Sproutedink's List: Sexuality and Genders

"This study points to how race, class, and residence integrally shape the interpersonal sexual scripts of college students"

"We elucidated the Enjoyment of Sexualization ( ES) construct in a sample of 206 female and 118 male undergraduate students. Our male ES Scale had high reliability, and confirmatory factor analyses indicated that a univariate structure was appropriate for both men and women. ES added to the prediction of self-esteem and number of sexual partners (but not body shame) after controlling for self-objectification; gender did not moderate these relationships. The relationship between ES and number of sexual partners was moderated by attractiveness such that individuals who believed themselves to be more attractive had more sexual partners at high levels of ES. Furthermore, ES was distinguishable from the conceptually-related self-objectification construct with regard to Big Five personality. Finally, results suggested that Enjoyment of sexualization might be less harmful than self-objectification."

"Building on a long tradition of measuring cultural logics from a relational perspective, we analyze a recent survey of American university students to assess whether institutional logics operate in the lived experience of individuals. An institutional logic is an analytic troika of object, practice, and subject linked together through dually ordered systems of articulations. Using the formal method of correspondence analysis (MCA) we identify two latent dimensions that order physical, verbal, emotional, categorical, and moral practices of and investments in love. We take these dimensions as evidence of an institutional logic. The dominant first dimension is organized through talk of love, non-genital physical intimacies, and affective investment. It has no sexual specificity. The subsidiary second dimension is organized through moral investment and it has a genital sexual specificity. There is little difference between women and men, either in the way these dimensions are organized or in the location of men and women within these dimensionalized spaces. We find that romantic love has a situated material effect in terms of increasing the probabilities of orgasm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]"

Discussions around contemporary hege-monic sexual discourses on whethersexology and psychiatry are ‘remedicalising’(Kleinplatz, 2001; Nicolson & Burr, 2003) or‘overmedicalising’ (Tiefer, 1996) sex areabundant. Concerns over the increasinginvolvement of the pharmaceutical industry in funding and defining sexual ‘dysfunc-tions’ while providing a medical ‘cure’(Tiefer, 2004; Moyihan, 2003) show that the‘postmedicalisation’ era (Tiefer, 1996) is adistant aim and that feminist and LGBTQIactivism are as important now as they were inthe 1970s (e.g. APA, 1974). If this is the‘second sexual revolution’ based on themedicalisation of sex ‘…from the Victorianera to the Viagra era’ (Cacchioni, 2010, para2) then it is one that requires a vociferousfeminist and critical presence

This article discusses why it could be adventageous to be more open about sex and sexuality, how repression may lead to more risk taking among youth.

audre lorde on S&M

News media play an important role in explaining the issue of sex trafficking and may influence discourse among the public and policymakers. Understanding the ways that mass media address sex trafficking has implications for the news industry and the global status of women. This study, a quantitative content analysis, analyzed news coverage of sex trafficking in major US newspapers to understand how the issue was framed during a year of coverage. Using Entman's typology to classify the function of frames, the study focused on how news coverage defined the problem of sex trafficking and identified the remedy. The study found that news coverage of trafficking was overwhelmingly framed as a crime issue (episodic not thematic) and proposed no remedies. Most news coverage favored official sources. Survivors of trafficking and their advocates were the least heard-from sources. The authors argue ultimately that if media are to fulfill their watchdog role where trafficking is concerned, a wider range of news frames and sources is needed.

This is a good article about next steps in understanding sexual identity. Just take a deep breath and remember to take things at your own pace. You know you're queer – now let's focus on what happens next.

"Ten-year-old girls want to believe in fairy tales. Take this pledge and God will love you so much and be so proud of you, they told me. If you wait to have sex until marriage, God will bring you a wonderful Christian husband and you'll get married and live happily ever after, they said. Waiting didn't give me a happily ever after. Instead, it controlled my identity for over a decade, landed me in therapy, and left me a stranger in my own skin. I was so completely ashamed of my body and my sexuality that it made having sex a demoralizing experience"

For starters, let’s get something out of the way. Guys, good old-fashioned penile thrusting simply doesn’t get a lot of women off.

A compilation of studies conducted over three-quarters of a century and compiled by Dr. Elizabeth Lloyd indicate that only about 25% of all women reliably reach their climax during “plain” sex (vaginal intercourse with no “extras”), while about one-third rarely or never have orgasms from intercourse at all.

Many women are, however, more likely to climax if they engage in other sexual activity with their partner, such as oral sex or manual clitoral stimulation.

So how does this relate to hookup culture? Simple. Casual hookups usually consist of vaginal intercourse and a focus less on other activities that help women reach orgasm.

Add what we already know, that women are more likely to orgasm from oral sex or an oral/vaginal combo than vaginal sex alone, to this fun fact: women are much less likely to get oral sex during casual sex. During casual hookups, men get it about 80% of the time, while women are on the receiving end of oral less than 50% of the time.

"Making the purchase of sex a crime strips women of agency and autonomy. It should be decriminalized altogether
Prostitution is known as the "world's oldest profession," and whether it should be criminalized - or not - is one of the oldest debates among social reformers. Today, a growing consensus around the world claims the sex trade perpetuates male violence against women, and so customers should be held as criminals. On the contrary, it's decriminalizing prostitution that could make women--in and outside the sex industry--safer.
This modern debate has roots in Victorian England, which branded prostitutes as wicked, depraved and a public nuisance. Yet a shift in social thought throughout the era introduced the prostitute as a victim, often lured or forced into sexual slavery by immoral men.
Today, we're seeing a global shift in prostitution attitudes that looks startlingly like the one in Victorian England. Many areas have adopted or are considering what's known as the "Swedish" or "Nordic Model," which criminalizes the buying, rather than the selling, of sexual services (because, as the logic goes, purchasing sex is a form of male violence against women, thus only customers should be held accountable). In this nouveau-Victorian view, "sexual slavery" has become "sex trafficking," and it's common to see media referring to brothel owners, pimps, and madams as "sex traffickers" even when those working for them do so willingly.
The Swedish model (also adopted by Iceland and Norway and under consideration in France, Canada and the UK) may seem like a step in the right direction--a progressive step, a feminist step. But it's not. Conceptually, the system strips women of agency and autonomy. Under the Swedish model, men "are defined as morally superior to the woman," notes author and former sex worker Maggie McNeill in an essay for the Cato Institute. "He is criminally culpable for his decisions, but she is not." Adult women are legally unable to give consent, "just as an adolescent girl is in the crime of statutory rape."
From a practical standpoint, criminalizing clients is just the flip side of the same old coin. It still focuses law enforcement efforts and siphons tax dollars toward fighting the sex trade. It still means arresting, fining and jailing people over consensual sex. If we really want to try something new--and something that has a real chance at decreasing violence against women--we should decriminalize prostitution altogether.
How would this work, exactly? "Decriminalizing" may sound like a less radical step than "legalization," but it's actually quite the opposite. Decriminalization means the removal of all statutory penalties for prostitution and things related to its facilitation, such as advertising. It does not mean there are no municipal codes about how a sex-work business can be run or that general codes about public behavior do not apply, explains Mistress Matisse, a dominatrix, writer and prominent sex-worker rights advocate. Legalization, on the other hand, is a stricter regime, wherein the state doesn't prosecute prostitution per se but takes a heavy-handed approach to its regulation. "This is how it works in Nevada, for example, where legal brothels exist, but one may not just be an independent sex worker," says Matisse. Under both schemes, forcing someone into prostitution (aka sex trafficking) and being involved in the sale or purchase of sex from a minor would obviously remain a crime.
But other crimes supposedly associated with the sex trade could be reduced if prostitution were decriminalized. Research has shown incidences of rape to decrease with the availability of prostitution. One recent study of data from Rhode Island--where a loophole allowed legal indoor prostitution in 2003-2009--found the state's rape rate declined significantly over this period, especially in urban areas. (The gonorrhea rate also went down.) "Decriminalization could have potentially large social benefits for the population at large-not just sex market participants," wrote economists Scott Cunningham and Manisha Shah in a working paper about their research.
In New Zealand, street prostitution, escort services, pimping and brothels were decriminalized in 2003, and so far sex workers and the New Zealand government have raved about the arrangement. A government review in 2008 found the overall number of sex workers had not gone up since prostitution became legal, nor had instances of illegal sex-trafficking. The most significant change was sex workers enjoying safer and better working conditions. Researchers also found high levels of condom use and a very low rate of HIV among New Zealand sex workers.
The bottom line on decriminalization is that it is a means of harm reduction.
Keeping prostitution illegal is done in the name of women, yet it only perpetuates violence against them while expanding the reach of the carceral state. Decriminalization would end the punitive system wherein sex workers--a disproportionately female, minority and transgender group--are being separated from their families, thrown in jail, and saddled with court costs and criminal records over blow-jobs. It would also allow them to take more measures of precaution (like organizing in brothels) and give them access to the legal protections available other workers (like being able to go to the police when they've been wronged). Yet for Swedish Model advocates, only the total eradication of the sex trade will "save" women from the violence and exploitation associated with it.
Certainly some in the sex trade - like minors, for example - are exploited, abused and forced into prostitution, while others aren't literally trafficked but feel trapped in the industry by economic necessity. These are the people who should receive attention, and resources, from social reformers. And there would be a lot more resources to devote if we left consenting adults to exchange money for sex in peace.
Elizabeth Nolan Brown is a staff editor for Reason.com. She blogs often at Reason's Hit & Run and enjoys covering food issues, gender, Gen Y, reproductive rights, intellectual property, sex work and things people are talking about on Twitter. This piece originally appeared at The Weekly Wonk.
PHOTO (COLOR): AFP--AFP/Getty Images: A prostitute working on the street in central Oslo."

"Tomohiro Osaki
July 19--An artist arrested for distributing 3-D data of her vagina online urged the public to outgrow the perception that female genitalia are taboo or shameful, after being released from police custody on Friday.
"I believe this arrest was completely unjust and unreasonable," said Megumi Igarashi, who signs her works as "Rokudenashiko," which roughly means "good-for-nothing girl."
"I have always stuck to my artistic principles," which she said are aimed at toppling the entrenched idea that female genitalia are obscene. The perception verges on sexism, she added.
Igarashi, 42, was arrested July 12 for emailing the data to her fans, which allowed those with 3-D printers to make a precise model of her vagina, in return for crowd-funding donations that helped her complete her latest genitalia-inspired art project. She was subsequently held until the Tokyo District Court on Friday annulled her arrest and set her free late Friday night.
"I have often wondered why Japanese TV shows edit out" slang words for vagina "like it's the normal thing to do," she said, bringing up the issue of profanity. "But this is (a part of) my body, and I don't understand why it's considered obscene."
Her arrest was protested by fans and supporters, who launched a petition drive online to demand her release. Petition platform Change.org logged more than 17,000 signatures in the two days after she was arrested.
Igarashi's release Friday means the court acknowledged it was unjust in the first place, said her lead lawyer, Takashi Yamaguchi.
Authorities will likely continue the investigation and try to press charges, but Igarashi said she will stick to her convictions and fight till the end if indicted.
"I'm fighting against a society that for some reason" brands female privates as taboo, she said."

Examples of sex positive parenting

these might be worth looking into at some point when i can stomach it.

To make this point in talks to college and community audiences, I often suggest that, "Pornography is what the end of the world looks like." By that I don't mean that pornography is going to bring about the end of the world, nor do I mean that of all the social problems we face, pornography is the most threatening. Instead, I mean that pornography encourages men to abandon empathy, and a world without empathy is a world without hope.

This is why pornography matters beyond its effects in our private lives. Empathy is not itself a strategy for progressive social change, but it is difficult to imagine people being motivated to work for progressive social change if they have no capacity for empathy. Politics is more than empathy, but empathy matters. Empathy is a necessary but not sufficient condition for the work that challenges the domination/subordination dynamic of existing hierarchies, and transcending that dynamic is crucial if there is to be a just and sustainable future.

"What I've been having trouble with is this: I think I was stirred by one story that stayed with me, in which some of the men who had abused the storyteller seemed to be acting on sexual scripts that they had learned from porn. On sexual scripts that on some occasions in the past I have also engaged in: using force, tossing on the bed, calling her a good girl, choking. I think there's nothing wrong with these things in an enthusiastic and consensual context, but I think what's been bothering me is the realization that the mainstreaming avenue for these behaviors, one of the things that made these men think it was okay to force them on a woman, was the average porn video.

So many of the traumatic stories were of men behaving the way porn stars do by inflicting sexualized violence upon women. The way that we've come to accept these manifestations of sexualized violence as scot-free sexuality itself is disturbing to me. The way these accepted manifestations of sexualized violence are shared both by my sexual partners and these horrifying rapists is disturbing to me. The way that the sex positive movement seems, at times, to give all of porn a free pass.

Annnnd what's most: I don't know now how to embrace sexual behaviors that mimic the horrifying violence endured by others, when these two things (sexual expectations of me by men, and the assault on and violation of other women) both stem from the same shit misogynistic capitalist exploitative porn videos. Can any of you weigh in?"

"From another angle, Knox has spoken about the fact that we live in a sex-negative society, where women's bodies and choices are limited. In an interview with Piers Morgan, she said, "To be in porn and to be able to be naked and to be able to be free and have that sexual autonomy, it is so incredibly freeing." While this may be true for Knox, does porn really give all women sexual autonomy?

With all of these thoughts in mind, I decided to look up some of Knox's work. I was disturbed to find many videos and photos that seemed to have a twinge of non-consent present in them. In the thumbnail for one of her videos with "teen girls" in the title, Knox is topless and looking into the camera with a terrified look on her face. Another video has "facial abuse" in the title; that alone is enough to make you cringe, as abuse doesn't really imply consent. Within the first 30 seconds of that video, the cameraman asks why she's there, to which Knox replies, "because I'm a whore." A few minutes in, he asks her how she feels about women being objectified, to which she says that it's "hot as hell." That's very feminist of you, Knox."