Is there any generation that doesn’t consider itself a watershed? We’re suckers for studies that prove we were born at a true turning point. Research by the Institute for Public Policy Research — a lefty, UK-based think tank — shows that “marrying up” is becoming a thing of the past, and the change really started with women born in the 1970s (hi!). While there has been a slight rise in the number of women who “marry down” (we prefer to think of it as a rise in the number of men seeking “aspirational marriages”), the most significant change is that more and more women are choosing to marry men of a similar social status, rather than trying to “bag a rich man,” as the classy saying goes.  Sorry, Don Draper.

Amongst women born in 1958, for example, 38% married “well” — and please take those distancing quote-marks seriously! 23% married someone from a poorer background, and about a third married someone of similar status. Amongst women born in 1970, the number “marrying up” dropped by 5%, and 45% married someone of similar status. And for women born between 1976 and 1981, only 16% married a Don Draper.

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photo via flickr

New research shows that boys are becoming more romantic and more careful — more like girls, some people might say — when it comes to their first sexual experiences. But just because your first time is candle-lit, doesn’t mean you should trust each other with nude photos…

• Sociological research shows boys are becoming more romantic and more careful (a.k.a. shit-scared of being a teen dad) about their first sexual experiences.
• Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker quietly signs four bills about women’s health care and sex education (not positive bills, needless to say).
• Revenge porn entrepreneur provides yet another reason not to let just anyone — or, perhaps: anyone. period. — take your nude photo.
• Why it’s so hard to get child porn removed from Wikipedia.
• A series of psychological studies finds that homophobia is more pronounced in individuals with an unacknowledged attraction to the same sex and who grew up with authoritarian parents who forbade such desires. Which should be no surprise to certain members of the Republican Party.

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photo via Flickr

The ladies got a rough deal this week, what with never being taken outside to play as little girls, being left behind by the Right, being told they don’t care about contraception, and getting spit on yet again by Tucker Max and PETA. Fortunately, Charlize Theron got some aggression out (on video) on behalf of all womankind:

• The Governor of South Carolina says “women don’t care about contraception” – and this is a female governor.
• Tucker Max offers 500K to Planned Parenthood, they say thanks but no thanks, he cries like a baby about it.
• Then PETA keeps it ever classy by offering to take Tucker Max’s money in exchange for a mobile spay-and-neuter truck with Max’s name, likeness and the tagline “Fix Your Bitches.” We’ll never get why it’s not okay to treat animals poorly but women are fair game.
• The best thing about Charlize Theron’s “hacked” kinky sex tape is the fact that the song playing in the background is from the tuck scene in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS.

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photo via flickr

A recent survey by the Boston Consulting Group asked people in the U.S. which key lifestyle habits they would be willing to give up instead of the Internet for a year. 73% would give up alcohol; 69% would give up coffee (we love how close those two figures are!); 77% would give up chocolate (really? 23% need chocolate more than they need the internet?!); 10% would give up their car; and 7% would stop showering (we’re guessing those 7% are all college guys).

But here’s the number that jumped out at us: 21% said they’d sacrifice sex for the internet. The first time we read this figure we found it depressing — just the fact that there are people out there who think this way. But then we re-read it and thought: 79% of people in the U.S. think sex is more important that the internet. And that’s kind of awesome. When you think of all the online porn, all the LOL cat videos, all the Facebooking, the Tweeting, the Tumblring, the emailing, the chain-letter-forwarding, the online dating, the Netflixing, the Amazon-ing, the blogging about your kid’s first poop on the potty — add up all of that and more, and it’s still not as compelling as a roll in the hay for most people. We think that’s something to celebrate.

So… what would you give up for the Internet? What would you give up in a heartbeat — and what would you never, ever give up?

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poster via NCCC-online.org

We’ve been writing about sex and sexual health for more than a decade, and HPV still makes our heads swim. It’s such a complicated subject — complicated further by the emotional and political climate surrounding the vaccine — and guidelines on HPV seem to be constantly changing. It’s been in the news a lot lately, so we thought we’d review some of the latest headlines. If you want to brush up on the facts, check out the CDC’s HPV page here. And you can review everything we’ve published on HPV here.

• A new study published in the British Medical Journal shows that the HPV vaccine — which previously had been thought to have a purely preventative effect – reduces the risk of a new HPV-associated illness in patients who have already been treated for a disease that resulted from HPV infection.
• A Nobel Laureate makes a case for vaccinating young males against HPV to help prevent cervical cancer in women.
• New cervical cancer screening guidelines include fewer pap smears for women over 21; HPV tests combined with fewer pap smears for women over 30; and no screening at all for young women under 21. (This is because young women’s bodies are more likely to clear HPV with no intervention, and the screening process can affect future fertility.)
• Research shows that while anal HPV infection and precancerous lesions are common among gay and bisexual men, most of these cases will not progress to anal cancer. (And the progression from lesions to cancer seems to be even slower than the already slow progression rate of cervical cancer.) A less cheery way of looking at this story is that men who have sex with men are at an increased risk of anal HPV and anal cancer.
• Is oral sex really responsible for a rise in head and neck cancer rates? And if so, can the HPV vaccine help? The jury is still out on both counts.

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When do we want it? Now! Of course, these kind of things take time and money. And if these things don’t fit the Big Pharma money-making model (take a pill, day after day, year after year, and keep shelling out the dough for it), then getting backing and support is an uphill battle. But Vasalgel seems to be the little birth control that could. After three decades of research and trials in India, this method of reversible male contraception has made it’s way to America thanks to the Parsemus Foundation, which is dedicated to finding low-cost solutions neglected by the pharmaceutical industry. The latest news on this front: preliminary rabbit safety and efficacy studies in the U.S. just started this month!

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photo via Flickr

photo via flickr

Where reason fails, satire sometimes works — hence the sudden trend of tongue-in-cheek proposed sex laws, like the “personhood of semen” bill. And where satire fails — will a sex strike work? That’s the hope of a group called Liberal Ladies Who Lunch (love it!). They are proposing a national sex strike from April 28 until May 5 — tagline, “If our reproductive choices are denied, so are yours.”

Now, clearly this is a symbolic gesture more than anything else — after all, a week without sex sounds more like a long-term relationship than a sex strike to us. As compared to, say, the ancient Greek play Lysistrata, wherein the women of Greece go on an actual sex strike to end the decades-long Peloponnesian War. Meaning, they wouldn’t have sex until the war was over, whether that took a week or another decade. Or take Colombia, where in 2006 the girlfriends of gang members in one of the country’s most violent cities, Pereira (it had a murder rate at the time of 97 per 100,000 people), went on strike until their men gave up their weapons. As a result, in 2010, Pereira’s murder rate dropped by 26.5 percent, the steepest decline in the country.

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photo via flickr

This week, research showed that men become “cognitively impaired” when around women — even if they just think they’re around women. So does that explain why Utah and Arizona broke out the crazy?

• Proposed new Arizona law would would allow an employer to request proof that a woman using insurance to buy birth control needed it for non-sexual reasons.
• Utah lawmakers vote for abstinence-only sex education.
• Hey, Utah, check this out: Research shows (once again… ) that sex education delays teen sex.
• Flip flopper Romney says he will get rid of Planned Parenthood (funny, we seem to remember him seeking their endorsement way back when).
• Kosher Sex author Rabbi Shmuley Boteach (we once shared a talk show couch with the man!) is running for Congress, as a Republican.
• Jessica Simpson, weeks away from giving birth, says her “Big O is, like, the biggest O ever!” We’d be gagging a little except that we kind of like the fact that she actually looks like a normal pregnant person and not a famine victim with a distended belly.
• Scientists find that interacting with women leaves men “cognitively impaired.” So that’s what they’re calling it these days.

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