Cory Silverberg's Blog, page 19

Talking About the Porn Talk

An article in the Times last week raised the complicated issue of talking with children about pornography. It was nice to see it there since it's been a reality for parents for years. Companies that make Internet connected technology (mobile devices, tablets, and old school computers) are increasingly marketing the devices as something suitable for young children. And plenty of parents agree.

But along with the free access to thousands of hours of kid friendly videos (thanks YouTube) and cool...

Doing It Solo

One can never know for sure what statistics about our online searching habits mean. Does the trending of a search term related to a celebrity illness or breakup "tell" us something about how much we care about that celebrity, or our health, or fidelity? Are we what we search for?

I think about this every time I look at the statistics for the Sexuality site on About.com. Millions of people visit the site, often finding me because they entered some term into a search engine. And based on a non-...

Masturbation Month Turns 17

In 1994 when President Bill Clinton fired Surgeon General Dr. Joycelyn Elders for answering yes to a question about whether masturbation was an appropriate topic to be addressed in sexual health education, many of us shook our heads. Not that we couldn't believe he fired her for it. Most of us were dismayed (or depressed) by the level of hypocrisy that would make it a forgone conclusion that she'd lose her job for suggesting that the most common sexual behavior on the planet be at least menti...

Stopping It Before It Starts: Banning Talk of Gateway Sexual Activity

Is it a sign of the apocalypse that it's harder and harder to tell the difference between so-called real news and the fake news delivered by places like The Onion or The Daily Show? It certainly makes it harder to know when to laugh and when to cry. Case in point, this item from WREG in Memphis:

Lawmakers have passed a bill changing the language of how sexual education is conducted in Tennessee.
The bill, Senate Bill 3310, focuses primarily on abstinence, but allows for comparison of contrac...

Making Meaning Out of a G-Spot

There's yet another article claiming to prove the existence of the g-spot. This one comes from a gynecologic surgeon whose website encourages patients to "regain" their "self-confidence with genetalia rejuvenation". Whether you want it thinner, thicker, plumper, or otherwise plasty-er Dr. Ostrzenski has the procedure for you.

He also managed to get access to an 83-year-old dead woman's body in Poland, and performed a "stratum-by-stratum vaginal wall dissection" on her. The results, he says, p...

Sexual Violence and Conjugal Visits

A paper published recently in the American Journal of Criminal Justice caught my attention. The report, titled "The Effect of Conjugal Visitation on Sexual Violence in Prison" brings attention to a topic that is seriously under studied among social scientists: sexual violence in prisons.

The authors, citing previous research, refer to prison sexual violence as "America's most ignored crime problem". It might seem like a small thing but I was thankful that the authors acknowledge sexual violen...

Problems Initiating Sex

Last week I got an email from a reader who wanted help figuring out how to initiate sex with her boyfriend. She explained that he always starts things up and she felt bad about that. But her desire to make things a bit more equal in the relationship was coming into conflict with her own feelings of shame around sex, which makes it hard for her to imagine taking up sexual space in a way that would allow her to initiate sex.

There's a paradox (or maybe it's a riddle, or a conundrum, I'm not sur...

Three Sexual Ways to Celebrate Earth Day

Type the phrase "ecosex" into your favorite search engine and pretty much all you'll get are for profit companies hawking their wares with a few coats of green washing. It's too bad because there's no question that many of the ways we express our sexuality leave a mark on the earth, and at a minimum it would be helpful (for us and for our planet) if we gave some thought to that.

With that in mind, here are a few suggestions of ways you might privately mark Earth Day, which is coming up this S...

You Can't Spell Awaretdness without S-T-D

Isn't that how you spell that word? As a sex educator whose work is mostly NOT about rsexually transmitted diseases my own level of awareness can always be raised. And since April is STD Awareness Month I thought I'd share the folks I regularly turn to for help and for the most up-to-date information on a part of sexuality that seems to always be changing.

First up, we have About.com's very own STD Guide Elizabeth Boskey, who manages to write about food security, trauma, non-monogamy, and cir...

Threesomes, and the Nature of Sexual Objectification

I am constantly surprised by people. You might imagine after twenty years of working in sex stores and another dozen of teaching and writing about sex that nothing would surprise me, but that isn't the case. I think the reason I am always surprised by people is because I let them talk long enough to say something that they find surprising, something they weren't expecting to ask. I find that if you let someone talk about sex, if you don't interrupt them or steer the conversation to something...