So, this paper in Nature reveals that sex is much more complex than just having XX or XY. I think an awesome followup would see if trans and/or gay/lesbian people had more of these chimeric conditions. Although, everything has potential for evil, I think this would be super helpful to parents of kids who were going to end up trans to educate themselves in order to be more supportive.

“Oh, you’re getting married? I guess your sex life is over” HYUK HYUK HYUK HYUK. It’s hilarious. Oh, wait, no it’s a hackneyed joke that’s more or less run its course. First of all, it doesn’t make sense for the segment of the population that waits for marriage for sex. Their sex life is just beginning. Second, it’s not really true. A marriage is just like any other relationship - it’s easy to take for granted, but it needs work to be maintained, much less to grow. That means satisfying each other’s needs: mental, physical, spiritual, emotional, and sexual. Given that I had a daughter, it should not be a surprise to anyone (although I know you’d prefer not to have it forefront in your mind), that Danielle and I have sex. And Scarlett was born after we were married so … yeah. That’s why I was pretty annoyed by the last paragraph of what was otherwise a pretty neat article about someone’s experience being in an open marriage and how it’s not the evil thing most people assume it is:

When I became sexually active (which I’ll loosely define as when I started trying to kiss and touch girls), here’s what I’d been told:

• School: there are tons of diseases you can get so don’t have sex
• Parents: If you have sex, make sure you use a condom to protect from aforementioned diseases as well as unwanted pregnancy. Because if you get the girl pregnant you’re dropping out of school to take care of that baby
• Church: The only proper sex is between husband and wife. Also, masturbation is a sin.

Of those, the only practical advice came from my parents. (The school helped, but I’ll elaborate on where they could have done more momentarily) In the end, I did not have intercourse until I married my wife so I guess all the authority figures in my life “won”. To be clear, my position is that the optimal sex is that between a married couple (whether you be straight or gay) or at least a deeply committed couple. Why? Because whether or not you have a religion that tells you to wait or even have a religion at all, I think sex is a special act between two people. I think sex requires trust because you’re making yourself ultimately vulnerable - you have no clothes to hide behind. Your body and your performance will be judged. And I think that the best sex is sex in which each partner is focused on the needs of the other, not their own. This is more likely to happen in a relationship than a casual hookup. And perhaps the biologists will just tell me that it’s oxytocin or some equivalent brain/body chemical, but post-sex I usually feel extremely close to my wife as though something has occurred on the metaphysical level.

[caption id=“attachment_7194” align=“alignleft” width=“455”] MRI of Clitoris converted to 3D model[/caption] First of all, it’s a complete accident of timing that this post appears next to tomorrow’s post. I wrote tomorrow’s post about a month before I wrote this one.

With that out of the way, let’s talk about one of the most interesting things I recently learned about the fairer sex and, well, sex. What you see in the image on this post is a 3D rendering of an MRI of the clitoris. The first most interesting thing about this image is that the clitoris wasn’t fully mapped until 2005! (WHAT?!?) Between the insane numbers of sexual dissatisfaction reported by women, the constant bafflement among men about how to best make sure their partners can also climax, and the awesome fact that is is the ONLY organ in the human body that exists purely for pleasure I am baffled that no one studied it this thoroughly until 2005. You’d think that, at the very least, there would be a potential goldmine for companies to help alleviate all that sexual dissatisfaction. The second most interesting thing about this image is the shape. Those of us men who’s actually taken the time to learn about women so that sex can be about both of us, not just the man, know about the nub we can see on the pelvic area. But pretty much no one knew about the wishbone shape of the internal aspects of the clitoral tissue. It’s almost like discovering that the clitoris is an iceberg and we can only see the 10% that floats above the surface of the water.

Boing Boing linked to an article about three women who worked in pin-up ar t. (While most of the images are tame enough to view at work, there are at least three drawings of fully nude women in the article, so it’s up to you) I was fascinated by this because it seems odd that women would want to contribute to the sexualization of women - at least under the narrative I grew up with. Interestingly enough, one of the artists is best known for the Coppertone Baby (which always reminds me of Miami Billboards)

John Waters was on NPR to talk about his new book, Role Models.  In the course of talking to Terry, he mentioned dealing with people with Alzheimer’s.  He asked a friend of his, a nurse who works with Alzheimer’s patients - “People forget who their family is, what they did that day or even five minutes ago.  Do they ever forget if they are gay or straight?”  And the answer was “no”.  He surmised this meant it was built in versus a choice.  Because you could forget a choice you made.  While not perfectly conclusive proof, I think it certainly adds to the idea that it is inborn rather than simply a choice.

I just wanted to free flow some ideas today since there isn’t any one thing I wanted to blog about that I felt was worth justifying an entire post.

First up, I think I’ve seen these ads on VH1 or MTv when my wife is watching them (I don’t like anything on those channels) - Elexa - a new feminine sexual line of products by the makers of the Trojan condom. As they have just launched the brand, the commercials are nice and cryptic - of course the reason for that is because Madison Avenue wants you to be all curious so that you go and check out what’s up with this product. I had no idea what it was. Looking online, I see that it consists of freshinging cloths, a lube, and some condoms. I have no idea what the freshening cloth is, but from their description using “polite” words, I think it’s a quick way to clean up after sex without going to shower. An interesting idea, although as a married man in my own house - I’d rather just get in the shower. I could understand if you were having sex somewhere else and had to be discrete or something and couldn’t shower - then they’d be pretty useful.