Naked news: why normal looking porn stars are a threat
- Why porn that women actually like (i.e. with normal looking guys like James Dean, above) makes men so uncomfortable.
- Does success as an artist bring you more sexual conquests? Yes and no, say researchers.
How different are girls’ and boys’ brains?
It’s a favorite question of ours…okay, of mine (i.e. Lo’s), and my personal answer is that yes, there are differences, but not as many or as great as our culture presumes. The bias we have as a society actually influences the development of boys’ and girls’ brains (which are elastic) so significantly as they grow that by the time they’re adults there’s much more difference than there would be if we lived in a more egalitarian, less Men-Are-From-Mars world. In other words, it’s a self-fullfilling prophecy. So while there are differences, we would do better to celebrate our similarities, or at least our potential for overlapping skills and desires and tendencies, so that both sexes don’t feel limited by narrow gender roles…
Read More »Why is sex fun?
The Discovery Channel is in the middle of airing a series called Curiosity. Current and upcoming episodes include “What Sank the Titanic” and “Is There a Parallel Universe?” Not sure how we missed the last one, “Why Is Sex Fun?” hosted by Maggie Gyllenhaal.
Read More »Naked news: Jim Carrey confesses his love to Emma Stone
- Kind of funny but mostly creepy: Jim Carrey confesses his love to Emma Stone via online video.
- Speaking of weird celebrity confessions of love, Sinead O’Connor is apparently into anal and on the prowl. (Is this just some weird performance art project of hers? One hopes.)
Masturbation study provides material for the lovers AND the haters
A recent study published in the journal Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine looked at the masturbation habits of American teenagers (age 14 – 17), and the results are likely to please both the self-lovers and those who think that adolescent boys and girls should be forced to sleep in mittens to keep themselves pure.
Read More »Survey shows Philly residents do it the least and enjoy it the most
We’re often asked what’s “normal” when it comes to sex frequency, and we always decline to answer — we hate to use the word “normal” when it comes to sex, period. That’s something that you’ve got to figure out on your own time, and we refuse to judge you (unless you like to do it while listening to Mariah Carey). But if you’d like to know what the average American is doing — at least, according to Trojan, and we admit that it might be in their interest to exaggerate our sexual activity to get us keeping up with the Joneses — then a new survey will enlighten you. It’s the Trojan 2010 U.S. Sex Census.
Read More »Top 10 reasons why Wednesdays are the best night to get laid
In a recent article for the New York Times, statistician Nate Silver hooked up with OkCupid’s Nate Rudder to determine which day of the week is best to meet someone at a bar. They came up with something called the “sexual availability index,” and found that you’re most likely to get laid on a Wednesday night. So here are our best guess at why Wednesday’s the winner…
Read More »Like surveys? Take this one about porn
Whether you’re not really into porn and only enjoy the occasional romance novel sex scene or you’re an addict whose love of Barely Legal Asian Sluts is jeopardizing your career and family life, there are three researchers from across the pond who’d love to hear from you. Clarissa Smith, Feona Attwood and Martin Barker have put together an online pornography survey that they say is “unlike almost all the previous research that has been conducted on pornography.”:
Read More »In the past, pornography has overwhelmingly been assumed to be a ‘problem’, and the only really important questions to ask about it are – how much do people (and especially children) encounter it, and how great is the ‘harm’ that it does? This research is different.
Our project is concerned with the everyday uses of pornography, and how the people who use it feel it fits into their lives. Pornography is of course a highly topical issue, subject to many opposing views and ‘strong opinions’. And we are not saying that there are no moral or political issues. But we are saying that the voices of users and enjoyers have been swamped. In fact, there is very little research that engages with the users of pornography, asking how, when and why they turn to it.
Naked News: Men used to have prickly peens
- In French tickler news: Our male ancestors had penile spines.
- Among gay men, penis size correlates with bedroom roles (the bigger, the bossier, i.e. tops).
Women have casual sex for — get this! — pleasure
It may not be news to any of you ladies out there who’ve enjoyed the thrill of a no-strings-attached hook-up, but for those who buy into the evo-psych pop notion that women are only interested in high-status resource providers rather than hotties (i.e. the opposite of men’s supposed eternal motivations) there’s a study published in [...]
Read More »Research shows a woman’s tears kill a man’s libido
Scientists have long pondered the mystery of why humans, unlike other species, cry emotional tears. A new study provides a few answers — as well as raising a whole bunch of new questions. Basically, researchers found that men who sniffed drops of women’s emotional tears became less sexually aroused than when they sniffed a saline solution that had been dribbled down women’s cheeks. The sexual arousal was measured in a number of ways, including testosterone levels, skin responses, brain imaging and also self-reporting (i.e. this study wasn’t just a bunch of guys claiming that “teary chicks are a boner killer”).
Read More »Totally unbiased study: Saving sex for marriage will improve your relationship
A new study shows that delaying sex until marriage will lead to a more satisfying and stable relationship, according to researchers at — get this — Brigham Young University. That’s the right, the university whose honor code bans porn, gay sex, sex outside of marriage, cussing, sleeveless shirts, alcohol, cigarettes, coffee, and tea (tea!) claims to have science on its side. Apparently couples who had sex the earliest — after the first date, say, or even in the first month of dating — had the worst relationship outcomes.
Read More »The best sex and love news of 2010
Yesterday we told you about the sex and love news from 2010 that most pissed us off and/or depressed us — dubious studies, dubious reporting, and rampant STDs, et al. Today we hope to put a smile back on your face with some of the love and sex news that most inspired us. You’re welcome.
- A kink study finds that the majority of men are open to fetishes once you get them behind closed doors. Just don’t expect them to dish about it over Monday Night Football.
- College gals finally close the marriage gap — new research shows that white women with college degrees are just as likely to marry as those who didn’t graduate from college.
- Okay, so yesterday we told you that the web is “luring” more women into porn addiction — but there’s a silver lining. We finally have proof that women are visual creatures too!
The worst sex and love news of 2010
Every week, all year long, we tell you all about what’s going on in the world of sex and love. Well, not quite all — you might notice that we steer clear of stories about sex crimes (because that’s not the kind of sex this site is about) and stories about teachers sleeping with their students (because we’re not Fox). But everything else, you’ll find here. Not everything we report on pleases us — in fact, some of it straight-up pisses us off. Here are the headlines and studies that depressed us most in the past year. Tune in tomorrow for the news that put a smile back on our faces.
- Economically dependent men are more likely to cheat on their female partners. We remain unconvinced that this is actual proven fact rather than just dubious study, but either way: boo!
- That “six-feet-tall” hottie you’re corresponding with online? Yeah, he’s totally lying.
The flaws in the science of sex differences
One of our biggest pet peeves is our society’s automatic acceptance — the giddy embrace, even — of the theory that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, with nary a space shuttle between them. We’ve written before on the lazy scientists who are suckers for a sexy headline about the “innate” differences between men and women, while touting the seemingly lone, reasonable voice of neuroscientist Lise Eliot in her book “Pink Brain, Blue Brain: How Small Differences Grow into Troublesome Gaps — and What We Can Do About It.” Fortunately, there are now a few other voices of reason voice that have jumped into the fray as of late: First, Barnard professor Rebecca Jordan-Young in her new book “Brain Storm: The Flaws in the Science of Sex Differences“; and then “Delusions of Gender: How Our Minds, Society and Neurosexism Create Difference” by academic psychologist Cordelia Fine. Slate has a great review of “Brain Storm” here, and below is Publisher’s Weekly succinct starred review of it:
Read More »The world’s gender inequality
The World Economic Forum recently came out with their 5th annual Global Gender Gap Report for 2010, which, according to Time magazine (Oct 25th issues), ranks 134 countries on “a percentage-based metric that calculates how much they have closed their gender gaps in education, politics, health and economic opportunity.”
Read More »No, he’s not trying to turn you gay
We are completely hooked on the dating research blog OKTrends because of how often it reminds us that the world is, in fact, a sane place — no matter how many of our politicians think that gay people shouldn’t be allowed to teach in schools or die for their country or get married or raise kids. The latest installment of research — based on OKCupid’s 3.2 million gay and straight users — is another perfect example, debunking some of the most common (and hostile) gay myths out there. For example, take the myth that “the gays” are on a mission to “convert” your precious little Johnny:
Finding the silver lining in porn addiction story
So the lurid headline in — natch — The Washington Times reads “More women lured to pornography addiction,” but we decided to find the silver lining in this news. The gist of the piece is that new research shows that women, and even — gasp! — Christian women are finding themselves “addicted” to pornography because it’s so much less risky to check it out online. (And for the record, our quote-marks around the word “addicted” aren’t meant to question the reality of pornography addiction, but rather to question The Washington Times’ definition of said addiction.)
Read More »Anal, orgasms, and advertising
One of the most popular and commented-on posts of our home site, EMandLO.com, is about strap-on sex. It’s not exactly a point of pride for us. We’re much more about the happy feel-good feminist relationship posts. And we worry that this prominent butt-sex mention is what keeps the advertisers away (of course, it could be the vibrators we peddle in our sidebar). But then we see Bank of America and Bing ads right along side Slate’s article “Riddle of the Sphincter,” about the correlation between anal sex and orgasms for women, and we can’t help but think “No fair!”
Read More »College gals finally close the marriage gap
As recently as the ’90s, Em was horrified to hear her college roommate say that she was at school to get three letters: MRS. It was said kind of tongue-in-cheek… but not completely. The ironic thing was that back then, having a college degree actually meant that a woman was less likely to get married…and [...]
Read More »How to study sex without being a sucker
As regular readers of this blog will know, one of our pet peeves is when scientific research about sex and love gets twisted and “re-interpreted” and boiled down and sexed up to make a juicy magazine or newspaper headline. (And yes, we have definitely been guilty of this tendency ourselves, at times. You try resisting when a guy in a lab coat studies sex in socks!) Which is why we love the newish column in the NY Times Style section by Pamela Paul, called “Studied.” Each week Paul takes a new study that is making the rounds — this week it was research showing that economically dependent men are more likely to cheat on their female partners — and attempts to unpack it. And — get this — Paul doesn’t necessarily take the each study’s findings at face value. Isn’t that what they used to call “journalism”?
Read More »The REAL stuff white people like
StuffWhitePeopleLike (TED Conference? World Cup? Picking their own fruit? Genius!) is one of our favorite blogs in the universe — seriously, it ranks right up there with FAILblog, even if it’s a bit of a one-note joke (but every time we leave it be for a few months, we go back and are reminded of its utter brilliance). Anyway, the dating site OKCupid, on its surprisingly fascinating OKTrends blog, decided to throw caution (not to mention fears of pandering to racist stereotypes) to the wind and examine the real stuff white people like… as well as the stuff that Asians, blacks, and Latinos like. They did this simply by parsing the data on all the personal ads in their system. The concept is both clever as well as a little bit stomach-turning.
Read More »One-night stands can so lead to beautiful relationships
Before we started writing about sex, we had no idea that so many scientists and researchers spent time so much time studying our sexual proclivities. These days we have trouble thinking of anything sexual that hasn’t been qualified and quantified and written up in a science journal.
Read More »The power of teenage love
We both went to high school in New Jersey (just a few towns away from each other, it turns out). During those late 80s days, Lo fell in love and had sex within a loving, committed, romantic relationship. Meanwhile, Em remained a virgin and sometimes ate her lunch in the bathroom. We both ended up excelling in high school, engaging in many extra-curricular activities, and going to well-respected universities.
Read More »Ask Men survey gives us hope, defies beer ad stereotypes…mostly
When we read that AskMen.com had surveyed tens of thousands of guys about everything from sex to suits, we were a little nervous. Would the results indicate that men — at least, the ones who read AskMen.com — exactly like the beer commercials say they are? We are pleased to report that our worst fears were not realized. Well, most of them. 46% of men said they’d dump a girlfriend if she got fat. But we’re going to look on the bright side and focus on the 54% of men who wouldn’t. Some other stats from the sex and dating portion of the survey:
Read More »
