Beneficios del cibersexo

The Top Ten Reasons Why Cybersex is Good for You
Yes, you, red-blooded, non-perverted American citizen. Cybersex wants you.
by Bonnie Ruberg
January 28th, 2008

When I tell people I write about cybersex, I get a lot of curious reactions. I’ve grown used to, for example, the “Oh my God, you’re secretly a pervert” grimace: a sour, prudish twisting of the mouth. I’m also well-acquainted with the “You actually have sex on the internet?!” look of shock and concern—raised eyebrows, dropped jaw. And then there’s the most curious reaction of all: the understanding, almost sympathetic nod, which says, “It must be tough, but good for you. After all, somebody has got to uncover that den of online perversion.”

Rarely do people—even sex positive people—respond cybersex positively. Why is that? When so many consenting adults are having sex online, why do we still think of it as “wrong”? Sure, we can blame media that feeds us anti-cybersex sensationalism (To Catch a Predator, with its line-up of internet prowling pedophiles, come to mind). But the truth is we love sex, and we definitely love technology. So why can’t we love the two together?

Agobios de pareja

Peculiaridades eróticas: los materiales del deseo (II)

 

Peculiaridades eróticas: los materiales del deseo (II)

María Victoria Ramírez - 29/01/2008

En el artículo de la semana pasada mencionamos que en la erótica humana hay muchas peculiaridades del placer y del deseo que nada tienen que ver con el coito, y que no tienen por objeto ni por fin último la reproducción. Mencionamos que la erótica reproductiva (coito) se ha tomado como modelo de “normalidad”, y se ha dado por supuesto que es “lo que le gusta a todo el mundo normal” o “lo que debe gustarle a todo el mundo”.

Sin embargo, el deseo humano se compone de muchas peculiaridades que, por alejarse precisamente del coito heterosexual, ha veces han sido consideradas en muchas ocasiones como “perversiones” o “trastornos”.

Lo cierto es que muchas de estas peculiaridades (las llamadas a veces “parafilias” o incluso “trastornos”), están presentes en gran parte de la población en pequeñas dosis.

Podemos encontrar ejemplos de varias de estas peculiaridades en muchos deseos y gustos eróticos, siendo a veces ingredientes que enriquecen las sexualidades. Incluso las peculiaridades consideradas socialmente más “extrañas” se “cuelan”, veladas y atemperadas, pero presentes al fin y al cabo, en algunas representaciones eróticas del cine y de la literatura, así como en las fantasías y juegos de muchos amantes.

Veamos algunos ejemplos:

Evaluación del abuso de menores

El reto de evaluar el abuso sexual

El proceso pericial puede agravar las secuelas psicológicas que sufren los niños

JOAN CARLES AMBROJO  -  Barcelona
EL PAÍS - 29-01-2008

Cuando el abuso sexual a un menor no deja huella física, el niño que supuestamente ha vivido el trance es el único testimonio que puede ayudar a esclarecer los hechos. Pero ¿son fiables las narraciones infantiles?, ¿corresponden a situaciones vividas realmente?, ¿son susceptibles de ser manipulados los niños? La dificultad que entrañan estas cuestiones hace que muchos de los niños víctimas de abusos hayan de entrar en una espiral de pruebas e interrogatorios que en ocasiones agravan las secuelas de los propios abusos. Por eso, los especialistas plantean la necesidad de mejorar las entrevistas psicológicas periciales. La prevalencia del abuso sexual infantil en España es parecida a la de otros países occidentales y se sitúa en torno al 18,9% (15,2% en niños y 22,5% en niñas), según la psicóloga de la Universidad de Barcelona Noemí Pereda. Tan sólo la Unidad Funcional de Abusos Sexuales y Maltratos al Menor (UFAM) del hospital Sant Joan de Déu de Barcelona atiende cada año unas 160 consultas en las que se sospecha que un menor ha sido víctima de abusos. “El 50% de las consultas proceden directamente de las familias, lo cual indica que hay un elevado nivel de alerta, pero también hay sospechas de abusos que luego no se confirman”, afirma Dolors Petitbó, coordinadora de la unidad especializada del hospital Sant Joan de Déu.
La tercera parte de los casos tratados en este hospital tenían una alta probabilidad de haber padecido abuso sexual. Aunque las estadísticas indican que ahora hay más denuncias de abusos sexuales intrafamiliares, Arturo Canalda, Defensor del Menor de la Comunidad de Madrid, no cree que hayan aumentado los casos. Muchas denuncias se producen en el contexto de una separación matrimonial conflictiva. El problema es cómo distinguir en qué casos, de entre los denunciados, se han producido realmente abusos sexuales, y para ello es decisivo el tipo de pruebas e interrogatorios que se practican.

Peculiaridades eróticas: los materiales del deseo (I)

Peculiaridades eróticas: los materiales del deseo (I)

María Victoria Ramírez* - 22/01/2008

Si observamos las clasificaciones que a lo largo de la historia se han hecho sobre los denominados ‘trastornos sexuales’, encontramos una sospechosa tendencia a denominar enfermedad o trastorno (parafilias, en su denominación más reciente) a todo aquello que se aleje del coito heterosexual.

En una cultura como la nuestra, todo lo que se aleje o incluso no tenga relación ninguna con dicha práctica, pese a que produzca satisfacción o placer erótico, se considerará extraño, raro o anormal. Si se parte de un concepto de la erótica centrado en el coito reproductivo, toda la erótica no reproductiva no se entenderá, su sentido o significado escapará a nuestra comprensión. Pero es evidente que en la erótica humana hay muchas peculiaridades del placer y del deseo que nada tienen que ver con el coito.

Hace algunas décadas, por ejemplo, las caricias orales en los genitales (relación no reproductiva) eran consideradas una perversión, y aún son consideradas de esta forma por muchas personas. Freud consideró en su día que las mujeres que tenían orgasmos por estimulación del clítoris (con caricias orales o con la mano), pero no por el coito, eran inmaduras y padecían un trastorno del que debían curarse con años de psicoanálisis (cura que, por cierto, como el propio Freud reconocía, no solía dar resultado).

También la homosexualidad (que implica relaciones no reproductivas) ha sido considerada durante muchos años una enfermedad, un vicio y un trastorno, y se han intentado diversos métodos de curación sin, obviamente, el resultado esperado: la orientación del deseo hacia personas de distinto sexo.

Otro ejemplo sería la masturbación (otra conducta no reproductiva) que ha sido tildada en el pasado de vicio y práctica enfermiza o inmadura y, aún a día de hoy, si una persona disfruta o logra un orgasmo con más facilidad con la masturbación que con el coito, es considerada extraña o se piensa que tiene un problema. Y, por supuesto, las relaciones eróticas entre personas de edad avanzada (relaciones también no reproductivas) han sido condenadas durante mucho tiempo.

Se adelanta la pubertad

Girl, you’ll be a woman sooner than expected

Puberty is arriving ever younger in American females — 8 is no longer considered abnormal.
By Susan Brink, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
January 21, 2008

AT 8 or 9 years old, the typical American schoolgirl is perfecting her cursive handwriting style. She’s picking out nouns, verbs, adjectives and adverbs in sentences, memorizing multiplication tables and learning to read a thermometer.

She’s a little girl with a lot to learn.

And yet, in increasing numbers, when girls this age run across the playground in T-shirts, there is undeniable evidence that their bodies are blossoming. The first visible sign of puberty, breast budding, is arriving ever earlier in American girls.

Some parents and activists suspect environmental chemicals. Most pediatricians and endocrinologists say that, though they have suspicions about the environment, the only scientific evidence points to the obesity epidemic. What’s clear, however, is that the elements of female maturity increasingly are spacing themselves out over months, even years — and no one quite knows why.

While early menstruation is a known risk factor for breast cancer, no one knows what earlier breast development means for the future of girls’ health. “We’re not backing up all events in puberty,” says Sandra Streingraber, biologist and visiting scholar at Ithaca College. “We’re backing up the starting point.” She has examined the research on female puberty and compiled a summary in an August 2007 report called “The Falling Age of Puberty in U.S. Girls.” The report was financed by the Breast Cancer Fund, an advocacy group interested in exploring environmental causes of that disease.

Earlier breast development is now so typical that the Lawson Wilkins Pediatric Endocrine Society urged changing the definition of “normal” development. Until 10 years ago, breast development at age 8 was considered an abnormal event that should be investigated by an endocrinologist. Then a landmark study in the April 1997 journal Pediatrics written by Marcia Herman-Giddens, adjunct professor at the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, found that among 17,000 girls in North Carolina, almost half of African Americans and 15% of whites had begun breast development by age 8. Two years later, the society suggested changing what it considered medically normal.

The new “8″ — the medically suggested definition for abnormally early breast development — is, the society says, 7 for white girls and 6 for African American girls.

Economía de la prostitución

Selling sex
Jan 17th 2008

Economists let some light in on the shady market for paid sex

IT IS all too easy to become a lost soul in New Orleans. The annual meeting of the American Economic Association this month was part of a huge gathering of social scientists sprawled across the city. Each venue itself was a warren of meeting rooms. Take a wrong turning and a delegate seeking an earnest symposium on minimum wages might innocently end up in the conference session devoted to the market for paid sex.

The star attraction there was Steven Levitt, an economics professor at the University of Chicago and co-author of “Freakonomics”, a best-selling book. Mr Levitt presented preliminary findings* from a study conducted with Sudhir Venkatesh, a sociologist at Columbia University. Their research on the economics of street prostitution combines official arrest records with data on 2,200 “tricks” (transactions), collected by Mr Venkatesh in co-operation with sex workers in three Chicago districts.

The results are fascinating. Almost half of the city’s arrests for prostitution take place in just 0.3% of its street corners. The industry is concentrated in so few locations because prostitutes and their clients need to be able to find each other. Earnings are high compared with other jobs. Sex workers receive $25-30 per hour, roughly four times what they could expect outside prostitution. Yet this wage premium seems paltry considering the stigma and inherent risks. Sex without a condom is the norm, so the possibility of contracting a sexually transmitted infection (STI) is high. Mr Levitt reckons that sex workers can expect to be violently assaulted once a month. The risk of legal action is low. Prostitutes are more likely to have sex with a police officer than to be arrested by one.

El futuro del matrimonio

The Future of Marriage

By Stephanie Coontz
January 14th, 2008

Any serious discussion of the future of marriage requires a clear understanding of how marriage evolved over the ages, along with the causes of its most recent transformations. Many people who hope to “re-institutionalize” marriage misunderstand the reasons that marriage was once more stable and played a stronger role in regulating social life.

For most of history, marriage was more about getting the right in-laws than picking the right partner to love and live with. In the small-scale, band-level societies of our distant ancestors, marriage alliances turned strangers into relatives, creating interdependencies among groups that might otherwise meet as enemies. But as large wealth and status differentials developed in the ancient world, marriage became more exclusionary and coercive. People maneuvered to orchestrate advantageous marriage connections with some families and avoid incurring obligations to others. Marriage became the main way that the upper classes consolidated wealth, forged military coalitions, finalized peace treaties, and bolstered claims to social status or political authority. Getting “well-connected” in-laws was a preoccupation of the middle classes as well, while the dowry a man received at marriage was often the biggest economic stake he would acquire before his parents died. Peasants, farmers, and craftsmen acquired new workers for the family enterprise and forged cooperative bonds with neighbors through their marriages.

Because of marriage’s vital economic and political functions, few societies in history believed that individuals should freely choose their own marriage partners, especially on such fragile grounds as love. Indeed, for millennia, marriage was much more about regulating economic, political, and gender hierarchies than nourishing the well-being of adults and their children. Until the late 18th century, parents took for granted their right to arrange their children’s marriages and even, in many regions, to dissolve a marriage made without their permission. In Anglo-American law, a child born outside an approved marriage was a “fillius nullius” - a child of no one, entitled to nothing. In fact, through most of history, the precondition for maintaining a strong institution of marriage was the existence of an equally strong institution of illegitimacy, which denied such children any claim on their families.

Al fin

“Maridos”, de Ángeles Mastretta

De oficina a oficina

A las nueve de la noche, Amalia llevaba once horas de trabajo de parto. Tenía la palidez de una hoja en blanco y el cansancio la había dejado en un silencio que sólo interrumpía su respiración sin tumbo. Entonces su marido llegó de la oficina con la corbata bien anudada y el cabello en paz. Se le quedó mirando, le puso una mano en la mejilla y dijo:
-No te imaginas qué día tan pesado he tenido.

Ángeles Mastretta (2007) Maridos. Seix-Barral. p. 130

Pornografía infantil en internet

  May, 2003

Child pornography online: myth, fact, and social control 

Book Review
Robert Bauserman

Beyond Tolerance: Child Pornography Online. By Philip Jenkins. New York: New York University Press, 2001, 253 pages. Hardcover, $22.95.

Few areas of sexual behavior arouse as much condemnation or as little critical thought as child sexual abuse, and child pornography (despite lack of a consensus definition) is often presented as the epitome of sexual abuse. Consequently, Jenkins’ book is valuable to those interested in issues of child and adolescent sexuality, sexual abuse, pornography, and sexuality on the Internet. Despite its flaws, no other comparable work exists that explores the online subculture of child pornography based on the thoughts and beliefs of the participants themselves, primarily as posted on message boards catering to individuals seeking to collect child pornography (CP) images.

Jenkins clearly states that CP images are exploitative and abusive, but manages to be (usually) calm and reasoned in discussing the nature and extent of the problem and possible responses. Jenkins is well qualified to take a levelheaded look at this online subculture. In his earlier book, Moral Panics, he documented how periods of extreme concern over sexual threats to children have occurred several times in 20th-century America, leading to exaggerated claims about prevalence and effects in order to advance social and moral agendas. Jenkins also writes that he recognizes the contradiction between his earlier exposure of such concerns as overblown, and his effort in this book to raise social concern about an authentic problem he believes is neglected.

Los idiomas masculino y femenino (II)

Los idiomas masculino y femenino (II)

María Victoria Ramírez* - 15/01/2008

En el artículo anterior comentamos que es frecuente que hombres y mujeres usen estilos de comunicación diferentes. Esto es, que hombres y mujeres usan el lenguaje de manera distinta, y para cosas distintas. Hoy continuamos abordando ciertas diferencias de la comunicación femenina y masculina, que con frecuencia producen malestar y discusiones que a veces acaban en terapia… o en ruptura.

Muchas veces las parejas discuten por cuestiones que desde fuera parecen insignificantes y sin importancia, pero que desde dentro se contemplan de otra manera: tras la discusión desproporcionada acerca de qué programa de televisión ver esta noche, de qué hablamos, o qué comemos hoy, a veces se están cuestionando los sentimientos presentes en la misma relación.

Es interesante resaltar que en las terapias de pareja una queja muy común en las mujeres de parejas heterosexuales es que “él no habla”. Lo cierto es que pareciera que muchos hombres sufren un periodo de locuacidad transitoria durante los estadios iniciales de una relación y, después, cuando la relación se ha asentado, se muestran mucho más callados y reservados, y esto no complace muchas veces a su pareja.

Según José Antonio Marina, una mujer no debería preguntarse: “Pepe, ¿me amará siempre?”, sino más bien: “Pepe, ¿me hablará siempre?”, porque lo que después se manifiesta como una queja frecuente de muchas mujeres no es que el no la ame, sino que no le habla. En terapia, son comunes diálogos como los siguientes, que muestran la forma diferencial en que mujeres y hombres entienden el lenguaje y hacen uso del mismo:

A quien no ama

AJENO

Largo se le hace el día a quien no ama
y él lo sabe. Y él oye ese tañido
corto y duro del cuerpo, su cascada
canción, siempre sonando a lejanía.
Cierra su puerta y queda bien cerrada;
sale y, por un momento, sus rodillas
se le van hacia el suelo. Pero el alba,
con peligrosa generosidad,
le refresca y le yergue. Está muy clara
su calle, y la pasea con pie oscuro,
y cojea en seguida porque anda
sólo con su fatiga. Y dice aire:
palabras muertas con su boca viva.
Prisionero por no querer, abraza
su propia soledad. Y está seguro,
más seguro que nadie porque nada
poseerá; y él bien sabe que nunca
vivirá aquí, en la tierra. A quien no ama,
¿cómo podemos conocer o cómo
perdonar? Día largo y aún más larga
la noche. Mentirá al sacar la llave.
Entrará. Y nunca habitará su casa.

Claudio Rodríguez

(Vía El Escorpión)

El hombre desnudo: estudio del cuerpo masculino

The meaning of Desmond Morris’s hair-do

11/01/2008

Jan Moir reviews The Naked Man: A Study of The Male Body by Desmond Morris

In his new book Desmond Morris points out that the hair that grows on top of a man’s head is one of the strangest features on his body. Indeed it is! Back in the jungle, man was the only primate to grow a mop on his roof. In the days before combs, scissors and Carmen rollers we must have been a frightful sight, yet this covering served an important purpose.

Head hair was our species signal visible from afar or, in Mick Hucknall’s case, outer space. However, thousands of years of evolution have proved that a lack of hair is equally as fascinating as a surfeit of the stuff. Why, Mr Morris’s own tonsorial arrangements have been the subject of much contemplation and discussion over the decades.

At the height of his fame, he chose to disguise his own lack of thatch with increasingly elaborate camouflage techniques. This bizarre ‘display’ behaviour is surely worthy of proper scientific investigation from a zoologist of his standing, but seek and ye shall not find.

Morris has been far too busy investigating the evolutionary success story of mankind to look skywards and check out the social upheavals that have taken place on his own pate. Therefore it falls to me to commemorate a famous hairstyle once regaled as the most fanciful comb-over in the business; a Charltonesque black skein unravelling from ear to ear over a clear dome of pink skin otherwise untroubled by follicle.

Divorcio

Anticoncepción y adolescencia

Teen sex habits revealed in survey
Wed Jan 9, 2008 3:54pm EST

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A “substantial minority” of 15-year-olds have had sexual intercourse, according results of a survey of 33,943 adolescents from 24 European and North American countries.

In additions, 13.2 percent of the sexually active 15-year-olds surveyed reported that they used no form of contraception during their last intercourse episode.

The good news, Dr. Emmanuelle Godeau, from Service Médical du Rectorat de Toulouse, France, told Reuters Health, is that among these sexually active teenagers, the vast majority (82 percent) is acting responsibly, “protecting themselves and their partner against pregnancy with age-appropriate contraception (condoms and/or pills).”

“Our results — in line with the rest of the scientific literature in this domain — show that, on the whole, teenagers are well protected against pregnancy but that there is room to improve the promotion of responsible sexual behavior among adolescents in several countries,” Godeau said.

The percentages of 15-year-olds who said they had sexual intercourse varied by country ranging from 14.1 percent in Croatia to 37.6 percent in England. Boys were more apt than girls to report having had sexual intercourse.

Condoms were the most popular means of contraception reported by young teens; however, condom use varied widely between countries, ranging from 53 percent in Sweden to 89 percent in Greece.