Perspectives on Sexuality

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birth control, china's view on sexuality, christian view on sexuality, history of sexuality, masturbation, milestones in tv, muslim views on sexuality, oral sex, pharmacist refusal, sexual intelligence, sexuality on tv, taoism views on sexuality, views of sexuality during the middle ages

All information is from Our Sexuality by Robert Crooks and Karla Baur, Eleventh Edition.

• Sexual intelligence means understanding oneself sexually and having interpersonal sexual skills and integrity
  • Depends on having accurate scientific knowledge about sexuality
  • Critical considerantion of the broader cultural, political, and legal contexts of sexual issues.
• Birth control: 46 states have laws that make pharmacists’ refusals legal; others have laws that forbid pharmacists from refusing to fill prescriptions (Anghelescu, 2008a; Lithwick, 2008).
• People with more education masturbate more often than less-educated people do (Kinsey et all., 1948).
• Oral-genital sex tends to be most common among young, college-educated whites and least common among African Americans and individuals with less education (Michael et al., 1994).
• Asian-Americans, on the whole, have more conservative sexual attitudes and are less likely to engage in premarital intercourse (Benuto & Meana, 2008; Cochran et al., 1991).
• Hispanic culture, on the whole, often endorses sexual exploration for males but places a high value on chastity before marriage for women (Comas-Diaz & Greene, 1994).
• 75% of Catholics in the United States believe that one can be a good Catholic and use birth control (Miller, 1008a).
• Orthodox Judaism forbids sex during menstruation.

Fertility, Pregnancy, and Childbirth

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artificial insemination by donor, basal body temperature, birth, bradley method, breast feeding, caesarean section, cervical mucus, childbirth, declining sperm counts, ectopic, fertile, human sexuality, in vitro fertilization, janice baldwin, lamaze method, ovulation, pregnancy, sex during pregnancy, simon levay, third edition

• Two of King Henry VII’s wives – Jane Seymour and Kathryn Parr – died in or soon after childbirth.

  • Of his 11 children, most died in infancy, and only three reached adulthood
• Excluding pregnancies that are terminated in by induced abortion, 80% of all established pregnancies in the United States culminate in the delivery of a live child. On
• Once a child is born it has a better than 99% chance of surviving infancy.
• Only about 1 in 10,000 pregnancies now leads to the death of the mother (Centers for Disease Control, 2004b, 2007e).

Sexual Relationships

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flirting, jealousy, leviticus, praire voles, PREP, prevention and relationship enhancement program, religious views on sex, robert sternberg, romantic love, sexuality, simon levay, social cues of dating, st. thomas aquinas, tantric buddhism, triangle of love, views on sex

All information is taken from Human Sexuality 3^rd Edition by Simon LeVay and Janice Baldwin

• Restrictions laid down by religious leaders of the ancient Israel and incorporated into the Book of Leviticus (part of the Jewish Torah and the Christian Old Testament) have been fundamental to Western moral tradition.
  
  • According to Leviticus, God gave Moses a list of prohibited sexual behaviors, along with appropriate punishments for transgression – sometimes death. The forbidden behaviors included adultery, incest (including sex with relatives by blood and by marriage), sex during menstruation, sex between men, and sex with animals.
    
  • The rules in Leviticus forbade sex during and after menstruation [somewhere around Leviticus 15 there's a section about how pretty much anything a menstruating woman touched was 'unclean' and she had to go to the temple to sacrifice doves at the end of every period] and pregnancy as well as on Fridays and holy days, during Lent, etc.
    
  • Did not prohibit marital sex nor sex between unmarried men and an unmarried woman (other biblical passages made clear that a woman who was not a virgin when she married could be stoned to death – Dueteronomy 22 – there was no equivalent punishment for men)

Hypocrisy and False Empowerment as Discussed by Ariel Levy in Female Chauvinist Pigs and the Rise of Raunch Culture

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ariel levy, female chauvanist pigs, girls gone wild, hugh hefner, raunch culture

A new brand of the “empowered woman” has been plastered throughout every media outlet recently.  This woman, described by Ariel Levy in Female Chauvinist Pigs, Women and the Rise of Raunch Culture, is supposedly in charge of her own sexuality.  Levy asserts that this is a false power and,  in reality, women are making themselves, and other women, sex objects (pg. 4).  This new culture will be discussed highlighting the problems with its claim of feminism and sexual power, and identifying specific cases, such as Girls Gone Wild and Playboy, and the exploitation of females under the new regime of female chauvinist pigs.

Attraction, Arousal, and Response

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aphrodisiac, asexual, asymmetrical development, attractiveness, breast size, female lap-dancers, fluctuating symmetry, homophily, muscularity in men, orgasm, ovulation, perception of beauty, sexual arousal, sexual fantasies, sexual response cycle, sexual satisfaction, testosterone, voice preference, waist-to-hip ratio

All notes come from Human Sexuality, 3^rd edition by Simon LeVay and Janice Baldwin.

• The more symmetrical a person’s face, the more attractive, sexy, and healthy that person seems to others (Fink et al., 2006)
• Fluctuating symmetry = a difference between the left and right sides of the body that results from random perturbations of development (genes were of poor quality or an interference, such as an infection, during development).
  • People with asymmetrical features are more likely to suffer from a variety of disorders – including extremely premature birth, certain forms of intellectual disability, schizophrenia, and psychological and physiological distress – than are more symmetrical persons.
  • Psychologist Linda Mealey and her colleagues studies the relative attractiveness and facial symmetry of monozygotic (“identical”) twins. MZ twins share the same genes, but the vicissitudes of development ensure that they do not end up looking perfectly identical. Mealey used a computer to make two composites of each face. In each composite, one half of the image was the real image of the person’s face, while the other side was a mirror-reversed version of that same left half. The other composite was done the same way with the right side of the face.
    • Students were asked to look at these composites and judge which twin’s face was more symmetrical. Consistently, the twin who was judged more symmetrical by this test was also judged more attractive, even though the two kinds of judgments were made my different raters.

Gender

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2D:4D ratio, 5 alpha reductase deficiency, amazons, autogynephilia, benefits, berdaches, brenda reimer, bruce reimer, CAH, children who experienced phsyical abuse, children who experienced sexual abuse, complications, david reimer, differences between men and women, eggs at twelve, fetal testosterone level, gender, gender constancy, gender dysphoria, gender identity, gender role, genital adrenal hyperplasia, guevedoces, hijras, influence of older siblings on gender-related traits, mahu, men and aggressiveness, phalloplasty, sex-change, sex-reassignment surgery, sexual orientation, stages of sexual reassignement surgery, tets of verbal fluency, transgender, transgendered, transgendered legal protection, transgenders in history, transmen, transsexual, transwomen

• Gender = the collection of psychological traits that differ between males and females
• Gender identity = a person’s subjective sense of being male or female
• Sexual orientation = the direction of a person’s sexual feelings: sexual attraction toward persons of the opposite sex, the same sex, or both sexes.
• Transgendered = having a gender identity that is discordant with one’s anatomical sex.
• Gender role = the expression of gender identity in social behavior
• On average, girls outperform boys on tests of verbal fluency.
• Men outperform women in mentally rotating 3-dimensional objects, targeting accuracy, and navigation (Watson & Kimura, 1991; Moffat et al., 1998; Peters et al., 2007)
• Women outperform men on tasks involving memorization of the location of objects, fine manipulation, and some verbal skills, such as verbal memory and fluency (Kimura, 1999).
• Men score higher than women on written tests of aggressiveness, show more verbal and physical aggression in real-life situations, and are more likely to commit violent crimes, both in the United States and across most cultures (Archer, 2004).
• Women are more likely to express aggression through indirect, nonphysical means, such as malicious gossip (Hess & Hagen, 2006).
• Women are more interested in people-related activities and occupations; men have more thing-related interests (Lippa, 2005).
• Men scored higher in  “assertiveness” and “openness to ideas” while women scored higher in “agreeableness,” “warmth,” “openness to feelings,” and “neuroticism (Costa et al., 2001).
• Men express far more permissive attitudes than women toward casual sex, as well as toward premarital and extramarital sex (Oliver & Hyde, 1993).
• Men are also more desirous of engaging in casual sex, and make more attempts to do so (Buss & Schmitt, 1993).
• Men were more than three times as likely as women to say they would feel “satisfied,” while women were more than twice as likely as men to say they would feel “regret” or “shame” after a one-night stand (Esquire, 2007).
• Women are attracted to older partners, men to younger ones.
• Women are more concerned than men with their partners’ status or wealth; men are more concerned than women with their partners’ physical attractiveness.
• Men are more interested in visual sexual stimuli generally and are more sexually arouse by such stimuli than women (Murnen & Stockton, 1997; Janssen et al., 2003).
• Women are predisposed to experience emotional jealousy (to fear that their male partner may commit himself emotionally to a different woman).
• Men tend to experience sexual jealousy (to fear that their female partner is being physically unfaithful to them.)
• Men masturbate more than females (Oliver & Hyde, 1993). [No, really!!]

Sexual Development

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5 alpha reductase deficiency, acrosome reaction, activational effect, AIS, AMH, androgen insensitivity syndrome, blastocyte, breedlove, CAH, capacitation, conception, conceptus, congenital adrenal hyperplasia, cryptorchidism, development of genitalia, DHT, diethylstilbestrol, embryo, fertilization, fetus, genetic sex, hermaphrodie, hypospadia, interesex, intersexuality, kallmann syndrome, klinefelter syndrome, LH, lordosis, luteinizing hormone, micropenis, mullerian duct, organizational effect, ovum, pregnancy, puberty, sertoli, sperm, SRY gene, testes, triple-x syndrome, turner syndrome, undescended testicles, wolffian, xxy syndrome

This is a doozy coming in at 14 pages.  A lot of it is hormone related.

All text/paraphrasing/quotations come from Human Sexuality, Third Edition, Simon Levay and Janice Baldwin.

• How does a sperm find its way into the oviducts? They find their way primarily by ascending a gradient of increasing temperature (Saurez & Pacey, 2006) and may be helped along by active contractions of the uterus and oviducts.

Sex Hormones and the Menstrual Cycle

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abuse, amenorrhea, AMH, androgen, anti-doping agency, aromatase, barry bonds, beef cattle, Bisphenol A, breast, cancer, capability, castration, cells, cervix, corpus luteum, cramps, cycle, DDT, DHT, dogo, dutasteride, dysmenorrhea, edition, effects, egg count, endrometirum, erectile, erections, estradiol, estrogen, finasteride, floyd landis, follicular, FSH, GnRH, gonadotropin, granulosa, hCG, hormone, human, inhibin, janice baldwin, kelli white, leviticus, LH, luetal, marion jones, mark mcgqwire, menorrhagia, menstrual cup, menstruating hut, menstruation, niddut, oakland raiders, oligomenorrhea, oocyte, ovarian cycle, ovary, ovulation, oxytocin, peptides, pliny the elder, PMDD, PMS, premenstrual dysphoric disorder, premenstrual syndrome, preventing, progesterone, progestin, prolactin, prostalandins, proteins, qur'an, raloxifene, sertoli, sex, sexuality, shrink prostate, simon levay, soy-rich diet, st. augustin, steroids, tammy thomas, tamoxifene, tampon, testosterone, thecal, thg, third, toxic shock syndrome

Sidenote: Raloxifene is as equally effective as tamoxifen in preventing breast cancer but with raloxifene there is no excess uterine cancer and the clotting risk was 30 percent less. Tamoxifen is about 30 cents per day and raloxifene is $3.30 a day. [link]

Finasteride and dutasteride block the conversion of testosterone to dihydrotestosterone, a hormone that prostate cancers need to grow.  They are on the market to shrink the prostate in older men, whose prostates often enlarge.  Finasteride can cause side effects such as impotence or decreased ejaculate but if they occur at all, are gone after a year.  It is recommended by the American Urological Association and the American Society for Clinical Oncology that men 50+ take it. [link]

Onto the text from Human Sexuality, Third Edition, by Simon LeVay and Janice Baldwin…

FYI this is pretty dry stuff so unless you are interested in this kind of stuff just look at my other posts

Men’s Bodies

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american academy of pediatrics stance on circumcision, balls, benefits, broken penis, canada's stance on circumcision, cancer, circumcision, erect penis, erection, flaccid penis, koro, male circumcision, mean length, penile cancer, penis, penis enlargement, penis surgery, prince albert, prostate cancer, quadriplegic men, risks, satisfaction with penis size, seminal plasma, sperm, spermatozoon, stephen gough, surgery, testicle, testicular cancer, volume of ejaculate, weight, wrinkly

All information is from Human Sexuality, Third Edition, by Simon LeVay and Janice Baldwin.

• Circumcision
  • Can I get circumcised as an adult?  “Absolutely — it’s an outpatient procedure done by a urologists.  But be sure that you want to be circumcised because there’s no going back.  Expect a few days of discomfort and a ban on sex (even masturbation) for about a month.”
  • “Worldwide, about one-fourth of all men are circumcised…and is religiously prescribed for Muslims and Jews.”
  • “Currently, about one-third of all male infants born in the United States are circumcised, but the circumcision rate is declining.”
  • “It is more common among whites than among African Americans or Hispanics”
  • Medical Benefits
    • “a tenfold or greater reduction in the incidence of urinary tract infections in infancy (McNeil, 2007).”
    • “Worldwide, circumcision is associated with a lower risk of acquiring ulcerative sexually transmitted diseases and AIDS (Moses et al., 1998).”
    • “Circumcised men are less likely than uncircumcised men to become infected with a commonly sexually transmitted virus, human papillomavirus…This makes them less likely to develop penile cancer and it also offers their female partners some protection against cervical cancer.”
    • “…circumcision facilitates hygiene.  In uncircumcised men, a cheesy substance called smegma builds up under the foreskin, and can develop a rancid smell and taste…This problem can easily be avoided, however, if a man washes under his foreskin whenever he takes a bath or shower.”
    • “one national study found that circumcision is associated with a lower incidence of sexual dysfunctions, especially erectile dysfunction (Laumann et al., 1997)
  • Risks
    • “hemorrhage, infection, and — extremely rarely — damage to the penis.”
  • “The American Academy of Pediatrics takes no stand on the matter…(American Academy of Pediatrics, 2007b).”
  • “The Canadian Pediatric Society takes a somewhat more negative view: it “does not recommend” routine circumcision (Canadian Pediatric Society, 2004).”
  • “In some Polynesian cultures as well as in parts of the Philippines, a slit is made along the top of a boy’s foreskin at or before puberty.  This operation, called superincision, exposes the top surface of the glans and lets the foreskin droop below the glans, but no tissue is removed.”
  • “Australian aborigines and some other cultures traditionally made a slit along the underside of the penis, exposing the urethra and allowing the glans and part of the shaft to flare outward, giving the penis a flat appearance.  This procedure is called subincision.”
  • “A ‘Prince Albert’ piercing enters the glans through or near the frenulum and exits via the urethra.”
    • Potential problems of piercing: “scarring, damage to erectile tissue, nerve damage, interference with urination, and a serious infections such as hepatitis and HIV (Grossman, 2008).”

Women’s Bodies

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african union, anne boleyn, bartholin's glands, bloodstained sheet, breast cancer, breast cancer risks, cervical cancer, clitoridectomy, clitoris, drinking and breast cancer, endometrial cancer, extra boobs, extra nipples, female circumcision, g spot, genital, glans, grafenberg spot, how nipples work, hysterectomy, infibulation, kegel, kegel exercises, mutilation, nipples, pharaonic circumcision, protocol on the rights of women in africa, pubic hair, purpose, smegma, sunnah, uterine cancer, vagina, vagina bacteria, yeast infections

• “Neither men nor women are the “original” sex from which the other was molded: Women and men coevolved over millions of years from females and males of our ancestral species.”
• Pubic hair “helps vaporize odors that arise in specialized sweat glands, similar to those in the armpits”
• “Many cultures (such as that of japan) have viewed abundant pubic hair as highly erotic.”
• Glans = the terminal knob of the clitoris or penis
• “Ointment-like secretions from the underside of the clitoral hood lubricate the motion of the hood over the clitoris, but as these secretions dry and mix with dead cells and bacteria they form a pasty material called smegma, which can collect under the hood.”
• “In many Middle Eastern countries it is traditional for a bride’s mother or other relative to display the bloodstained sheets from a  window after the bride’s wedding night, thereby proving to the community that the marriage was consummated and that the bride was indeed a virgin…there may be no stain…the bride was not a virgin; she was a virgin but didn’t have an intact hymen; the couple achieved coitus without rupture of the hymen or without sufficient bleeding to stain the sheets; or they didn’t engage in coitus because the man ejaculated prematurely or because one or both parties were too anxious or too drunk to perform the act.  To guard against any of these possibilities, the mother brings a vial of chicken blood with her.”
• Female Circumcision
  • “An estimated 80-120 million women worldwide have been subjected to some form of cutting of their external genitals during childhood or puberty…various procedures have been referred to collectively as female circumcision, female genital cutting, or female genital mutilation.”
  • “Prevalent in 29 countries, most of them in Africa.  Eighty percent or more of the women in Djibouti, Egypt, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Gambia, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and Sudan are believed to have been circumcised.  Female circumcision is also practiced in the Middle East, Indonesia, and elsewhere (World Health Organization, 2001).”
    • “It is particular associated with Islamic cultures, and…female circumcision is not prescribed in the Qur’an, it is referred to favorable in later Islamic texts and is often perceived to have religious significance.”
  • Least invasive procedure = Sunnah, “the clitoral hood is incised or removed…some part of the clitoris itself is often removed during sunnah circumcision.”
  • Clitoridectomy/Excision = “the entire clitoral glans and shaft are removed, along with the hood and sometimes nearby portions of the labia minora.”
  • Most invasive procedure = Infibulation/Pharaonic Circumcision, “widely practiced in the Sudan and Somalia…includes clitoridectomy…removal of the entire labia minora and inner parts of the labia majora.  The cut or abraded edges of the two labia majora are then stitched together to cover the vestibule.  Only a small opening is left for the passage of urine and menstrual blood.  When the woman first has coitus the opening has to be enlarged — by forceful penetration with the penis or other object, or by cutting.”
    • “…Can cause serious problems with urination, menstruation, intercourse, childbirth, and fertility.” (Some studies suggest that the harmful effects have been exaggerated)
  • “Generally performed by traditional practitioners who lack medical training…often done with crude instruments and without anesthesia or attention to sanitary conditions, so there is a risk of potentially fatal complications…Recent trend towards the “medicalization” of female circumcision…performed by trained medical personnel.”
  • “A woman who retains her clitoris may be considered ritually unclean or dangerous to the health of a man who has sex with her…In many cultures in which female circumcision is practiced, a woman who has not undergone the procedure is not marriageable — which often means that she is condemned to a life of poverty.”
  • “In the United States, female circumcision has been illegal since 1996…some circumcision of the daughters of immigrants does occur in the United States, but the prevalence of this illegal activity is hard to estimate.”
  • “In 2005, the African Union’s Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa was ratified: It requires all 53 member states to prohibit female circumcision…its effect is uncertain.  In Kenya, for example, female circumcision has been illegal for several ears, but in many parts of the country virtually all girls still undergo the procedure.”
  • “Women in the countries concerned have mostly positive views about the practice, and many girls want to have it done as a token of their womanhood and their membership in the culture.”
• “Small glands of unknown function — Bartholin’s glands — lie on either side of the vaginal opening, just inside the labia minora.  They secrete a few drops of fluid prior to orgasm, but they do not play a significant role in lubricating the vagina.  It’s possible that these secretions help neutralize the normally acidic environment of the vagina, thus making it more hospitable to sperm.  The main significance of Bartholin’s glands, however, is that they sometimes become blocked and form large cysts.  These can be drained by a gynecologist.”
• “Women are advised to wipe themselves in a backward…direction after using the toilet.  Why? “Intestinal bacteria can be spread rather easily from the anus across the perineum to the vagina or urethra, possibly causing an infection.”
• Kegel exercises = “exercises to increase the tone of pubococcygeus muscle and other muscles of the pelvic floor.”  “Steady contraction of these muscles stiffens the walls of the vagina during sex, thus increasing sexual sensations for both participants.  These muscles contract more strongly at orgasm, increase pleasure, prevent urinary and fecal leakage, and possibly help to keep semen in the vagina…Has been recommended for the treatment of sexual dysfunction as well as to prevent the involuntary leakage of urine or feces.”
• “If a woman who is not sexually excited, the vagina resembles a collapsed tube that runs about 8 to 10 cm (3-4 inches) upward and backward from the vaginal opening.”
• “The vagina is normally inhabited by large numbers of “friendly” bacteria — specifically, lactobacilli — which converts sugars to lactic acid.  Because of this bacterial activity, the surface of the vagina is usually mildly acidic and this helps to prevent the growth of harmful bacteria.”
• Yeast Infections (candidiasis, vaginal thrush) “It is better to get a medical diagnosis….at least for the first episode, because women sometimes use over-the-counter medications for inappropriate conditions, a practice that can lead to the development of drug resistant infections (CDC, 2004c).  Also, persistent candidiasis can be a sign of a underlying problem with the immune system, such as might be caused by infection with the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).”
• The G-Spot
  • “the Grafenberg spot” (with two dots over the a), named for sexologist Ernst Grafenberg, who described it in the early 1950s
  • “Only a minority of women say they have a G-spot, but for those who do, it is an area of heightened sensitivity on the front wall of the vagina, about 3 to 5 cm (1 to 2 inches) from the vaginal entrance.  Deep pressure at this location can trigger the desire to urinate, but is is also said to be sexually arousing and to trigger an orgasm that is different in quality from an orgasm caused by stimulation of the clitoris (Ladas et al., 2004).”
• “Cancer of the cervix (cervical cancer) strikes about 13,000 American women annually and causes about 4400 deaths.  The main factor predisposing women to cervical cancer is infection with human papillomavrisu (HPV), a virus that is sexually transmitted.  Less important risk factors include chlamydia infection (Koskela et al., 2000), smoking, and immune system dysfunction (cervical cancer is a common complication of AIDs in women).
• “Endometrial cancer (often called uterine cancer) is three times more common than cervical cancer, but only causes 50% more deaths…the survival rate is better.  The 5-year relative survival rate (…the percentage of women who are still alive 5 years after diagnosis, excluding women who die of other causes) is 84%.”
• “Except for the earliest-stage cervical cancers, cancers affecting the uterus are usually treated by removal of the entire organ (hysterectomy).  Sometimes other pelvic organs, such as the oviducts and ovaries, also have to be removed, depending on how advanced the disease is.”
• “Half a million hysterectomies are performed in the United States annually, and 1 in 3 women have had a hysterectomy by the age of 60.  The associated costs exceed $5 billion annually.”
• “The use of oral contraceptives for more than 5 years decreases the risk of ovarian cancer by about 60%”
• “A suckling infant removes milk by compressing the nipple between its tongue and palate, rather than by actually sucking as commonly believed”
• How nipples get erect: “erection is caused by contraction of smooth muscles beneath the nipple, which push the nipple outward.”
• Extra nipples = polythelia; extra breasts = polymastia
  • “Small extra patches of areolar skin — sometimes with miniature nipples at their center — are fond in about 6% of people –  more commonly in men than in women and more commonly on the left side of the body than on the right (Schmidt, 1998).”
  • “These extra nipples are usually found along the “milk lines” — embryological ridges that run from the armpits to the groin.”
  • “Extra breasts in women can become fully functional at puberty”
  • ANNE BOLEYN HAD AN EXTRA BREAST! WHY WAS THIS NEVER MENTIONED IN ALL THE STORIES ABOUT HER?!? “There has been a traditional (but incorrect) belief that women with extra breasts are unusually fertile.  This may be why Anne Boleyn was chosen by King Henry VIII of England as his second wife…(Grossl, 2000).”
  • “The record number of medically verified breasts in a single person is ten (Deaver & McFarland, 1917).”
  • “Extra breasts are also subject to the same diseases as regular breasts.”
• Breast Cancer — “About 180,000 women are diagnosed with invasive breast cancer in the United States each year, and about 40,000 women (as well as about 400 men) die of the disease.”
  • “It is estimated that 13.2% of American women will develop (but not necessarily die of) breast cancer in their lifetime (Mustanski et al., 2005).”
  • “Heart disease kills far more women than do all cancers combined.  In fact, breast cancer is not even the leading cause of cancer deaths among women: Lung cancer kills more women in the United States than does breast cancer.  Still, breast cancer is a leading cause of death among middle-aged women.”
  • “A women who has one first-degree releative…with breast cancer faces twice the risk of getting the diseases as a woman who does not.  Having two first-degree relatives with breast cancer multiples her risk fivefold.”
  • “Women who inherit damaged (mutated) versions of these genes [BRCA1 and BRCA2] have an 80% risk of developing breast cancer during their lifetime, as well as a heightened risk of developing ovarian cancer (King et al., 2003).” 
  • “Mutations in these genes account for only about 10% of all breast cancers, however; in fact, most breast cancers occur in women with no family history of the disease.”
  • “About 85% of newly diagnosed cases are in women over 50.”
  • “Women who had early menarche (before age 12) or late menopause (after age 55), who have had no children, or who had their first child after age 30 have a modestly increased risk of developing breast cancer.  Prolonged breast-feeding may offer some reduction in risk.”
  • “Women who consume two to five alcoholic drinks per day have about a 1.5-fold increase in risk of developing breast cancer compared with women who consume less than two drinks per day (Science Daily, 2007).”
  • “Women who are obese — especially those who become obese during adulthood and those whose body fat is concentrated at the waist — face an increased risk of developing breast cancer.”
  • “Women who exercise several hours a week (and who don’t have a family history of breast cancer) can cut their risk of developing breast cancer almost in half (Carpenter et al., 2003.)”
  • “A history of high-dose radiation treatment that includes the breast raises the risk of breast cancer.”
  • “The use of oral contraceptives by young women (ages 20 to 34) is associated with a slightly increased risk of breast cancer (Althuis et al., 2003)…The increase in risk disappears by 10 years after cessation of contraceptive use (Collaborative Group on Hormonal Factors in Breast Cancer, 1996).  There is little or no risk for older women who use oral contraceptives (Marchbanks et al., 2002).  There is little or no risk of older women who use oral contraceptives (Marchbanks et al., 2002).”
  • “Regular low-dose aspirin was once though to reduce breast cancer risk, but a large, carefully controlled study showed no such protective effect (Zhang et al., 2008).”
  • “According to the results of two very large prospective studies, women who are taught breast self-examination undergo twice as many breast biopsies as other women, but are just as likely to die of breast cancer (Kosters and Goetzche, 2008).”
    • “The best time of breast self-examination (BSE) is about a week after your menstrual period ends, when your breasts are not tender of swollen.  If your periods are irregular or you are not menstruating, do BSE on the same day every month.”
  • “The American Cancer Society and other professional organizations recommend that all women have an annual mammogram from age 40 onward (American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, 2002).”
  • “Only about 1 in 5 biopsied lumps turns out to be cancer.”
  • “How big must a breast lump be to be detectable by mammogram or by self-examination?  The typical lump detected by mammogram is 5mm (.2 inches) in diameter; by self-exam it is 2cm (.8 inches).  It is possible to detect smaller lumps with either technique, depending on experience, position and density of the lump, and the general texture of the breast.”

Sex and Evolution

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anglerfish, animal rape, boar, forced copulation, human sexuality, incest, insect rape, langur, levay, life-long bonding, male seahorses, male to female ratio worldwide, mating, pig, pig sperm, pregnant, rape, rape in animals, rape in nature, rodents, seahorses, sex, sperm, swans, third edition, tortoises, when did life arise

By the way, I think it’s kinda funny that whenever I make a post about sex it gets the most hits.  Guess I’ll have to provide fun facts for all of the chapters in my book.

• It is not about 4.9 billion years since the formation of the Earth and at least 3.9 billion years since life actually arose (Rosing, 199).  That means the Earth was inhabitable for 700 million years.  Makes you feel small, eh?
• “Among humans…males are more vulnerable than females.  At every phase of life, starting with conception, males are more likely to die.  This higher death rate among males results both from greater disease susceptibility and from behavioral factors such as greater risk-taking.  Thus, if equal numbers of males and females were conceived, there would be an excess of females during the reproductive years.  This in turn would increase the value of bearing sons.  In reality, the sex ratio at birth does slightly favor males: About 104 to 107 boys are born for every 100 girls (Chahnazarian, 1991).”
• Rodents’ pregnancy may last from 2-3 weeks while an elephant’s pregnancy is 22 months.
• Ever wondered how male seahorses get pregnant?  “Like Arnold Schwarzenegger in the movie Junior, the males get pregnant and give birth to young.”  (I cannot believe that Junior was referenced in my textbook)
  • “Females and males form closely bonded, monogamous pairs… The female produces ova in the normal way, but then she deposits the ova in a deep pouchlike cavity in the body of the male, where they are fertilized by the male’s sperm.  This is the only known example in nature in which fertilization occurs within a male animal’s body.  After fertilization, the opening of the pouch closes, and the eggs remain sealed off for about 10 days.  At the end of that period the pouch reopens, and the young — now tiny sea horses — emerge to face the world.  The female, meanwhile, has prepared another load of ova to deposit in the male’s pouch.  In the course of a single season, a male may go through a dozen cycles of fertilization, pregnancy, and parturition, giving birth to a total of several hundred fry.”
  • Also, “it appears that…most or all of the nutrients they (the growing baby sea horses inside the father) consume come from the yolk their mother packs into their eggs.” (females expend more energy on reproduction than males in this case.)
  • “Among birds, the sex that invests less in parenting tends to be larger and more brightly colored.  Usually that sex is the male”, although occasionally the sex is female.
• Tortoises grow throughout their lives.  The oldest and largest females are capable of laying the largest clutches of eggs, so males mate preferentially with the oldest females.
• A majority of invertebrates, fishes, amphibians, and reptiles are “essentially solitary or belong to same-sex groups, and they reproduce by mating with strangers (either one or many) whom they never see again.” Oh, so animals can do it but when humans do it we’re sluts?
• “Swans are famous for forming lifelong pair bonds.  The belief that bereaved swans die of grief is a myth, however; they actually go searching for a new mate.”
• Female jacanas are brightly colored (can find them in southern Texas) water birds that are polyandrous (many males).
• In deep-sea anglerfishes “a male homes in on a female and partially fuses with her.  His eyes degenerate, and he remains permanently attached to  the female, providing her with sperm whenever required.”  He “only mates once-period.”
• “In the hamadryas baboon…females seem never to cheat on their male partners, even if their partners are sterile, in which case there would be no offspring (Birkhead, 2000).”
• “When the dominant male in a polygynous species is displaced by a new male, the new male may kill the young born to harem females over the following few months.  This infanticidal behavior benefits him because the young he eliminates most likely were fathered by the previous dominant male; once the young are removed, the females will quickly become pregnant by the new male.”
• “Among langurs, pregnant females will solicit sex with the new dominant male even though…they cannot conceive young with him.  The benefit…is that the new male protects the offspring of those females that mate with him, rather than killing them.”
• “Each ejaculate of male pig (boar) measures a pint or more in volume and contain an average of 750 billion sperm (compared with a mere 350 million sperm in men.)  Furthermore, the boar’s penis is long enough to deposit the ejaculate directly into the sow’s uterus (rather than into the vagina as in humans).”
• Scorpionflies and forced copulation : “In one strategy, he offers the female a nuptial gift, such as a dead insect; the female approaches the gift-bearing male, and they mate.  If a male approaches a female without a gift, the female will attempt to flee.  In this case, however, the male may grasp the female and hold her immobile with a special appendage called a notal organ, which enables him to obtain a  forced mating.  Because the notal organ has no use other than for forced copulation (it is not required for unforced sex), Thornhill concluded that forced copulation is not a random by-product of scorpionfly evolution, ut an adaptive behavior resulting from countless generations of sexual selection.”
  • “Only a couple of other species (also insects) have anatomical adaptions that facilitation forced copulation.  In fact, quite a few species have the opposite — arrangement of the female anatomy that make copulation impossible without her active collaboration.”
    • “A female rat’s vulva is situated on the underside of her rump and is inaccessible to males unless she exposes it by arching her rump upwards — a behavior called lordosis.”
  • “Most animals do not have anatomical specializations that either facilitate or prevent this behavior, but attempts at forced copulation by males, and resistance by females, have been observed in numerous species including species closely related to humans such as chimpanzees (Wrangham and Peterson, 1996).”
• “Children who are very close in childhood — not just biological siblings, but also foster-siblings and unrelated children who grow up together in communes (Shepher, 1971) — tend not to find each other sexually attractive in adulthood…Biological siblings who did not spend their childhood together may indeed find each other attractive, fall in love, and desire to have a sexual relationship.”

Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby

Tags

abstinence, abstinence-only programs, alfred kinsey, annang, facial beauty, gilbert herdt, human sexuality, levay, male-on-male fellatio, nigeria, sambia, sex, sexual behavior, SSRIs, viagra

I gotta read this stuff anyway so I thought I’d pick out the most interesting information I find.  All information is from LeVay and Baldwin’s book “Human Sexuality : Third Edition”.

• Viagra (sildenafil) was introduced in 1999.  It’s only been around for 11 years, can you believe it?
• SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) are used for the treatment of compulsive sexual desires such as exhibitionism and voyeurism.  What do SSRIs not do?  I really hope they don’t end up like MAOIs where we find out many years later that they’re really pretty bad for you.
• The work of Gilbert Herdt, a cultural anthropologist (who now directs the Human Sexuality program and San Francisco State University) : He “spent extended periods of time among the Sambia, a small society indigenous to the highland rain forests of New Guinea.  The Sambia…believe that boys can become men only by ingesting semen, which is thought to trigger puberty and to instill the qualities of manhood.  Before puberty, boys are removed from their families, and for about 10 years they are house collectively.  During this period they must engage in a secret daily ritual that involves male-on-male fellatio (oral sex).  The younger boys take on the receptive role, swallowing the ejaculates of the older boys.  Later, as they mature physically, they take the insertive role.  At the end of the ten-year period the boys, now young men, leave the group and take wives…This long period of compulsory and exclusive homosexual behavior has no apparent effect on the men’s ultimate sexual orientation. ”
  • “Similar beliefs and practices exist (or existed) widely throughout Melanesia, but sometimes the transfer or semen is accomplished by means of anal rather than oral sex.”
• “The proportion of the population that is homosexual seems to be roughly similar from one society to another (Whitmas, 1983).”
• “Facial beauty is judged fairly consistently across disparate cultures (Perrett et al., 1994)”
• The Annang people of southeastern Nigeria : “Annang women engage in considerable physical labor, yet calorie-rich food is scarce, so most women are very lean.  Before a girl is married off, however, she is secluded in a ‘fattening room’ for several months — sometimes for more than a year.  While in the room, the girl is called a mbobo. She does not work and has few visitors, but she is fed three large meals every day..between meals the mbobo is instructed in the duties and skills of womanhood.  She may also undergo circumcision.  At the conclusion of the fattening period there is a festival.  All the mbobo in the village have their bodies painted, and they dance nude in public to display their fatness.  The ceremony includes a great deal of feasting, with food provided by the mbobo’s families.”  A young man can select a mbobo but he has to pay a bridal payment to her father (the fatter, the more expensive)
  • Why this is good : There is a general scarcity of food and occurrence of periodic droughts and famines that make it difficult for an Annang woman to complete a pregnancy and nurse her baby successfully.  She carries energy reserves that should see her through her first pregnancy.
  • Why this is bad : It is very expensive to fatten a mbobo and if a family cannot afford it they must marry their daughters off to less desirable men.
  • This practice is on the decline.
• Alfred Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior of the Human Male and Sexual Behavior of the Human Female :
  • Interviewed 17,000 Americans about their sex lives.  The reports stated that 37% of men had had at least one sexual contact with another male resulting in orgasm at some time between adolescence and old age.  (Although, don’t forget sex surveys are always skewed towards those who are willing to discuss their sexuality…and a majority of the interviewees were urban whites living in the northeastern United States.)
  • Educated, professional people masturbated much more frequently than those with little education or those who worked as laborers, for example.
• Only 5% of Americans obey abstinence until marriage (Finer, 2007).
• 1 in 3 U.S. teenagers receives no education about birth control.  Only 14% of U.S. school districts have policies that could be described as comprehensive (they have both abstinence and contraception).  (Guttmacher Institute/Lindberg et al. 2006)
• “…Abstinence-only programs have little or no effect on teens’ sexual behavior.  Comprehensive programs, on the other hand, do cause teens to delay sexual activity and make them more likely to use contraception when they do become sexually active (Haignere et al., 1999).
• The teen pregnancy rate has been declining steadily and is not 36% below its peak in 1990 (National Campaign to Prevent Teen Pregnancy, 2006b)
• “In 1994 the United States had joined 178 other nations in creating the “Cairo consensus,” which affirmed the right to comprehensive sex- and family-planning education.  But at a follow-up meeting 10 years later, U.S. representatives fought to delete these provisions in favor of abstinence-only education.”
• The U.S. government has directed funding for sex education that mandates “abstinence-only” programs.  California has “rejected federal funding in order to be able to present comprehensive sex-ed programs, it requires that instruction be age-appropriate, medically accurate, and appropriate for use with pupils of all races, genders, sexual orientations, ethnic and cultural backgrounds, and pupils with disabilities.”
  • The U.S.’s teen pregnancy rate is 2x higher than Canada’s (Guttmacher Institutde, 2006).
• “The Canadian federal government has established sex-education guidelines that are far more liberal than those of the United States (Public Health Agency of Canada, 2003).”…The guidelines urge elementary through high school education, outreach to homeless and institutional youth, condoms are widely available, and girls can obtain prescriptions for contraceptive pills directly from their school nurses.
• Campaigns promoting sexual abstinence and sexual monogamy, along with condom use by sexually active persons have reduced HIV infection rates in Uganda.
• Mangaian (from Mangaia in the Cook Islands) girls and boys are given instruction in sexual techniques and encouraged to put what they learned into practice, even in the form of casual liaisons.
• Want to know more?
  • In the US –> The Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality (SSSS or “Quad-S”) which publishes the Journal of Sex Research (and other periodicals), The American Association of Sex Educators, Counselors, and Therapists (AASECT), and the Society for Sex Therapy and Research (SSRA), the Kinsey Insitutue (affiliated with Indiana University), and the Guttmacher Institute (focuses on family-planning issues).
  • Internationally –> The International Academy of Sex Research (IASR) publishes the Archives of Sexual Behavior, and The World Association for Sexual Health (WAS) issued a Universal Declaration of Sexual Rights (both groups have an annual meeting)
    • WAS represents 118 national sex-research organizations; Declaration was approved in 1999 in Hong Kong.  It states the rights to sexual freedom, pleasure, equity, autonomy, integrity, safety, privacy, expression, associate freely, free and responsible reproductive choices, sexual information based on scientific inquiry, comprehensive sexuality education, and health care.
• Related books to read :
  • Richard von Krafft-Ebing’s Psychopathia Sexualis –> compendium of 237 case histories illustrating all kinds of sexual “deviations”