there, urban hipster columnists! Stuck for a way to meet your word count today and fresh out of lorem ipsum? Time to trot out the old "sexual taxonomy of women" satire you first took a crack at for your college humor magazine. You can fart it out before your first latte has kicked in, and the thing will pay for itself in outraged comments and blog links. And before you insist it's too dumb/obvious to work, I refer you to Spencer Morgan, whose withering New York Observer takedown of "cheetahs" has been setting forehead veins reflexively a-throbbing this week.

Dudes: Porn is harmless!

Tracy Clark-Flory — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 11:01:00 PST

It's official: Pornography doesn't affect men's view of women. This breaking news comes by way of 20 young men who ... just say so, OK? Stop asking so many questions, gosh!

What's wrong with female desire?

Tracy Clark-Flory — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 15:35:00 PST

Scientists have scanned women's brains and wired their genitals to measure arousal. They have meticulously cataloged the most intimate of feminine experiences and yearnings -- and yet these detectives in lab coats haven't been able to map the fingerprint of female desire. It's an unsolved mystery. Still, there is plenty intriguing evidence to sift through and competing theories to consider. Case in point: The New York Times Magazine feature on ladies who "want to want" -- or, put in technical terms, women with hypoactive sexual desire disorder.

Your vagina is ugly

Kate Harding — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 12:12:00 PST

British researchers, having reviewed the existing literature on cosmetic labioplasty (surgery to reduce the size of a woman's labia), have concluded that it risks "impairing sexual sensitivity and satisfaction," much as female circumcision does; that not enough long-term research has been done on it; and that "counseling and support" might be more appropriate alternatives for women who seek surgery because they believe their vulvas aren't pretty enough. Moreover, says the report's author Lih-Mei Liao, aggressively marketing the surgery exacerbates one of the problems it's meant to correct. "Advertisements promote labial surgery as easy answers to women's insecurities about their genital appearances -- insecurities that are fuelled by the very advertisements that prescribe a homogenised, pre-pubescent genital appearance standard for all women." (I'm envisioning the ladyparts version of a Latisse commercial here: "For inadequate or more than enough labia.")

The celebrity sex tape jumps the shark

Mary Elizabeth Williams — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 12:45:00 PST

The once-scandalous celebrity sex tape took its fatal jump over the shark this week, after gay-marriage-opposing, famously breast-implanted author and Miss USA contestant Carrie Prejean confirmed the existence of a naughty tape of herself.

Sex toys arouse outrage at Duke

Tracy Clark-Flory — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:01:00 PST

Duke University researchers are looking for female students to attend a sex toy party, "engage in sexually explicit conversation" with other young ladies and, if they so desire, buy some titillating playthings at a great discount-- all in the name of science. Wait a sec, no, make that "were looking," past tense -- all of the participant spots have filled up rather quickly. Fancy that.

"Gossip Girl": Threesome's a crowd?

Judy Berman — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:05:00 PST

Get ready for a brand new scandal, from the folks who brought us Nipplegate. This time, conservative watchdog group the Parents Television Council is all atwitter about "Gossip Girl." Of course, the show has been raising parental eyebrows ever since its debut: It does, after all, feature a gaggle of rich, largely amoral teenagers who don't think twice about downing martinis and jumping into bed together. And the series has been on PTC's shit list for a while, with the organization claiming it "conveys the message that sex is a tool used to manipulate people."

High-tech hookups? The horror!

Tracy Clark-Flory — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 16:01:00 PST

Oh, David Brooks. Once again, the cantankerous columnist has pulled out a relic from a bygone era -- back when women stayed at home and first ladies covered their biceps -- to show young people today how it used to be in the good old days. The au courant subjects of his scorn this week: Cellphones, text messages and (insert heavy air quotes) "hooking up." The trigger for this rant: New York magazine's recent analysis of 141 week-long sex diaries posted over the last couple years on its blog Daily Intel.

Teen sex: a weighty issue

Judy Berman — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 05:03:00 PST

Lately, at Broadsheet, we've been writing a lot about the fashion industry, glossy women's magazines, plus-size models and Photoshop disasters. It's difficult to quantify the effects of Christian Louboutin's howling about Barbie dolls' cankles, on one hand, and Glamour's newfound (and likely temporary) commitment to showcasing models with a variety of body types on the other. But a new study hints at the impact such a weight-obsessed culture may be having on a particularly vulnerable demographic -- teenage girls.

How not to make love like a porn star

Mary Elizabeth Williams — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 16:29:00 PST

He'd been jackhammering away for what felt like hours. "You like that, baby? You like that?" he asked, though he didn't notice I wasn't answering. And then, somewhere around the 18th time he said it, it hit me -- I wasn't just having bad sex. I was having bad porn sex.

Sex without nipples

Ann Bauer — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:28:00 PDT

What came between Jessie and her boyfriend of seven years was nipples. Or rather, the lack thereof.