MetaFilter posts tagged with sex and Salon

"challenging Casanova"

flex — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 09:02:46 -0800

Guys don't want casual sex: "This stereotype 'tells us that guys are primarily interested in sex, not relationships... This contributes to the notion that guys are emotional clods who are incapable of connecting with their partners because, hey, they’re just guys, and guys are only interested in sex.'... the Wake Forest University professor lays out the current data on young men’s sexual desires and behavior to make a case against this insidious stereotype." Salon interviews Andrew Smiler, author of Challenging Casanova: Beyond the Stereotype of the Promiscuous Young Male. More from the interview:

...When we interview adolescents or undergrads, the girls really have the impression that guys are just interested in sex, that they’re not interested in relationships. What we know is that most guys do get into relationships, they enjoy relationships, they do a lot of things in relationships that are not about sex and they’re not doing them just to put up with them in order to get sex. Guys get something out of relationships; they like relationships. If you add in the fact that average age of first marriage is something like 28 for guys, a lot of guys have the sense that this girl they’re starting to date at 17 or 19 or 21 probably isn’t going to be the one — and yet they are choosing to date. They could easily choose to just hook up — or instead of spending that money in a bar you could get a prostitute — but they’re consistently choosing to be in relationships. ...One of the ways it impacts girls and women is they get the wrong proportions. They’re told that most guys, if not all guys, just want sex, that they don’t want relationships. So we have a lot of stories and evidence that girls are putting their bodies out there and doing things sexually in order to entice guys into relationships. We’re giving girls the wrong percentages which makes them perhaps behave in ways in which they wouldn’t behave otherwise — starting your contact with somebody sexually instead of relationally, for example. [Some have argued] that because we give girls this image of boys, girls are taught to not attend to their own desires and own sexual wants. So girls’ whole sexuality is really about both enticing desires from boys and also controlling that desire. That introduces some real issues around duplicity and intention. We’re not doing girls any favors here either.

NYT: Inside the Mind of the Boy Dating Your Daughter

The stereotype of the 16-year-old boy is that he has sex on the brain. But a fascinating new report suggests that boys are motivated more by love and a desire to form real relationships with the girls they date.

NYT: follow-up to "Inside the Mind of the Boy Dating Your Daughter"

Researchers said the findings show that teenage boys really are motivated by love and a desire for meaningful relationships. But many people still don’t buy it, including, it seems, many former teenage boys... Such skepticism about boys in their teens isn’t surprising, say researchers, but it reveals more about what’s going on in the minds of adults, than of teenagers. ...None of this is to say that teen boys aren’t interested in sex. Of course they are. But adolescence can often be a lonely time, and for many boys, girls represent needed companionship, Dr. Thompson said. “Many boys are yearning to talk to somebody, but they can’t talk to their boy friends because it’s all teasing and a lot of competitiveness,” he said. “For many boys who have been a little bit lonely in the boy group, finally meeting a girl and talking to her is a huge relief.” But the widespread skepticism about teenage boys is worrisome, some psychologists say, because it may mean that boys ultimately will fulfill our low expectations of them.

*Smiler on HuffPo: Why So Bleak?

What we're missing is an understanding of why relationships are a mess. The answer is both simple and complex: we give young people very little guidance in developing healthy relationships. In common culture -- the world of the media and popular Internet content -- we get a very singular depiction of a good couple, or at least good courting, in a million variations. He makes the moves, she guides the relationship and they eventually get married and live happily ever after. Yes, there are misunderstandings and the couple almost -- or does -- break up before they come to their senses. That realization is accompanied by an (often grand) apology, acknowledgement of misunderstanding or fear and the couple lives happily ever after. In most segments of common culture, the work it takes for couples to stay together is invisible. We don't really see the efforts to identify one's own wants and the difficulty in balancing one's own needs with a partner's needs. We rarely see crises whose resolution requires more than an episode or two, and certainly not the same problem occurring over and over. We never see the resentment that builds up when one person always puts their partner first and rarely, if ever, gets their own needs met. The places where that content appears with some regularity are aimed squarely at girls and women... So what's the message? Girls talk about relationships, almost exclusively with other girls or women. Boys get to figure it out for themselves. As a result, boys and girls have very different levels of knowledge about relationship dynamics. It's no surprise some people think they're from different planets!

*Smiler on The Good Men Project: Are We Afraid of Men in Love? *an article and a discussion of Smiler's lecture on Young Men's Sex Lives: "...the sense is that the majority of young men cite emotional reasons for engaging in sexual behaviors - Smiler suggests that this runs counter to our view of most young men falling into the "Casanova" role." *Smiler on the "Secret Lives of Men" radio show: Young Men's Sexual Lives (audio, ~25 min.) *his book's website *an excerpt from the book - Chapter 5: Masculinity, Peers, and Identity

"dawn of the deed"

flex — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 08:19:03 -0800

Secrets of T-Rex sex! An interview with John Long, author of The Dawn of the Deed: The Prehistoric Origins of Sex. Long's four-part series on Evolution: This View of Life - 1) Down and Dirty in the Devonian; 2) Palaeozoic Paternity Problems; 3) From Bones to Behavior; 4) From Clasper to Penis. Also a Scientific American video ("Long discusses a fossil central to this new view of the origin of copulation and live birth: a 375-million-year-old expectant mother fish dubbed Materpiscis attenboroughi").

So She's Holding Out?

John of Michigan — Sun, 23 Oct 2005 08:09:35 -0800

Why Your Wife Won't Have Sex with You. That quack Dr. Phil says that while sex is only 10% of a marriage, it's 90% when you're not getting it. Or words to that effect. There's some truth to that. This site discusses, from woman's point of view, why a wife might not feel like sex--often for years at a time. She also goes into greater detail (with insights taken from her own life and experience) such issues as some causes and what a man can do.

Operation Affordable Coitus

Ignatius J. Reilly — Wed, 18 Jun 2003 09:28:11 -0800

It's not exactly the same as being in heaven surrounded by virgins.

Anatomy of sexual risk

The Jesse Helms — Sun, 01 Dec 2002 10:02:08 -0800

In the Trenches with Love and AIDS. An HIV-negative gay man shares why he sleeps with seropositive men and how he deals with the danger :
"When his health finally collapses, you clean his diarrhea off the sheets and floor and swaddle him in diapers against his will. When he falls into a coma, you lie next to him every night and jerk off amid the scent of looming death. Your orgasms are great. You hold his hand as his last breath slips away and then his mouth drops open and foam bubbles out. They take him away but you can't let him go yet, so you don't change the sheets for two days, and you masturbate some more."

"Terror Sex"?

BarneyFifesBullet — Fri, 21 Sep 2001 15:43:36 -0800

"Terror Sex"? Geez..."next on Oprah!", or maybe somewhere on cable.

Critics call Abercrombie & Fitch catalog soft porn.

topolino — Fri, 22 Jun 2001 00:26:39 -0800

Critics call Abercrombie & Fitch catalog soft porn. I can't comment on the catalog itself, since I haven't seen it; I just had to laugh out loud though when I read this sentence: "Boycott organizers contend the company... is wooing younger customers and using sex to popularize its image." Oh, the horror! Also striking was A&F's spin on it, calling it " the Norman Rockwell of 2001." Clearly, a divide in perceptions. Can anyone who has seen the offensive/inoffensive material in question explain why it is/isn't any different from the marketing practices of, oh, say, everyone else?

A FIFTH-grade girl at Cincinnati's Mount Airy School says at least 15 boys have been trading soda and cash for sex

mgtrott — Mon, 09 Apr 2001 22:25:17 -0800

A FIFTH-grade girl at Cincinnati's Mount Airy School says at least 15 boys have been trading soda and cash for sex with at least five girls, according to WLWT Eyewitness News. Police and school officials are looking into the allegation, which claims the students -- some as young as 10 -- were sneaking into closets to do it.

Americans 'have more sex'.

holgate — Tue, 17 Oct 2000 14:23:36 -0800

Americans 'have more sex'. No, that's not a order. But according to Durex, you're meant to be getting it more often, at a younger age. Does this say "as much about bragging as actual sexual behaviour"? Or are we just being led to think that "we are strange if we aren't thinking about sex all the time", as this Salon piece suggests?

it's just not the same on radio

mkn — Sat, 17 Jun 2000 15:34:19 -0800

it's just not the same on radio but it seems radio morning shows are willing to go to any length to get new listeners.

Whoa! What was that?

fpatrick — Thu, 15 Jun 2000 10:28:28 -0800

Whoa! What was that? Did you hear something?

Digital Diaries

fil! — Sun, 07 May 2000 15:18:37 -0800

Digital Diaries is a photo journal of sorts, detailing the sex life of the author, Natacha Merritt. I haven't seen the book or anything, but what struck me as a little odd was the interview they have with her on Salon. It seems like they purposefully tried to make her come off as completely ignorant with regard to photography and art in general.