3 Sex Facts I learnt Today

Some days it's a complete pleasure to be a journalist, because all you have to do is sit, read and immerse yourself in research to prep for an upcoming feature. Today was one of those days for me and it probably won't come as much of a surprise that what I was researching involved sex.

Here are three tid-bits of super interesting sex things I learnt today, that sadly won't make the feature, but I didn't want to let them go to waste!

1. Sharks and vagina's - like two peas in a pod
Well, sort of. Very vaguely. Luckily it doesn't have anything to do with razor sharp teeth and vagina dentata. Both contain squalene: a substance found in shark livers and natural vaginal lubricant.

2. How To Make Fake Spunk
Sometimes scientists need to make artificial semen. Masters & Johnson reportedly did this to try and disprove the 'up-suck' theory (which they did). Apparently to make something of the same consistency of actual semen you need a cup of flour mixed with water, although, apparently, cornstarch works just as well.

3. Discovery of Human Sex Pheromones
Knowledge of animals using pheromones to attract a mate has been known to scientists since the late 70's, but it wasn't until 1986 that they discovered that humans give off pheromones too. That was the year I was born and is a super cool fact. I'm miffed as to why that was never included on my "year you were born keyring"?!

The Perfect Mess

I am in turmoil. My other half has just cleaned the office, thus affecting all of the positive creative energy within the room, which I use to feed off and come up with all of my wonderful, world-changing ideas. As he faffed and put-away, I felt myself getting more anxious. I need that magazine there, and leave that bit of paper so I know where it is and yes, I do need that receipt. ARGH!

The (intelligent) git has just pointed out the paradox of the situation: that by cleaning and "ruining my creative environment" he's just given me something to write about in this blog.

What a bastard.

We have a "shared" office space. It's not equally shared, it is more mine than his. He only works from home once a month for a week, whereas I am here all of the time and even the week that he does work from home, he only uses it in the evenings when a work related call comes through. Essentially, it is my office and in my office I like a certain amount of organised mess. It's nothing OTT, it's not like I have coffee cups piled high or newspaper clippings everywhere. It's more just a few magazines dotted about the place that I haven't got round to putting away, or am constantly referring to in the week that I have a deadline, and the several notepads - each assigned a different feature - that I need to have on the desk at all times until my deadline for said feature has been met.

To the untrained eye, it may look messy, but it's organised mess and there's actually some positive research about organised mess.

Take this 2012 study for example, where a group of two students we're placed in two different rooms: one insanely neat and the other with a bit of chaos. Asking the students to dream up new uses for ping pong balls, the ones in the messy room came up with much more imaginative uses (and no, I'm sure none of them had anything to do with popping out of body parts). Just one example that mess equals creativity.

Or this book, A Perfect Mess: The Hidden Benefits of Disorder. It argues that too much neat encroaches on productive time. "If you devote all your time to organizing, you won’t get anything done. If you don’t spend any time organizing, the resultant mess bogs you down completely. When you find the ‘sweet spot’ between messiness and order, then you have a perfect mess," explained Eric Abrahamson, one of the book's authors. That's what I have...sorry, had! A perfect mess.

Tomorrow could have been the day that I sit in my organised messy office and dream up my blockbuster novel. I guess now we will never know!

Pink Toys For Tomboys: does colour really matter?

One of my best friends had a baby girl today. It's her fifth child. Her first four children are all boys, so when we found out that she was due to have a girl everyone was pleasantly surprised and, if we're honest, the conversations quickly turned to theories of how this little lady is going to survive in a house full of lads.

Personally, I reckon she'll be fine and will no doubt grow into one of the toughest tomboys I'll know. I'm already assuming that's what she's going to be, especially as the mother (my friend) has put the kibosh on anything pink and she's going to grow up in a house full of cars, trucks, Lego, sports gear, DS and computer consoles that her older brothers adore playing with. Geez, I'm jealous.

This is fine by me, because I have a real issue with pink toys, especially pink toys that try to be “boys toys” aimed at girls, like this recent offeringfrom NERF, which I spotted an advert for while on holiday in France.

I hit on something similar with my first tomboy blog post when I found the god-awful Tomboy Tool Kit. My issue is thus: why does something which women are more than capable of using, because after all a hammer is a hammer, a NERF gun is a Nerf gun, then need to go and be painted pink in order to make it somehow more legitimate for women to use? If a woman, or young girl is in a hardware/toy shop and they are faced with two products that are exactly identical in every way except colour - lets say one is grey and the other is pink - would they choose the pink one because it somehow means that it is more tailored to a woman/girl using it? That somehow the manufacturers have gone the extra mile to produce something specifically for women because they have made it more stereotypically feminine by painting it that colour?

It's a sure fire way to tap into the psyche of women, I'll give the marketers that, and I think this is when the debate around colour really becomes an issue as it somehow implies that 'specialist' pink things should be used by females as a non-gender alternative is somehow inferior or not suited to the female form.

Of course, this is bull shit.

However, this led me to think more about the recent debate around the need for gender neutral toys and question whether I was actually being a total hypocrite for secretly wanting my friend's little girl to turn into a tomboy and therefore avoid pink completely?

The idea of genderneutral toys has been a hot topic recently, thanks to the comments made by the Education Minister, Elizabeth Truss calling for 'gender neutral toys' in nurseries and parent-led projects like Let Toys BeToys and PinkStinks campaign. I fully agree that separating toy sections into “boys” and “girls” should be abolished. No more should a girl be discouraged from playing with a toy tool kit, than a boy should be prevented from pushing a doll around in a push chair. By doing this you'd hope the debate about girly colours and boyish colours would also become null and void, because is it really the colour we have issue with, or the act of the play that the child is performing?

A really interesting article is this on The Telegraph by June O'Sullivan, chief exec of London Early Years Foundation, who argues that indeed toys need to be toys and kids, both boys and girls, should be able to pick up with and play with whatever they feel comfortable with. Reading this and the subsequent comments, certainly made me re-evaluate my opinion on pink toys, because if I think back honestly to when I was younger, whether something was blue or pink mattered less to me. What was important was how I could fit it into my pretend story and if it didn't work, I wouldn't play with it. So, really, apart from doing away with the idea that 'this is just for boys' and 'this toy is just for girls', does colour actually matter?

Something New - Hot Yoga

My motto for this year is "be better". It's nice, and broad, and can cover a lot of aspects of life without too much room for error. I can either be a little bit better at something, or be loads better at it. It works on so many levels, see?

So one way I'd like to "be better", is by being a little bit healthier and trying new shit, you know, putting myself out there a bit more and seeing things from a different perspective. I did just that today, because this morning I tried hot yoga.

Usually, I scoff at yoga. My boyfriend has had to endure taunts from me about how it's all "hippy shit" and not a real work out. How it's all "ohmm-ing" and "woosah" and all that jazz. I've probably just royally pissed some of you off by saying that, but hear me out and stick with me. So, with that attitude, just how in the hell did I end up in a yoga class, I hear you ask?

Well, I have a friend to blame for that. Not just any friend, a friend that gets way too Groupon happy sometimes. Before Christmas, she got especially Groupon happy and because she knows I do Pilates, when she saw this Hot Yoga class deal, she couldn't resist and signed us up.

PAH! This would be a doddle. It's all slow, flowing, om, om, stretchy movements. I can do that. I do hardcore Pilate stretching that has toned my abs to not quite rival that of Jessica Ennins, but they're still looking damn good. And it's in the heat? No problem! I love heat. I've been to Australia. In the summer and I survived, but hey. I'm "being better" and I should give this a go and it will be a doddle anyway, right?

It wasn't.

Within the first three minutes I was sweating and having to stop to take some water and all we'd done were a couple of cobra's and a lot of downward dogging (I lost count of how much dogging we did in class today). The teacher was relentless. We were up, down, sideways warrior-ing, doing the [funky] pigeon, happy babies and there were a load of words I didn't understand, but sounded totally "woosah" and like the hippy shit I was expecting. There was no clock in there and I didn't have a watch, but the class was only meant to last an hour. It felt like we were in there a lot, lot longer.

Apart from not understanding a lot of the words coming out of the nice-teacher lady's mouth and being told to not look to see if I'm doing it right, but instead just "listen to the instructions and the flowing movement of [her] voice," after a while I did start to get the hang of it. That was only after I had the rebellious thought of, "fuck this, it's all too fast, I'm going at my own pace," and I'm pretty sure that's not the right attitude, but whatever. After I thought that, it got better, I got better and actually started to enjoy it.

I liked the breathing. Who knew that breathing in a hot room with other super sweaty people could be so chillaxing? I also liked the balancing. I was good at that and the sequences of balances we did was probably the only point in the class when I didn't look like a total beginner.

The bastard class left me feeling, what I'd like to call, 'yoga-happy'. Yes, I felt all floaty and smiley inside. It's only after I've come down off that inner-tranquillity high and had a cup of toxic coffee with extra sugar that I've been able to write this blog about how pigging irritating it is that I'm going to have to eat my previous words about yoga. It was tough. It was hot. I sweated like a bastard and couldn't keep up, but goddammit, my balancing tree-pose looked beautiful and I didn't wobble once. NOT ONCE!

And yes, if you must know, I am looking forward to next week's class and being just a little bit better than this week.    

How to knock a country's sexual confidence

It's a sad fact that there is some really terrible sex writing out there. While I can't claim that everything I pen in relation to sex is "sparkling copy", at least it generally doesn't make people feel like shit (I hope), like I think this article would.

Titled, 'Why are British men so bad at sexting?', my major gripe with Rebecca Holman's piece was the total man-bashing of British men and the use of cliches and stereotypes to do this. Specifically, it was this paragraph that really pissed me off:

"Sexting is awkward, bad, sexist and never sexy. It’s the natural progression of a nation who once thought Benny Hill to be the height of sophisticated comedy. If a French man were to send me a sexto, it would be a perfectly worded combination of charm, smarm and sex, leaving me in a puddle of lust, excitement and shame on the floor."

Note the use of the word "if" in this paragraph, confirming that she doesn't actually have any hard evidence. I wouldn't mind so much if she didn't go on to write this: 

"I don’t know what it is, but in the UK, even the most articulate of chaps is reduced to the same combination of sexual clichés and inexplicably terrible spelling."

But hang on, THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT YOU JUST DID! Or, did Rebecca use that sexual cliche and stereotype of a French man to be ironic? I doubt it.

I don't intend to be bitchy and I'm not out to criticise anyone on a personal level by writing this. It simply makes me sad (and angry) to see an article like this when considering the bigger picture about the UK's attitude towards sex.

Going on my experience, adults in this country worry a lot about sex. They worry about whether they're good enough, if they're saying the right things, if they're satisfying their partner, if they're "weird" for having a particular fetish, or whether the sex they're having is "normal", whether they come too quickly, or take too long. Sadly we're in a society that has a big fucking fear about how good they are in the sack (a lot of the time) rather than remembering sex should be fun, and why do people worry so much? Partly because bullshit articles such as this get published, where a hugely uncorrelated link is made between how well someone can spell and text and how well they might be at sex (see third paragraph from the end).

*Sigh*

First study of sexual health among UK Male sex workers

While male sex workers may be getting more of a voice in the popular press, there is still one area of their work that is totally in the dark: their sexual health. Touched on partially in the BBC report I analysed last week - the reporter asked whether any of them would be willing to have unprotected sex with a client, some of them confessed they would at an increased cost - there are obvious conversations happening around the health of male sex workers (MSW), but surprisingly there has been very little research by the medical profession into the male sex worker community. Until last month.

A study published in the online edition of Sexually Transmitted Infections, has attempted to establish a picture of the characteristics and sexual health of men that are selling sex in the UK. A team of investigators studied the 2011 records of men that visited GUM clinics. In total 627,780 men attended sexual health services, but only 411 were identified as being a MSW. That's not many at all, but the authors of the study believed the true figure is higher, however, many MSW's don't feel inclined to disclose their profession when getting tested.

Ok, so this doesn't leave the study with a huge number, but you have to start somewhere and considering no one had attempted to make any sort of document of the health of male sex workers previously (maybe because they felt there wasn't enough data?), then this is the best snap shot we got of how guys working in the sex industry are looking after themselves.

Despite only having a small sample to analyse, it appears that most sex workers are taking their health seriously, visiting sexual health services more than twice as many times as other men (4.5 vs 2.3 visits respectively). Taking that a step further, migrant MSW's are more likely to get tested more often than UK-born MSW's.  

Reading the results, what surprised me the most were the findings about age and where the majority of UK male sex works are from originally. Reading between the lines, it seems that UK punters have a preference for 35 year old South American guys Most MSW in Britain have migrated from South America. So, can we deduce that UK punters have a particular thing for Latino men?

Read the full report here. 

The BBC on gay male escorts

From female prostitutes in Tatler, to male escorts on the BBC website, it's refreshingly impossible to keep a certain credential of sex worker out of mainstream media at the moment. Hurrah! You'll see why I say "certain credential" momentarily.

Hang on though. What was that? A story on the BBC about male escorts? WTF? 

I know, I found it double blinkingly amazing too! It's mostly positive and I love how it has gone for the business angle as a hook - as in the practicalities of how male escorts market themselves - rather than sticking a figure on the work to "wow" readers. Having said that, the Beeb can't completely help themselves and chuck in a quote in paragraph seven in which the interviewee, Brandon, says: "The most I've ever made is £30,000 in a month. When I work that hard, the money can be great." I'm glad they kept in the fact that Brandon had to work hard for that money and not insinuate that sex work is a piece of piss and that figure probably isn't every month, unlike the £20k-a-night female sex workers piece, which made it sound like it was a) easy to achieve that kind of status and b) made it sound like that happened all the time. The BBC even keep up the positivism highlighting the fact that his career choice has afforded him a living space in the heart of London. Well jel!  

It doesn't last though, because, naturally, this lifestyle has to come at a price:

 "I was seeing an arms dealer."

Wow, what a BBC-esque way to take the escort profession down a peg! 'You can have all this great stuff, but you have to cosy up to some pretty undesirable characters that might throw your ethics into whack.' I suppose that's one way to read it. The other is that it could possibly feel very James Bond. Now that is sexy.

Interesting that yesterday, for the ladies, it was all talk of rich oil tycoons, royals, bankers; there was nothing so controversial in there as servicing arms dealers. This is BBC's first stab in the article at reinforcing to readers that maybe this career path ain't so glam after all and just to hammer that home they have the story of Nico: a depressed, drug-taking male escort with family issues. Obviously, as it's the BBC, they need to show both sides of the coin. That's what they're famous for of course: unbiased. However, kudos to them that they didn't stick that right at the end of the story and the feature's parting words actually appear quite liberal and open minded towards male escorting.

Right, that's the bulk of what I wanted to say. Now onto what I meant by "certain credentials". The only other thing to highlight is that this is about gay male escorts. Again, it's excellent that this stem of sex work is getting a voice within mainstream media at all, and that is a positive, but with this article and the one from yesterday it's only progressive to a point.

'There has been a slow societal shift in the acceptability of sex work, says Del Campbell from the Terence Higgins Trust.

"There is a lot less stigma for men who sell sex," he says. "Often, the women are still seen as victims but for some gay men, escorting is now a normal job. You could mention that you're an escort at a dinner party and in some circles, no one would bat an eyelid."'

While it's apparently becoming an accepted profession within the gay male community, what about out of it? What about the men that offer escorting services for women? How often do we hear them, or see them in the media? In this scenario, the focus of the articles are often shifted to be about the women that are doing the buying, because that's the "shock" value. That's still the taboo. The guys get lost in the media storm around "her". Examples here, here and here.

So, my (sweeping) assumption from what I've seen in the last two days is that unless you're a gay male, a high-end expensive female escort, or a woman paying for a male escort, you're going to find it tough at the moment to make it into the popular press.