A research project from Portugal has developed three standardized pornographic film clips meant for use in testing heterosexual male subjects’ ability to recognize and appropriately respond to a woman’s cues expressing consent or non-consent. Each 90-second film clip depicted the face of the same actress experiencing intercourse with an off-camera male: in one she showed […]
A new study examined the terms women use to name their genitals and their associations with genital attitudes, sexual pleasure, and genital health behaviors across both non-sexual and sexual contexts. The findings of this study provide the first empirical evidence linking genital naming to women’s GSI, sexual-, and health-related well-being, affirming that the words women […]
Women can experience exercise-induced orgasm (EIO) and exercise-induced arousal (EIA) during exercise or physical activities that are vigorous, repetitive, or demanding of core abdominal muscles, usually apart from sexual situations and without direct genital stimulation. In a qualitative study based on interviews with 21 adult women, researchers aimed to understand women’s lived experiences with EIO/EIA. […]
Conceiving of gender and sex as binary concepts is a stubborn means of categorization that has long limited human understanding of important aspects of identity and experience. In most cultures humans become binary subjects at birth in two major ways: 1) we are corralled into either male or female sexed body designations based on anatomical […]
On October 7, the US Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Chiles v. Salazar, the case challenging Colorado’s ban on counseling for gender dysphoria that does not seek to affirm gender transition as the best path forward for the patient. Much of the legal debate concerns whether psychotherapy is medical treatment (conduct that can be […]
A study of 1,513 Swedish adolescents from age 14 to 17 reveals a surprising degree of variation in sexual orientation during this developmental phase. Most striking is the fluidity of those who at some point in their trajectory identify as lesbian or gay: only 17.6% of girls and 29.4% of boys who so identify did […]
Heteronormativity is a cultural, social, and political framework that institutionalizes heterosexuality as the standard and preferred sexual orientation. Heteronormative familial discourses play a significant role in socializing children, and what makes them so influential is their ability to naturalize certain behaviors and desires. Children are taught that “this is how things are” or “how things should […]
In a defamation action brought by a man with a decades-old conviction for statutory rape involving a consensual relationship with a 15-year old while he was in his 20s, a federal court ruled against him, finding that it is “substantially true” to call such an individual a “pedophile” even though nothing in his background or […]
A study of approximately 400,000 UK and Australian adults, mostly middle-aged and older, reveals that about 1% of the population goes through life without ever having experienced any form of sexual intercourse. The study found sexlessness is associated with a range of genetic, environmental, physical and mental factors – but much still remains unclear. Among […]
Are sex dolls Immoral? Researchers at UK’s Nottingham Trent University have developed a scale to measure public attitudes toward the use of sex dolls, which have in recent years become highly realistic and are being purchased by a growing number of mainly male users. Men who obtain such dolls are commonly stereotyped as immoral, sexually […]
