#human sexuality

[foldingfittedsheets]

When I was getting my associates degree I took a course on human sexuality. It was really fascinating and wonderful. One of our assignments was to write about the first time we ever masturbated which was very uncomfortable and silly at the same time.

Mine was extremely boring because there’s nothing exciting about a five year old realizing that climbing the fire pole feels really good.

I told a coworker at the time about the assignment and she laughed and told me about her daughter. They had these really old dining room chairs with carved legs. The chairs had smooth wood bulbs going up them that the kid loved to rub on.

Her mom didn’t want to dissuade her or make her ashamed but she also needed to establish that masturbation should always be private. So she talked to her daughter and explained that she could do that but must do it in her room alone.

The result of which was that everyone was aware the girl was going to masturbate when she dragged the chair into her room to be alone with it.

My friends was my favorite though, because his discovery was in stages. He liked it when his penis would get hard as a kid because it meant he could grab it and pretend to be flying a helicopter. His aha moment was when this happened once in the shower and the grabbing plus soap made him realize something else might be going on.

That was funny on its own, but nothing could match when in the most betrayed tone he said, “It was so much more fun then, before stuff came out at the end.”

#ramblies #ffs foibles #funny #human sexuality #there were some stories that were much more smutty because people realized as adults #but a fair number of the class had kid stories #story #writing #funny story

[haggishlyhagging]

Were anti-porn feminists being hysterical? Censorious prudes? In the age of internet porn, DVDs and video cassettes, let alone centerfolds and seedy theaters, can be joked about as nostalgic throwbacks. It may seem to some, looking back, that feminist anti-porn campaigners must have been overtaken by anxiety about a mass culture that was becoming more open about sex, and that was quite capable of separating fantasy from fact. Feminists, anxious about sex under patriarchy found it easier, a group of pro-porn feminists wrote in 1983, “to attack the picture of what oppresses us than the mysterious, elusive . . . thing itself.” The implication is that anti-porn feminists were overestimating the power of porn: they had lost perspective. But what if the true significance of the perspective of anti-porn feminists lay not in what they were paying attention to, but when? What if they weren’t hysterical, but prescient?

It was my students who first led me to think about this question. Discussing the "porn question" is more or less mandatory in an introductory class on feminist theory. But my heart wasn't really in it. I imagined that the students would find the anti-porn position prudish and passé, just as I was trying hard to make them see the relevance of the history of feminism to the contemporary moment. I needn't have worried. They were riveted. Could it be that pornography doesn't merely depict the subordination of women, but actually makes it real, I asked? Yes, they said. Does porn silence women, making it harder for them to protest against unwanted sex, and harder for men to hear those protests? Yes, they said. Does porn bear responsibility for the objectification of women, for the marginalization of women, for sexual violence against women? Yes, they said, yes to all of it.

It wasn't just the women students talking; the men were saying yes as well, in some cases even more emphatically. One young woman pushed back, citing the example of feminist porn. "But we don't watch that," the men said. What they watched was the hardcore stuff, the aggressive stuff—what is now, on the internet, the free stuff. My male students complained about the routines they were expected to perform in sex; one of them asked whether it was too utopian to imagine sex that was loving and mutual and not about domination and submission. My women students talked about the neglect of women's pleasure in the pornographic script, and wondered whether it had something to do with the absence of pleasure in their own lives. "But if it weren't for pornography," one woman said, "how would we ever learn to have sex?"

Porn meant so much to my students; they cared so much about it. Like the anti-porn feminists of forty years ago, they had a heightened sense of porn's power, a strong conviction that porn did things in the world. Talking with my graduate teaching assistant after that seminar (she was a handful of years younger than me), I realized what should have been obvious from the start. My students belonged to the first generation truly to be raised on internet pornography. Almost every man in that class would have had his first sexual experience the moment he first wanted it, or didn't want it, in front of a screen. And almost every woman in the class would have had her first sexual experience, if not in front of a screen, then with a boy whose first sexual experience had been. In that sense, her experience too would have been mediated by a screen: by what the screen instructed him to do. While almost all of us today live in a world where porn is ubiquitous, my students, born in the final years of the last century, were the first to have come of age sexually in that world.

My students would not have stolen or passed around magazines or videos, or gathered glimpses here and there. For them sex was there, fully formed, fully interpreted, fully categorized—teen, gangbang, MILF, stepdaughter—waiting on the screen. By the time my students got around to sex IRL—later, it should be noted, than teenagers of previous generations—there was, at least for the straight boys and girls, a script in place that dictated not only the physical moves and gestures and sounds to make and demand, but also the appropriate affect, the appropriate desires, the appropriate distribution of power. The psyches of my students are products of pornography. In them, the warnings of the anti-porn feminists seem to have been belatedly realized: sex for my students is what porn says it is.

-Amia Srinivasan, The Right to Sex: Feminism in the Twenty-First Century

#amia srinivasan #anti pornography #radical feminist theory #human sexuality

[what-if-a-dragon]

Wanna help a stress spaghetti PhD student out? Take this survey!

It's about human sexuality topics, and my classmates and I would muchly appreciate it! I am a disabled researcher studying human sexuality and disability because nothing about us without us!

Seeking participants for a class research study! The study involves taking a 10-15 minute survey that is completely anonymous. Questions ask about sexual attitudes and beliefs, sexual education, relationships, and gender and sexual identities. Survey responses will only be used for class learning purposes. Must be 18+ to participate. Email Dr. Brooke Wells ([email protected]) with any questions. Find out more and participate here: https://tinyurl.com/bdfrj29z

This survey is now closed.

All responses are valued and appreciated. So please take it yourself and share it with friends, family, coworkers, classmates, community members, etc.

Please share this with your friends and family both here and on the less feral raccoon side of the internet!

#human sexuality #Sexuality education #lgbtq #lgbtq community #lgbt #transgender #trans #gender identity #video games #dungeons and dragons #disability pride #disability #chronic illness #spoonie #Disabled researcher #nothing about us without us #signal boost #please share #disability community #disability awareness #disability studies #latina #latinx #hispanic #gen xers #gen x #millennials #elder millennial

[shrimpmandan]

Expanding on some of my Thoughts from earlier I feel like a lot of american cishet people end up being more confidently misinformed about sex and sexuality because the sex ed they get is so basic and separated. They assume that because they were taught, that must be all there is to know, right? Why would their school or parents NOT teach them something?

Maybe some of the gaps are filled in by porn or smut. Which, of course, that breeds more misinformation when they don't have comprehensive sex ed to reference. They think saliva is ACTUALLY a good substitute for lube, or that most women can orgasm through penetration and nothing else. They fail to recognize these things as creative decisions, because it doesn't occur to them that they've never seen an accurate, real description of sex before.

LGBT people aren't taught sex ed at all. The sex ed we get isn't FOR us. I feel like The LGBTs end up being more curious about sex because of that fact-- a lot of what we're told just doesn't apply to us. So we look for ourselves, and we find more. We find stuff about safe gay sex, about kink, about being transgender. Cishets are often only told vague shit about being abstinent and using a condom. They assume there's nothing more to it because they're taught about sex purely as an Adult Thing that is Mandatory to know because you Need To Have Children. And I find that incredibly, terribly sad.

#sexology #sexuality #human sexuality #sex education #saucyish #lgbt #i'm just rambling don't take this as like Anything lmfao

[cardiac-agreste]

I do not understand why so many non-smut fics have Adrien and Marinette say they want to wait until marriage to have sex. These are French, atheist teenagers who are acutely aware of their own mortality. There's NO WAY. It takes me out of a scene the same way i was when I read a fic about a kid in Japan DRIVING HIS PICKUP TRUCK TO HIGH SCHOOL.

Also speaking from personal experience being in a romantic relationship that long without having sex is going to fuck up your marriage for a while: you will have spent so many years sublimating your sexual desire for your partner that you'll keep it up within the marriage out of habit.

I dated my girlfriend for seven years starting as a teenager and we were virgins when we finally got married. That means until i was in my THIRTIES i had spent more years pretending i didn't want to have sex with her than i had spent actually having sex with her.

I would never wish that on my blorbos.

Also let's be candid, every time Nino and Alya talk about Super Pingüino they're talking about having sex.

#miraculous ladybug #adrien agreste #marinette dupain cheng #adrienette #adrinette #mlb fandom #miraculeakless #ml fanfiction #human sexuality #sex advice #old dude dishing out life protips

[grumpy-potat]

People, Parasocial Relationships, And ChatGPT

I wrote an incredibly long article about how people are developing relationships with Chatbots and how this isn't as out of character as we think human nature can be.

Trigger Warnings: Discussions of Bullying, Deviant from the norm human sexual behavior, Brief Mentions of DV and assault, as well as discussions of death and Grief.

I published it on Medium and I hope you all like it. It looks into the early 2000s, how they framed different forms of parasocial relationships, and how subjects like parasocial relationships with objects are understudied in a time when we all have access to objects that can talk back to us.

I am also editing the audio recording I made of this article to publish in an audio format in the near future.

#ai chatbot #human sexuality #human behaviour #parasocial relationships #parasocial behavior #future technology

[neuroticboyfriend]

what do you do if you're a non-offending and anti-contact pedophile? i have an irrational fear i will hurt a child even though i don't want to hurt children and i don't want to look at photos or videos of child sexual abuse...

in terms of staying healthy, people usually accept that they can't control their desires, and try to express them in the safety of their own mind, or in fiction/fantasy, where no real child can get hurt.

but if you have an irrational fear instead of being a MAP, all you have to do is just as you are. you don't want to hurt anyone, and you aren't hurting anyone. then comes addressing the fear and finding coping skills to get through and lessen it. that can also mean accepting that, it's just a fear, it's just thoughts - that you aren't hurting anyone, and that's what matters.

both cases involve accepting the brain does weird things, we feel things that we don't expect to, but at the end of the day, what matters is that we aren't hurting others or ourselves. as long as we're doing that, we're ok!

#asks #anon #ocd #pocd #intrusive thoughts #<- related tags. im not trying to diagnose you #paraphilia #pro paraphile #pro para #paraphile safe #minor attracted people #sexuality #human sexuality

[haggishlyhagging]

Not talking about sex does not make it go away, and the lack of discourse about sexuality is not a stable situation. Sex has a way of reminding people about itself. Biblical law's concern with regulating sexual behavior indicates that Israel was as aware as we are of the power of human attraction. In the Song of Songs, this awareness finds expression in the phrase "for love is stronger than death." This awareness also underlies all the uses of the erotic metaphor, for they rely on our experience of the sexual bond as a bond of connectedness. The Bible is aware of the strength of sexual attraction and the sensations of communion, but it offers no vision to help understand and integrate this experience of human sexuality. Biblical monotheism's lack of a clear and compelling vision on sex and gender was tantamount to an unfinished revolution. But no culture can exist without some ideas about an experience as compelling as sexuality. When powerful emotions cannot be integrated into our vision of humanity, society, and divinity, then they are feared. This fear of eros can lead to a desire to avoid the occasions of temptation, thus rigidly reinforcing gender lines and making society ever more conscious of gender divisions. This weakness in the fabric of biblical monotheism begins to emerge in the stresses of the destruction of Jerusalem, the Babylonian exile, and the difficult restoration period. Then, when Israel becomes exposed to Greek ideas in the Hellenistic period, Greek concepts of sex and gender fill the vacuum in decidedly antiwoman, anticarnal ways that have long influenced the Western religious tradition.

-Tikva Frymer-Kensky, In the Wake of the Goddesses: Women, Culture, and the Biblical Transformation of Pagan Myth

#Tikva Frymer-Kensky #human sexuality #monotheism #sex and gender #biblical mythology #misogyny

[palephx]

Given that I was about 7½ at the time, it's really a wonder that I didn't grow up with a fetishistic affinity for black guys. I mean, I already had access to the "grown-up" section of the public library, but I can see how that might have happened.

And it's not like they were putting cocks-out anglos on mainstream publications, that year.

I also see how this can be deemed as "purely anthropological," but they looked OK, regardless. I still didn't really HAVE a sexuality, yet.

Now, they just ban everything.

#national geographic #lgbtqia #baby gay #afrikan beauty #dicks out #magazine cover #favorite periodical #human sexuality #book banning

[shrimpmandan]

Spin-offing into my own post a bit because this is less about pansexuality and more about sexual orientation and etymology in general.

I personally don't think the definitions of "homosexual" and "heterosexual", as they are in the dictionary, are accurate. Or at least, it's oversimplified in a way that lines up with the idea that sexuality is an inherently rigid thing.

To not make this super confusing, I'm going to be using the word "homosexual" to specifically refer to gay men here. Homosexuality is not just "being attracted to the same sex". If this were true, this would mean that gay men would never be attracted to a trans man, and would be instead attracted to trans women. This would also mean that a gay man could not hypothetically develop a crush-- no matter how fleeting-- on an exceptionally masculine woman.

Homosexuality is about the attraction to male sexual characteristics. Some examples of what most might consider male sex characteristics would be a penis + testicles, a relatively flat chest, small hips, a strong jawline, short hair, the presence of particularly dense body hair, or a top-heavy physique. Obviously, not all men look like this, but this is what most people would picture as being a conventionally attractive adult male. Gay men are attracted to at least some of these features, in different configurations. Maybe they only care about the presence of a penis, without caring of the presentation of their partner otherwise. Maybe they like men with long hair and no body hair, but who also have strong jawlines and relatively thin waists.

And then the question is raised: but can't women also have those traits too? And of course, the answer is yes. And when you say that, it brings in the question of what's preventing a gay man from being attracted to a woman. The answer, and what's uncomfortable for many people to accept, is absolutely nothing, which applies to any orientation. This is why gay men and straight women can sometimes develop crushes on masculine or butch women. This is why straight men and lesbians can sometimes develop crushes on feminine men. This is why any orientation can be attracted to a trans person of any identity or sexual configuration. Our sexualities are not tied to explicitly and rigidly defined genders. We are attracted to sexual characteristics that are more commonly associated with either males or females, and human beings-- being sexually bimodal-- can come in all sorts of configurations of those sex characteristics.

The reason TERFs are so threatened by the idea of lesbians dating trans women is because their entire ideology fundamentally hinges on women and men being completely distinct categories with no overlap. They often target cis women who look "too mannish" or cis men who look "too effeminate" and accuse them of being trans, because they fundamentally cannot accept the idea that sex isn't as clear-cut as they think it is. It's a direct threat to bioessentialism to accept that. And when you ask the question, "if a lesbian can be attracted to someone who is biologically male, but who looks like and identifies as a woman, and may or may not have developed or been naturally born with sex characteristics that are more typical of cis females, then what's stopping a lesbian"-- (an identity TERFs have fully co-opted as being "anti-male")-- "from developing attraction towards a man who also expresses in the same way, and has similar sexual characteristics?"

The answer is absolutely nothing.

Also, as a footnote, some people may take this to mean that everyone is just fundamentally bisexual. Whether I agree with this assessment or not, this is only because my post doesn't take into account the additional psychological and sociological factors of attraction. A fully homosexual man who develops a crush on a masculine woman would likely lose that attraction upon finding out they identify as a woman. If they aren't, then they could be bisexual! That's why it's so complex. I simply forwent mentioning it because I wanted to focus more on how people misunderstand how sexuality works biologically.

#sexology #lgbt #lgbt discourse #anti terf #human sexuality #sexuality #theres SOOOOOOO much more i can elaborate on here it's so fascinating to me #but I'll leave it for now

[kamagyaan]

https://Kamagyaan.com

KamaGyaan is a website and page that focus on discussion about sex related issues, education and humor.

#sex education #sexuality #sexy content #lifestyle #humor #education #human sexuality #kama sutra

[mxanunnakiraymarquez]

Let's join together to dismantle the oppressive systems used to do harm to millions of people. Together we are stronger.

#together we are stronger #black lives matter #black trans lives matter #indigineous people #intersex awareness #transgender #lgbtqia+ #human sexuality #human rights violations #rainbow pride #homophobia. #transphobia #intersex phobia #queer phobia #hope for humanity #love not hate #love is love #togetherwecan #endosexism #lgbtqai #lgbtq community #lgbtq #lgbtqi #lgbt memes

[cottoncandyopinions]

I hope no one finds this person or is mean

But sometimes I hear about a kink I've never heard of before, and it's so specific or interesting I HAVE to talk about it

So while looking in the tag for a game series I came across art of the main character shirtless and listening to his own heart with a stethoscope

The text made it clear it was a fetish thing. I go to the blog, because the name seems related.

It's just ALL ABOUT hot shirtless guys listening to or getting their heartbeats listened to.

I mean I have no problem, utterly harmless. But so interesting??? Human sexuality is so fascinating it drives me nuts

Fuck I follow someone that posts about paraphilias a bunch and they always have interesting takes on sexuality, would wanna share this if I could remember the name/didn't feel weird or parasocial about it

#Human sexuality #Stethoscope