photo by walknboston

We hope that you’re sitting down to enjoy turkey (or tofurkey) with a loved one today. But if your loved one refuses to partake in the holiday celebration, we thought you should know that — acccording to a New York court, at least — that’s not as bad as refusing to partake in sex. Okay, that sounds fair enough, you might be thinking: turkey and sex — not exactly a fair trade. But what if your partner refused to celebrate Valentine’s Day, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, your birthday, and Thanksgiving? What if they refused to eat dinner with you ever? What if they wouldn’t even be your date for a trip to the E.R.? Yeah, now that sounds as bad as withholding sex, right? Worse, even? Except that it doesn’t officially qualify as “abandonment” in the eyes of New York law. Nope — to do that, you have to refuse to have sex with your partner for a full year. So spare a thought for Mrs. Davis — of Davis vs. Davis, natch — this Thanksgiving. After 41 years of marriage, she still doesn’t have a date for the holiday. Here’s hoping that all of you get turkey and a good stuffing this year.

MORE FROM EM & LO:

• Pine-Sol Ad Jumps on Housework-Improves-Sex Bandwagon
• 10 Ways to Win Over Your Partner’s Parents This Thanksgiving
• Do Men Imagine Sex with Every Woman They See?

photo via erix!

We admit, genital art isn’t really our thing. We’ve seen our share at downtown art shows (and, ahem, on our own TV show in the U.K.), and, while we’re glad that people are out there creating work like this, we don’t have any hanging on our walls.

That said, we totally, absolutely, 100% understand how important genital art is in helping both women and men understand what sex organs really look like outside of the porn world. As porn increasingly becomes a source of sex education, and as women feel pressured to dye, bleach, and pluck their way to the perfect look — or even, god forbid, go under the knife to get it via labiaplasty — images of real, average vulvas become more important than ever.

READ MORE >>

You know all those questions that you really want to ask when you meet a lawyer at a cocktail party? But you restrain yourself because you figure it’s not polite to ask a complete stranger whether you could get sued if you broke someone’s penis during sex. Well, our friend Robin Epstein and her sister Amy Epstein Feldman have written a book to save you the embarrassment: So Sue Me, Jackass! Avoiding Legal Pitfalls That Can Come Back to Bite You at Work, at Home, and at Play. “At Play” being our favorite topic, of course — like, who gets to keep the ring in a broken engagement? Are you really “common law married” if you live together for seven years? Can you claim temporary insanity and get out of your marriage if you were drunk when you said “I do”? And why the hell do mattresses have tags that say “Do not remove under penalty of law”? Anyway, about that broken penis…

READ MORE >>

photo by steakpinball

We have a special place in our hearts for Sherri Williams: the owner of a sex toy store called Love Stuff in Hoover, Alabama, she has been fighting her state’s ban on sex toys since the law was enacted in 1998. Yep, you read right, 1998: this isn’t an antiquated law Williams is trying to scrape off the books, it’s a shiny new law to keep all good vibrations out of Alabama. Sadly, her 11-year legal battle just hit a dead-end in the state’s Supreme Court: They voted 7-2 to reject a challenge to the state law that bans the sale of sex toys except for limited purposes.

READ MORE >>