Your Sex Life 101

ABSTRACT Sex is one of the biggest industries in the virtual world of Second Life—ranging from shops selling beds embedded with animation scripts to professional escort services. While virtual sex is not a new concept, the usage of avatars in a 3D immersive environment creates a level of interactivity unprecedented in former forms of cyber sex. In these virtual worlds, cyber sex includes dialogue as well as visual stimulation, and is unique in that the user is able to actively participate in the content development of both visual and textual elements of role-playing. 1. INTRODUCTION The Internet has fostered a culture that enables people to engage in sexual activities by using the computer as a medium. Past studies—mainly conducted by psychologists and sociologists—have examined cyber sex as a phenomenon that replaced written text and phone sex (Young, 2001). Cyber sex was defined as messages exchanged in live chat rooms and email correspondence (Dryer, 2007).The recent development of

WHAT IS SAFER SEX?  Safer sex is not about eliminating sex from your life. It is about respect for yourself and respect for your partner—talking about sex, knowing how to protect yourself, and taking precautions every time. Safer sex means enjoying sex without getting or giving sexually transmitted infections (STIs). Some STIs can be treated and cured easily. Others have no cure but can be controlled with treatment.  Remember that you are the one responsible for protecting yourself in every sexual relationship. WHAT ARE THE RISKS? To make physical intimacy as enjoyable and safe as possible, know which types of intimate contact are higher risk for STI transmission and which are lower risk. The chart below ranks sexual practices by their degree of risk, assuming no protection is used.* Activities that involve direct exposure to a partner’s semen, vaginal secretions, or blood are more dangerous. HIGH RISK << Receptive anal intercourse << Receptive vaginal intercourse <<

Abstract Sexual fluidity has been defined as a capacity for situation-dependent flexibility in sexual responsiveness, which allows individuals to experience changes in same-sex or other-sex desire across both short-term and long-term time periods. I review recent evidence for sexual fluidity and consider the extent of gender differences in sexual fluidity by examining the prevalence of three phenomena: nonexclusive (bisexual) patterns of attraction, longitudinal change in sexual attractions, and inconsistencies among sexual attraction, behavior, and identity. All three of these phenomena appear to be widespread across a large body of independent, representative studies conducted in numerous countries, supporting an emerging understanding of sexuality as fluid rather than rigid and categorical. These studies also provide evidence for gender differences in sexual fluidity, but the extent and cause of these gender differences remain unclear and are an important topic for future research.

Unlike the Greeks whom we so admire, with our lips for their taste and their reason, we make no provision in society for the bacchanalian part of being. We do not know how to laugh or revel. We are serious thinkers or serious alcoholics. We read Freud's Civilization and Its Discontents and approve but do not heed. The Middle Ages, for all their fits of puritanism and supposed fears of eternal punishment, knew how to wash away anxiety in laughter and make room in civilization for the Dionysiac, as well as for its sublimation in work. We have lost all three forms of release and can only look for "relaxation," wondering why we are timid and tired, afraid of power, and looking for shelter in little huts--art, the home, the religions of the East--like sufferers from agoraphobia. The relation of work to the Dionysiac naturally suggests another relation--that of Intellect to sex. It can be said that a chief hindrance to the development of Intellect in the young is the incoherenc