Sexual Behaviour

New research: Kissing.

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From the New York Times:

Now, a Kiss Isn’t Just a Kiss By Jan Hoffman

There are activities common to most humans that we enjoy immensely, without much thought, and as frequently as opportunity and instinct provide. On occasion, researchers feel they need to know why.

Recently, experimental psychologists at Oxford University explored the function of kissing in romantic relationships.

Surprise! It’s complicated.

After conducting an online survey with 308 men and 594 women, mostly from North America and Europe, who ranged in age from 18 to 63, the researchers have concluded that kissing may help people assess potential mates and then maintain those relationships.

“The repurposing of the behavior is very efficient,” said Rafael Wlodarski, a doctoral candidate and lead author of the study, published in Archives of Sexual Behavior.

But another hypothesis about kissing — that its function is to elevate sexual arousal and ready a couple for coitus — didn’t hold up. While that might be an outcome, researchers did not find sexual arousal to be the primary driver for kissing.

Participants in the survey were asked about their attitudes toward kissing in different phases of romantic relationships. They were then asked about their sexual history: for example, whether they had been more inclined toward casual encounters or long-term, committed relationships. They also had to define their “mate value” by assessing their own attractiveness. Later, during data analysis, the researchers looked at how individual differences affected a person’s thoughts on kissing.

[…]

The participants generally rated kissing in casual relationships as most important before sex, less important during sex, even less important after sex and least important “at other times.” (To clarify: researchers defined kissing as “on the lips or open-mouth (French).”)

Past research has shown that three types of people tend to be choosier in selecting mates who are genetically fit and compatible: women, those who rate themselves highly attractive, and those favoring casual sex. In this study, these people said that kissing was important mostly at the start of a relationship.

[…]

But other people might use different criteria to size up their mates: men, those who rate themselves as less sexually attractive, and people looking for commitment. In the grand search for a partner, these individuals screen for people who seem to have the inclination and resources for the long haul. And for them, this study showed, kissing has a lower priority at the beginning of dating.

[…]

Among the study’s participants who said they were in exclusive relationships, frequency of kissing, rather than of sexual intercourse, was best correlated with relationship happiness.

Read the rest here.

Young people in Japan losing interest in sex?

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From the Guardian:

Why have young people in Japan stopped having sex? What happens to a country when its young people stop having sex? Japan is finding out… Abigail Haworth investigates.

Ai Aoyama is a sex and relationship counsellor who works out of her narrow three-storey home on a Tokyo back street. Her first name means "love" in Japanese, and is a keepsake from her earlier days as a professional dominatrix. Back then, about 15 years ago, she was Queen Ai, or Queen Love, and she did "all the usual things" like tying people up and dripping hot wax on their nipples. Her work today, she says, is far more challenging. Aoyama, 52, is trying to cure what Japan's media callssekkusu shinai shokogun, or "celibacy syndrome".

Japan's under-40s appear to be losing interest in conventional relationships. Millions aren't even dating, and increasing numbers can't be bothered with sex. For their government, "celibacy syndrome" is part of a looming national catastrophe. Japan already has one of the world's lowest birth rates. Its population of 126 million, which has been shrinking for the past decade, is projected to plunge a further one-third by 2060. Aoyama believes the country is experiencing "a flight from human intimacy" – and it's partly the government's fault.

The sign outside her building says "Clinic". She greets me in yoga pants and fluffy animal slippers, cradling a Pekingese dog whom she introduces as Marilyn Monroe. In her business pamphlet, she offers up the gloriously random confidence that she visited North Korea in the 1990s and squeezed the testicles of a top army general. It doesn't say whether she was invited there specifically for that purpose, but the message to her clients is clear: she doesn't judge.

Inside, she takes me upstairs to her "relaxation room" – a bedroom with no furniture except a double futon. "It will be quiet in here," she says. Aoyama's first task with most of her clients is encouraging them "to stop apologising for their own physical existence".

The number of single people has reached a record high. A survey in 2011 found that 61% of unmarried men and 49% of women aged 18-34were not in any kind of romantic relationship, a rise of almost 10% from five years earlier. Another study found that a third of people under 30had never dated at all. (There are no figures for same-sex relationships.) Although there has long been a pragmatic separation of love and sex in Japan – a country mostly free of religious morals – sex fares no better. A survey earlier this year by the Japan Family Planning Association (JFPA) found that 45% of women aged 16-24 "were not interested in or despised sexual contact". More than a quarter of men felt the same way.

Read the rest here.

More on the meaning of slut.

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From the Huffington Post:

The Truth About Being a Slutty Slut

by Stefanie Williams

I am a slut. A slutty slut slut. So say a lot of people. People who read my blog and disagree with its premise. People who don't like me. Women who think sex is gross. Guys who want the girl you bring home to mom and think because I talk openly about sex, I don't like family dinners or moms.

There are loads of reasons they think that. I've slept with a couple guys. More than 10. More than 20. Want to keep guessing? I wrote about a lot of my sex life. Shared personal stories because I did and still do believe not only do I write well, but that it's a good story. One that I still believe has a happy ending somewhere in all the messed up tragedy between all the hate e-mail I can count and having a note left on my mother's car at a train station parking lot that said "I hope you're proud of the slut you raised."

[...]

Because the slutty slut never wins, you see. The girls who have pictures leaked, never win. They lose their jobs, they lose their reputations. They are humiliated, shamed. Of their bodies. Apologizing, for being sexual privately. For the things we do in the privacy of our bedrooms that we all aren't and shouldn't be doing but apparently are because hey, there are nine billion people on this planet and they got here somehow. Sabbith sits in a dark room and says, "I want to die." Because she let her boyfriend take pictures, and he released them. Pictures not of her murdering puppies, or punching toddlers, or raping old people. Pictures of herself. Her body. The stuff that exists under her clothes. The body parts that are somehow more offensive than her toes.

Then came Maggie. Maggie said everything I've been saying for years. "What's wrong with being a slut?"

We all fear this label. And the ironic part is, most of us (and maybe I'm wrong here but I'm pretty sure I'm not) do the slutty slut stuff. We take pics. We sext. We sleep with our boyfriends. Husbands. We give blowjobs. We get naked. We have vaginas. We use them. Some of us, sometimes, even enjoy using them. We have boobs and nipples and butts. Which clearly we should all be ashamed of. Because we're the only ones doing it. You hear me, every woman on the planet? You are the only one doing what you're doing with that guy (or girl, or worse, BOTH). And it is so, so, incredibly hurtful and wrong and shameful. What? You wanna know why? Oh. Because... slutty slut?

Read the rest here.

Slut shaming.

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From Buzzfeed:

Pictures Of Teenage Girl Engaging In Oral Sex At Eminem Concert Spark Intense Online Slut-Shaming Many are furious that the teenage girl involved is being called a slut, but the boy is being celebrated as a hero. WARNING: This post contains graphic content.

A sample of the commentary:

And a sample of people pointing out the double standard:

See the entire article, including all the photos and commentary, here.

Sexercise.

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Some light and funny reading to cure the Monday-morning blues. From The Cut at NYMag:

How I Turned My Sex Life Into an Exercise Routine

B C. Maria McMillan

In the back of any fitness enthusiast’s mind is a series of attainable and unattainable goals. Run 26.2 miles? Attainable. Squatting my way to Coco Austin’s ass? Utterly unattainable. But my personal Everest has always been sexercise, that elusive yet seemingly attainable goal of burning calories with exertions designed by nature to feel good. Over the years, while on the treadmill or holding a plank, the ultimate form of multitasking would call to me: “Why are you doing (insert current activity) when you could be having sex?” It seemed so simple. Deceptively simple. Following in the footsteps of exercise pioneers like Suzanne Somers and Jane Fonda — and sexual pioneers like Sappho and Kim Cattrall — I was ready to condition and climax.

First, I needed a plan. I was shocked by the lack of information on sexercise. Most of the books were distasteful self-published works from nostalgic swingers. As a modern sexerciser, I would need to construct my own approach.

My grand experiment would last fourteen days. I would perform aerobic sexercises for 30 minutes a day, six days a week, using twelve approaches culled from contemporary fitness trends. Needing zero persuasion, my husband was onboard. (He would regret this decision in coming days.) Experiencing the mix of dread and anticipation every athlete feels before an intense training period, we set a date and commenced sexercising.

Day 1: Interval Sex

We start with interval training, a workout basic that can be applied to any cardiovascular routine. I will alternate between periods of heart-pumping high-intensity humping and sensual, slow-paced recovery periods.

I decide to keep the tone sporty instead of sexy, so I pull off my clothes, smack my hands in a single clap, and yell “Let’s do this!” in my coachiest voice. I immediately regret missing the chance to scream “Clear eyes, full heart, can’t lose!” while slapping my husband’s bare butt. Luckily, it’s just the first night.

I position the clock so I can time my (nonsexual) splits. Jumping into bed, we assume my first position, my husband lying on his back while I pump vigorously for one minute, slow down for 30 seconds, then pick up the pace again. Like Kristen Stewart in Breaking Dawn, I am a female jackhammer. I break a sweat and my first mistake becomes painfully clear: I forgot to warm up. Like a distance runner cramping after the second mile, jumping into hard intervals leaves me with a sore, dry vagina.

After a pit stop for lube, I practice targeting different muscle groups by switching whether I use my arms and legs to propel movement. Though some sexercise books outline specific positions, I find that using positions I already know and enjoy makes it easier to endure my interval burns.

Though I work out daily, twenty minutes of interval sex exhausts me. I face two unpleasant truths: First, I have terrible sexercise endurance. Second, when it comes to sexual workouts, men have been duping women for years. When I became the predominant thruster I burned calories, toned muscles, and worked my heart. The first rule of sexercise is to take back the thrusting. Whether on top, bottom, or sideways: thrust, ladies, thrust.

Read the other 13 days here.

Asking 100 girls/guys for sex.

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There are several important sex differences in sexuality, some related to biology and some related to the social environment, learning, etc. Often, biology and environment interact. Recent research is showing that some of the sex differences that were thought to be quite large actually aren't - men and women are far more similar than they are different, as discussed in class.

These clips depict an interesting pseudo-experiment examining sex differences in responses to propositions to have sex. From a scientific perspective, the experiment isn't particularly rigorous, but it's still of interest. The results aren't at all surprising, both in terms of biology, and social rules and environment. Heterosexual sex is more risky for women, as they are the ones who can become pregnant. Socially, women are judged more negatively for a huge variety of sexual behaviour, including causal sex. Also, a stranger approaching someone for sex must be considered in the context of male-perpetrated sexual assault.

Here's the description of the experiment:

Social Experiment: Asking 100 Girls For Sex

There is a saying that goes that if you ask enough girls (in this case 100) to have sex with you, at least one will say yes. I'm not sure who to attribute that assertion to, but it's clearly wrong. I had a pretty strong feeling going in that I wasn't going to be very successful. What I didn't expect though, was that the vast majority of girls found it amusing and actually cracked up.

I wanted to do a social experiment comparing and contrasting how males and females respond differently to being outright asked if they want to have sex. I had a pretty good idea of how it was all going to go down beforehand, but I thought it would make for an interesting and entertaining video nevertheless.

Sex // Girl Version ► https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JJFBtHcBnM&index=1&list=PL2uZhEhKQPWYeyAsRV9Rk3IvewORrZ18e Merchandise ► http://whatever.com/shop | Vlogs ► http://youtube.com/nevermind Facebook ► http://facebook.com/whatever | Twitter ► http://twitter.com/whatever Instagram ► http://instagram.com/brianwhatever There is a saying that goes that if you ask enough girls (in this case 100) to have sex with you, at least one will say yes.

Sex // Guy Version ► https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gxyySRgrYsU&index=4&list=PL2uZhEhKQPWYeyAsRV9Rk3IvewORrZ18e Merchandise ► http://whatever.com/shop | Vlogs ► http://youtube.com/nevermind Facebook ► http://facebook.com/whatever | Twitter ► http://twitter.com/whatever Instagram ► http://instagram.com/brianwhatever I wanted to do a social experiment comparing and contrasting how males and females respond differently to being outright asked if they want to have sex.

 

And some extras and bloopers:

Merchandise ► http://whatever.com/shop | Vlogs ► http://youtube.com/nevermind Facebook ► http://facebook.com/whatever | Twitter ► http://twitter.com/whatever Instagram ► ...

Guy Version ► http://youtube.com/watch?v=gxyySRgrYsU&feature=c4-overview-vl&list=PL2uZhEhKQPWYeyAsRV9Rk3IvewORrZ18e Merchandise ► http://whatever.com/shop | Vlogs ► http://youtube.com/nevermind Facebook ► http://facebook.com/whatever | Twitter ► http://twitter.com/whatever Instagram ► http://instagram.com/brianwhatever Even More ► http://youtu.be/RoIiIlHIZ8o For permission to use this video or other media / business inquiries, email me here: brian [at] whatever [dot] com - I check it often.

Gender bias in sexuality self-reporting.

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From Ohio State University:

Men, Women Lie About Sex to Match Gender Expectations

For Other Behaviors, People Care Less about Meeting Norms

People will lie about their sexual behavior to match cultural expectations about how men or women should act – even though they wouldn’t distort other gender-related behaviors, new research suggests.

The study found that men were willing to admit that they sometimes engaged in behaviors seen by college students as more appropriate for women, such as writing poetry. The same was true for women, who didn’t hide the fact that they told obscene jokes, or sometimes participated in other “male-type” deeds.

But when it came to sex, men wanted to be seen as “real men:” the kind who had many partners and a lot of sexual experience. Women, on the other hand, wanted to be seen as having less sexual experience than they actually had, to match what is expected of women.

“There is something unique about sexuality that led people to care more about matching the stereotypes for their gender,” said Terri Fisher, author of the study and professor of psychology atThe Ohio State University’s Mansfield campus.

“Sexuality seemed to be the one area where people felt some concern if they didn’t meet the stereotypes of a typical man or a typical woman.”

Fisher discovered how people would honestly respond to questions about sexuality and other gender-role behaviors by asking some study participants questions when they thought they were hooked up to a lie detector machine.

The study appears in a recent issue of the journal Sex Roles.

Participants were 293 college students between the ages of 18 and 25.

The students completed a questionnaire that asked how often they engaged in 124 different behaviors (from never to a few times a day). People in a previous study had identified all the behaviors to be typical of either males (such as wearing dirty clothes, telling obscene jokes) or females (such as writing poetry, lying about your weight). Other behaviors were identified as more negative for males (singing in the shower) or more negative for females (poking fun at others).

But some people filled out the questionnaire while they were attached to what they were told was a working polygraph machine or lie detector. (It was actually not working.)

The others were connected to the apparatus before the study began, supposedly to measure anxiety, but the machine was removed before they completed the questionnaire.

In general, the results showed that both men and women tended to act as would be expected for their gender. Men reported more typical-male behaviors and women reported more typical-female behaviors, regardless of whether they were attached to the lie detector or not.

But for non-sexual behaviors, the participants didn’t seem to feel any added pressure to respond in stereotypical ways for their gender.

In other words, women who were hooked up to the lie detector and those who weren’t were equally likely to admit to bench pressing weights – a stereotypical male activity.

“Men and women didn’t feel compelled to report what they did in ways that matched the stereotypes for their gender for the non-sexual behaviors,” Fisher said.

The one exception was sexual behavior, where, for example, men reported more sexual partners when they weren’t hooked up to the lie detector than whey they were. Women reported fewer partners when they were not hooked up to the lie detector than when they were. A similar pattern was found for reports of ever having experienced sexual intercourse.“Men and women had different answers about their sexual behavior when they thought they had to be truthful,” Fisher said.

This result confirms what Fisher found in an earlier study, back in 2003 – with one important difference.

Back in 2003, women went from having fewer sexual partners than men (when not hooked up to a lie detector) to being essentially even to men (when hooked up to the lie detector.)

In this new study, women actually reported more sexual partners than men when they were both hooked up to a lie detector and thought they had to be truthful.

“Society has changed, even in the past 10 years, and a variety of researchers have found that differences between men and women in some areas of sexual behavior have essentially disappeared,” she said.

Fisher said the results of the study may actually be stronger than what was found here. Although half the participants were not hooked up to the lie detector while completing the questionnaire, they had been hooked up before they started.

“Some of the participants may have been made uncomfortable by being attached to the lie detector at first, and that may have led them to be more forthcoming and truthful than they otherwise would have been,” she said.

Documentary: Virgin Tales.

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The second of two documentaries posted today on purity balls, this one from the CBC (link to the full documentary at the bottom of this post):

There is a second sexual revolution growing in the heart of the American Evangelical Christian community. Young girls are promising to remain virgins in lavish ceremonies led by their fathers. So called “Purity balls” were created by the Wilson family, led by father Randy a deeply conservative Christian who works for the politically powerful Family Research Council. Randy and his wife Lisa homeschooled their 7 children and raised them to believe men are warriors and women are wives. Filmmaker Mirjam von Arx followed the family for 2 years and produced a fascinating portrait of how the religious right is grooming a young generation of Virgins to embody an Evangelically-grounded Utopia in America. Today one in eight girls in the United States vows to remain “unsoiled.”

In western nations in particular, the virginity movement is experiencing an outright boom in popularity, with an estimated 5,000 of these balls held in 48 states across the U.S. Evangelists who form the core of this movement already make up a quarter of the U.S. population and are a powerful constituency within the Republican Party, whether they vote or instead, sit at home, could decide who wins the U.S. Presidency in November. The Wilsons believe their duties include getting a Republican into the white House and ensuring their daughters remain virgins until marriage to a young man of their choosing.

Virgin Tales is a deeply engaging film that illuminates the complicated intersection of personal and political power in modern day America.

Directed and produced by Mirjam von Arx, written by Mirjam von Arx and Michele Wannaz for Ican Films. Read more on the official film website.

You can watch the full documentary here (it's excellent!).

Sexed-up culinary school ads.

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From AdWeek:

Talking Food Gets Amusingly Raunchy in Culinary School Spots Pastry is seductive, ducks are borderline gross—but funny

The San Diego Culinary Institute has a trio of talking food commercials that are funny, albeit in a dumb way, but also a lot more sexually charged than this kind of ad tends to be. The “Napoleon” ad at least tries to be a little seductive (and who among us hasn't been seduced by dessert before? Don't lie to yourselves), but the “Ducks” spot borders on flat-out inappropriate. I mean, I'm OK with it, but I hope the institute knows what it's getting into. Some of its incoming applications might get pretty strange. Created by San Francisco agency Muh-tay-zik | Hoff-fer.

Two Ducks are impressed with the skills of their stuffer.

A Norwegian Salmon is feeling pretty good about getting filleted.

A Napoleon pastry wants you to follow your passion.

New research: Friends with benefits relationships (FWB).

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Despite the fact that FWB relationships have become very common, there's still little research examining the nature and impact (both positive and negative) of these types of relationships. This recent study was just published online in the Archives of Sexual Behavior:

Friendship After a Friends with Benefits Relationship: Deception, Psychological Functioning, and Social Connectedness Abstract

Friends with benefits (FWB) relationships are formed by an integration of friendship and sexual intimacy, typically without the explicit commitments characteristic of an exclusive romantic relationship. The majority of these relationships do not transition into committed romantic relationships, raising questions about what happens to the relationship after the FWB ends. In a sample of 119 men and 189 women university students, with a median age of 19 years and the majority identified as Caucasian (63.6 %), we assessed relationship adjustment, feelings of deception, perception of the FWB relationship and friendship, social connectedness, psychological distress, and loneliness. Results demonstrated that the majority of FWB relationships continued as friendships after the sexual intimacy ceased and that about 50 % of the participants reported feeling as close or closer to their FWB partner. Those who did not remain friends were more likely to report that their FWB relationship was more sex- than friendship-based; they also reported higher levels of feeling deceived by their FWB partner and higher levels of loneliness and psychological distress, but lower levels of mutual social connectedness. Higher levels of feeling deceived were related to feeling less close to the post-FWB friend; also, more sex-based FWB relationships were likely to result in post-FWB friendships that were either more or less close (as opposed to unchanged). FWB relationships, especially those that include more attention to friendship based intimacy, do not appear to negatively impact the quality of the friendship after the “with benefits” ends.

The reference, for those who would like to read the full article (search through UBC Library, PsycInfo):

Owen, J., Fincham, F. D., & Manthos, M. (2013). Friendship after a friends with benefits relationship: Deception, psychological functioning, and social connectedness. Archives of Sexual Behaviour, DOI: 10.1007/s10508-013-0160-7 (published online first).

New research: Women don't like friends who've had more partners.

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From Huffington Post (and reported elsewhere).

The researchers expected that compared to men, women (especially those with more sexual partners) would be less likely to negatively judge other women with more sexual partners. They discovered the opposite:

Female Friendship: Women Less Likely To Befriend Promiscuous Peers Regardless Of Their Own Sexual History, Study Finds

In case you needed more proof that your sex life shouldn't be anyone else's business, a new study suggests that the number of people you've slept with can affect whether other women want to be friends with you.

New research out of Cornell University found that women judge their "promiscuous" peers harshly -- to the point where they don't want to be friends with them. The study was published this month in the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships.

A research team led by Zhana Vrangalova, a graduate student in the field of human development in the College of Human Ecology at Cornell, surveyed 751 college students about their past sexual experiences and attitudes about sex and relationships. Participants then read a short story about a peer of their own gender, who had either had two or 20 sexual partners in his or her lifetime, and were asked to rate that peer on "friendship factors" including likeability, competence and morality.

Female participants ranked the woman with 20 sexual partners more negatively on nine of the ten friendship attributes, regardless of their own sexual history. This pattern was not seen in male participants.

"What surprised us in this study is how unaccepting promiscuous women were of other promiscuous women when it came to friendships –- these are the very people one would think they could turn to for support," Vrangalova said in a press release.

Anna Breslaw at Jezebel commented that the study makes a case for rethinking how we choose to make friends, given that women denied friendship on the basis of their sex lives can lead to isolation and poor psychological outcomes.

A 2005 study found that both women and men were judged for a high number of sexual partners, but other research has suggested that women are evaluated much more harshly than men. Research from 2009 found that this was especially true in teenagers.

Women's sexuality.

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Recent research has challenged some of the long-held stereotypes about the sexes and how vastly different men and women are. This isn't to say that sex differences aren't real - it's just that men and women are actually more similar than they are different. Part of the difficulty in doing research on sex differences in sexuality is the bias that manifests itself in self-report data. Women are much more likely to underreport all aspects of sexuality, and men are more likely to overreport. How much this effects research on sex differences isn't entirely clear.

The New York Times recently published an excellent piece (despite some minor problems) about women's sexuality, in particular sexual desire. The piece is adapted from the book, What Do Women Want? Adventures in the Science of Female Desire.. It's long, but worth reading, and it mentions much of the stuff we discussed in class.

Unexcited? There May Be a Pill for That

Linneah sat at a desk at the Center for Sexual Medicine at Sheppard Pratt in the suburbs of Baltimore and filled out a questionnaire. She read briskly, making swift checks beside her selected answers, and when she was finished, she handed the pages across the desk to Martina Miller, who gave her a round of pills.

The pills were either a placebo or a new drug called Lybrido, created to stoke sexual desire in women. Checking her computer, Miller pointed out gently that Linneah hadn’t been doing her duty as a study participant. Over the past eight weeks, she took the tablets before she planned to have sex, and for every time she put a pill on her tongue, she was supposed to make an entry in her online diary about her level of lust.

“I know, I know,” Linneah said. She is a 44-year-old part-time elementary-school teacher, and that day she wore red pants and a canary yellow scarf. (She asked that only a nickname be used to protect her privacy.) “It’s a mess. I keep forgetting.”

Miller, a study coordinator, began a short interview, typing Linneah’s replies into a database that the medication’s Dutch inventor, Adriaan Tuiten, will present to the Food and Drug Administration this summer or fall as part of his campaign to win the agency’s approval and begin marketing what might become the first female-desire drug in America. “Thinking about your desire now,” Miller said, “would you say it is absent, very low, low, reasonable or present?”

“Low.” This was no different from Linneah’s reply at the trial’s outset two months before.

“When your partner initiated sexual activity over the past eight weeks, did you show avoidance behavior?”

“Yes.”

“Like earlier to bed?”

“Yes.” Linneah’s voice lurched louder; she laughed; it was a relief to talk bluntly.

“Do you have pleasant feelings when you’re touched?”

“Yes.”

Later, after her appointment, she told me that in fact she has orgasms pretty much every time she and her husband have sex — that wasn’t the problem. “There’s something that’s stopping me from wanting it,” she said. “I don’t know what it is. I can’t tell you what it is.”

Go read the rest here.

Some interesting commentary from Jezebel (link here).

First sexual experience.

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From The Mystery Box Show (NSFW language!): 

Nick Nelson opens the evening with his story at The Mystery Box Show on June 21st, 2012. Recorded live at The Brody Theater. For more stories and upcoming show dates visit http://www.mysteryboxshow.com

Many more amazing videos here. I'll post some over the term.

Feel free to share the awkwardness (or awesomeness) of your own first experiences in the reply section (anonymous posting available, as always, if you'd like).

New app: Lulu.

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From The Gloss:

Review Men Like Restaurants With New Lulu App, The Yelp Of Romance (For Girls!)

Someone once Tweeted, ”Yelp.com: explore where local illiterates have recently stopped eating.”

If you are one of the many people who find Yelp to be a source of valuable information (not in the social anthropology sense), however, you may be receptive to this new Lulu app, which is to men as Yelp is to restaurants. All you need is a Facebook profile confirming your femaleness and you can go on Lulu and review exes, crushes, hook-ups, current loves, friends and relatives. Like meat, but with abs.

According to founder Alexandra Chong, she “created Lulu because my girlfriends and I needed it.” But also because people will download and use such a service, seeing as how any technology that promotes and cultivates human vileness tends to be very popular.

Here is a description of Lulu for you, by Lulu:

Lulu is the smart girls’ app for private recommendations and reviews on guys.

Lulu takes its cues from the real world: we meet a guy and think he’s cute, but want to know if he’s the charmer he appears or really a wolf in sheep’s clothing. So we ask our girlfriends, and look him up on Facebook and Google. It’s a private, fun ritual we all indulge in, often complicated by the fact that we don’t want the guy to know we’re checking out his creds.

Enter Lulu—the first database of men, built by women, for women. Through Lulu, you can read and write reviews of guys, which are pulled from a variety of tools, questionnaires, and fun features. The reviews show numerical scores across a number of categories, putting the emphasis on collective wisdom.

[...]

But there are obviously bigger and grosser aspects than the stupid hashtags. Namely, this whole thing is really objectifying. People aren’t movies. Or restaurants. They shouldn’t be reviewed and then ranked, publicly, according to their score. That’s what Maxim does.

It’s also impressive how poorly Lulu manages to reflect on both genders. Not every woman internet stalks dudes and then gabs with her “girlfriends” about it over lemon drops or half-caff beverages or fat free stuff because life isn’t the first act of a fucking romcom. Moreover still, not everybody’s straight (though Lulu is only concerned with them). Things just harken back to a simpler time with the Lulu app, a time when men were men (with lots of money and cars and love-believing!) and women were kind of sad and desperate with no real personality to speak of. Per the brand’s press release: Lulu aims “to create a discreet, private space for girls to talk about the most important issues in their lives: their relationships.” The worst.

Though we’re certainly more used to seeing stuff like this with women as the target, we’d like to emphasize this sucks when it’s done to anyone. Regardless of gender, we’re not in favor of anything that offers a space for people to say mean things about other people* under the guise of helping… though the glossy, airheaded faux female empowerment makes it even harder to swallow.

Read the rest here.

The homepage for the app is here.

Some enterprising young man has created an app that allows men access to the Lulu database (which they can't normally access) and see their own reviews, and reviews of their Facebook friends. Check it out here.

Male bats perform oral sex on female partners.

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From LiveScience:

Male bats perform oral sex on females, apparently to make sex last longer, researchers say.

These findings, the first discovery of male-to-female oral sex in bats, match prior studies revealing that female bats perform fellatio, or oral sex, on male bats.

Scientists analyzed a colony of about 420 Indian flying foxes (Pteropus giganteus) roosting in a single fig tree in southern India, near the village of Nallachampatti. This fruit-eating bat is one of the largest bats in the world.

Over the course of more than 13 months, using binoculars and a video camera, researchers witnessed 57 cases of sex ― oral and intercourse ― usually in the morning.

"Apart from humans, bats also exhibit oral sex as a courtship behavior," said Ganapathy Marimuthu, a bat researcher at Madurai Kamaraj University in India.

Initially, males groomed their penises to go erect before approaching females. When they gently touched females with their wings, females typically moved away, and males followed. [See Video of Bats Having Oral Sex]

When the females stopped moving, the males started licking the females’ vaginas ― the act known as cunnilingus. This foreplay may help arouse and lubricate females, the researchers said.

Read the rest here.

Documentary: Virgin School.

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From the documentary description:

Virgin School follows the emotional and physical journey of a 26 year old virgin as he embarks on a unique four month course for sexually inexperienced men in Amsterdam. The course is designed to boost his sexual confidence. If he makes enough progress the course could end with him losing his virginity to one of the sex therapist coaches.

According to a recent study (by Radio 1, MTV and Durex) the vast majority of people lose their virginity between the ages of 16 and 18. However, there is a small section of society who remain virgins well into middle age. Around 4% of people haven’t had sex by the time they hit 25. James is one of them. He’s ‘never even got to first base.’ He says that ‘Being a virgin you get judged, you’re isolated, an outcast. For me losing my virginity is a rite of passage, it’s about becoming a man and feeling like everyone else, feeling that you’re not abnormal ’.

James has given up all hope of ever having sex or having a meaningful relationship with a woman but that could all be about to change as he heads off to Virgin School.

The documentary is uncomfortable to watch at times, but is also fascinating. This type of school is the sort of thing that could only happen in specific jurisdictions, and raises some interesting ethical questions.

NSFW!

Virgin School part 1

Virgin School part 2 continued

Virgin School part 3 continued

Virgin School part 4 and final