For example, I never realized how monogamy-centric the majority of American fiction is — books and movies — until I delved into adult communities online. There, many people explore alternative relationship styles like polyamory and group unions, in the relative anonymity of the internet. In that realm, it is “safe” for men to be emotional and for women to have sexual desire and multiple partners.

(If you have ever wondered why so many awesome men love Heinlein and remember clearly the lessons they learned about sex and love from him as adolescents, before cultural realities kicked them in the balls as adults, the answer might lie herein.)

Dr. Charlie Glickman provides some interesting commentary on the language choices in a Time Magazine article about emotional openness and male mental health.

Emotional Skills Help Men Live Longer | Good Vibrations Magazine

Anytime boys or men step outside the box of being a “real man,” we run the risk of being fag-bashed. In many ways, this is comparable to slut-shaming women. In both cases, when someone violates the rigid boundaries of gender by doing something that the “other group” is allowed to do (for men, showing emotions; for women, wanting to have sex or multiple partners), they get attacked, shamed, and assaulted. And even when reporting on research that shows that these inflexible rules cause problems for the people who comply with them, the writer still managed to get some digs in at men who don’t fit the stereotypes.

I think the Time Magazine article uses phrases like “mama’s boy” and “stop sniveling and ‘be a man’?” deliberately, to draw attention to cultural attitudes about masculinity, to create just enough controversy to drive traffic to the story without pissing off the advertisers, and to be humorous. I like to the think that the author wants to show how easy it is to reinforce the repression of natural male instincts — including the expression of tender emotions, the ability to form deep bonds with other men, and respect for their mothers as people not just objects in need of protection and reverence — simply by using common American sayings.

I might be projecting based on my own language choices in certain Sex Drive columns. Also, I have some experience with the pressure editors and publishers can apply, encouraging one to push buttons so that bloggers will be offended and write posts about (and therefore link to) the story. Maybe it’s wishful thinking on my part, seeing benign and even benevolent motives that aren’t actually there.

But I noticed that the title bar says “Emotional Openness May Be Good for Your Health,” an accurate summary of the article content, genially and neutrally expressed. Very likely, this was the original headline, entered into the meta data fields of the publishing tool.

Then a copy editor came along and said “well, gee whiz, this is the blandest title I’ve ever seen,” and changed the headline to its current rabble-rousing state: “Being a Mama’s Boy: Good for Your Health?”

Which one are you more likely to click?

The one that creates an emotional response, of course.

I figured it would, as the OhMiBod toys vibrate in response to audio, whether music or voice or random environmental sounds (depending on which toy you get). But you never know for sure unless you ask, so I called and spoke with co-founder Brian Vatter. “People already love to use the [wireless OhMiBod] Freestyle for voice, and adding video is remarkably relevant to the conversation,” he said. “It adds that third dimension. It’s a perfect fit.”

We also talked about Steve Jobs and his efforts to protect you from pornography and sex, and the struggle to get OhMiBod apps into iTunes, and whether Brian will be developing apps for Android OS in the near future. (You don’t need an app to use OhMiBod vibrators with any music player, but that’s not the point.)

In the meantime, Debby shares her experience and offers tips for getting the most out of your iThingie.

The Best (Phone) Sex of Your Life
The first thing that strikes you about FaceTime is that the image quality is incredible. Instead of some blurred-out cluster of pixels, your partner looks touchably real. You can see small movements and subtle expressions quickly flitting across faces. The second thing that subtly blows your mind is actually something you don’t notice: Because the screen and camera are essentially in the same place, you end up looking at your partner directly, skipping that weird sensation that you’re both staring at some point off in the distance. This leads to gazing, to intimacy, to locked eyes searching for glimmers of love, sadness, hurt, or mischievous excitement. And we all know where that leads: It’s a direct flight to Gettin’ Busytown.

[[Update: Debby posted her "author's cut" review on her own site, with more juicy details. Click here to read it at MySexProfessor.com.]]

iPhone Owners Have the Most Sex Partners
OkCupid looked at the data hidden in the images that users uploaded as profile pictures to see which cameras were used to take them — including smartphone cameras. With many of the site’s users also having taken personality tests like “The Dating Persona Test” or “The Slut Test,” which ask for a count of sexual partners, the site was able to cross-reference that data to complete the study.

Maybe it’s because Steve Jobs is doing his darndest to protect you from porn on your iPhone, so you end up pursuing more sex rather than tucking in with mobile porn like Droid users can. Maybe it’s because people who seek sexual novelty by having more partners are also early adopters of new technologies — or at least, hip new communications devices (perhaps to keep up with all those partners) — and so they already had iPhones when the Droid came out.

Or maybe iPhones make people more attractive and act as tractor beams for new sexual partners. Maybe I need to get a t-shirt that says “I loved my partners before they got iPhones”?

Meanwhile, I’m happy with my Droid.

DISCOUNT/COUPON CODE: SexRev2.0

It’s good for 10 percent off one order and you can only use it once, so don’t waste it on something cheap.

EstaNoche’s selection is smaller than some stores but it’s because they’re focusing on all the best stuff (yes, I consulted a bit on that too; you’re welcome) and of course they only launched a month or so ago so the catalog is still growing. But they’ve got OhMiBod, nJoy, Aneros, Tenga, Fleshlight, Sqweel, Red Hot Touch videos and books, Tristan Taormino’s videos and books, and these really pretty stick-on body bling things from Bijoux Indescrets that I bought but have yet to try on.

I’m having a great time writing for them — in Spanglish, no less, as we are being playful with the language. I’m picking up muchas palabras I did not learn in la escuela (lo siento, señor Contreras, y no es necesario afilar mi lápiz o ir al baño.) I’m ex-Hispanic by marriage and I now regret that I was too shy to talk dirty in Spanish to mi esposo.

But setting my relationship status will only complicate, not clarify. I’d rather people talk to me. Otherwise they might make assumptions about my interests, availability, or partner(s) based on their own interpretations of the multiple choice options.

Kelli Lawless has a thoughtful article on her Dating and Mating in America blog about What It Means when you do, or don’t, publish your relationship status in social media.

Will you change your relationship status?
For those who live and breathe social media, this little click of a button signifies a one-line piece of big news. But for people who are skeptical of the value of sharing their life with a world of partial strangers, changing that status can be a make it or break it moment in every relationship.

The real problems arise when you are dating someone who feels differently than you do about shouting out to the world that you are in a relationship. If you’re a little in doubt as to where your boyfriend or girlfriend falls on the “status change” issue, here are some tips on how to spot and communicate with the 4 most common types of social media attitudes.

Are you transparent? Cautious? Burned? Not gonna do it? Let her know in the comments.

Super squid sex organ discovered
The mating habits of deep-sea squid have been revealed for the first time, after the discovery of a male squid with a huge elongated and erect penis.

The male squid’s sexual organ is almost as long as its whole body, including the squid’s mantle, head and arms.

That shows how male deep-sea squid inseminate females; they use their huge penis to shoot out packages of sperm, injecting them into the female’s body.

The discovery may also help explain how giant squid mate in the ocean depths.

[snip]

“Obviously a strongly elongated penis is the solution,” says Dr [Alexander] Arkhipkin.

Isn’t it always?

But before you whip out that credit card, you might want to consider the history of the domain. First it was stolen from Match.com founder Gary Kremen by con man Stephen Cohen. Cohen exploited the domain for millions of dollars before the court system finally decided that domain names could be worth something. But by the time Kremen won a lawsuit against Cohen, the thief and the money had already left the country.

Now the domain is for sale because the current owners — who paid “an estimated” 14 million dollars for it in 2006 — have gone bankrupt.

According to the report, which looked at a representative sample of around four million extracted URLs, adult content on the Internet increased by 17 per cent in the first quarter of 2010, as compared to the same period in 2009. Web sites related to the online role-playing games RPGs, such as World of Warcraft; Final Fantasy and Grand Theft Auto 4, have grown by more than 212 per cent in the first three months of 2010. Web sites that contain violence have grown by 10.8 per cent, terrorism content by 8.5 per cent, and illegal drugs purchase by 6.8 per cent, and are continuing to grow, according to to the study, although it failed to define what it means by these terms.

via Over a third of the Internet is pornographic | THINQ.co.uk.

In discussing this report with a friend, he mused “I wonder if that corresponds to real life. If we spend 37% of our meatspace thinking/doing/fantasizing” about sex.

What do you think? Do you?

Why Porn and the iPad Are Key for HTML5
The emergence of HTML5 is largely being spurred by the iPad and its big, high-resolution screen, which offers a far more immersive (read: porn-friendly) experience than any handset can deliver. So adult sites are moving quickly to re-encode their video content for the new, video-friendly device.
[snip]
Mobile porn has never found much of a market here in the U.S. thanks to carrier prohibitions and handsets that make for poor platforms to view it. The rise of the iPad will change that, though, providing an easy way for users to access adult content online wherever they are. And there’s no question that demand for online porn is immense: the worldwide adult web industry has an estimated value of $37.2 billion. The rise of the iPad will only fuel that fire.

I don’t know where that figure of $37.2 billion comes from, and my sources within “the industry” say that numbers like that are usually exaggerated. But it’s only fitting to let porn in through the back door, considering Apple’s reluctance to carry adult-oriented applications and content openly, not to mention its inability to define its “adult” standards with any sort of consistency.

According to Gigaom, porn studio Pink Visual is already on board with HTML5, and DIY porn exchange YouPorn is encoding everything for the new standard. Gay site RocketTube was well ahead of the game, ready with its shiny new HTML5 video before the iPad even launched. All this despite known security issues with HTML5.

I guess we’ll find out what’s more important to consumers, content security or easy access to porn. I know which way I’d bet.

Have you ever accidentally typed your obsession’s name into the status box and published it? What happened next?

New Research on Vibrator Use.

…researchers Michael Reece and Debra Herbenick along with colleagues from Indiana University (and one self-interested researcher from Trojan) recently published two studies on vibrator use in the Journal of Sexual Medicine and they represent a quantum leap in research quality and methodology. The studies involved just over 2,000 women and 1,000 men, all U.S. adults, and were conducted online, using a nationally representative sample from the company Knowledge Networks.

The most surprising and significant finding in my mind is the number of people who use vibrators. 52% of women and 45% of men report having ever used a vibrator.

Cory quotes several of the results, such as that the majority of women report no negative side effects, that the majority of males used vibrators with a partner, and that vibrator use corresponds with higher levels of sexual confidence and health.

I signed up for the free trial period at PinpointsX, installed PPX-to-Go on my Droid, and found that it works as described. All the users who met my picky criteria showed up on the map, along with bars, restaurants, theaters, adult stores, and other venues. Users who did not meet my criteria did not appear.

The criteria you can set is extensive enough to be comical, including not just hair and eye color and weight, but also physical endowment.

I found several users within an hour’s drive of my home. Now, I don’t even live in a town any more. After 20 years in San Francisco and Los Angeles, my new home is in a “Census Designated Place” with a population of 1400. “Going into town” means driving 10 miles to the whopping metropolis of 11,000 people. (Er, for those who didn’t know, after retiring from Wired, I moved to the mountains of northern California for a sabbatical…and stayed.)

Imagine how many icons would be on my prospecting map if I were in a hip city like New York, Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, or Austin.

Ronen’s goal is to “close the triangle” and give users one place to handle all aspects of the pursuit of sexual happiness: Find and chat with a compatible lover or performer, make restaurant reservations, find live music or a strip club or other entertainment, make hotel reservations, buy a plane ticket, get directions from place to place. All communication is encrypted and private so your phone number and other information is not exposed.

Ronen is targeting most of his marketing campaign toward women, knowing that if he can get the girls to sign up, the boys will come. “Our research showed that women have three main reasons for using adult social media,” he says. “One is to be empowered to choose partners based on what she wants, not just on who happened to show up at a bar that night. Another is to add spice to her life. Maybe she even has a husband, kids, a career, but she wants to feel that thrill of something outside of all that, the thrill of fantasy. Another is opportunity — find someone you like and just go for it.”

But he is also firm about embracing the power of “and.” He believes the application provides a good screening mechanism along with the convenience of being able to set the stage for our fantasies, no matter what our gender, sex, orientation, kinks, desires, or hopes might be. “We tried to cover everything. We have 50 different icons.” (The icons represent who users are and what they are looking for.)

But he also knows that not everyone is going to find a compatible lover just like that. “You can enable the ability [in your profile/criteria] to view professionals on the map, like if you want to go get a lap dance, or a Chippendales show, a swinger club,” says he. “No one goes home unsatisfied.”

I see PPX as a good fit for those who require an additional layer of discretion in their search for sex. It’s a natural partner for Ashley Madison (an online dating site for married people seeking extramarital lovers) or Alt.com (a dating site for kinky people) or escorts and other professionals. It’s great for those impromptu urges when traveling away from home, especially if you just want to pop out to an erotic club.

The PPX app is free, but the matching service ranges from $10 to $24 per month, depending on the length of service.

Will women pay $120 for a year in advance just to streamline their casual sex encounters? Maybe not. But there were a couple of years in my life where the all-in-one, location-aware adventure planning would have been worth the price of admission, whether I intended it for sexual purposes or just a night out.

“We want to be classy,” says Ronen. “This is a community of people who want to spice up their lives. It’s not pornographic. Every person can find a person who can help fulfill their fantasies.”

Je Joue’s G-Spot Resource
The resource has all five of us answering a bunch of questions about g-spots such as how to find it and what to do when you get there, along with a list of stores that are participating in the “the g-spot does exist!” campaign.

How that moment has any bearing on her current abilities, I don’t know. She’s a singer-songwriter and former model, for chrissakes; I’m sure she didn’t expect to marry the president of France.

What were you doing 14 years ago? Are you the same now? I know I’m not. Nor am I capable of living my life as if my future political enemies are watching, so I’m glad I have absolutely no ambitions to go into public office, civil service, or pre-K to 12th grade education.

FDA considers endorsement of drug that some call a Viagra for women
A German pharmaceutical giant wants to sell a drug with the decidedly unsexy name “flibanserin,” which has shown prowess for sparking a woman’s sexual desire by fiddling with her brain chemicals.

Some issues under discussion are the potential for abuse, the ability of a drug company to create diseases and then medicines to fix them, and the concern that waning sexual desire is a natural process that we should not interfere with.

Ack, really? You mean like wrinkles, arthritis, or dementia?

If it works, think of all those individuals who will be quietly humming and smiling as they go about their daily business, basking in the glow of renewed passion, closeness, and intimacy. We’ll be way too relaxed to worry about whether we have just allowed a pharmaceutical company to dictate to us what “normal” is and to sell us a medicine to make sure we meet their criteria.