Cory Silverberg's Blog, page 10

Onanistic Inquiries

A few weeks ago an issue of New York Magazine featured a story about men who were quitting masturbation and finding solidarity and guidance on a Reddit forum called "NoFap". The piece was a mess of misinformation and confusion. It referenced to faddish research ("Your Brain on Porn") and conflated sexuality, desire, gender identity, and gender roles. All of this made it a pretty accurate reflection of many mens understanding of their own sexuality, and a good reminder of why things rarely get...

Onanistic Inquires

A few weeks ago an issue of New York Magazine featured a story about men who were quitting masturbation and finding solidarity and guidance on a Reddit forum called "NoFap". The piece was a mess of misinformation and confusion. It referenced to faddish research ("Your Brain on Porn") and conflated sexuality, desire, gender identity, and gender roles. All of this made it a pretty accurate reflection of many mens understanding of their own sexuality, and a good reminder of why things rarely get...

National Masturbation Month Comes of Age

It was back in 1995 when a group of political sex shops came together to do what they always did best: combine consciousness raising with politics with pleasure. National Masturbation Month (NMM), and the month's main event the Masturbate-a-Thon were inspired in part as a response to the firing of Surgeon General Dr. Joycelyn Elders for daring to suggest that masturbation might be something that should be mentioned in school based sex education.

The month was also a tongue-in-cheek response t...

Envisioning a New Model of Mental Health (Sort Of)

Last week the National Institute of Mental Health made a significant announcement: they will no longer be prioritizing research proposals that are framed around categories of mental disorders promoted by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, also known as the DSM.

The announcement, which I first read about on the excellent Mind Hacks blog, comes two weeks before the American Psychiatric Association is set to release the newest iteration of the DSM, the DSM-5. I'm sure the...

Weekend Reading - Sex Across the Lifespan Edition

I've been spending most of my time reading off line these days (gems including Nevada and Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe) which means I have a lot online reading to catch up on. Here are three pieces that cross the lifespan and are open in my browser as I type this:

Canadian Women's Health Network: Adolescent Sexuality: Out of Hand?

Wonders & Marvels: Masturbation and the Dangerous Woman

The Globe and Mail: Facts & Arguments: I'm a sexually liberated woman,...

Parsing Porn's Influence

A study, to be published this month in the Journal of Sexual Medicine has been getting surprisingly little coverage in the US. The paper, titled "Does Viewing Explain Doing? Assessing the Association Between Sexually Explicit Materials Use and Sexual Behaviors in a Large Sample of Dutch Adolescents and Young Adults", tries to examine the influence of watching pornography (which is currently being called sexually explicit material or SEM by researchers) on sexual behaviors among teens. The res...

New Resource: Sex Work in Canada

As a Canadian who spends a lot of time in the US I often find myself answering questions and trying to explain differences in laws and customs between that country and this one. These conversations always start with a reminder of the kind of settler privilege that makes talking about borders and customs seem like natural or fixed concepts, when in fact they are very new and always changing.

But in short order we end up talking about sex. I never know what to say. Or more to the point I never...

Phrase of the Week: Uncircumcised Penile Environment

One of the first things I look at when I receive the New York Times email digest every morning is the quote of the day. I like reading the quote first and thinking about what it might be before letting my eyes read on, beneath the quote to the speakers name and the context.

Words can cause us so much trouble and so much pain, but they can also be a whole lot of fun, and phrases out of context make me giggle and excited in the ways that words like "penis" and "boobies" once did, before I start...

Sexuality and IBS Awareness Month

If you're wondering what on earth Irritable Bowel Syndrome Awareness Month has to do with sex, chances are you don't have IBS and have never had a partner who has it.

If you had IBS, or have ever slept with someone who lives with it, you'd know that having uncooperative bowels doesn't change much in the realm of sexual desire and interest. At least not right away. Eventually ableism, which describes the many ways that the world excludes any of us whose bodies don't conform to mostly unrealist...

Questions with Answers

Sex doesn't lend itself well to simplicity. There really isn't any aspect of sex or sexuality that isn't in some ways a shifting landscape, with fuzzy boundaries and plenty of territory that is not only unchartered but completely unobservable.

When I'm thinking of my own sexuality or sex life I tend to forget this. Like most of us my mind does tricks to make meaning and find patterns and consistency among the chaos.

But as soon as I sit down to answer a question about sex it all comes back. T...