What you learn and do in dance class is a reflection of and shapes your life. And the first thing you need to know is that “you can’t say you can’t!”

My Zumba Strip Cardio instructor in Peurto Vallarta was hardcore. But everything she said made sense. The mind and the body are one, so whatever the mind knows it can do, the body does. And she stuck with this principle throughout each routine. If you didn’t do a move right, she’d glare right at you and make you do it until you got it right!

The high intensity workout consisted of Salsa, Samba, Jazz, Bellydance, Tango, Hip-Hop, and sexy cabaret using a chair. I absolutely LOVED it! She taught a move on the floor where you stick your butt in the air (very Velina-esque) and she said “you learn this move and your boyfriend or husband will buy you jewelry!” She was being tongue-and-cheek but we all had a good laugh as we awkwardly tried to make it look as smooth as her. I discovered new moves and interpretations of music and was having so much fun I forgot I was working out – even with what felt like gallons of sweat pouring out of me!

The class was small, with one middle-aged, Spanish-speaking woman and what appeared to be a mother and her 20-something-year-old daughter. Near the end of the class, the teacher told us to work with our chairs and dance “whatever we...

The internet shows a huge preoccupation with the issue of semen taste -

even though condom use is recommended during fellatio.

There is also a great deal of "folk wisdom" about why semen tastes bad and

how to make it better.

This quickie survey gets at some of the basics: who is worried and why, 

how big a "deal breaker" is "bad tasting" semen, what do people believe will

improve or worsen the situation and where do they get their information.

Feel free to take this survey and add your comments.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=vr74WBIwTLCog12sXJ0v_2bw_3d_3d

I'm the mother of a trans kid, and trans issues and gender expression issues are hot topics of conversation in my house. Even though I am a sexologist by trade, training (and inclination), I can scarcely keep up. I keep learning more from my son and I look forward to this constant learning process. 

Even so, I was moved to write this column on Carnal Nation, to pay tribute to some people I knew personally, and others I gaze at from a distance.

I think it's a good read, and if you have comments, please let me know!

http://sf.carnalnation.com/content/39286/999/reflections-gender-mandala

Jezebel posted the most adorably bizarre video of a penis doing its best Teletubbie impersonation (NSFW). I immediately reposted onto my Facebook because, you know, sharing is caring. And I care enough to subject my friends to my strange sense of humor.

While I get that not everyone finds a penis playing peek-a-boo with its own foreskin as funny as I do I did not anticipate the response left by a male friend:

Surgically altering babies should be outlawed. That is an adult decision. Otherwise it’s mutilation. Period.

The issue of circumcision is always one I avoid. I do not have a penis and will not have children so I get to steer clear of this hot-button sexual values issue. But, as I repeatedly read his comment, I realized what was bothering me about it: I prefer a foreskin-free penis.

Typing that sentence makes me wince. Who am I to have a preference for cut cock? Is it shallow? Destructive to men? I try to rationalize my desire via the freedom of personal choice.

Then I realize that this choice is not as personal as I would like to believe. I live in a culture that regularly circumcises boy babies. Nearly every penis I have seen up close has been sans-foreskin. The penis in its given state looks as alien to me as the unmodified female form looks to so many guys raised in a Maxim world.

...

When I first moved to San Francisco two years ago and threw down all of my remaining money on a deposit for an apartment, I found myself broke and desperate for work.  After several failed attempts to get a restaurant or cafe job (most of my work experience in the past had been in the service industry), I quickly took the opportunity to work the counter service at one of the remaining all male strip theaters in the city.  Aside from putting on live nude strip shows, the establishment also catered to male public sex with its basement video porn arcade.  At first I thought this would be an interesting experience in working male public sex industry (and interesting it was indeed) because I had believed that male public sex spaces might serve as places of empowerment for validating gay sex.  What I found however was that the space sometimes functioned off of implicit principles of internalized homophobia.  Interestingly enough, I began to question the notions of solely ascribing a liberatory status to institutions that provided spaces for what appears to be non-heteronormative sexual experiences and instead began to understand the ways in which shame, anger and hatred were also inflected in the daily happenings of these establishments.  Allow me to give a few examples:

During each eight hour shift, my job primarily consisted of managing the strip performers, selling porn videos, sex toys or novelties at the front counter, or exchanging...

As it has been explained to me by my Catholic girlfriend, the goal of marriage is procreation. If a heterosexual couple is barren or past their child-bearing years, the ideal goal of the marriage (according to my Catholic girlfriend) is still procreation because “miracles can happen.” 

When I brought up this point of miracles yesterday to a group of sexuality masters students, an intriguing question was proposed: Why couldn’t the same be said of non-heterosexual couples, most notably same-sex couples? We all had a good laugh and someone said, “Well, I guess I should start trying!” but then today I started thinking about just how amazing and bizarre such a “miracle” would be.

First of all, it would force everyone, religious, non-religious, sciencey folks, medical professionals, the average Joe, to question how the world works. Second, it would make the religious Bible-thumpers either cower in defeat or come up with a conspiracy theory to explain it all away. Third, it would be absolutely awesome. The fact that my girlfriend and I cannot combine our DNA to make a child (and that neither of us has a brother in order to have DNA that is at least close) is heart-wrenching to us. Sometimes when I am envisioning our future theoretical children I think, well, obviously the kid’s going to have this physical or personality trait because we both have it,...

National Sexuality Resource Center is pleased to announce a fabulous new resource, the Black Youth Project Website. Here is some info about their work:

Black Youth Project Website

Our goal for the site is to generate new media information, blogs, art, conversations, webinars, data, research, policies and movements that will expand the human and social capital of young black youth, facilitating their empowerment through highlighting their voices and experiences.

We hope you’ll visit and use the site today and frequently in the future. And please let others know the BYP site . It’s truly a first-of-its kind online resource that explores the attitudes, actions and decision making of black youth by including their lives, ideas and voices.

There are a number of features on the site that we invite you to explore:

• Black Youth Blogging – daily blogs by black youth on important and controversial topics and links to black youth bloggers
• Rap Lyrics Database – the first public searchable database of rap music lyrics based on Billboard charts
• Curriculum Workshop – teachers, social workers, community activists, and artists can download and add to curriculum centered on the experiences of black youth and use data from the Black Youth Survey.
• Black Youth Create! – uploaded...

This morning on twitter, I saw a tweet from a blog I like to follow, @afterellen (news and media by/about lesbian and bi women) that read ‘The only “Playboy" playmate to ever come out as gay is reportedly engaged to a man’. The subsequent article describes how this particular model came out in 2004 as a lesbian, and began to publish, speak, and do activist work around LGBT issues. The article cites the New York posts description of her recent engagement to a man. Stephanie Adams states that she will “retire from being a public persona so that we can settle down and have children ... Life is good ... I have no regrets for anything.”

Maybe this is the sexuality studies student in me, or the fact that I have friends that identify in fluid and plural ways, but, what’s the big deal? I wanted to write about this post after I read Gabe’s blog describing the comment section from an AOL story about a 77 year old trans woman, also a veteran, that finally got the gender confirmation surgery she had been wanting. Both of these articles deal with the story at hand well-enough for online news...

In prepping for a graduate class I'm teaching on sexuality education and social policy, I recenlty reread Kristen Luker's book, When Sex goes to School, in which she analyzes and describes the 100+ interviews she conducted over twenty years with individuals on both sides of the sex education debate that have been warring for the past half century.  I think she does a good job summing up the history of these battles as well as provides some interesting insight into the players, particularly how they became passionate about this issue, on both sides. The only major problem I have with her books, and one she points out as a major limitation to this work, is the lack of non-white voices and an analysis of race and ethinicity - I think this is highly likely due to the fact that issues regarding race and ethinicity are often excluded as are voices from communities of color and other so-called "minority" groups when it comes to sex ed.  Having worked in sexuality education for almost twenty years, I can honestly say that there wasn't much that was surprising or anything that I hadn't heard before, at least until I reached the last chapter. "Chapter Nine: Sex education in America and whether it works or doesn't -- and why that's not the right question"

While reading it, I came to a realization that answers a question that I've been...

At age 77, Renee Ramsey is being hailed as one of the oldest in the United States to undergo gender confirmation surgery. Identified as “male” at birth, a U.S. Navy veteran of 20 years, and married twice, Ramsey lived most of her life as a “man” and largely kept the fact that she has felt “different” from “5 or 6” years old onward to herself.

After her second wife passed away, Ramsey decided to seek out surgical intervention in order to match the exterior of her body to how she felt on the inside. In June of this year, the operation was completed.

In all honesty, it inspires me when I read stories about people who struggle to overcome unfortunate life difficulties and pursue lives of fulfillment. However, after reading a number of the comments following Ramsey’s story on AOL news, I am reminded of just how much people enjoy seeing others suffer. And not only this, but I am also reminded of how much people actively work to hurt others.

Comments include:

• “LMFAO ........... Now .. I think I'm gonna HURL .... !”