3. Upping The Risk Factor

Who doesn’t love a little adrenaline? We pay to ride roller coasters and get addicted to tattoos, so it makes sense that we’d want a little excitement in our sex lives. According to a study done by LELO, compared to 2012, 2014 was a big year for risky sex. In 2012, their survey reported that 27 percent of women had sex outdoors, while 35 percent tried it in 2014. Only 10 percent of women in 2012 participated in a threesome, compared to the 20 percent who gave it a go just two years later. As for sex tapes, in 2012, only 28 percent had filmed one, while 2014 saw a jump to 52 percent! Having the confidence to try something new is seriously cool — and your partner probably agrees. As long as all parties feel safe and comfortable, a little risk can go a long way.

4. Getting Creative With Birth Control

2015 has already been a big year for male contraceptives. Various kinds are in the works, all of which will allow the burden of accessing and using birth control to be shared. Yay, gender equality! Aaron Hamlin, director of the Male Contraception Initiative, promises that “this is a total game changer,” and I believe him. The long-term, non-hormonal concept that is in the works is anticipated to be out as early as 2018. Plus, there are plenty of condom variations available (and in the making), as well as a vaginal condom with a built-in vibrating ring that sounds like some good old contraceptive fun.

5. Pumping Iron … With Your Vagina

Having strong pelvic floor muscles is very in right now. Venus balls, geisha balls, whatever you want to call them — they’re great for your orgasm. You lube them up and insert them in the vagina, and use those leg and PC muscles to amp up your kegel workout. Now, why exactly would you do that? Because they can help strengthen the vagina, which results in improved sexual performance and more intense orgasms. There are actual apps designed to track your vaginal strength progress, so if you think lifting weights with your vag sounds like a joke, think again.

A sexy robot could be in your future.

By 2050, if you don’t have a sex robot, chances are your neighbor will.

In less than 15 years, humans will be having emotional and casual sex through virtual reality (VR), at least that’s the opinion of futurologist Ian Pearson as reported in online magazine Breitbart.

In the meantime, as scientists and programmers figure out artificial intelligence (AI) of these robots to make them socially interactive, others are debating the ethics of this new development to satisfy a basic human need.

Human sexuality and intimacy with robots were discussed at Thursday’s The Human Choice and Computers Conference in Salford, UK.

A contingent of those opposed to robot sex, the Campaign Against Sex Robots, maintain that AI contained in a humanlike synthetic body would never substitute the need for a person’s relationship and intimacy. There are even calls for sex robots to be banned.

Dr. Kathleen Richardson, a senior research fellow in the ethics of robotics at De Montfort University in Leicester, UK, and who heads the campaign told Sky News, “One of the first impacts of something like sex robots would be to increase human isolation because once you try to tell people that they don’t need other human beings anymore, one of the consequences of that is more isolation.”

However, such a ban might be interpreted as denying rights to technology for someone who could benefit from it. Such a person may be anti-social, have sexual phobias or have a medical problem.

In December, the second International Congress on Love and Sex with Robots will be held in London to discuss topics such as roboethics. The event will be for academics and industry professionals to share thoughts on human-computer and human-robot interactions.

Unlike today’s unemotional sex toys, it’s predicted robotic sex partners will be an important part of someone’s life by engaging with that person through AI. “There’s not just going to be two models on the market, you’re going to be able to pick robots where you can customize their appearance…they’ll be customizing the appearance of that so that they find it attractive,” Pearson told Breitbart.

From ethical and social standpoints, questions arise on whether regular human relationships will become less important. Pearson told Breitbart, “I don’t have any reason to expect that people won’t still want human partners, I don’t think we’re gonna just have sex with robots. It’ll be very much human relationships I think that still dominate, people will still prefer humans.”

Curated by Erbe
Original Article

The Word is God

According to Reay Tannahill’s book Sex in History the years between 400AD and 1000AD saw Christian morality gain a grip on Western thought “so paralyzing that it is only now beginning to relax”. Many of its rules regarding sex originate in the Hebrew law of the Old Testament and were fixed firm for over 1,500 years, with threats of hellfire proving one of the most successful deterrents ever invented. Lust and sex became associated with the original sin of Adam and Eve and the celibate life was promoted for those with the most godly minds. An indication of how poorly early Christians viewed sex is the fact that they declared Jesus to have been conceived without carnal contact.

Incest, masturbation, oral sex, anal sex and homosexuality were all deemed sinful and punishable by the Christian church with increasing severity. Sex within marriage was tolerated for reproductive purposes only and contraception banned because of its associations with pleasure. We know little of how these rules affected the lives of ordinary people, but the threat of damnation almost certainly transformed sex into activity loaded with fear and danger.

Renaissance pleasures

The spread of syphilis to epidemic proportions across Europe in the 16th century reveals that many men and women were not as chaste as the Church would have liked. Prostitution was large-scale across the continent (there were 7,000 public women in Rome in 1490) and the brothels of Southwark in London were notorious. The Church accepted the situation as a necessary evil, arguing that at least sin was contained. But times were definitely changing. Italian Renaissance painting and sculpture reveals the rediscovery of the art of antiquity, when the naked flesh of men and women were worshipped and enjoyed rather than regarded as sinful. Homosexuality was tolerated in certain areas and classes, among artists such as Leonardo and Michelangelo for example, and even in the court of James I in London where the king paraded his lover, the Duke of Buckingham, in public.

Although a Buggery Act was introduced for the first time in 1533, making sodomy between men punishable by death, it was rarely acted upon. Indeed, the homosexual Duke of Sutherland was able to rise to the position of Prime Minister in the early 18th century and only forced to resign when satirical stories were published about the gay sex club he had established. Enlightenment literature, in novels such as Samuel Richardson’s Clarissa and, most strongly, in the novels of the Marquis de Sade, outlined the dangers and excitements of sexual perversion and reveal the extent to which sex had moved away from the guilt-laden act of the Middle Ages to become an intoxicating if risky source of pleasure.

It’s ironic that authors such as Steven Pinker who claim that the world is becoming much more peaceful have not recognized that violence against women in many countries is, if anything, becoming more prevalent, not less so, and dwarfs the violence produced through war and armed conflict. To say a country is at peace when its women are subject to femicide — or to ignore violence against women while claiming, as Pinker does, that the world is now more secure — is simply oxymoronic.

Gender-based violence is unfortunately ingrained in many cultures, so much so that it can take place not only during a woman’s life but also before she is even born. On our scale measuring son preference and sex ratio, the world average is 2.41, indicating a generalized preference for sons over daughters globally. And in 18 countries, from Armenia to Vietnam, childhood sex ratios are significantly abnormal in favor of boys. The United Nations Population Fund suggests that, as of 2005, more than 163 million women were missing from Asia’s population, whether through sex-selective abortion, infanticide, or other means. Demographer Dudley Poston of Texas A&M University has calculated that China will face a deficit of more than 50 million young adult women by the end of the decade. Think of the ways this imbalance will affect China’s state stability and security — and in turn its rise to world power — in this century.

Other global indicators are equally disheartening. In family law, women are disadvantaged in areas such as marriage, divorce, and inheritance. This inequity in turn serves as a foundation for violence against women, while also undercutting their ability to fend for themselves and their children. My colleagues and I found that the world’s average score for inequity in family law is 2.06, indicating that most countries have laws that discriminate to a greater or lesser degree against women. And some of the countries in the Arab Spring, including populous Egypt, are actually poised to regress on this scale. Maternal mortality, meanwhile, clocks in globally at 2.45, a truly lamentable comment on state priorities and the value of female life.

Lastly, the inclusion of women’s voices in decision-making bodies, as captured by the level of female participation in governments, measures an abysmal world average of 2.74. This is no surprise, given that the level of participation of women in government is less than 20 percent. But it’s also true that some of the worst countries when it comes to the representation of women in national government include democracies such as Japan (13.4 percent in the Diet) and South Korea (14.7 percent), not to mention Hungary (8.8 percent). The United States is below average, with only 17 percent female participation in Congress. Ironically, when the United States invaded Afghanistan and Iraq, it urged that these countries have a minimum of 25 percent female participation, and now both countries score higher than their invader on this indicator: Afghanistan’s parliament is nearly 28 percent female, and Iraq’s is just over 25 percent. In that one respect, the United States has done better by Afghan and Iraqi women than by its own.

4) Do you believe crotch shots from men could be linked to a biological urge to indicate sexual interest to women?

Laura: Most of our sexual urges are linked to biology.  Other mammals publicly display their sexual interests and we have gotten away from that with the advent of clothing and the creation of polite society.  If you are a chimpanzee or a bonobo who wants to mate, you probably display your penis to get female attention and that works when females are in estrus.

Virginia: It is interesting to think about how the impulse to send a picture of your junk is linked to our caveman self, but what makes it possible is human technology.  In the future, men will send a sculpture of their d*ck to your 3-d printer.  You go try to print a vase or a little bear or something and you’re all “Great, whose d*ck is this?”

Laura: As I’ve told you many times, let’s get you scheduled with a therapist.

Virginia: Shut up.

6) How has modern technology ‘encouraged’ this type of behavior?

Laura: In the past, if I wanted to send a photo of my penis to a woman, I would have to take a photo with my camera that I couldn’t see beforehand, take my roll of film to the drugstore and let all the photo-lab employees see my junk (or refuse to print my photo), then find out what the woman’s mailing address is, stamp my envelope and snail mail my genital pic to her.

Virginia: Lots of legwork there.

Laura: Exactly.  The digital age has taken down all of these barriers and I can now view my photo in the privacy of my own home, use the right angles, correct imperfections with Facetune, and send the same picture out to as many women as I want.

Virginia: Oh god, do you think they’re Facetuning their d*cks?

Laura: I am absolutely certain of it.

7) What would you recommend men to do to indicate sexual interest, other than sending a crotch shot?

Laura: Let’s go “old school” and tell the woman that you think that she is pretty and want to get to know her. Ask her out on a date and see where the night takes you.

Virginia: A couple of rules that seem to work well- don’t send an un-asked for d*ck pic.  If you’re seeing a woman and she makes a request and you want to honor it, great.  But sending an unasked for picture is at least rude and possibly upsetting.  Also, your unasked for d*ck pic will be passed around at brunch, laughed at, and you’re gonna get talked about in not a good way, and word will get around and later your girlfriend will ask why you’re sending d*ck pics to other women.

8) Story Time: Do you remember your first d*ck pic?  What was your reaction?

Virginia: I got one on my first smartphone, I had started working as a comic and my phone number got around on my business card.  I got a very impressive-looking member from an anonymous person- It came with a message like “want to sit on this?” and I wrote back, “Hey, nice dick! Is this yours?” and after a minute they wrote back and said, uhhh.  No.  And I asked, why are you sending a stranger another person’s d*ck?  And they didn’t write back after that.

Laura: Thankfully, I have never received a crotch shot directly. I have had a couple of scares when swiping through Tinder. I mean, honestly, you made a picture of your penis your profile photo and you think that most women will be into that?

I have a male friend who is gay and one evening he showed me an entire iphone screen chock full of genital pics.  He was so happy about it and this was the moment when I realized how fundamentally different men and women feel about this subject.

Virginia: Hey!  That’s a good idea.  Send your d*ck pics to other men!  Maybe you can form a club!