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Sex in San Diego: Porn Sex vs. Real Sex – the Differences Explained With Food

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By Emilie Astolat

I don’t mind the fact that my hubby watches porn, partly, I guess, because it’s inversely related to how often we have sex. Just because I’m not in the mood doesn’t mean that he has to remain sexually abstinent. Plus, I watch it, too, when the mood strikes.

What does bother me, however, is the often unrealistic portrayal of sex that pornography perpetuates for men and women. Being a woman, I can only speak for my gender and, while porn can be fun, it definitely has the potential to take its toll on the self esteem. I mean, there are just some so-called standards I just can’t live up to.   [Read more…]

Sex in San Diego: New Pornographers Claim Their Work Is Ethical, Feminist and ‘Sex-Positive,’ But Will It Sell?

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By David Rosen / Alternet

The 8th annual Feminist Porn Awards, held in Toronto, April 4 to 6, were organized by Good for Her, a Toronto-based, women-orientated, sex paraphernalia store. Some 110 programs were submitted for such categories as Golden Beaver (Canadian content) and Smutty Schoolteacher (sex-ed).

When Carlyle Jansen started Good For Her in 1997, there were a very limited number of porn videos that appealed to her customers. “There was a narrow selection of videos, in particular those highlighting people of color, gays and lesbians, transsexuals and women with a variety of body types and desires,” she recalls.

The Feminist Porn Awards (FPA) grew out of discussions among the company’s employees to host an event that would acknowledge and celebrate diverse ways to sexually represent people, particularly women. Jansen noted that her customers wanted porn they could identify with. “They wanted movies, high-quality productions,” she said, “that did not feel degrading, were not misogynistic and turned them on rather than off.”   [Read more…]

Sex in San Diego: Could Porn Be Censored in America?

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By David Rosen / Alternet

On July 22, British Prime Minster David Cameron announced a plan by which, at year-end 2014, all UK Internet users would be required to formally register—“opt-in”—for access to porn sites on the web. Those who fail would be blocked from viewing such sites. His first step is to have Internet users install special programming filters to block access to such sites. Further, public venues like libraries, offices and cafes and nonregistered (read underage) users will be blocked from accessing porn sites.

“By the end of this year, when someone sets up a new broadband account the settings to install family-friendly filters will be automatically selected,” London’s Daily Mail reported Cameron announcing. “If you just click ‘next’ or ‘enter’, then the filters are automatically on. … Once those filters are installed, it should not be the case that technically literate children can just flick the filters off at the click of a mouse without anyone knowing.” (In the UK, like the U.S., most schools, libraries and businesses employ filters to block porn and other undesired content.)   [Read more…]

Sex in San Diego: Sex Work in America

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By David Rosen / Alternet

Three centuries before Las Vegas was founded, New York was known as sin city. It was home to drinking, gambling, and most especially, illicit sexual pleasures. One of New Amsterdam’s first sex workers was Grietje “Little Pearl” Reynies, a lively bawd or “doxie.” Taunted by seamen on a departing sloop with the cry, “Whore! Whore! Two pound butter’s whore!” she allegedly lifted her petticoat and pointed to her naked backside, replying, “Blaes my daer achterin.”

Daily media reports often headline tantalizing stories of the NYPD arresting streetwalkers, breaking up a prostitution ring, and closing storefront sexual massage parlors. “Sin” still sells. However, between 2008 and 2012, the state Division of Criminal Justice Services reports the NYPD arrested only 5,834 people for patronizing prostitutes. On average, that’s only 1,167 arrests per year, 22 or so a week – and that’s in a city with 8 million-plus adult residents and visitors (e.g., businesspeople and tourists) prowling the city streets every day.   [Read more…]

Sex in San Diego: Should You Give Your Partner Your Passwords?

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By Marjorie McAtee / Don’t Call Me Marge

Some time ago now, I was watching the Today Show one morning, because I am a glutton for punishment, and some blowhard came on and started lecturing us about how, in a good relationship, we should share our email, social media, cell phone and presumably online banking passwords with our partner because, “If you’re trustworthy, you have nothing to hide.”

Right, that’s what the NSA said. How about, if I’m so trustworthy, then you trust me.

A few minutes later, the same guy told America that we no longer need to wear socks with our closed-toed dress shoes, so that just goes to show you how well-thought-out his opinions are.   [Read more…]

Sex in San Diego: Supreme Court Reluctantly But Historically Elevates Same-Sex Marriage

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By Steven Rosenfeld / AlterNet

The Court’s narrow rulings are a big victory for LGBT rights.

The U.S. Supreme Court opened the legal door to same-sex marriage Wednesday, issuing two rulings that did not confer broad new civil rights but established that same-sex marriage must be treated equally under federal law in the 13 states that allow it. 

“The crowds are overwhelmingly ecstatic about this experience,” said Tom Goldstein, publisher of SCOTUSblog.com, describing the scene at the Courthouse. “The bottom line from the court seems to be straightforward. It was not going to announce fundamental rights for same-sex marriage, but it will uphold the rights of people who have been married… sometimes you have to listen to the music, not the individual notes.”

The Court’s majority sent the message that same-sex marriages and individuals deserve equal treatment. In the first case, it threw out a key part of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), saying it was unconstitutional on equal protection grounds for the law to say that marriage can only be between a man and a woman. But it did not declare a constitutional right to same-sex marriage.   [Read more…]

Sex in San Diego: What I Won’t Do For My Husband

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By Nadira Hira / The Good Men Project

Nadira Hira’s manifesto on marriage.

I won’t change my name. I’ve spent the last three decades making the one I have mean something. And I’d like to keep it up, thanks. Which is, I hope, a major part of why he’ll love me always.

I won’t accept a ring. I will gush over my friends’ rings, of course. I will keep my views on the fraught history and general scourginess of diamonds and engagement rings to myself, mostly. But till he too is sporting a symbol of ownership on his strong and manly hand, I won’t be wearing a bloody thing on my finger.

I won’t stop celebrating men—him, and all the others. This will be a service to our children, and given my taste—Brad, Idris, Sandman—a testament to his quality.   [Read more…]

Sex In San Diego: The Drought is Affecting More than the Water Table

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By Judi Curry

The well has run dry! There is nothing to be had anywhere. Life is a sad, lonely spiral, as the tap only trickles its remaining rust and dirt from the spigot. What the hell is she talking about, you ask? On line dating, of course!

I’ve tapped into Zoosk. I turned the spigot off on eHarmony. I cleaned out the faucet on Mingle. I prayed for a good catch at JD. I fished at Plenty of Fish. I didn’t care if I was overweight at Big and Beautiful People Meet. I didn’t lie about my age at Senior People Meet. It wasn’t my time at OurTime.com. There were no rich men at RichMen.com. There were no matches at Match.com and several other sites that I don’t remember for I was with them a very short time.   [Read more…]

Sex in San Diego: A Daddy’s Letter to His Little Girl (About Her Future Husband)

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By Dr. Kelly Flanagan / UnTangled

Dear Cutie-Pie,

Recently, your mother and I were searching for an answer on Google. Halfway through entering the question, Google returned a list of the most popular searches in the world. Perched at the top of the list was “How to keep him interested.”

It startled me. I scanned several of the countless articles about how to be sexy and sexual, when to bring him a beer versus a sandwich, and the ways to make him feel smart and superior.

And I got angry.   [Read more…]

Daughter of an Arranged Marriage

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By Monica Luhar / Alhambra Source

At the age of 19, my mother fastened a red bindi in the middle of her forehead, wrapped herself in a silk sari, and walked seven times around a sacred fire in Karamsad, India with a 26-year-old man she hardly knew.

At 19, I was a single Indian American college sophomore who certainly did not have any plans to have an arranged marriage like my parents. And a relationship was not really an option, because my parents did not allow me to date. For years, they had one strict rule: I was to focus on school until I graduated from college. Meanwhile, most of my friends were in committed relationships and some were even engaged to their high school sweethearts. I resented the rule, and felt that they were limiting me from dating because they did not have any experience themselves.

Arranged marriages have been a common practice in India — and many other cultures — for centuries, but my parents never pressured me into one. The summer after I received my college degree, my mother casually told me I was allowed to date.   [Read more…]

Sex in San Diego: Why Emergency Contraceptive Terrifies Christian Conservatives

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By Valerie Taric / Alternet

You know the 11-year-old down the street who is dividing her after-school time between the park where she gets laid and the drug store where she buys her douches? Yeah, neither do I.

But apparently a number of right-wing commentators live in a different world than we do, because in their world that girl is the reason all of us should have to show ID to get emergency contraception.

In their world, if we can get EC without showing our names and birth dates, so can she. Apparently, this girl’s fear of pregnancy is the only thing keeping her and her peers from even nastier sex lives. Think tweens gone wild. As columnist Kathleen Parker put it, “As long as there’s an exit, whether abortion or Plan B, what’s the incentive to await mere maturity?”   [Read more…]

Sex in San Diego: Marriage Is For Losers

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By Dr. Kelly Flanagan / UnTangled

You can be right, or you can be married; take your pick. I can’t remember who told me that, but I do remember that they were only half-joking. The other half, the serious half, is exceedingly important. This is why.

Many therapists aren’t crazy about doing marital therapy. It’s complicated and messy, and it often feels out of control. In the worst case scenario, the therapist has front row seats to a regularly-scheduled prize fight. But I love to do marital therapy. Why? Maybe I enjoy the work because I keep one simple principle in mind: if marriage is going to work, it needs to become a contest to see which spouse is going to lose the most, and it needs to be a race that goes down to the wire.

When it comes to winning and losing, I think there are three kinds of marriages.   [Read more…]

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