Pleasure Theory and the Shamelessly Sexual

SexIs Magazine, April 2011 What if everything we’ve ever learned about our basic motivation to have sex — the procreation of the species — is unequivocally wrong? What if making babies is a byproduct of the real purpose of our couplings? What if the reason humans as a species spend more time having sex than any other creature on the planet — including our randy bonobo cousins who don’t seem to have any hang-ups about enjoying a good knoodling...

Fearless and Naked over 40 in Youth-Obsessed Culture

“Women over forty have a very clear picture of who they ARE, but a distorted idea of what they actually LOOK like.” – Jillian Todd, photographer One of the best-kept secrets of women’s lives is that as they age sex gets better. Breasts may sag, tummies may flab, and butts may drag, but none of that really matters in soft candlelight and a warm bed. There are other reasons why women become more willing and relaxed. With childbirth...

Born This Way? | Postpartum to Orgasmic Birth

“I don’t want him,” I whisper to the wall. On the bed in front of me is my first-born, swaddled in his going home clothes. We’d waited years to have a baby, and now that I am a new mother, something feels terribly wrong. Alone in my hospital room, I’m asking myself if babies really supposed to be born this way, under these conditions? Last night I asked for help for the third day in a row. Please, please – I haven’t slept in days and...

Scent-uality and Aural Sex | Why Women Go For Beastly Boys

We’ve long known that women are attracted to their mates in part by smell, not just via the subtle nature of pheromones, but man (speaking heterosexually here) in every aspect of his glorious scent. If it’s the one we love, there’s a whole lot of stink we can soak up; of course, most of us like our partners smelling clean and inviting (I’m betting that the Old Spice Guy’s popularity was partly due to our vivid imaginations. Hmm, he smells...

Unlikely Holocaust Remembrance Love Story

There is a photo in Yad Vashem, grainy from a bygone age that you can’t miss it when you enter the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem. The black and white panoramic view shows thousands of people standing in a square facing a stage. They are grouped by the hundreds like orderly rows of hero worshippers, and the view from behind the stage – upon which stands hundreds of officers and men of rank – reveals carbon replicas of military...