Thursday, March 27, 2014

Sex News Roundup, March 26/14

(File photo.)















Dusty Miller


Southern states and the Bible Belt watch more gay porn on average.

“It began with a simple question.  Proceeding from the assumption that less sex in a marriage turns straight couples to online porn, does the same hold true for gay married couples?”

(There would also be the question of single folks in repressive social contexts. The study also notes the difficulty in distinguishing between lesbian searches and male searchers. Males report a high interest in voyeurism and lesbian acts.)

Pornhub and Buzzfeed sought the answers and got some surprising results.”

“Looking at gay porn viewers by state, we see an interesting phenomenon. Why, would you look at that! 

The highest numbers are, by and large, in southern states. Hmmmm. But all of those states hold that same-sex marriage is illegal, right? There wouldn’t be just a tinge of hypocrisy at play here, would there? You bet your stars & bars there is. Every single southern state has a percentage of gay porn viewers higher than the average for states with legal same-sex marriage.” 


***

Who’s doing what?

Speaking of the Bible Belt, we might be a bit surprised by who’s actually making and uploading amateur porn videos onto the internet.

“Amateur porn website Homegrown Video (NSFW link) cataloged all video submissions they received over a six-month period. They found that almost one-third of homemade sex tapes submitted between July and December 2013 were created not in sexually liberal coastal cities, as one might imagine, but in the Bible Belt. Furthermore, 56.9 percent of videos were submitted by women.”

(This is one of those I LOVE MY JOB DAYS.)

“These results are consistent with a recent PornHub study, which found that the religiosity of an area had little impact on how much porn its residents watch. Furthermore, residents of cities with higher churchgoing rates spent 47 seconds longer per PornHub visit than their peers in less religious cities.”
Personally, I have no conclusions. I may have more questions, but no conclusions.


***

So. Just how much porn is there on the internet?

That’s a very good question, and we can thank the BBC for answering it.

“Many things in porn are exaggerated, including the statistics regularly quoted to show how much pornography is on the web.”

“The need to get a good sense of its size and reach has sharpened as British politicians, pundits and the media debate what influence pornography is having on children, teenagers and their understanding of what sex is all about.”

“A lot of different statistics were quoted in those debates. However, few stand up to scrutiny.”

“One figure that cropped up again and again is that 37% of the internet is made up of pornographic material. 
Many of those people who quoted the figure took it from a press release put out in June 2010 by net filtering firm Optenet.”

Ah, but.

“However, that same year the largest study ever done into human sexuality published a very different figure for how many of the web's most popular sites were devoted to porn. The academics behind the research based their results on analysis of the million most frequented sites in the world. Most people now turn to the web to see pornography Their estimate? Just 4% of those websites were porn.”


***

Can watching porn help your relationship?

“Can porn really enhance married life?”

“The predominant stereotypes regarding  pornographyrevolve around men who can't get enough of it, and women who can't stand it. Traditional thinking dictates that porn-loving men should be hiding in dark corners, terribly ashamed of whatever weakness causes them to want to look at pictures of naked ladies. Women, on the other hand, should never touch porn themselves (no, romance novels aren't porn, they're romantic) and should feel degraded by the very idea of appearing in some. They should also be totally jealous if their own love interest admits to looking at porn because it means he prefers porn to real women.”

“Of course, the more  sex-positive people among us know that today there is a wide variety of pornography out there catering to all kinds of different styles and to both women and men. Pornographic art, film and literature have made it into the mainstream. Heck, we'd probably enjoy pornographic dramas and sitcoms on TV if only they existed.”

A friend woke up in the middle of the night and saw her husband masturbating.

As she told me, “I wondered why the hell he would ever want to do that when I was right there.”

(There is a time to bite one’s tongue and just nod sagely, and say nothing.)

“The important thing, according to the research, is that we're open and honest about what we like, what we do, and what we want to do.”


***

Sexual activity grows brain cells.

“Forget mindfulness meditation, computerized working-memory training, and learning a musical instrument; all methods recently shown by scientists to increase intelligence. There could be an easier answer. It turns out that sex might actually make you smarter.”

“Researchers in Maryland and South Korea recently found that sexual activity in mice and rats improves mental performance and increases neurogenesis (the production of new neurons) in the hippocampus, where long-term memories are formed.”

Middle-aged rats.

“In April, a team from the University of Maryland reported that middle-aged rats permitted to engage in sex showed signs of improved cognitive function and hippocampal function. In November, a group from Konkuk University in Seoulconcluded that sexual activity counteracts the memory-robbing effects of chronic stress in mice. “Sexual interaction could be helpful,” they wrote, “for buffering adult hippocampal neurogenesis and recognition memory function against the suppressive actions of chronic stress.”

Texans say watching porn causes brain damage.

“So growing brain cells through sex does appear to have some basis in scientific fact. But there’s some debate over whether fake sex—pornography—could be harmful. Neuroscientists from the University of Texas recently argued that excessive porn viewing, like other addictions, can result in permanent “anatomical and pathological” changes to the brain. That view, however, was quickly challenged in a rebuttal from researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, who said that the Texans ‘offered little, if any, convincing evidence to support their perspectives. Instead, excessive liberties and misleading interpretations of neuroscience research are used to assert that excessive pornography consumption causes brain damage.’"


***

Here’s one that I always find interesting.

Does the use or availability of pornography increase the rate of violence against women?

According to BOLD, the answer is yes.

“The consumption of pornography can be directly linked to violence against women.”

According to Liberal Conspiracy, the answer is no.

“Research reported last week in The Scientific American claimed that using porn can actually reduce levels of violence against women and girls.”

I suppose it depends on whom you ask and what their interest is. There’s also the question of objectivity when an issue already generates strong and opposing opinions. How in the hell you are ever going to get an objective result with everyone peddling an agenda and such small study samples is beyond this writer.

I suppose the truth will never be known, and even if it was, those with an opposing interest would never accept it anyway.

Anyhow, that’s it for today.

Love and kisses.

Bye!!!




END

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