Are men hornier than women? The research says no!

It’s time to bust another sexual myth!  Here’s the myth:Women with high sex drives are the minority. I hear this myth over and over again! The myth that men are highly sexual and women are more interested in love and affection can lead to all sorts of confusions and disagreements. It’s been used throughout history to control female sexuality and to keep the sexes in their place!

A recent study of almost a thousand women found that well over half of them could be classified as “highly sexual.” They were interviewed for sex drive, sexual communication, sexual adventurism, sexual fantasies and thoughts, sexual esteem, body image, reputation concerns, and attitudes toward all of the following: casual sex, sexually explicit material, masturbation, and sexy clothing..

So women with high sex drives who are very interested in sex for sex’s sake are much more common than the stereotype would have you believe. Liberating ourselves from these sexual myths about how the sexes are supposed to behave is so important.

Does wearing kilts mean you have healthier sperm?

Apparently those Scots in their kilts with their genitals flying free were onto a good thing! Wearing kilts traditionally (without underwear) in the cold, rugged Scottish highlands is the perfect “physiological scrotal environment” to make strong sperm, according to Dutch researcher, Erwin Kompanje.

Kompanje says the modern man with their tight pants and underwear are confining their “scrotal environment.”  So while Kompanje wants to research this aspect of kilt wearing because of his own “hunch” about the Scots and kilts, his research idea is based on the fact that healthy sperm need to be a few degrees cooler than the body. Kompanje says, “The cremaster reflex only works, and has any sense, when the scrotum is hanging free.  In tight trousers it cannot work. In a naked man, or a man wearing a kilt, it can and will.”

Kompanje goes on, “I searched the scientific literature, and I found nothing on the subject,” he said. “Then I searched on sperm quality and found many scientific papers related to high scrotal temperature and tight clothing. So as 1+1=2, I formed the hypothesis that wearing a skirt-like garment (as a kilt) without underwear would help to improve sperm quality.”

“Wearing a kilt has strong psychological benefits…  A kilt will get you noticed no matter where you are. Research indicates that men wearing a kilt experience a strong sense of freedom and masculinity…The kilt gives a man a sensuous awareness of his own body and how it will be seen by others.”

He is looking for volunteers for his research if anyone wants to wear a kilt non stop! This Scottish obsessed research urges that it will be easy to find men to have the temperature and quality of their sperm measured under their kilts because of the “positive attention from sexual admirers” that kilts generate!

I had fun putting up this article, and perhaps it was just an excuse to look at photos of men in kilts! What do you think? Do you laugh when the Doctor tells you not to have a laptop on your lap, in case you damage your sperm? What about the research that shows that men wearing cooling testicular devices had more fertile sperm?  Would you wear a kilt for research?

What you never knew about the clitoris!

For International Clitoris Week I’m going to harp on about the clitoris some more! The clitoris is such an incredible organ! It has more nerve endings than anywhere else on the human body, and twice as many on the end of the penis!

The Internal Clitoris
This incredible organ is not just a ‘bean,’ (that’s just the tip of the iceberg!) but actually mainly internal! The ‘glans’ (or ‘bean’) is connected to the shaft of the internal clitoris, which is made up of two corpora cavernosa.  When excited and erect, the corpora cavernosa swell full of blood around the vagina, as if they were wrapping around it giving it a big embrace!
These corpora cavernosa have two crura (looks like a wishbone when resting and not excited!) which  stretch toward the spine when erect. They’re coloured in a darker colour in the picture to the left.

So when the vagina is being stimulated the internal clitoris is also being stimulated! clitoris

You can see from the picture on the right, that the internal clitoris is very similar to the penis! In fact, I’m often disappointed by the lack of attention and research given to this increible organ. Textbooks often only show the external glans with no drawings depicting the inner clitoris! It is only recently (in the 1990’s) that a MRI was done of the clitoris for health and research, whereas men had already thirty years of research into pleasure and nerve endings in their penis!

An Australian Urologist, Helen O’Connell was the first person to show the world of medicine what the internal aroused  clitoris looked like in 1998. Medical papers published in response to her findings admitted that social mores had a lot to do with the lack of research into the clitoris and that it is “seemingly impossible it is to understand the internal structure of the clitoris with just one diagram.  Several are required to truly get a comprehensive understanding of it.

Internal ClitorisIt wasn’t until 2009, that researchers in France -Dr. Odile Buisson and Dr. Pierre Foldès did the worlds first complete 3-D sonography of the stimulated clitoris.  It says a lot about how we view the clitoris, that they couldn’t get any funding, and had to self fund their research for three years!

Dr Foldès is a surgeon for women who have undergone clitoral mutilation and has given pleasure back to thousands of circumsized women. Internal ClitorisHe too was amazed by how little research has been done over the years into the clitoris, when he found thousands of studies into the penis.

“When I returned to France to treat genital mutilation, I was amazed that they were never tried. The medical literature tells us the truth about our contempt for women. For three centuries, there are thousands of references to penile surgery, nothing on the clitoris, except for some cancers or dermatology -and nothing to restore its sensitivity. The very existence of an organ of pleasure is denied, medically. Today, if you look at the anatomy books that all surgeons have, you will find two pages above. There is a real intellectual excision.

So there you have it! We are only now beginning to understand the internal workings of the complex and fascinating female genitals! Is it any wonder women can be confused when some of this important information is not included in textbooks?
Thanks to Ms M for the inspiration for this article..

Happy International Clitoris Week!

Happy International Clitoris Week everyone! It is the first ever Clitoris Week and is organised by “Clitoraid,” a Las Vegas-based group usually devoted to helping victims of female genital mutilation around the world. They celebrate sexual freedom and pleasure for all women in the world..

“The clitoris, this extraordinary organ of pleasure boasting the most nerve endings of all the human body (8,000 compared to 5,000 for the penis) has been ostracized from society for millennia because of religious dogma condemning women’s sexual pleasure. It has therefore been ill-studied (if at all), misrepresented (if at all) and of course made shameful. It is only in the last 5 years that it has finally been completely mapped and It appears that this organ actually rivals with a man’s penis in size. During echo graphic studies, the clitoris was found to reach eight inches in length made of thick highly pleasurable erectile tissue wrapped around the vulva and the pelvic floor. (which is why it is possible to restore a mutilated clitoris.)”
From http://www.clitoraid.org/

 

When parents get hysterical about sex education and try and ban books.

Wow. A mother in America wants The Diary of Anne Frank to be banned from her daughters school because of a passage where Anne writes about discovering her own genitalia.  I remember this was a text at my school in Year Seven, but that excerpt hadn’t been allowed to be published at the time. I think Anne Franks family had requested it be removed.
It’s quite a mature and insightful passage of self awareness and body exploration by such a young girl. Would this passage get you into hysterics if your young daughter read it?  I personally don’t see anything wrong with this innocent paragraph of self discovery and curiousity around one’s own body. In fact for someone so young, she had incredible insight and perception into her own body!  Read the section and see for yourself;
“Until I was eleven or twelve, I didn’Anne Frankt realize there was a second set of labia on the inside, since you couldn’t see them. What’s even funnier is that I thought urine came out of the clitoris…When you’re standing up, all you see from the front is hair. Between your legs there are two soft, cushiony things, also covered with hair, which press together when you’re standing, so you can’t see what’s inside. They separate when you sit down and they’re very red and quite fleshy on the inside. In the upper part, between the outer labia, there’s a fold of skin that, on second thought, looks like a kind of blister. That’s the clitoris.”

This Michigan mother said the phrases made her uncomfortable and that the diary was “pornographic.” After reading the above paragraph what do you think? There seems to be such a hysteria about children learning about their own genitals and functioning. I don’t see anything pornographic about young people learning about their own biology do you?

Happy Masturbation Month everybody!

I hope everyone is having a wonderful masturbation month! National Masturbation Month is an annual event celebrated on a day in May to protect the right to masturbate!

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Here’s some information courtesy of Wikipedia..

“The point of Masturbation month is to raise awareness about masturbation and to protest against social stigma against masturbation. Sexologist Carol Queen, an organizer of the NMD, argued, although over half of men and women in North America masturbate regularly, masturbation is viewed negatively in contemporary culture and deliberately excluded from the formal education system. According to Queen, “We gave our heads a shake and said it’s about time we fought back. That’s when we founded National Masturbation Day.”

A lot of people have been telling me about the shame they were made to feel about masturbation as a child and how they were told it was ‘dirty’ or ‘bad.’
The culture in Victorian England defined masturbation a sinful act that would surely send you blind or crazy.. It was called “nocturnal emissions” and was deeply frowned upon. Thrust forward to the early 1900’s and little boys found touching themselves were told it was self abuse and worse than lying or stealing!

What messages did you receive about mastubration, pleasure and sexuality when you were growing up and how do you think it has affected you? Were you shamed into hiding your sexuality and was self pleasure in your own private time seen as something to be ashamed about?
Imagine if we lived in a world where self-love and healthy self exploration was not frowned upon, but encouraged.

Self pleasuring has powerful healing potential.. It reduces our feelings of pain, increases our libido, helps us sleep, helps reduce anxiety and improves men’s quality of sperm.  It is good to keep your reproductive organs moving and functioning. Solo sex increases our feel good chemicals in our brain like dopamine, oxytocin and endorphins and helps you feel better about your body.

Happy self pleasuring everyone!

The Female Orgasm as Art

What an interesting project.  I just watched a series of movies called, “Hysterical Literature” by film maker Clayton Cubbitt. A womanHysterical Literature sits at a table and reads from her favourite book. Underneath the table out of view of the camera, an “unseen accomplice” tried to bring the woman to orgasm with a vibrator. There was something quite beautiful about the black and white treatment, the reading of the literature and the intimacy of the orgasm. It is a very different treatment of  female orgasm that is seen in pornography!

There is a distinct sensuality in these short films, which I really enjoyed watching.  There’s even some humour as the woman Hysterical-Literaturestruggles to maintain her focus on the words in front of her!  Apparently it was a back massager that was being used, and if you listen carefully, sometimes you can hear the buzzing!

The director sums it up nicely, “It’s quite interesting to hear about what was going through their mind as they started to lose track of what they read and surrendered to their bodies. They talk about it almost like it becomes a religious trance, and they usually have no recollection of the last half of the reading.”

I love how they don’t remember the last section of what they’re reading! And the director also mentions the interesting struggles the sitter has between mind and body. One of the women said she held on for as long as she could, reading the literature, before she decided to give in to the pleasure.

“The title is a winking reference to the quack Victorian medical theory of “hysteria” in women, and the vibrators and hydrotherapy treatments used to “cure” them. On an individual level, I’m interested in the battle the sitter experiences between mind and body, and how long one retains primacy over the other, and when they reach balance, and when they switch control.”

As a sex therapist, I couldn’t help but see the films as a nice  metaphor for letting go and stopping thinking and overanalysing everything, in order to experience pleasure. During sex a lot of people find it hard to stop the non-stop narrative going through their head, and this can make it hard for them to let go and experience orgasm. What are your thoughts?  When has your mind and all your thoughts blocked you from letting go and feeling pleasure and/or orgasm?

If your body was a temple..

What do you do to “self care?” It’s something so many of us neglect in our busy, day-to-day lives. What do you do to care for yourself when you’re down or sad? Take a pen and paper and write a list! Stick it on your bedroom wall if needed, so that you can look at it when you need inspiration! It could be as simple as going for a walk or having a warm bath.

Do you listen to your body and what it needs? What do you find is happening when you are not listening and ignoring those messages? We’re often taught not to listen to our body and to “silence” those messages.

How do you think being in touch with the needs of our body might be connected to our sexuality?  Do you love, respect and nurture your body or do you resent it, hate it and punish it? Fulfilling and enriching sex comes from a place of self love and acceptance!

Are you in love with your body and all of its skin? Do you see your scars and stretch marks as badges of honour or things to be ashamed of?  What are some of your favourite things about your body?

If you were to imagine that your body was a temple how you treat your body differently? How does the way you treat your body reflect how you feel about it? Would your temple be run down and neglected or a divine, sacred place of love and nurture?
What are some of the healing, comforting, sensual, loving and invigorating things you are doing to adorn and cherish your temple?  How is your body or temple unique and different? How can you glory in your difference so as not to bring yourself down with comparing yourself to others. We are not billboards. We are living, holistic beings with beautiful flaws. How can you embrace your flaws?

I’d love to read your answers.

Am I Having Normal Sex?

This is a question that I am asked a lot.  “She didn’t have “normal” sex!” What is “normal”? How do you measure “normal”?  One of my obsessions over the past ten years has been researching the history of sexuality. I am so fascinated by how different eras and cultures have controlled and constructed sexuality, how religions or governments, Doctors or psychologists have told us what is “normal” and what is not, and how this reflects the social and political climate of the time. This is so vastly different throughout  different times. From Ancient Greek culture through to Victorian times to now, we have had very different ideas about sex and sexuality and what is “deviant” even down to what we would find attractive in a fellow mate.

Dr Marty Klein sums up the reasoning behind these attempts to “normalise” and control sexuality perfectly;

“Historically, normal sex has always been about defining and imposing boundaries. Various sexual activities, thoughts, and ideas were demonized, even criminalized. Most people really did fear, condemn, and stay away from whatever forms of eroticism they learned were abnormal. The adventurous—Oscar Wilde, Marquis de Sade, Margaret Sanger, Hester Prynne—were punished.

Much of this was about controlling procreation. Some of it was about ignorance toward female pleasure, and hostility toward female enthusiasm. Some of it was about dividing the body into clean and dirty areas, hence clean and dirty activities. Some of it was about managing virginity, which was valuable family property.

Beyond all this, a key reason religion and repressive government have always wanted to control sexuality is because it’s a place where people can experience profound autonomy. Since the beginning of time, even the poorest, least intelligent, least attractive people have been able to feel powerful during sex. Even when you have absolutely no power over the important circumstances of your life, you can, if not instructed against it, still do and imagine whatever you want in bed. What powerful social institution would NOT want to control this bottomless well of personal power?

Therapists find that when people become empowered around their sexuality, they often keep growing: “If I can be uninhibited in bed, where else can I express myself? If I can make up my own rules in bed, why not in my relationship, my family, my community, or even with my God?”

So defining and patrolling normal sex is an important political tool. Every religion and every government knows that.”