Sex - Dark Side of The Moon

Thanks for all those who are reading my blog. The time has come to move to a different blog host, so from now on you can read the most interesting sex news here. See you all there!

Cervical cancer, which kills 250,000 women a year and rising, is about to become a vaccine-preventable disease. HPV, the virus that causes it, is sexually transmitted, so girls should be vaccinated before they become sexually active - and probably boys too.

Already there are predictable protests. Some on the Christian right in the US say the vaccine will lead to more premarital sex. This sounds far-fetched. After all, how many teenager know or care about HPV?

In some countries, the fear is that parents will interpret a request to vaccinate their daughter as an accusation that she will "sleep around". Maybe she will, or maybe not. But what abou tthe man she marries, willhe be free of HPV? People do not wear a seat belt so they can drive dangerously. They wear it just in case, and because of all "the clowns" out there.

When parents are actually asked whether they want their daughers vaccinated against HPV - they say YES PLEASE. They will not reject this vaccine unless told to do so by people who care more about dogma then women's lives.

This vaccine is not an instrument of promiscuity any more than cancer is a punishment for it. It is a tool to prevent a fatal disease. Choose Life.

Source: The Scientist

Around one percent of adults have absolutely no interest in sex, a surprisingly high figure that is not far from the estimated three percent of the population who are gay, according to a study reported in next Saturday's New Scientist.

The analysis looked at responses made among 18,000 people in Britain who were interviewed about their sexual practices.

One percent said they agreed with the statement: "I have never felt sexually attracted to anyone at all."

That study, conducted by Anthony Bogaert, a psychologist and human sexuality expert at Brock University in St. Catherines, Canada, is published in the latest issue of The Journal of Sex Research. The British survey was carried out in 1994 as part of a study into sexual practices.

"If asexuality is indeed a form of sexual orientation, perhaps it will not be long before the issue of 'A' pride starts attracting more attention," New Scientist says.

Plucky activists have already started campaigning to promote awareness and acceptance of asexuality, it reports.

One such group, the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (AVEN) has an online store selling T-shirts bearing such slogans as "Asexuality: it's not just for amoebas anymore".

It also sells a thong that reads: "It's only underwear. Get over it."

Retiring from porn stardom with 1300 films under his belt, Italian actor Rocco Siffredi claims he is still up to the job but is quitting for "family reasons", the daily La Repubblica reported on Wednesday.

"My children are growing up, and I can no longer just say 'Dad is going to work to make money for the family.' They want to know more," he said of his two sons, aged seven and four.

"It's not my body, which is holding up very well, but for family reasons," he told the paper.

"When I started 20 years ago, it bothered me to see old guys around 40 filming with much younger girls. Now I'm 40 and it's time to go," he said, adding that he would go into filming and producing.

Siffredi described his wife of 13 years, Rosa, a former Miss Hungary, as "sweet and intelligent".

"She absolutely knows the difference between sex for work and sex for love," he said.

Source: La republlica

An Australian woman in the market for a husband decided that an advertisement in the lonely hearts column of a newspaper simply wouldn't do. Nor would posting an item on the internet.

So Helen Zou, a 40-year-old Sydney civil engineer, went public in the most dramatic form. She erected a giant billboard at a major Sydney intersection appealing for love.

The billboard, measuring approximately four metres by five metres, sits near the popular Ritz Theatre in the affluent eastern suburb of Randwick.

In blaring capital letters it reads, "HUSBAND WANTED", before continuing: "Beautiful, intelligent Australian Chinese lady seeks to have dream family with a fabulous partner to enjoy a lifetime with".

Zou asks for a man "ideally in good health (non-smoker or drinker)", aged up to 45, "unencumbered and of caucasian appearance [with a] good sense of humour [and a] solid financial background with warm and caring nature".

She also says she would prefer a "businessman or professional background" before asking for "serious replies only" at helen2003@optusnet.com.au.

Zou resorted to the billboard after earlier attempts to find a partner failed. She had previously been involved in a five-year, transnational relationship with a man.

According to experts, Zou's predicament is not unusual for many young Sydney women — even if her solution is.

In 2001, the Australian Bureau of Statistics found that 23 percent of Australian households were single-person and that a quarter of women of child-bearing age were likely to remain childless. And the trend has only continued.

Social observers have also blamed a relative abundance of young single women in Sydney for the failure of young men to commit to long-term relationships.

But Zou insists her unorthodox search for a mate is not so strange. "I'm surprised a lot of people think this is special or unusual," she told Sydney's Daily Telegraph.

"It's Australia. There's a lot of freedom here. If you can put up a sign advertising Coca Cola, why not write one about a husband?"

Under Zou's contract with the Australian Posters company, her billboard will stay up for another month — or until her ideal man arrives.

Source: Sydney Herald

A respectable middle-aged woman with a steady partner would leave the house while sleepwalking and have random sex with strangers, an Australian doctor said in a report Thursday.

Peter Buchanan, who treated the woman, said this was an example of a recently identified disorder known as sleep sex, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.

The woman was totally unaware of her double life, which came to light after her partner noticed unexplained condoms around the house and eventually caught her in the act.

"He was aware of some sleepwalking and there was circumstantial evidence, including the unexplained presence of condoms around the house," said Buchanan, a sleep physician at Sydney's Royal Prince Alfred Hospital.

"On one occasion he awoke to find her absent from the bedroom and searched until he found her - engaged in such activity."

Buchanan is to describe the case this weekend to a meeting of the Australian Sleep Association, the newspaper said.

While Buchanan admitted some initial scepticism about the case, brain tests while the woman was sleeping indicated that she was unusually likely to rouse from deep sleep without passing first through lighter sleep patterns.

Almost half of all sleep sex cases were associated with psychological problems and the woman was treated successfully with psychotherapy, the doctor said. Sleep sex did not indicate sexual abuse or any other sexual problem and should be viewed as a sleep disorder, he said, rather than a sexual one.

Buchanan said sleep sex would likely soon be included in an international list of sleep disorders. It is fraught with dangers, he said, including risky sex practices and the possibility that the sufferer could commit sexual assault while sleepwalking.

"There's a huge embarrassment about seeking medical help," he added.

Source: afp.com

Women are more likely to lie about their sex lives than men, according to a new US study involving a fake lie detector test.

The study by psychologists Terri Fisher at Ohio State University and Michele Alexander at Maine University offers a new solution to a paradox that has puzzled sex experts for decades.

In survey after survey, heterosexual men average more sexual partners than women — a statistically impossible situation.

Coventional wisdom had dictated that a man's desire to significantly exaggerate his sexual promiscuity was responsible for the anomaly, but the latest study — published in the Journal of Sex Research — suggests it is the women who are being economical with the truth.

Women change their answers depending on whether or not they believe their responses will remain anonymous or they will be caught lying, the researchers found. The number of sexual partners a woman reported nearly doubled when women thought they were hooked up to a lie detector machine.

"Women are more sensitive to social expectations for their sexual behaviour and may be less than honest when asked about their behaviour in some survey conditions," said Fisher.

According to Fisher, women appeared to feel under pressure to meet expectations of being more relationship-orientated and not promiscuous.

Fisher and Alexander surveyed over 200 unmarried, heterosexual college students aged 18 to 25.

One group filled in questionnaires having been told the researcher might view their responses. A second group filled in the survey alone in a room and were assured the results would be strictly confidential.

A third group were rigged up to a polygraph or lie detector — although they were not told the machine no longer worked.

Women who thought their responses might be read said they had had an average of 2.6 sexual partners, compared with 3.4 partners for those who thought their answers were anonymous.

Those who believed they were attached to a polygraph reported an average of 4.4 partners.

"You would assume that when a heterosexual man has sex, a woman is having sex at the same time, but the statistics always suggest otherwise," Fisher said.

"That can't be true. We thought males would be over-inflating their experience ... but that's not what we found."

Under the same conditions, men's answers did not vary significantly. Those attached to the lie-detector reported an average of 4.0 partners compared with 3.7 for men who thought their answers would be read.

Source: AFP.COM

By James Desborough

SEX-CRAZED bisexual Sam Heuston was up for bedding ALL her Big Brother housemates, The People can reveal. The bikini-loving beauty confessed her horny desires after viewers booted her out of the show on Friday. The randy brunette, 23, revealed how she:

-FANCIED Anthony the most but said he was brainless and unsure about his sexuality.

-LOVED her lesbian snog with Makosi who she is convinced will jump into bed with Anthony.

-BRANDED Saskia a manipulative bitch who WILL romp with Maxwell.

-HOPES Makosi wins because the others are "thickos".

Sam said: "I fancied too many of them to number - Anthony, Maxwell, the girls AND others. I would've slept with any of them.

"I felt really horny in there. I'm very open about my sexuality and if I want it I'll go and get it.

"I'm not fussed either way. Sex is sex. If people think I'm a slapper then fair enough, I don't care. I just like to have a good time."

The marketing graduate admitted she was smitten by Geordie dancer Anthony from the start, saying: "As soon as he walked in I thought 'phwoar'.

"He blew me out for Makosi, but I'd still sh*g him - even on live telly.

"Anthony is fit but he has no brain to go with it. He's too stupid to work out his own sexuality which is quite funny really."

Sam said her biggest thrill during her three weeks in the house was her steamy snog with Zimbabwean nurse Makosi.

"That was amazing. She is a brilliant kisser, and much better than Anthony. It was probably the best snog I've had in my life - off the scale. But I wasn't attracted to her."

Sam believes the sexual tension will increase over the next few weeks. "The way things are going between Maxwell and Saskia who knows what could happen.

"But she's just winding him round her little finger and I don't think he knows what's going on."

And saucy Sam reckoned other housemates could go all the way.

She added: "Makosi is also a very sexual person, Anthony is really keen but I think she might be interested in another girl.

"Craig would sh*g anything as would most of them. "

On fellow evictee, Lesley Sanderson, who threatened to "knock the s***" out of her, Sam said: "She was a bully. But it would never have come to blows. I'd have just walked out."

Sam, who was kicked out after polling 59 per cent of the viewers vote, now hopes Makosi walks away with the #100,000 first prize, saying: "She is girl power."

But she dismissed the others as "a load of thickos".

Sam, who wants to become a model and set up a "ladettes" mag, also denied claims she'd pleasuring herself in a cardboard box during one of the challenges. And she added with a chuckle: "Now I'm out I can't wait to have sex. I've been starved for the last few weeks."

SHE GIVES HER VERDICT

ANTHONY: Fit but a pain too

KEMAL: A real entertainer

DEREK: Boring and frustrated

MAKOSI: Lovely girl inside & out

MAXWELL: Good and bad

ROBERTO: A control freak

SASKIA: Too in love with herself

SCIENCE: Very volatile & quiet

VANESSA: Two- faced on votes

CRAIG: Just a real sweet guy

Source: people.co.uk

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by Merritt McKinney (this is a bit older news but still interesting)

New York - Though marriage between first cousins is illegal or restricted in most US states, the odds that a child whose parents are cousins will be born with a birth defect or genetic disorder are not nearly as high as often thought, according to a panel of experts.  Compared with the offspring of unrelated parents, children whose parents are first cousins have an additional 1.7% to 2.8% higher risk of birth defects such as mental retardation or a genetic disorder, a panel organised by the National Society of Genetic Counselors estimates in the April issue of the Journal of Genetic Counseling.

Since the risk of most birth defects is in the low single digits, the increase in risk may double the odds that a child will be born with a health problem.  But parents with some genetic diseases have a much higher rate of passing on their disorder to a child.

The panel states that cousins who want to have children do not need any special genetic counselling.  As is the case with unrelated couples, they should be offered appropriate genetic testing based on their family history and ethnic background, the report indicates.  But due to the somewhat increased risk of health problems, babies born to parents who are first or second cousins should undergo supplementary testing for metabolic disorders soon after birth, the panel advises.  They also should be offered hearing tests by age 3 months.

One reason that relationships between cousins are often discouraged is the concern that first cousins - who share 12.5% of their genes - will pass on recessive genes to their offspring.  Recessive genes do not cause disease in every generation, but can cause disease when a person inherits a recessive gene from each parent.  "The closer the biological relationship between parents, the greater is the probability that their offspring will inherit identical copies of one or more detrimental recessive genes," the report states.  Children born to first cousins, the authors note, will have two identical copies of 6.25% of their genes.

But the scientific evidence on the risk of birth defects in children born to cousins has not been conclusive, according to the task force.  The panel was led by Robin L Bennett, of the University of Washington in Seattle, who is the president-elect of the National Society of Genetic Counselors, and Dr Arno G Motulsky, also at the University of Washington.  The panel, which included genetic counsellors, physicians and epidemiologists, reviewed the results of six previously published studies that examined the risk of birth defects and other health problems in the children of first-cousin relationships.

Although cousins are often discouraged from marrying each other in North America, or even forbidden from doing so, the researchers point out that unions between relatives are common or even preferred in some parts of the world, especially the Middle East, Asia and Africa.  "In some parts of the world," according to the report, "20% to 60% of all marriages are between close biological relatives."  Due to immigration to the US from these areas, doctors and genetic counsellors may be encountering more patients who married to cousins.  "Health providers should provide supportive counselling to these families and respect cultural belief systems," the authors assert.

"If you look at global populations, 20% of people are married to their cousins," Bennett told Reuters Health in an interview.  There is a lot of stigma against cousin marriages, but there does not seem to be "good biological or social data to back up that stigma," according to Bennett.  From a biological standpoint, "There's probably nothing wrong with it."  She said she hopes that the report will "get rid of some of the stigma so people aren't afraid to tell their doctors."

Bennett pointed out that a child born to cousins is much less likely to be born with certain genetic health problems than children of people with certain genetic conditions.  For example, Bennett said that people with Huntington's disease have a 50% chance of passing on the disease to their kids.

From the Journal of Genetic Counseling 2002;11:97-119

Source: reuters.com 4 April 2002 Reuters Health