Cory Silverberg's Blog, page 25

What Defines Sexual Expression?

The term sexual expression gets used a fair bit in by people who work and advocate for better access to general health and human rights for people around the world. But what exactly does it mean? What does it mean to say that people have the right to sexual expression? Is being sexual the same as sexual expression?

One of the problems with all sexual definitions is that they are framed by other definitions. I'm sure there's a Latin word for this, but the only ones I can come up with at...

Real Sex on Film

In 2005 the folks who run Hot Docs, the largest documentary film festival in North America, approached me with an idea. They wanted to have a retrospective of the best sex documentaries from around the world. At the time I was working with a television production company that was producing a weekly documentary program all about sex. So I jumped on the chance.

I didn't quite realize how many bad documentaries there are out there about sex, and how when it's a topic you love, seeing a bad d...

Sex Toy Review: The Gossip Ring

Over the years sex toys have been called a lot of different things. We've called them romantic products, sexual aids, sexual health enhancers, marital aids, adult products, adult novelties, the list goes on. When I started working in sex stores, in the late 1980s there was a concerted effort on the part of the more political sex shops to change the language around sex toys.

Why, we asked, do we have to hide our sexual desire behind mugs, wind-up penises, and the idea of novelty? Why is ...

New Research on Sexual Counseling after Prostate Cancer Treatment

Researchers and clinicians from the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center published a study this week in the journal Cancer describing research they conducted looking at how effective counseling is in improving couples sexual satisfaction after prostate cancer treatment. The bottom line, not surprisingly, is that something is better than nothing, but we're still not doing a great job at figuring out how to support couples in enjoying sexual expression following treatment that...

Celebrate Sexual Freedom Day

For the past few years the Woodhull Sexual Freedom Alliance has been marking September 23rd, the birthday of their namesake, Victoria Woodhull, as Sexual Freedom Day.

They present a day of educational sessions in DC along with a sexual state of the union, focusing particularly on the many ways that sexual rights and freedoms are curtailed in the U.S. And this year they are ending the day by awarding three individuals with the Vicki Sexual Freedom Awards. This years recipients are Ajamu...

The Sounds of Porn

I was flipping through eMusic the other day searching for musicals and I came across an entire disc of orgasm sounds. That didn't surprise me so much, but I scrolled down to the bottom of the page where the site links to relevant YouTube content, and that's where I found "Meet The Old Lady Behind The Sounds In Porno Flicks!". I was annoyed by the isn't-it-freaky-when-someone-over-30-does-sex-work tone of the headline, but intrigued by what it could be, so I clicked.

It looks like a clip f...

Sex Toy Review: Ola Vibe

Everything is relative. What you loathe in one person or situation, you might welcome in another. I, for example, really hate being sold to. If someone is pushing me to buy something, or to believe that whatever it is they are selling is something I need, I shut down and walk away just as fast as my submissive Canadian manner allows me to (which usually means I'm standing there for another 10-15 minutes after my American friends have gone).

But that same enthusiasm for the sales pitch...

Down in a Sex Hole

When you worry about your sex life, what is the thing you worry about most? You may worry about not being able to "perform" (as if sex were always a performance, and you an actor). You might be worried about losing the person you like to have sex with the most (who may also be the person you love the most and like to do other things with the most). You might be worried that you'll never find someone you like to do anything sexual with, or someone who wants to do sexual things with you...

First Hollywood Does Vibrators, Next Up Sexual Surrogates and Disabled Folks

One doesn't turn to Hollywood for complicated stories, and as I'm girding myself for the onslaught of articles about how Victorian women were just like us, only much more uptight, and how far we've come, courtesy of the new movie about vibrators, I'm crossing my fingers that someone who is connected to poet and journalist Mark O'Brien is involved in the upcoming movie about his experiences with a sexual surrogate.

The surrogate is being played by Helen Hunt, and John Hawkes is playing...

Sex Toy Sides

In the retail sex toy industry lubricant is often considered something of an add-on sale. It's the sex toy store equivalent of asking "do you want fries with that" to ask "do you need lube?" It's a little sad for the lube, because really it does so much that it deserves center stage once in a while (sort of like when the french fries are better than the veggie burger). But maybe that's why they call lube "nature's second banana".

As the lubricant market grows (thanks mostly to aging baby b...