Cory Silverberg's Blog, page 11

Sex Under Unusual Circumstances

On Monday I posted my response to an About.com reader who wasn't sure about where to start again after 25 years of marriage where she only had sex with one man (who happened to be the only man she's ever had sex with).

I had to edit her email a lot as it was full of personal details, and so what wasn't in the generic quote at the top of the article was a feeling she conveyed which was that what she was facing was strange. Being past forty and starting to have a sex life again was, in her term...

Coming Back to Sex

When we're young, if we get access to any kind of sex education material it usually includes something about sexual development. We learn that as we get older our body will change. We learn that there are some things we don't do as children but we might do as adults. Often there will be a picture, showing bodies from adolescence to adulthood, in a neat progression from smaller, to bigger, to biggest.

This is one of the many ways we learn about how a human sex life progresses. But I'm growing...

Of Nuts and Pests: An April Ode to STDs

I learned in high school that April was the cruelest month. I also learned that the guy who said so was an extraordinary anti-Semite.

Now that I do so much of my learning on the Internet I know other things about April. I know, for example, that April is National Pecan Month, and that the pecan is known, at least by it's admirers as the "All American Nut". I know that April is National Pest Management Month (link is provided for verification purposes only, I don't recommend you follow it).

An...

This Day in Sex Drug History

Fifteen years ago today the FDA approved Viagra, paving the way for a new category of drugs and a marked change in the acceptability of talking about erections in public.

Well that's not exactly right. We don't actually talk about erections in public, but the double entendre and sometimes bizarre bathtub innuendos fly like never before in prime time television commercials. And parents do have to contend with questions from kids about what erectile dysfunction means often before they have conv...

Lubricant and Menstruation: The Slipperiness of Sexual Knowledge

When I answer a sex question I am usually drawing on three sources of knowledge. I always start with research. It's not that I think scientific research delivers the best, the most accurate, or the most interesting answers. It's just a habit from my academic training. I want to start by learning what a carefully designed, methodical study by scientists and other academics might tell us about the question being asked.

Next, I turn to my professional experience. I've had the pleasure and privil...

The Sex Tech Revolution That Won't Happen

Over the past few years there have been a growing number of surveys of teenagers' texting behaviors that focus on when they send texts with sexual content (aka "sexts" and "sexting").  The results vary wildly from 4% to 31% of teens surveyed reporting that they've either sent or received such a text.

A recent study published in the International Journal of Mobile Communications focused not on the behavior itself but on attitudes toward it.  The authors asked 236 adolescents about wh...

YTH Live: Annual Conference on Youth, Tech, and Health

In less than a month a unique and diverse group of youth and professionals who work with youth will converge on Stanford Court Hotel in San Francisco for what has become my favorite conference of the year. Formerly known as Sex::Tech, now YTH Live, the conference brings together people from private and public health organizations and departments, the technology sector, and a mix of academics, activists, epidemiologists, and unaffiliated thoughtful types to share their work and consider the cu...

Compromising Positions

When I hear people talking about the sexual compromises they make in their lives, I often hear about the judgement they feel from others for their decisions. Friends think they shouldn't be doing this or that, question whether it's really consensual, and suggest that a good sex life isn't a negotiation.

But there is no living in this world without compromise. So why should our sex lives be immune.

There are all sorts of sexual compromise. A compromise might involve having sex when you'd rathe...

Circumcision and Penile Sensitivity: Accepting the Data Rejecting the Premise

A new study, published last week in the journal BJU International has got me all bent out of shape. It's not the conclusions that I find troubling. The study - which involved asking 1,369 men to rate the sensitivity of their penis and then divided the group by who was and was not circumcised - delivered unsurprising conclusions. When you surgically remove a piece of skin from the penis, it has an impact on how that penis feels.

Unless the basic understanding of scar tissue is up for debate, m...

Think Producing Shaming, Offensive Sexual Health Promotion Materials Won't Cost You?

New York City's Department of Social Services has launched a new ad campaign which they say is aimed at teen pregnancy prevention. The tag line for the campaign is:

"Think being a teen parent won't cost you?"

The campaign (which you can see in full size here) includes a series of posters, an interactive texting "adventure" and apparently a video (which gratefully, I haven't seen yet). I'm including three of the posters here just to give you a sense.

So let's see what we learn from this c...