Cory Silverberg's Blog, page 24

Vulvanomics: Pleasure Not Profit

The New View Campaign is a group of educators, clinicians, researchers, and activists who, since 2000, have been working on several fronts to challenge the ways that financial gain shapes both public discussion of sexuality and individual sexual expression. They began their work challenging the way that sexual concerns get re-framed as sexual dysfunction in order to sell drugs that, until the dysfunction was created, had no market. They have held four amazing conferences in both Canada and ...

Monday Sex Data Mining

I'm way behind in my reading, but thought I'd share a few surveys that are sitting on my desk waiting for a few good hours and a clean spreadsheet to more fully understand. They might provide some needed Monday morning distractions.

Asexual Community Census Results

Two weeks ago the busy folks behind Asexual Awareness Week posted the results of a community survey they conducted called the Asexy Census. Over one month they had 3,436 people respond to the survey. They posted a summary of...

Of Accessible Sex Education and Inaccessible Partners (Part 1)

As a sex educator (who is currently non-disabled and whose life is happily infused with disability on many levels) I'm aware that most of the sex information and education I encounter that is about disability seems to be based either on what doctors or made-for-TV-movies have to say about disability and of sexuality. The options are usually something along the lines of:

It's tragic.

It's triumphant and incredible!

It's "Special". Super Duper Special.

You hear and read a lot...

Sexuality, Disability, and Ableism, Take Two

Ten years ago I co-authored a book about sex and disability. It's still a book I like, but if I had the opportunity to re-write it today it would be a vastly different read. Much of the sex education information would be the same, but the framework would be different. When I look through the book today I'm a bit pained to see how much we missed in that first effort. In particular the way that we glossed over issues of ableism and the importance of unpacking independence, dependence, and i...

Scary Sex (Toys)

As a sex educator fear is not my friend. Fear can be a powerful motivator, and if you look at a lot of sex education with a critical eye you'll find that fear is used to try and get people to change, avoid, or adopt particular behaviors. But it's not a tool I use because I don't actually see it as my job to get people to do anything in particular.

Which isn't to say that there aren't plenty of things about sex that are scary, and not in a feeling-turned-on-by-this-horror-movie kind of...

Halloween and Sex: The More Things Change

Sometimes it feels like so much has changed since I was a kid. At least when it comes to being afraid of Halloween.

When I was young we mostly feared Halloween costumes because they were toxic, flammable, and suffocating. Now we're meant to fear how they teach us all the "wrong things" about what it means to be sexy.

When I was a kid we were meant to be afraid of razor blades in apples and poison in unwrapped candy. Now there are dozens of articles and websites that help parents...

Susie Bright's Porn History Gold Mine

Christmas came early for me, and anyone else who cares about sex as a cultural production, or about our sexual history, in the form of a new book by Susie Bright. Susie Bright's Erotic Screen, Vol. 1 1967 - 1989 is a gold mine of porn history, and a funny, complicated, sometimes squirming in your seat trip through the beginnings of serious porn film contemplation.

The collection reprints all of Bright's "X-Rated Advisor" columns from Penthouse Forum, along with several essays covering...

Research on Sexual Violence Against Men with Disabilities

The numbers vary, but every research enterprise that has asked young people and adults who live with disabilities about their experience of sexual violence reports that their experience of sexual violence is substantially greater. In fact many studies around the world have found that in any given group, if you're disabled you're more likely to have experienced sexual violence than not.

Researchers and service providers who are interested in working on reducing sexual violence usually focus ...

Friday Four Sex Definitions

There are currently 154 words in the About.com Sexuality Glossary. These definitions are meant to be brief and provide a definition of a word in the context of sexuality and sexual health. But they are always among the hardest things I have to write.

Each time I start to compose a new entry for the glossary I feel unprepared. It's not that I don't have a lot to say about the way we come to define terms like desire or fetish or virtual sex. On the contrary, I could write for hours....

What's In a Number: What Counting Sex Partners Says About You

In What's Your Number the highly skilled Anna Faris does her best to keep a terrible premise entertaining. The film is about a woman who discovers that she has had more sex partners than any of her friends (she's at 19) and who doesn't want to hit 20 without finding the love of her life. Unfortunately even Faris' brilliance (have you seen Smiley Face?) can't save something as idiotically conceived as this.

Which isn't to say that people don't care about numbers. It's one of those things t...