Amorous Propensities :The Sexuality Blog

The self-proclaimed beautiful people who make up BeautifulPeople.com’s members are engaged in a anti-fat purge to make sure no unwanted people pollute their ranks.

Men and women who gained weight during the Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Day holidays are being banished from the dating site.

According to the BBC, the victims were “singled out after posting pictures of themselves that reportedly showed they had put on pounds over the holiday period”. They were fingered by the user police who apparently patrol the site to ensure standards are maintained, and management moved to show them the door, which had presumably been widened for the occasion.

BeautifulPeople ejects post-Xmas fatties

I understand BeautifulPeople.com’s marketing plan but this sort of enforcement seems a mite extreme.

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Sex Doesn’t Sell — nor Impress! Content, Box Office, Critics, and Awards in Mainstream Cinema

“Sex did not sell, whether in the domestic or international box office, and even after controlling for MPAA rating,” said Simonton, who is a professor of psychology at the University of California, Davis. “In other words, even among R movies, less graphic sex is better.”

Does sex sell movies? Uh, not really

Social research is subject to bias in a way real scientific research isn’t. One of the researcher had taken acting classes in the past and was distressed by the sexual content. One of the things prompting the study. Indeed this researcher hopes the study will lead to less sexuality being shown in movies.

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Online ads have popped up lately, telling readers that they can win a $150 Amex Gift Card for use at Hooters … In other words, getting involved with the Chamber’s campaign against reform. These “incentivized ads” appear to be the favored new tactic of lobbying groups looking to generate the appearance of grassroots support for their positions.

Chamber of Commerce Campaign: Fight Health-Care Reform — And Win A Trip To Hooters!

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Santa and the Sexy Girl

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Clemson University economist Bentley Coffey says that her research reveals that women with names stereotypically associated with males find success above average in the legal profession.

The study found by hypothesizing and using a series of equations that a female “Cameron” is about three times more likely to become a judge than a “Sue,” while a female “Bruce” is five times more likely.

Women with male names do better in legal careers

I rather like the Portia Hypothesis and it isn’t just because I have a monomania for androgyny. I also have a low opinion of mankind and this would validate that.

But the study was conducted in South Carolina. Would the results differ in, say, San Francisco.

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Disallowing innocent queer folk the equality with the straight majority isn’t enough for John Marcotte. Marcotte wants to further protect the sacred nature of hetero married couples with the California Marriage Protection Act that would forbid divorce.

Marcotte said he was inspired by last year’s voter-approved ban on gay marriage.

“It’s actually what I think is a logical extension of Prop 8, which was the California Marriage Protection Act. (My initiative) would protect traditional marriages by banning divorce,” he explained.

Sacramento Man Seeks Ballot Measure Banning Divorce

PZ Myers talks about the pleasure Marcotte might feel at having power over others:

… but the prospect of being able to meddle in other people’s lives and tell them exactly how they must act gives me a kind of head rush of power. All those women trapped in loveless marriages, or dominated by abusive husbands…nuh-uh, no way out for you, you get to suffer until you are dead!

Protect the sanctity of heterosexual marriage!

That is how the universe works for those with religious certainty. They know the truth. The issue is salvation or damnation. Going to Heaven or to Hell. Personal rights are irrelevant. Fundagelicsls always trend toward totalitarian impulses.

Hetero couples wanting to escape what proved to not be wedded bliss will be much luckier I’m sure than gays who wanted to give it a try.

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Épater la bourgeoisie never stales does it? And a nun extracting milk from her teat, evidently for coffee, though this nun doesn’t seem to have much control - anyway, this photo would surely shock the innocent and ignorant.

Is the milk of human kindness best when freshly squeezed from the breast of a cloistered virgin?

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There’s no denying that prophylactics are unerotic. Worse, some men allow illusions about penile sensitivity to engage in risky unprotected sex without a condom.

Science to the rescue:

According to the University of Utah press release, the mesh of molecules—at 30 to 50 nanometers wide—should be able to block any HIV particle, which is two to three times thicker (roughly 100 nanometers wide). This should also block sperm, which measure 5,000 to 10,000 nanometers (5 to 10 microns). One way to think about this nano scale is that a strand of human hair is generally about 100,000 nanometers wide (100 microns), making it 10 to 20 times thicker than sperm and 2,000 to 3,333 times thicker than an HIV particle.

What if the virus were to get past the double barrier of this nanoscopic mesh and the accompanying antiviral drug? The study’s senior author, Patrick Kiser, an associate professor of bioengineering at the University of Utah’s College of Engineering, says that after sex the vagina gradually becomes more acidic again, and any residual HIV particles would be inactivated by not only this acidity, but also the antiviral drug (such as tenofovir) within the remaining gel.

How condoms for men could be a thing of the past

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Extract from a review of new reappraisal of Helen Gurley Brown (Sex and the Single Girl), Bad Girls Go Everywhere by feminist scholar Jennifer Scanlon:

Brown also reshaped—enduringly, single-handedly—the way magazines and television shows for a female audience conceive of their mission and their scope, which encompasses the frankly titillating and the shockingly clinical, and presents them cheek by jowl. When you watch Oprah—or Dr. Phil or the Today show, or almost any successful work of daytime television for women—when you read any mass-market women’s magazine or listen to a call-in radio show for a female audience, you are experiencing the fruits of her innovations. These involved three distinct but related ideas: that American faith in the power of self-improvement as an animating force in individual lives is so complete that—provided the messenger has enough conviction—almost any bond of propriety can be broken in its name; that instruments of mass culture and entertainment are the most expedient means of conveying public-health information, and that they therefore have a moral imperative to do so; and that, where issues of women’s reproductive health and well-being are concerned, the line between a medical explanation and an essentially obscene exploitation can be reduced to nothing at all.

Sex and the Married Man

As an able and energetic manipulator of popular culture Brown probably did have more real influence in the shaping of American sexual culture than the leaders of the Womens Liberation Movement of the time. Mass influence is rarely for the good. But when dealing with the deeply compromised lives of urban American young women it may have been for the better.

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American Psychological Association Dismisses Ex-Gay Therapy

No Ex-Gay Martians Either

That attempts to convert homosexuals persons into heterosexual men and women can never amount to more than self-coercion should be obvious to anything thinking human being. Sexual orientation - something much bigger than gender preference - isn’t mere whim or performance. Affectional and gender preferences are too deeply rooted in people to be altered by (bogus) psychological therapy.

“At most, certain studies suggested that some individuals learned how to ignore or not act on their homosexual attractions. Yet, these studies did not indicate for whom this was possible, how long it lasted or its long-term mental health effects. Also, this result was much less likely to be true for people who started out only attracted to people of the same sex.”

Programs to change gays to straights don’t work, report says

But nothing will stop fundamentalists operating as therapists and counselors from coming up with psychiatric nonsense like Same-Sex Attraction Disorder (SSAD)!

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