El amor y Octavio Paz

Yo no creo que el amor sea un fin -es un comienzo. ¿De qué? No lo sé aunque lo presiento: de nosotros mismos

Octavio Paz

¿Crisis erótica en Japón?

INFORME | ABSTINENCIA A LA JAPONESA
Crisis sexual en el país del sol naciente
Yasuyo, ama de casa, lleva ocho años sin practicar sexo. Ryotaro, comerciante, dos… Sólo el 34% de los japoneses lo hace una vez por semana, por un 72% de los españoles. La crisis sexual está hundiendo aún más la alicaída natalidad de los nipones
JUNKO TAKAHASHI desde Tokyo

Los japoneses son un pueblo orgulloso. Pero su vanidad se descoyunta cada vez que se publican encuestas sobre sexo. En la nación con menos huelgas del mundo, la gente sólo se abstiene del deber conyugal.

El síntoma más llamativo de esta crisis del sexo son los matrimonios asexuados. Ryotaro Kono, de 39 años, tiene varias empresas de alimentación en Tokio y todavía se acuerda de la última vez que se acostó con su mujer. Fue hace dos años. Ni siquiera le parece demasiado. “Antes de esa vez, esperé otros ocho años”, asegura Kono, casado desde hace tres lustros y con una hija pequeña de 10 años.

El alejamiento llegó al poco de haberse casado, debido al exceso de trabajo. Al principio, su mujer se quejaba de la falta de actividad en la cama, pero en cuanto tuvo el primer bebé, fue ella la que, siguiendo la tradición nipona, dejó de ver a su marido como un compañero de juegos. Así llegaron al acuerdo actual: no importa lo que se quieran, y aseguran que es mucho. En adelante, nada de sexo. “Me da pereza hacer el amor. Además, mi esposa es mi familia, y siento vergüenza de comunicarme sexualmente con ella” explica Kono a Crónica.

Por extraño que parezca, el caso de esta pareja no tiene nada de inusual en el Japón de hoy. “Entre nuestros clientes que quieren construir casas nuevas, la demanda de alcobas separadas está aumentando”, dice Shuichiro Takeshima, empleado de una firma constructora.

Divorcio

Duración de los encuentros eróticos

Sexual Intercourse: Let’s All Be Brief and Average
By Sue Katz, Consenting Adult. Posted April 16, 2008.

The Associated Press, under the headline “Sex Takes 3 to 13 Minutes,” has given the world a sneak-peek at the science of quickies. A study to be published next month in the Journal of Sexual Medicine, based on a survey of sex therapists, concluded that the “optimal amount of time for sexual intercourse was 3 to 13 minutes.”

I scratched my head on that one, until I read that “the time does not include foreplay.” And then the bulb went on. Well, two bulbs went on. First, why are they using those tired, narrow definitions of “sex” and “foreplay” — as if they were separate activities? And second, what if “intercourse” isn’t in your sexual vocabulary, although you’re having fabulous erotic experiences? Or if your idea of intercourse involves neither a penis nor a vagina?

What’s sex?

This conflation of “sex” and “sexual intercourse” is as outdated an idea as the prohibition on wearing white shoes after Labor Day or the belief that birth control causes promiscuity. Let’s get real.

Penetration is one of many sexual activities. Others are oral sex, nipple pinching, butt squeezing, clit rubbing, ball tickling, breast binding, toe sucking and, did I say clit rubbing? The actions that constitute “sex” — undistinguished from “foreplay” — are as varied as the people who do them.

If a couple has kissed and touched and teased and stroked and sucked until both of them are totally satiated — but they haven’t screwed — is that not sex? If someone has a fetish — say they are wild about stockings — and they get off humping the silk-encased thigh of their partner — is that not sex?

Recuerdo

El fantasma de la anterior pareja

April 4, 2008
Is your ex in bed with you?
If your ex is overshadowing your new romance, it’s time for an exorcism

Andrew G. Marshall

It’s an inescapable fact that when we fall in love, we bring all our previous sexual experience and conquests into the new relationship. However much we want to make a fresh start, and in the words of Madonna approach our new partner “like a virgin”, it’s hard to throw off the past. For many people, the legacy is a positive one, especially if the ex has helped them to feel safe and secure. However, if he or she was possessive, abusive or unfaithful, the past can cast a shadow over subsequent relationships.

Surprisingly, the ghosts of ex-lovers is less of a problem at the very start of a relationship. This confuses many of the couples in my marital therapy office. Rachel and Mike, both in their early thirties, sought help because their sex life had gone from being a source of great pleasure to one of conflict.

“It was really passionate for the first six months, but once we moved in together sex started to dwindle and now it happens only if I initiate, and then not always,” said Rachel.

So how can things change so quickly? When we first make love, we are very aware of past lovers and how we measure up. As intercourse is all about possession and surrender, casting out the ex is part of the excitement, drive and passion. However, once lust, the other ally at the beginning of a sexual relationship, has begun to wear off, ghosts can creep back into the bedroom.

Mujeres solteras felices

Single and happy: it’s the freemales

Women are increasingly rejecting a desperate, Bridget Jones-like search for a perfect partner, preferring instead to enjoy their single status and refusing to compromise by settling for ‘Mr Mediocre’.
Caroline Davies
Sunday April 13, 2008

Observer
They are successful, spirited and single and their growing numbers are contributing to a major change in the make-up of the traditional British household.

‘Freemales’ - manless women who are happy to remain so for the present at least - are now a force to be reckoned with and are overturning the dated Bridget Jones image of the lonely woman staring despondently at an empty Chardonnay bottle. They are too busy living life to the full to make time for ‘Mr Mediocre’ and the last thing on their minds is, ‘Will I find Mr Right today?’ Instead, they are juggling careers with busy social lives and if they happen to bump into him, all well and good, but they are not going hunting.

A new report demonstrates we are now seeing the lowest marriage rates on record and more ‘freemales’ living alone. Released last week by the Office for National Statistics, it shows that the number of women living alone aged between 25 and 44 - the age when traditionally they would be married and having families - has doubled in the past two decades. The same report states that more than two-thirds of people questioned in a recent survey believed they did not need a partner to enjoy a happy and fulfilled life.

The trend towards people living alone looks set to continue partly due to an ageing population, with more people over 65 home alone, but also because of a rise in the number of divorces, with fewer women remarrying or cohabiting, and an increase in the number of young people living singly.

Acople perfecto

Una pareja: Leonardo y Virginia Woolf

(Texto extraído de la elegante y extraordinaria biografía de Virginia Woolf escrita por Quentin Bell, editorial Lumen, 2003/1972, pp. 270-273.)

[Carta de Leonardo a Virginia]

Quiero verte para hablarte y ahora aunque supongo que no podré voy a escribirte profundamente desgraciado lo que quiero decirte y probablemente no pueda.

Desde ayer pareció surgir algo en ti contra mí. Pueden ser imaginaciones mías; si es así, debes perdonarme: incluso no creo que te des cuenta de lo que significaría para mí. Dios mío, lo feliz que he sido contigo y habiéndote y sintiendo juntos mente con mente, alma con alma. Sé con claridad suficiente lo que siento por ti. No es solo amor físico aunque sin duda existe pero lo cuento como lo menos importante, es solo que soy feliz estando contigo…; es por esta razón que quiero que también me ames. Es verdad que soy frío y reservado para con los otros, incluso no siento afecto con facilidad, pero aparte del amor, me gustas como nunca me ha gustado nada ni nadie en el mundo. Todos a menudo nos reímos de tu manera encantadora de ser pero no sabes cuán encantadora eres. Es esto realmente lo que no me deja dormir, mucho más que el deseo. Es lo que me preocupa ahora, me lleva por dos caminos algunas veces, puesto que no quisiera que te casaras conmigo, porque tanto te quiero, si creyera que puedo procurarte alguna infelicidad. Realmente es cierto que me hieren más que el peor dolor físico tus meras palabras, que le dijeras a Vanessa que probablemente nunca te casarías con nadie.

Consejos eróticos de mujeres expertas

Mirror.co.uk

Ultimate sex tips from the women who know best!
If your love life is more snooze than sizzle, we’ve got the answer. Our five sexperts have heard everything and are completely unshockable. Follow their 25 tips to put the X back in sex…

27/03/2008

Explore your fantasies

Psychologist Dr Petra Boynton is a lecturer and sex researcher at University College London, and an award-winning agony aunt.

1 Don’t believe the hype! We’re misled that “good” sex is lots of penetration with g-spot stimulation and huge orgasms.

The truth is that the average person has sex once a week or less. What’s more important is the quality of sex rather than quantity, as is exploring all your erotic zones from toes to clitoris to earlobes.
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2 Things outside the bedroom cause most sex problems. Women who get time to rest, have help with housework or childcare report more satisfying sex lives.

3 Poor body image is a cause of women’s sexual problems. Build your confidence and you’ll feel more like being intimate. Try taking classes on assertiveness, drama or dance.

4 Many women aren’t sure what turns them on, or they know what they fancy but are too shy to say. Help yourself by exploring masturbation and fantasies on your own, then with your partner. Dr Sprinkle’s Spectacular Sex (Tarcher, £14.99) helps you work out what you’d like to do, while Carol Queen’s book Exhibitionism For The Shy (Down There Press) explains how to ask for it.

5 Condoms are the new sex toys. As well as making him last longer, they’re guaranteed to turn you on with their different textures or added lubricants. They’re also free from family planning or GU clinics (find one at www.condomessentialwear.co.uk) and protect you from STIs and pregnancy.

Contact Dr Petra Boynton at www.drpetra.co.uk

Fantasías de divorcio

Reivindicación del juego manual

An Expert’s Guide to Hand Jobs for Men and Women
Examining the myths, merits, and sparse vocabulary of hand sex
by Tristan Taormino
February 26th, 2008

Last week in Los Angeles, I produced a new sex-ed movie with porn star Penny Flame, all about how to get people off with your hands. I first shot Penny for the fourth edition of my reality series, Chemistry, and that’s when I saw her gifted mitts in action. In one scene, she started giving a handjob to a guy, and I was mesmerized. She used her hands in such creative ways, culminating in this technique where she stroked his shaft with one hand while using her other hand to work his head. She started out with a flat palm pressing and twisting against his head, then cupped her fingers and turned her wrist like she was juicing a lemon. Lying on his back, the male performer—who, I’m pretty sure, has had plenty of pairs of hands on his dick during his career—snapped his (other) head up and actually said, “Oh my God, what are you doing to me?” Penny just giggled and kept it up. He looked ready to explode.

Later, she put her fingers to work on performer Adrianna Nicole, with equally ecstatic results. In fact, they both had their hands all over each other, and it was quite a sight. Gone are the days of fake-looking girl-on-girl porno, when most starlets look disinterested or clueless (or even slightly scared) when faced with touching another woman; these chicks are fierce when it comes to fucking each other. When Penny’s fingers started moving against Adrianna’s muff, I thought the cameraman might have an epileptic seizure. Suddenly, a lightbulb went off in my head: Penny needs to share her dexterous skills with the rest of the world!

Months later, the deal with Penny finally came together, and we shot a great movie, with only one dilemma: What do we call it? Right now, the working title is Penny Flame’s Expert Guide to Hand Jobs for Men and Women. Wiktionary defines a handjob as “an act of masturbation performed by someone else’s hand,” which is pretty accurate. The problem is, when most people think of handjobs, they think of cocks. We’ve got plenty of cocks in the movie, but we also have lots of pussies, and I fear handjob doesn’t immediately bring “vagina” to mind—which is why we tacked on “for men and women,” but that just makes the title more cumbersome, less catchy. Think about it: There are a ton of well-known phrases for man-ipulating the male member (wack off, beat off, jack off), but little slang or even sexy shorthand that connotes using your digits on a woman to make her squirm or come.

Peleas matrimoniales

Control de la natalidad en Gran Bretaña

 

H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-Albion@h-net.msu.edu (February 200

Kate Fisher. _Birth Control, Sex, and Marriage in Britain, 1918-1960_.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. 294 pp. Figures, bibliography,
index..
$125.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-19-926736-1.

Reviewed for H-Albion by H. G. Cocks, Department of History, University of
Nottingham

Getting Off at Mill Hill

Historians have long been puzzled by the decline in fertility which took
place in Britain between about 1870 and 1939.  Specifically, they have
wondered how exactly it happened, and have tended to assume that it was
the consequence of three interlocking factors: the spread of contraceptive
education by pioneers like Marie Stopes, leading to a wider awareness of
mechanical birth control methods; the gradual emergence of less
patriarchal, more “companionate” marriages in which women’s interests were more
readily voiced and discussed; and the consequent ability of wives to take control
of decisions about birth control and family size.  All of these, it is often
suggested, were a constituent part of modern attitudes to sex, fertility,
subjectivity, and society itself.  In particular, the increasing use of
birth control has been seen as a rejection of the “traditional” and
fatalistic belief that conception, and hence the future, could not be
controlled.  In contrast, small families and fertility control appear to
represent a revolutionary moment in the making of modernity, one in which
people began to develop a “modern” mentality of trying to control
uncertainty through careful planning.

A number of related assumptions accompany this narrative: first, that
women were empowered by taking control of contraceptive decisions–what was in
effect their natural province; second, that new methods of birth control
required more marital communication and hence were the key cause of the
decline in patriarchal marriages;  and finally, that the adoption of
increasingly reliable appliance methods occasioned the demise of birth
control techniques which historians have seen as unreliable, unsatisfying,
and harmful to the sex lives and psyches of those practicing them.  In
this account, the vagaries and frustrations of coitus interruptus are replaced
by more predictable condoms, caps, and pessaries.  This story is also central
to the rise of women’s sexual, moral, and political autonomy, a
narrative in which key obstacles to female sexual enjoyment–ignorance, insensitive
masculinity, unreliable contraceptive methods, and the possibility of
conception itself were gradually removed.

¿Qué buscan los adolescentes en las chicas?

February 24, 2008

Peeking Inside the Mind of the Boy Dating Your Daughter
By TARA PARKER-POPE

THE image of the testosterone-fueled teenage boy is a familiar one. It has been reinforced by movies such as “Porky’s,” “American Pie” and “Superbad,” which chronicle the escapades of high school boys determined to lose their virginity.

But are boys that age really defined primarily by their sexual urges? Or does the stereotype fall short, telling us less about teenage males and more about a culture that seems to have consistently low expectations of its boys?

A new report in The Journal of Adolescence this month suggests that when it comes to sex, girls and dating, boys are more complex than we typically give them credit for. While hormonal urges are no doubt an important part of a teenage boy’s life, they aren’t necessarily the defining trait influencing a boy’s relationships with girls.

Psychology researchers from the State University of New York at Oswego recently examined data collected from 105 10th-grade boys, average age 16, who answered questions about a number of health behaviors. In questions put to them about girls (most of the boys self-identified as heterosexual), the teenagers were asked to note their reasons for pursuing a relationship. The top answer, marked by 80 percent of the boys? “I really liked the person.”

Physical attraction and wanting to get to know someone better were tied as the second-most-popular answers. Boys who were sexually active were as likely to say they pursued sex out of love as they were to say they simply wanted to know what sex feels like or to satisfy a physical desire. Wanting to lose their virginity barely registered, with just 14 percent of boys checking that answer.

Researchers said the findings show that teenage boys really are motivated by love and a desire for meaningful relationships.

Viagra reduce la fertilidad

Men who take Viagra ‘put their fertility at risk’

Robin McKie, science editor
The Observer,
Sunday February 24 2008

Using Viagra may be damaging men’s fertility, researchers have warned. Experiments suggest that the anti-impotence drug can harm sperm and may prevent some men from fathering families.

In particular, young men who use the drug recreationally could impair their ability to have families. And fertility clinics that prescribe Viagra to help men produce sperm for IVF treatments could be preventing some couples from conceiving.

‘I think it is worrying that some IVF clinics are using Viagra in order to boost fertility results,’ said Dr David Glenn, a consultant gynaecologist at Queen’s University Belfast. ‘Couples that go there for treatment are, by definition, already having problems getting pregnant. Giving male partners something that could make the problem worse is scarcely the right approach.’

Glenn’s research, which is to be published in the journal Fertility and Sterility, is based on two sets of experiments. The first involved taking sperm samples from volunteers and then bathing them in weak solutions of Viagra. The aim was to produce a Viagra level equivalent to that found in the blood of a man who had taken a single 100-milligram tablet.