Jennifer Lyon Bell makes porn with a humanistic approach, designed to get viewers to identify with the characters, not just watch them. She combines the visual quality of art films with erotica. Her ethos is that the former could be sexier and the latter just plain better. Also, she doesn’t think porn should be for men or women (or that we differ much in how we respond to it). …more

Artist Jason Novak brings us his tale “Depressing Sex: An essay in pictures.”

Enjoy: …more

“In its breadth, depth and frank embrace of sexuality as, what Vernacchio calls, a ‘force for good’ — even for teenagers — this sex-ed class may well be the only one of its kind in the United States.”

A NY Times Magazine article on the state of sex education highlights a Philadelphia Quaker Friends high school teacher’s comprehensive approach to teaching sex ed. With Mr. Vernacchio’s emphasis on pleasure as well as emotional complexities, acknowledgment of gender biases, and lessons on female ejaculation, this looks like possibly the best course ever.

(Via Feministing)

Yes Means Yes has a conversation with Jaclyn Friedman about What You Really Really Want: A Smart Girl’s Shame-Free Guide To Sex And Safety. Topics include the book’s writing exercises, flexisexuality, fetishization and communication, and parenting.

“…You can’t become free of influences. You can only become aware of them, and choose which you want to give more energy and attention to. Similarly, as parents, I don’t suppose you can ever not influence your kids. You can only be thoughtful about what kind of influence you’re being. And even that, imperfectly. Because you’re a collection of influences yourself.”

(Via Feministing)

“The images were graphic – they showed genitals and countless sex positions – but they were also artistic, and tasteful.”

BBC takes a closer look at The Joy of Sex forty years after its publication. The piece examines how publishers sought to avoid obscenity charges by using hand-drawn illustrations rather than photographs, focusing on creating quality artwork, and including ancient pictures as “foils” to offset the explicitness of the illustrations. We also get a glimpse of the couple who ended up serving as the main models for the many positions.

“To be clear: this isn’t about sexual repression; it’s about the sorry state of sexual expression. When did we forget how to talk dirty? Sexting transcripts are criminally boring. Craigslist ads read like chimp-generated remixes of the same five words. Is it the Internet? Why are Americans so bad at writing and speaking the thing they love thinking about and doing? You can measure a civilization’s cultural capital by how it encodes its basest operations. By that yardstick, we’re broke.”

Calling for a return to “the golden age of dirty talk,” this Awl piece introduces us to a 17^th century pamphlet dubbed The Academy of Pleasure and reflects on the value of euphemisms.

“It seemed, some days, that life was nothing more than a tally of the people who’d left us behind.” …more

Dear Sugar,

I’m a twenty-one year old guy. I’m in college right now. Though I work full-time to pay for some of my bills, I’m still dependent on my parents for room and board. I also use their car. I have no problem with living with my parents—at least I wouldn’t if I wasn’t gay. …more

Hello sweet peas! I decided to whip out a few shortish answers this week instead of the usual longer, single column. There are three of them, all on the subject of sex. …more

Why do people think being a Tea Party Patriot means missing out on all the fun when it comes to sex? …more

Dear Sugar, Sugah, Sage,

I’m a spry 47 year-old feisty broad. For the past three years I’ve been deeply in love with a woman. The timing of our meeting was atrocious. …more

“Only with the relatively recent shift from off-the-land foraging to agriculture did our species veer away from cooperation and sharing, even sharing of mates, in small groups; hierarchy, sexual repression and violence may pass for the human normal nowadays, but it wasn’t always so.”

At Bookslut, a detailed discussion of the points made in the new anthropological/scientific polemic Sex At Dawn, a book that sounds like a must-read for anybody eager to slough off tired, old nuclear-Victorian-Reagan-era repression.

Which in San Francisco, where I live, means pretty much everybody.

(Funny moment at the bookstore recently: a woman asked, “Do you have sex at dawn?” referring, of course, to the new book but in my ignorance of said book I almost thought she was being literal. So I said, “No, only at dusk, after a hearty meal of spinach leaves and couscous,” which I didn’t really say but I wish I had. But on second thought I’m glad I didn’t.)

Dear Sugar,

My lover is having an affair. He’s married. I’m not. …more

Then she asked if it was strange that we were doing all these photo shoots as an excuse to sleep together because she was in a monogamous relationship.

Yes, I said, that part is strange. …more

“It’s high time you get yourself laid, honey bun. And laid and laid and laid and laid.”

…more

Yesterday’s essay by Antonia Crane: The Man I Gave a Hand Job in West Hollywood Will Surely Blow His Brains Out Before I See Him Again.

Some of those women your boyfriend used to fuck have nicer asses than you. Some are smarter or funnier or fatter or more generous or more messed up than you. That’s okay. …more

“When, they ask, are things going to get dirty again?

“If you want an answer to that question, ladies and gentlemen, let me propose one. In 2010, the only sex that’s truly dangerous and unbounded is solitary.”

In response to Granta’s latest Sex Issue, Guardian UK takes a provocative, one-handed stance.

Personally, I find this reassuring for it completely justifies the entirety of my adolescence (and twenties) as an audacious experiment in taboo-breaking.

But I also hope and pray that not all taboo is shattered. Which brings me to a considerable tangent.  …more

Bookninja pointed me in the direction of the recently released “1992 Librarians and Sex Survey Results.”

Apparently, the Wilson Library Bulletin ran this survey way back when, and then promptly fired its author and destroyed all remaining copies. However, 5000 librarians responded, and now, thanks to the Internet, we get to see the answers!

For example, 20% of librarians reported having sex in a library, while 63% had sex in a car.

4% were virgins.

22% would classify their sex life as a “comedy.”

38% of the women said they would sleep with Pee-Wee Herman if it were necessary to propagate the species.

And I’ll leave you with this one:

“22% of the respondents felt that libraries should have condom dispensers in their bathrooms.”

I encourage you to read the whole thing. It will make your day better.

I hope you all had a wonderful National Library Week!

Propeller Mag has been collecting the various terrible covers for Karel Capek‘s super great War With the Newts.

An affront to human decency: proper nouns to be allowed in Scrabble.

Fascinating lost turn of the century female sex study.

Behold the rainbow eucalyptus!

Big Picture has some more robots for you. Thanks Big Picture!

“The key is to remember a sex scene is a scene of dramatic action and psychological development. You need to pay attention to emotion and to a character’s self-awareness—or lack of self-awareness.” …more

“But there is another issue, too: one for which you can’t blame publishers or booksellers. The thing about being funny is that it’s really hard.

“It’s a lot harder than being serious. It requires wit, grace, agility, sensitivity; it requires knowing how hard to push and when to stop on a dime.”

Another strong argument to be made for the importance of comic literature at The Times. …more

Antonia Crane has worked many jobs in the sex industry. She’s done escort, BDSM, porn, and stripping. …more

I just learned from Jacket Copy that “Menifee school district in Riverside County has removed the 10th edition of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary from all school shelves after a parent complained about a student running across “oral sex” in its pages.”

It’s thanks to dirty dictionaries like that one that I decided to become a writer.

…more

“The first time I read A Sport and a Pastime, just two years ago, I knew I’d experienced something unusual, alive, difficult in its directness; not something to look upon “fondly,” but a story that, like all great art, connected me more deeply and truthfully to my whole human self – sans irony or “cool.”

[...]

The nakedness of these characters is soul-deep, and the novel demands no less of its reader; the “new narcissism,” per Roiphe –“boys too busy gazing at themselves in the mirror to think much about girls, boys lost in the beautiful vanity of ‘I was warm and wanted her to be warm,’ or the noble purity of being just a tiny bit repelled by the crude advances of the desiring world” – won’t do here.”

At The Millions Sonya Chung joins in the collective response to Katie Roiphe by singling out a wonderful writer that Roiphe had neglected to mention: James Salter and especially his novel, A Sport and a Pastime.

Tasmanian Devils may wind up extinct, and not due to humans driving them out of their habitat. The culprit is a contagious cancer.

The British NHS claims sex is good for you. Yet another argument for universal health care?

The universe might not be as old as scientists thought, but what’s a million years to a universe, anyway?

I’ve suspected this for years, in large part because I’ve seen the change happen, but still, it’s nice to see confirmation–people read more now than they have in the recent past.

Magnetic north is moving to Russia.

Russia, not satisfied with luring magnetic north, is also looking to develop an asteroid deflector.

There is not enough nice things you can say about the incredible varieties of sexual diversity in San Francisco.

I think as Bay Area folk it’s easy to take it for granted. But all the same I find endless reasons to be grateful.

It was my first year in San Francisco when my girlfriend and I were fortunate enough to live with a queer punk surfer artist with a penchant for boiling her sex toys in the mornings and painting naked in the afternoons, when I realized this city would introduce me to people, things, and experiences that were beyond anything I had ever known. …more

John Wraith’s penis is a neat literary device. It provides character depth and motivation, and is central to every plot twist in the book. …more

My girlfriend is reading Henry Miller, we’re applying for food stamps and I’m having nightmares about children having died in my house.

I spent the last weekend partying in Al Capone’s old hideout. And woke up to find myself waiting in line at Social Security.

…more

Writer and artist Alasdair Gray is his own best nightmare. It took the modern Scottish bard twenty-five years to finish Lanark: A Life in Four Books (1981), his fat, strangely inspirational novel of urbanism gone awry. …more