Welcome to NSFW Sunday!
+ Jezebel breaks it all down for you about what does and doesn’t happen to your vagina and asshole from sex, with an emphasis on the fact that both of these situations are MUSCLES which expand and contract:
Sexual arousal/relaxation is what loosens those muscles so you can receive the peen/fingers/dildo you so desire. But still, when this happens, Castleman explains, it doesn’t make a “big open cavity” like a loose sock or an empty potato chip bag, dumdums. There is no possibility for the aforementioned “hotdog in the hallway,” AKA “bee bee in the boxcar” scenario, as funny to imagine as that may be.
+ Ways to get into talking dirty in bed include narrating what’s happening, complimenting your partner, asking questions and giving directions:
“‘Touch me here.’ ‘Kiss me there.’ ‘Take off your clothes.’ ‘I want you to come.’ ‘Close your eyes.’ ‘Turn over.’ ‘Leave that on.’ ‘Put your hand here.’ ‘Don’t move.’ ‘Don’t stop.’ ‘Please don’t stop.’
Whatever you say, make your voice a little lower and softer or huskier than your regular voice. This will probably come naturally—kind of like how your voice automatically gets higher when you talk to a baby—and the more you do it, the more naturally it will come.”
+ A growing number of couples in committed relationships, including marriage, are living apart according to a recent study. According to Nerve:
“This is a growing trend in the US, with the number of married couples choosing to live apart growing from 1.7 million in 1990 to just over 3 million today. That’s over 3% of all married couples.
Though the numbers doubtlessly reflect the number of couples who live apart in different cities— the tumultuous economy and lack of jobs in any one city might explain some of the rise—there seem to be instances where couples living in the same city just plain don’t really want to look at each other all the time, and so they retain separate residences.”
+ In honor of Masturbation Month, Autostraddle has put together a pretty amazing masturbation roundtable. We encourage you to share your stories, weirdos.
I read The Book for weeks — in my room, in my yard, in the porch swing, in the bathroom. My favorite section was on masturbation, obviously. It was complete with a super clear diagram and helpful tips to get you started. “It may not feel good at first,” it said. “Massage the clitoris in a soft, circular motion. You can even massage the skin around it.” For whatever reason, that was the most intriguing: “the skin around it.” As if my mind hadn’t been fully blown with news of a clitoris (whatever that was) between my legs, I could also do stuff with the skin around it?? I was totally used to that skin; I’d been looking at that skin for years. This made me feel a lot calmer about the whole thing. The Book also said that masturbation was totally normal and that I shouldn’t be worried about wanting to do it. Thanks, Book!
+ What linens do you need to wash between partners? Everything? Only things they actually touched? More or less depending on your laundry situation? Jolie Kerr answers:
“How would you feel if the situation was reversed, and you were doing the nasty on a set of sheets that had been used by your paramour for the same act with another lady?
If you’d be livid or squicked or simply aghast that someone could be so careless with his sheeting, then there’s your answer — you need to launder the linens between guests.
If you’re shrugging and thinking, “What I don’t know won’t hurt me,” then your answer is that you can rotate lovers in without the benefit of a laundering cycle.”
+ The Lingerie Lesbian discusses women, sexuality and power:
“It is almost impossible to find a situation in which the display of female bodies or female sexuality doesn’t carry with it the weight of how you will be judged and discounted. There is a logic behind it that comes from the assumption both that women’s bodies are out of their control and that they use sexuality as a method of persuasion, a combination that makes unchecked female bodies somehow dangerous.”
+ Solopoly discusses the importance of making a conscious choice about your relationship style, whatever it is:
“People should know what their relationship options are, and see that any type of honest, consensual relationship stands a decent chance of making the people involved happy. And that the mere existence of non-standard relationship options or preferences doesn’t really threaten anyone.”
+ Sex dreams can influence your daily life, according to a new study:
“They found that the occurrence of infidelity or presence of strong emotions like jealousy towards a partner in a dream often affected feelings towards that partner the next day. When a person dreamed of a fight, often they were more likely to fight with their boyfriend or girlfriend on the subsequent day. And when a person dreamed of cheating on their partner or being cheated on, they reported less feelings of intimacy and even felt less loving the next day.”
+ There is now a peer-reviewed journal about porn, proving it is more worthy of discussion than ever:
“‘Porn, of course, is very marginalized as a media form and yet at the center of lots of scares currently around young people and their access,’ she says, as well as ‘the objectification of women.’ The journal aims to bring some empiricism, as well as a global perspective, to the discussion. ‘The Anglo American debate is framed within the feminist and objectification rubric,’ she says. ‘In Europe, that just isn’t the case.’ Papers will look at the content and ‘textual formations’ of porn, surrounding legal regulations and other ‘questions that remain rather hidden and haven’t had the kind of rigorous debate that we might like to see,’ and which ‘we’ve seen about nearly every other media form,’ she says. That isn’t to say that the journal won’t address worries about porn’s impact, but ‘it will have to proceed beyond the scaremongering.’ They’re interested in evidence, not anecdotes.”
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