By Karley Sciortino / pic Ellen von Unwerth /
It’s good to know what’s going on in the world… ish. From now on, I’m going to help keep you informed on what’s happening outside of your apartment, at least in the world of sex and relationships. Here’s the first installment of my weekly sex roundup!
1. Ireland legalizes same-sex marriage (yay!)
The most import piece of sex news this week is definitely that Ireland became the first country to approve same-sex marriage by popular vote. Woo! The final vote was 62% in favor of legalizing same-sex marriage, and 38% opposed. This is a really big deal, because Ireland is generally a pretty conservative country. A large portion of the country is Catholic, and abortion is still illegal there. However, the church’s influence has waned in recent years, particularly due to the shifting attitudes of young people. Open-minded young people will change the world! We rule! Read more about this story in this New York Times article.
2. New Sex Toys Sync Up to Virtual Reality Porn
Porn experiences are getting fancier and fancier these days. In the near future, not only will you be able to have a totally immersive porn experience with your at-home VR glasses, but you’ll also be able to sync up your VR to your sex toy via Bluetooth, and the toy will squeeze and/or vibrate along with whatever the performers in the video are doing. And then you’ll never leave your house again. Cool. Read more about it in Wired.
3. A new study shows that having more sex won’t necessarily make you happier
Sex is fun, and orgasms feel good, obvi. Because of those generally agreed upon facts, the consensus since basically forever had been that having more sex will make a person happier, and that having a lot of sex in a relationships signifies that things are going well. However, those things have never actually been scientifically proven. Recently, researchers from Carnegie Mellon University conducted the first ever study examining the connection between sexual frequency and happiness. They studied 128 healthy heterosexual couples between the ages of 35 and 65—one group was instructed to double their weekly sexual frequency, and the other group fucked as normal. In the end, the couples who increased their fucking experienced a small, but discernible decrease in happiness, as well as lower sex drive and a decrease in sexual enjoyment. The researchers concluded that the reduced happiness wasn’t necessarily because they were having more sex, but because they were asked to do it, rather than initiating it themselves. So, the moral of the story is: you can’t force it. So, rather than focusing on just fucking more, you should probably focus on creating situations that turn you and your partner(s) on, and therefore make you want to fuck more! Read more about it in this Huffington Post article.
4. Debunking the story of “man the hunter,” by Rebecca Solnit
In this month’s Harper’s mag, there’s an article titled “Shooting Down Man the Hunter,” which I recommend everyone read. It’s written by one of my favorite writers, Rebecca Solnit (who wrote the book Men Explain Things To Me, among many others, and invented the term “mansplaining”). This particular article is about the history of the idea of the nuclear family, and that myth that, since the dawn of time, men hunted and provided for their families, and women sat around the house doing basically nothing—this behavior, apparently, is rooted in our biology. Or so the story says. However, that’s actually not the case, and not only that, but that age-old story turns out not even to be true. As usual, Solnit is insightful and laugh-out-loud witty. Unfortunately, you can only read the article online if you’re a subscriber to Harper’s. If you’re not, I recommend you become one! It’s my favorite mag, and it’s literally less than $20 a year for a month subscription—totally worth it. Or you can just buy this issue on newsstands. See an excerpt of the article HERE.