Cory Silverberg's Blog, page 9

Saving Myself for Marriage

Over the past few weeks I have been emailing with an About.com reader who decided to wait for marriage before having sex. He made this decision, but he's worried about it. What struck me the most about his first email was his expression of doubt. This, I think, is unusual.

Not that people who try to abstain from sex don't have doubts about their choices. Like all of us, they must. But when you read about the issue of abstinence or chastity particularly in the media, you rarely find people equ...

Sex, Gender, and Us Animals: Exposing the True Crime Against Nature

Librarians are the best friends to have. I have this one librarian friend who sends me links and citations and PDFs every week to books new and old that relate to my interests. I never ask, they just arrive in my inbox, like one of those daily deal websites, except everything is free and everything is relevant (no Costco, I do not want to purchase a "survival" kit for $999.99).

Several months ago my librarian friend sent me a link to artist Gwenn Seemel's book, Crime Against Nature. The book...

Sex Toys at the ITC

This week the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) ruled in favor of Standard Innovation, the Ottawa based maker of the We-Vibe. Standard Innovation filed a complaint against LELO and its distributors, claiming that their product Tiani was a rip off of the We-Vibe.

Presumably the result will be that the LELO product will no longer be available in the U.S.

The real news here is that any manufacturer spent the time and money to protect their patent and intellectual property. As the long t...

The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly in Movie Sex Scenes

This year's Palme d'Or winner Blue Is the Warmest Colour received a lot of attention for it's depiction of lesbian sex. The author of the graphic novel the film is based on told The Guardian that she considers it porn, and was disappointed. Others, including the judges at Cannes, disagreed.

What should the measure of a good sex scene be? Is it a scene that turns you on? One that makes you think? If sex is meant to be "authentic" how is authenticity evaluated when the thing being represented i...

He Only Played a Doctor in the Movies

I was terrified when I saw Michael Douglas as Dr. Mark Bellows in the 1978 film Coma. Mind you I was eight years old, and there was a conspiracy to keep patients in comas in some weird space age room where they were suspended from the ceiling. So I think I had a right. That early experience imprinted the actor as doctor in my mind, and to this day the only way I don't think of him as a doctor is when I do think of him as a greedy capitalist pig.

Although now, thinking of him performing oral s...

Does Sex Have a Use-By Date?

Recently I was approached by a writer working on a column for a dating website. She was curious about "sexual newness" which I understood to mean how sex feels at the beginning of a relationship, and what couples could to to prolong that feeling and stave off "sexual staleness".

I'm not sure what she thought of my answers (I'll have to wait and see if I make it into the article) but I found the questions fascinating. I was particularly interested in this idea of sex going stale.

What does tha...

We Never Masturbate Alone

I'm surrounded by people and still feel completely alone.

National Masturbation Month is coming to an end and I wanted to leave on a confusing note. Masturbation seems to me to be one of those parts of sex that everyone thinks is obvious. Even the vaguest of masturbation references gets a laugh because it seems to be a shared and shame filled part of everyone's life. But masturbation is never one thing.

Sinful to some, salvation to others, it can be a form of political action, a spiritual pra...

My New Book, What Makes a Baby is Out

I haven't talked about this project very much on my About.com site, but today I'm excited and nervous to let you know that my new book is available for sale.

I wrote What Makes a Baby for the four-year-old son of one of my closest friends. He and his partner were about to have a second child and their son started asking questions about his mom's pregnancy. My friend is Trans and so he isn't biologically related to his son. They wanted a book that would allow them to share their families stor...

A Short Guide to Flavored Lube

I got my first job at a sex shop in 1987. At the time I don't know if there was such a thing as flavored, water based lubricant. What we did have was a product called Emotion Lotion. Emotion Lotion (we never called it "EL" for short, but now I wish we had) came in a shapely clear plastic bottle with a white flip top. It was thick, sickly sweet, and branded itself as the original warming lotion. Put a little on your skin, rub it in, and blow on it, and the lotion would feel as if it is warming...

At What Age Do You Become an Adult Virgin?

Growing up in the 70s I heard bad things about virgins from all sides. My friends were desperate to shed their virginity. They were excited to get to try out sex (after years of practicing on their own). But the desperation came as much from the sense that, like nerd or loser, virgin was a label you didn't want to stick.

I didn't feel that kind of pressure at home, but I was raised to understand that sexuality was something wonderful, something to be explored, and in contrast to the messages...