Hugo Schwyzer tackles a new book by Eric Anderson, which claims that men are by nature polyamorous creatures, and attempting to stay within the confines of a monogamous relationship will almost certainly lead to resentment or straying. Is monogamy an unattainable ideal? According to increasingly popular wisdom, it seems to be. One new book suggests […]
Is a “panda three-way”—when an established heterosexual couple is joined by an inexperienced male in the bedroom—an appropriate right of passage into an informed, healthy sex life? Lynn Beisner ponders its true value after her son shared his first, incredible experience with her. Last Friday, I went to go pick up my college-age son to […]
This was originally posted at No Longer Quivering. Republished here with permission. This isn’t a story about how modest clothes allowed me to “let myself go” and conceal a growing figure. It’s not even a story about how wearing modest clothes kept my self-esteem at rock bottom and thrust me into a too-close relationship with […]
How did Friends With Kids get romance right? According to Eric Sentell, the movie accurately illustrates romance through shared meaning and relationship rituals, not stereotypical Hollywood sex. In the recent dramedy, Friends with Kids, the principle characters discover that romance isn’t everything they thought it was. To which I reply, “Duh.” Serial-dater Jason Fryman (Adam […]
This originally appeared on RealAdultSex.com. Republished here with permission. Kind of weird what you get when you run that L.A. Times article about Tim Gunn’s 29 years of celibacy through Regender.com. The original article is kind of a piece of work. The reporter (and, evidently tens of thousands of people querying Google) are somewhere between […]
This week’s roundup of our favorites from across the interwebs to help you make sense of men and women. 1. To Reclaim or Reject ‘Slut’? by Tracy Clark-Flory of Salon.com says the Limbaugh controversy is a perfect example of the complexities of reappropriating, or renouncing, the slur. 2. The Strange, Fascinating History of the Vibrator […]
Because reproduction requires both men and women, Misty McLaughlin says the War on Women is more accurately a War on People, and asks men to take responsibility for their part. In a beautiful twist on the gruesome women’s-health-as-political-theater we’ve all been subjected to lately, female legislators in two states have introduced bills to limit men’s […]
Media in English-speaking culture, largely written by men, tends to give us the impression that women are all attractive and can pretty much have sex whenever they want. They just have to agree to whatever offers from men are on the table right now. We men, on the other hand, have to earn sex, and what we look like […]
This originally appeared at In Our Words: A Salon for Queers & Co. Republished here with permission. Dana Norris went on 71 Internet dates in the space of two years. This was not one of them. (We posted the first date here, the second date here, the third date here, and the fourth date here.) So […]
Hugo Schwyzer says that according to ‘homosociality,’ American men find the approval of other men more desirable than sex itself. Pop psychology suggests that men are hardwired for promiscuity; women for monogamy. Men’s predilection for sexual variety may be oversold, but the urge for erotic novelty may be bolstered by something other than lust. Perhaps […]
Despite fully knowing the risk, author Kerry Cohen didn’t make condoms a regular part of her sex life. What was regular, however, was fear and shame. When I was 22, I sat on the toilet bowl, my fingers probing my vulva. I was terrified. There were two inflamed bumps, and also creamy discharge. I had […]
When I was 17, I brought my first serious girlfriend to spend the weekend at my grandmother’s ranch in the country. Before we left, my mother took me aside to remind me of her mother’s rule: our luggage would be placed in separate rooms. “Nocturnal traffic,” as she put it, between my room and my […]
