Cory Silverberg's Blog, page 20
March 31, 2012
How Do You Define Sex?
It's a tenent of most pop psychology and self-help advice that in order to move forward you have to know where you're starting from, and where you'd like to end up.
I see the wisdom in this advice, but I've never been sure how well it fits when the movement you're looking for is in the bedroom.
First off, I'm not sure that I like the importance placed on moving forward. How do we know that another direction might not be as fruitful a place to move toward? What's wrong with shuffling...
March 26, 2012
Bi-Coastal Sex Conferences
This weekend while I'll be following my colleagues to the west coast for the fifth annual Sex::Tech conference focusing on new media, youth, and sexual health, there's another major meeting of sexual hearts and minds happening on the east coast.
Now in it's second year, the Momentum Conference ("Making waves in sexuality, feminism, and relationships") is coming to Washington, DC, offering three days of education, politics, and good times. I've never been able to attend, but any conference ...
March 19, 2012
The Trouble with Normal
I remember many years ago having a conversation with a sex therapist. He said that one of his most important functions was reassuring people they were normal. He described client after client who would sit down in his office, often wracked with guilt and full of shame about some aspect of their sexual desires or practices, and how their entire demeanor and outlook would change once he told them that whatever secret they had been holding on to wasn't something that made them a freak. That...
March 13, 2012
Maybe Another Reason to Maybe Get Circumcised. Maybe.
This week an article published in the journal Cancer documents a possible connection between being circumcised and having a lower risk of prostate cancer. Possible, as always, is the key word here.
The study compared data from 1,754 men who were diagnosed with prostate cancer and compared them with about the same number of men who do not have prostate cancer. The researchers interviewed both groups of men in-person and asked them questions about a variety of things including whether or not ...
March 8, 2012
Friday Readings in Sex
From longest to shortest, three readings from this week in sex:
Dahlia Lithwick on the story behind the story of Lawrence v. Texas (The New Yorker)
s.e. smith on what's missing from the critique of Rush (xojane)
Elizabeth Boskey on condoms on the red carpet (About.com)
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March 6, 2012
Why Sex Matters
There are so many ways that people who identify as asexual have enriched public discussions of sexuality. Among them is the question of why sex matters to us personally. Yes, yes, we all know that certain kinds of sexual activities assist in the continuation of our species. But is that one of the reasons you care about sex?
If you're not a particularly neurotic person you may be asking, why do I need to know WHY sex matters to me? Isn't enough that it does?
This is a fair comment. And ...
March 1, 2012
When the Sex Question Isn't Why
This week's sex question came from an About.com reader who is in a great relationship and with their partner they've made a wonderful family that they don't want to lose. The problem is that her and her partner have had sex exactly one time in the past three years.
Reading her story and her questions I couldn't help but think about how we often treat the idea of a "sexless relationship" as if all relationships are the same. And how her situation was so different from some others I hear...
February 27, 2012
Sex::Tech Brings Together Leaders in New Media, Youth, and Sexual Health
March is around the corner which means so is Sex::Tech. For full disclosure I should say that I was so impressed by the first Sex::Tech conference held in 2008 that I became a volunteer board member of ISIS, the non-profit organization the following year, and I'm proud to be involved with the organization and to be attending for the fifth year in a row.
As a sex educator it's one of the few conferences that I go to every year and every year come away with half a dozen things I learned...
February 22, 2012
'Round About Sex: Can Beer be Romantic?
About.com recently reached a milestone, their 1,000th Guide. That's 1,000 actual people (not aggregators, not algorithms, not even monkeys who can type) each of whom has both some expertise and a lot of passion for a particular subject.
Most of the time I'm so busy writing sexuality information and education for my site that I don't get to look around About, beyond my own colleagues in the Health Channel. But now and then I put on my visiting coat and venture out to see what other guides a...
February 20, 2012
One Thing You Don't Need for Sex
A few weeks ago I got an email from a reader who was at a loss at what to do with her boyfriend's soft penis. She had a bunch of other questions, so I felt like I should address those first, but her being flummoxed in the face of flaccidity left me frustrated.
Without a doubt the most freeing sexual realization I made as an adult was that you don't need an erection to have sex. You don't even need a penis! I could be forgiven for thinking otherwise. It's the very crux of heterocentrism...
