well yes.... what a party it will be...QUOTE: The Aug. 14 event, a masquerade that will take place in a wheelchair-accessible theatre, is believed to be the first of its kind in Canada.

Most discussions on accessibility focus on physical barriers, but the event’s organizers said it’s also important to look at the emotional and social hurdles that people with disabilities face, such as the widespread belief that they aren’t sexual beings.

“Access (to sexuality) is such a major barrier for people with disabilities — I don’t think there’s any other group in society that, depending on the level of their physical limitation, can’t even pleasure themselves sexually,” said Stella Palikarova, a disability awareness consultant.

Toronto group organizes ‘Deliciously Disabled’ sex party

http://metronews.ca/news/canada/1449612/group-organizes-sex-party-for-disabled-people/

13 Photographs Inside the Sex Lives of People With Disabilities (NSFW)

Olivier Fermariello's images will change your definition of beauty.

"I see disability as a mirror for society," says photographer Olivier Fermariello. "Most of us belong to the 99 percent of people who do not fit in the standards of manipulated beauty."
With his series, Je t'aime moi aussi, Fermariello opted to push the dialogue about physical beauty further, photographing what has (sadly) often been a taboo subject: the sex lives of people who have physical disabilities.
"Diversity is scary for people," says Fermariello, "because it reflects our far from perfect appearance. When it gets to matters like sexuality and disability, we usually feel uncomfortable and we rather not want to talk about."
Below, Fernariello's perspective-shifting photographs:

http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/news/a30735/photos-sex-lives-of-people-with-disabilities/

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CHINA:

Learning how to flirt

Updated: 2015-01-16 07:10

Through the pioneering work of sex educator Glenn Quint, NGOs and institutes in China are helping disabled youths manage their sexuality
Hu Minting, 28, who works at Nurturing Relationships, a nongovernmental organization in South China's Guangdong province that educates youth with disabilities, remembers the first time she worked alongside Glenn Quint, a pioneer in sex education for the disabled.
It was in 2009, a year after Quint had been invited by the Special Education Center of Guangzhou Youth Palace, the Guangzhou Yangai Special Children's Parents Club, and the Guangzhou Qizhi School of Special Education to provide consultation on the issues surrounding disability and sexuality.

A physically disabled person decorates the wall at the Disabled Persons' Rehabilitation Center in Beijing. Wang Jing / China Daily

"Several parents of disabled children asked for help from teachers in these special education schools and organizations, saying that they couldn't handle the awkwardness of adolescence that their children had displayed," says Hu, who at the time was an intern at the Guangzhou Yangai Special Children's Parents Club.
While Hu recalls Quint as a wildly creative and personable teacher, what truly surprised her was his honesty and tolerance of sex education and his systematic research on how sex is taught in the United States and Europe.
"When he talked about sexual desire and youths' curiosity toward sexuality, his eyes never spoke of shame, as many people do in China," she says.
Quint, 61, taught Germany's first human sexuality class in 1983 as a second-grade teacher in Berlin. In the 1990s and from 2007-2009, he worked for Planned Parenthood as an outreach educator, speaking to thousands of parents, children and teenagers about human sexuality. He then worked for 19 months in Guangzhou as a sex education consultant, focusing on sexuality and disability. He is the author of We are Growing Up: Sexuality Education Lesson Plans for Children with Disabilities, China's first human sexuality curriculum for people with developmental and physical disabilities.
He also created the first sexuality website in China to provide a comprehensive approach to human sexuality for youth and adults.
"China had no such expert on sexuality and disability and we did need help," Hu recalls. "We were dealing with boys who were fond of women's silk stockings and even tried to touch women who were wearing stockings in public. Girls had difficulties taking care of themselves during their menstruation."

Discussions of sex have been taboo in China for thousands of years. Even today, sex education is not widely promoted in schools across the country. Almost all teachers currently working in special educations schools graduated from Chinese universities that did not have courses on sex education. Most learned what they know about sex and disabilities through seminars or workshops organized by NGOs and foreign research institutes.
But in 2009, with Quint's assistance, an education program was established to train teachers, professionals, and parents about sex education for the disabled. The program worked directly with children, teenagers, and adults with physical and developmental disabilities, such as autism.
Classes were hosted by the trio of aforementioned organizations and by Nurturing Relationships, and involved about 2,700 people, including teachers from special education schools and NGOs supporting the education of the disabled.
In just 19 months, Quint trained Hu and 24 other professionals to be the first group of sex education consultants in the province.
Quint says there was an immediate need to provide sex education to youths in China to not only tackle the embarrassing incidents in their lives but to prevent them from being ashamed of who they are or from being hurt.
In the US, he says more than 90 percent of people with developmental disabilities will be sexually abused at some point in their lives, 49 percent of whom will suffer from 10 or more abusive incidents.
"I don't know what the statistics are for China, but I doubt they're any better. I came to help, to teach them to say 'no' to unwanted touches," Quint says.
According to the China Disabled Persons' Federation, by the end of 2010, there were more than 85 million people with disabilities in the country, 20 percent of whom have mental and emotional disabilities, while more than 25 percent have physical disabilities. Most have hearing or speech impairments, or multiple disabilities.
The Ministry of Education says the government has in recent years been making greater efforts to provide more educational opportunities for the disabled, claiming that by December 2012, nearly 72 percent of disabled children had access to compulsory education, a 10 percent rise from 2008. The bump in numbers was attributed to the establishment of special training schools and centers in China.
But little progress has been made with regard to sexuality and disability, especially among people with mental or emotional impairments, or those whose problems result in diminished intellectual abilities.
"Many people believe that disabled people have no sexual desires, or believe that their sex lives will almost certainly result in trouble, such as unplanned pregnancies," said Cai Cong, a visually impaired man who works for One Plus One, a disabled culture development center in Beijing.
Cai says parents will resort to desperate measures to avoid unplanned pregnancies, such as authorizing doctors to remove their daughter's uterus, a practice supported by special education schools.
"When we discuss their (disabled people's) rights to have sex, get married, or even have children, the most common question people ask is: Isn't it enough for a family to have one abnormal child?" Cai explains.
'This is normal'
Despite her four years as a teacher at Lizhi Disabled Persons Rehabilitation Center, Xu Yulu was still embarrassed when she discovered a male student masturbating in a dormitory.
"It happens a lot and usually there's more than one student involved, but I know this is normal in the physical development of disabled people," the 28-year-old says.
The center, located in an old kindergarten building in the Fengtai district of Beijing, started providing services to emotionally and mentally impaired people from the ages of 15 and older in 2008. There are currently 81 students, and in addition to teaching basic life and communication skills, the center also provides students with opportunities to take part-time jobs.
Students who need to live at the center from Monday to Friday are charged about 3,500 yuan per month.
"We have often noticed intimate acts between male and female students, such as holding hands, touching each other's bodies, or kissing. Sometimes this also happens between students of the same gender," said Yang Chao, deputy director of the center.
"People who are emotionally and mentally impaired know sadness, happiness and shame. They are physically healthy and have sexual impulses. The key is how to teach them to express their sexuality in appropriate ways, rather than depriving them of the right to express or enjoy it."
China has no official programs to promote sex education for the disabled - most of the work is done by a handful of NGOs. In August 2013, the country's first workshop on disability, gender and sexuality was held at the privately organized 5th Asian Conference on Sexuality Education in Chengdu, capital of Sichuan province.
"Everyone needs ongoing and age-appropriate sex education to help them develop positive attitudes about their sexuality, and that includes people with disabilities," said Alessandra Aresu, director of Handicap International China, an NGO that supports disabled and vulnerable people.
She said providing sex education for intellectually impaired people younger than 18 can help them to stay safe, prevent them from contracting sexually transmitted diseases and stop unplanned pregnancies.
In Quint's eyes, youths with disabilities need to learn more about the skills they'll need to become sexually healthy adults. To this end, one of the things he taught some older students in Guangdong was how to flirt.
"We discussed the different ways to flirt when you're interested in someone, including smiling, giggling, laughing, complimenting, making eye contact, finding out the other person's interests, or touching the other person on the arm or hand. Then we had the students practice their techniques on life-size male and female outlines that we had drawn on the blackboard," he said.
Quint has also worked with parents of children who have disabilities.
"What had these parents accomplished? In a society where most people didn't see the connections between disability and healthy sexuality, these parents were doing the impossible," he says.
Apart from promoting sex education, NGOs are also educating the public about the rights of disabled people to express their sexual needs in appropriate ways and supporting their right to marriage and reproduction.
Du Jingchen, program assistant at the Enable Disability Studies Institute in Beijing, which focuses on social work and legal support for people with disabilities, says: "Before we let them know 'how', we should help them and the public to realize that people with disabilities are equal to everyone else, and they have the right to make their own choices under professional guidance."
In some cases, protecting disabled children from sexual abuse can be problematic for parents. Last year, a couple visited the institute because their 15-year-old daughter, who is severely mentally impaired, was being sexually abused at school.
The couple warned other parents that their children could have been abused.
"Of the three girls examined, one was found to have had her hymen ruptured within the past seven days," Du said. "However, none of the parents chose to call the police because the city has so few special education schools with good facilities, and they were worried about where they would send their daughters if the school was prosecuted."
Since July, the institute has cooperated with the Ford Foundation, a private organization in New York that works to advance human welfare, to train 20 teachers in the protection of disabled people's sexual rights. The project will draw upon experiences of disabled people in Taiwan, the US and a number of European countries.
"It's a start for disabled children and their parents. Of course, 20 is small number, but those few teachers will bring a very, very big future with them," Du says.
Zhao Xu contributed to this story.
yangwanli@chinadaily.com.cn

Xu Yulu, a teacher at the Disabled Persons' Rehabilitation Center in Beijing, interacts with a mentally disabled man. China is working with NGOs to educate disabled youngsters and their parents to provide a better understanding of the relationship between sexuality and their physical and mental conditions. Wang Jing / China Daily

A physically disabled person uses a brush to do a manicure on a model hand during a competition for people with disabilities in Nanjing. Dong Jinlin / China Daily

http://europe.chinadaily.com.cn/epaper/2015-01/16/content_19332839.htm

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ITALY- Course aims to train 'sex assistants' for disabled

Published: 29 Nov 2013 12:36 GMT+01:00

A course aimed at training sexual assistants for disabled people is being prepared by an organization pushing to legalize the role in Italy.

Maximiliano Ulivieri, one of the organization’s founders, launched a campaign to change Italian legislation earlier this year.
He told The Local that the aim is to prepare a course that would give special training - along the lines of what is already provided in a number of other European countries - to people on how to cater to the sexual needs of disabled people. Once in place, the course will be taught in Bologna, where the voluntary organization is registered.
Ulivieri, who suffers from muscular dystrophy, the muscle wasting disorder, hopes to begin enrollments next year, but realizes it could be some time before the newly trained assistants are able to exercise their role.
CLICK HERE TO READ A FULL INTERVIEW WITH ULIVIERI
“I understand it will take a long time for any law to be put in place, but we can still offer the course,” Ulivieri said.
An online campaign to grant legal status to the role of sexual assistant has gathered over 600,000 signatures and also has the support of politicians from the Democratic Party and the Five Star Movement, Ulivieri said.
“Our first objective is to have the ‘profession’ of sexual assistant recognized, which is why we’re preparing the course now,” he said, adding that the main challenge will be cracking the taboo of disability and sex in Italy.
Parents of disabled children in Italy have also been campaigning for the role to be legalized. In August, the mother of a 30-year-old disabled man from Treviso appealed for brothels to be reopened in Italy so that her son can have an active and safe sex life.
The issue is less of a stigma elsewhere in Europe. In Switzerland, sex assistants are paid €100 an hour. Training includes a course on disabilities and psychology as well as practical workshops on massage and masturbation techniques. A similar system is in place in Germany, Denmark and the Netherlands, where disabled people can get money from the government to pay for sexual relations.
Don't miss a story about Italy - Join us on Facebook and Twitter.
Angela Giuffrida (angela.giuffrida@thelocal.com)

http://www.thelocal.it/20131129/course-aims-to-train-sexual-assistants-for-the-disabled

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Toronto to host world's first-ever sex orgy for disabled people

Organisers want to change negative sexual attitudes towards people with disabilities

The city of Toronto is to make some major barriers fall after confirming it will play host to the world’s first-ever sex orgy for disabled people.

Canadian disability awareness advocates, Andrew Morrison-Gurza and Stella Parikarova, say they are tired of facing ignorant attitudes when it comes to sex and sexuality involving those with disabilities.

Ms Palikarova, 35, is the brain behind the idea after becoming frustrated with people assuming her libido is virtually non-existent because she is in a wheelchair as a result of spinal muscular atrophy.

“The naysayers are just subconsciously hating the fact that people in wheelchairs are having great sex – better sex – than a lot of people are having,” she told the Toronto Sun. “I won’t apologise for that. This should not be shocking.

“It should be celebrated. But it’s fine. No progress is ever made without controversy. By making this party accessible, we are saying openly that people with disabilities are sexual beings, and not only in more conventional ways.”

The event – called #DeliciouslyDisabled – will take place on 14 August which is at the same time as the city holds the Parapan Am Games.

#DeliciouslyDisabled Friday August 14 @ Buddies in Bad Times #AllAccess Event pic.twitter.com/sj3HinDixX

— Ella Vation (@Ella_Vation) June 4, 2015

It is not exclusively for disabled people; the invite is open to all.

The entrance fee is $20 – although caretakers can get in for free. The venue will hold 125 people, up to 20 wheelchairs plus walkers, canes and there will also be an interpreter for the deaf.

Mr Morrison-Gurza, who has been very vocal about the event and sexual equality, is the mastermind behind the name of the orgy: “We needed to create a language around disability that highlights the best parts about disability and one that everyone could have access to.

@amgurza1 @AlexxStierXXX I am #DeliciouslyDisabled how about you?? pic.twitter.com/nQr0Hv6XWi

— Bryce Green (@TonyWinnerBryce) April 27, 2015

“What would you do if you saw that really sexy person with a disability at the club? How would you describe them?” Morrison-Gurza tells the Daily Dot. “#DeliciouslyDisabled helps give you a new way to do that, which isn't steeped in medical or political prose.”

Finally, to raise awareness of the event, here is a 14-minute long video of artist Brent Ray Fraser painting a large #DeliciouslyDisabled sign with his penis. (Probably NSFW).

Brent Ray Fraser Supports #DeliciouslyDisabled https://t.co/wKxtVkec32 @amgurza1#brentrayfraser #PenisArt

— BRF (@BrentRayFraser) June 2, 2015

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/love-sex/toronto-to-host-worlds-firstever-sex-orgy-for-disabled-people-10306688.html

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BLOGSPOTS:

War Amps Canada - amazing organization - making disabilities in2 abilities /DISABLED HAVE GREAT SEX LIVES AND ALWAYS HAVE Jul 11/2015

http://nova0000scotia.blogspot.ca/2015/04/war-amps-canada-amazing-organization.html

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BLOGSPOT:

CANADA MILITARY NEWS-Wheelchair Rights in Canada/ Hey Nova Scotia- Hey Canada- if ur driving and u hit and badly injure or MURDER a pedestrian in a crosswalk, highway, bicycle or bike rider on the highway SHOULDN'T U DO 10 YRS HARDTIME- instead of a ticket 4 murder?? OR HIT BY LOUSY DRUNK DRIVER... SHOULDN’T U GET LIFE???/Disability Rights in Canada March 25-2015
http://nova0000scotia.blogspot.ca/2015/03/canada-military-news-hey-nova-scotia.html

BLOGSPOT:

CANADA MILITARY NEWS: Disabilities are Abilities in Disguise-Honorary Colonel RICK HANSEN- Canada's Man in Motion (985-87 Wheelchair World Tour) proves that we need more politicians and media savvy on our Canada world stage- courage, determination, intelligence and resourcefullness...and loyalty - that defines us Canadians /Over 40% of people have visible-invisible disabilities and #1BRising

http://nova0000scotia.blogspot.ca/2015/06/canada-military-news-disabilities-are.html

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BLOGSPOT:

CANADA MILITARY NEWS: Disabled warriors have great sex lives/ O Canada...sigh, Why aren’t there more (visible/invisible) disabled TV Anchors, Media, Radio, OnLine folks representing us on air and radio AND POLITICS?-Here’s how 2do it-make the world proud/ #1BRising /UN Peacekeepers stop raping/OmarKhadr dishonours Canada and our troops who died 4 Afghan freedom /Updated July 11 2015

http://nova0000scotia.blogspot.ca/2015/05/canada-military-news-why-arent-more.html

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BLOGGED:
CANADA MILITARY NEWS: #1BRising- no more excuses or abuses/IN CANADA OUR GENDER EQUALITY TOPS RELIGION BY LAW…. USA and UN both refuse 2 proclaim women equal men- BUT CANADA DOES- GET USED 2 IT… or don’t come 2 Canada or leave… simple as that folks /HEADS UP- CANADA ELECTION THIS YEAR- I sincerely believe in Canada women’s rights and equality beats your religious beliefs…. seriously…. and if any political party says differently in Canada- tell voting women now… ONE BILLION RISING- NO MORE EXCUSES
http://nova0000scotia.blogspot.ca/2015/02/canada-military-news-1brising-no-more.html

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Disabled and Fighting for a Sex Life

How misperceptions about disability can prevent people with physical and cognitive impairments from being able to express their sexuality

Millie Dollar sashays onto the stage in a green, feathered dress to conclude the evening’s entertainment with a sultry burlesque routine. The capacity audience at the ornate Epstein Theater in Liverpool is enraptured by her sensual beauty.

Burlesque, she says in an interview, gives her a way of communicating through costume, routine and dance—which she does with panache. What the audience can’t see, though, is the hearing condition that means she must work hard to follow the beat during her glamorous routine.

A number of disabled performers have taken to the stage to entertain mainstream audiences in recent years, although in her routines, Dollar (unlike some) does not refer to either her hearing impairment or her depression, which she writes about with candor and insight.

The internationally famed multi-disciplinary performer Mat Fraser has long explored the relationship between disability, entertainment, and sexuality. He is currently appearing in the popular TV series American Horror Story. He said in a recent interview: “When you are disabled the two things people think you can’t do are fight and have sex … so I’ve got a black belt and I’m really good at shagging. The physical pleasures in life are really important to me.”

"When you are disabled, the two things people think you can’t do are fight and have sex. So I’ve got a black belt and I’m really good at shagging."

Research has shown that disabled people are less likely to have a long-term partner or marry than non-disabled people, although this is very dependent on impairment type. When a 2014 U.K. newspaper poll asked people if they had ever had sex with someone who had a physical disability, 44 percent said “No, and I don’t think I would.”

So how can we shift the negative images of disability and sexuality that still dominate society’s attitudes? Disabled people and their allies have been campaigning for change for decades. While it is not going to be easy, change is on the way, but with it comes new controversies.

* * *

Disabled people’s sexuality has been suppressed, exploited and, at times, destroyed over many centuries. It has been seen as suspect, set apart, and different from the sexuality of non-disabled people.

Tom Shakespeare, a disabled academic, wrote The Sexual Politics of Disability nearly 20 years ago. It remains one of the few evidence-based studies in the field. “I think images of disability and sexuality either tend to be absent—disabled people being presented as asexual—or else perverse and hypersexual,” he says.

The key attitudes identified by Shakespeare appear as threads throughout myth and literature, from classical times onwards. Disabled characters and their sexuality appear relatively frequently in legends and texts, but are usually harnessed to powerful negative metaphors.

Consider the myth of Hephaestus, born “shriveled of foot” and cast out from Olympus by his mother. He is married off to the goddess Aphrodite, but she is unfaithful to him because of his impairment, which unmans him in her eyes, and he is cuckolded and scorned. This trope is repeated, much later, in D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, where Lady Chatterley satisfies herself with the virile gamekeeper because her husband is a “cripple.”

This scenario, where a disabled man is judged to have lost sexual power because of his impairment and his sexual partner has carte blanche to seek solace elsewhere, has become known as the “Chatterley Syndrome.”

As Shakespeare observes, disabled men (and, to a lesser extent, women) are rendered impotent and sexless by disability, and thus are seen as unattractive and vulnerable to mockery and exploitation. As Cicero wrote: “In deformity and bodily disfigurement, there is good material in making jokes.”

In Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Lady Chatterley satisfies herself with the virile gamekeeper because her husband is a "cripple."

This may explain an assumption often made in the past—that it was better to shield disabled people from reaching out for sexual relationships, rather than risk the potential of being rejected. There was an expectation that disabled people’s sexual desires should be set aside and ignored, because they should not—or could not—be satisfied.

The second trope is that disability is a punishment wreaked for committing a sin and, as such, the disabled person is a wholly unsuitable sexual partner because they are evil and, paradoxically, powerful. One of the best examples is William Shakespeare’s Richard III, who is written as twisted in body and mind or, as he says of himself, “rudely stamped” and rendered impotent by his physical limitations.

Disabled women have also faced this stigma. Many women with mental-health conditions—along with older people showing signs of dementia, and people with benign and cancerous growths—were caught up in the European witch-hunts of the 17th century, for example. One observer at the time, Reginald Scot (a justice of the peace in Kent, England), noted that they were “commonly old, lame, blear-eyed, pale, foul, full of wrinkles … lean and deformed, showing melancholy in their faces, to the horror of all that see them.”

Disabled people have also been stereotyped as being hypersexual—a claim used against women with learning difficulties in particular. This has led on to persistent abuse of disabled women, particularly in institutions, where they have been routinely raped and abused for centuries. Early 19th-century whistle-blowers gave evidence of such maltreatment—which extended to rape and murder.

Another powerful archetype, Tom Shakespeare says, is the unconscious—and sometimes conscious—attitude surrounding reproductive fitness that suggests having a disabled partner is potentially contaminating, as it could pass the “problem” on to the next generation.

Disabled people have challenged this on many levels: For example, sexual relations are not all about procreation, not all impairments are inheritable, and many disabled people accept their impairment and the possibility that it might be passed on. Deaf (with a capital D) people, for example, consider deafness to be a culture, rather than an impairment, and believe it should be embraced and celebrated.

With eugenics—a now-discredited social philosophy—Francis Galton pursued the theory of contamination to its logical end. He argued, along with others who took up his ideas, that people with disabilities (along with the poor and the generally “unfit”) should be prevented from breeding.

The eugenics movement, which started in the U.K., was taken up with enthusiasm in the U.S. By 1914 nearly two-thirds of U.S. states had made it illegal for “feeble-minded” and “insane” people to marry. The so-called “Ugly Laws,” first passed in the 1880s, prohibited the “unsightly” from being seen on the street at all. Between 1907 and 1928, thousands of Americans were sterilised.

The legitimization of eugenic views throughout Europe and America ended in a logical, if horrifying, outcome: the systematic murder of thousands of disabled people in Germany after the Nazis came to power in 1933. By the end of World War II, it is estimated that some 200,000 people with disabilities had been murdered.

Asexual, hypersexual, perverse, and contaminated: These four damaging tropes from history combine to form a bitter legacy for disabled people.

The disability movement first started to challenge those attitudes in the U.S. in the mid to late 1960s. The first disabled American war veterans were starting to arrive back from Vietnam and pushing for inclusion. Students were also key to this new civil-rights battle.

Ed Roberts was the first student with significant disabilities to attend the University of California, Berkeley. In the early 1960s, he and other disabled students formed a group, The Rolling Quads, to advocate for UC Berkeley to become the first truly accessible university. From that point onwards, British disability activists have looked to UC Berkeley, and to the U.S. more widely, for inspiration in the civil-rights struggle, including around the right to independent living.

Student activists wanted the right to have sex too. The University of California responded by founding a sexuality and disability center, where sex therapists could give advice and facilitate contact with “sex surrogates,” as they became known. Although prostitution was outlawed in almost all U.S. states, the legal status of sexual surrogates was (and still is) undefined—meaning the sexual services they offer are technically neither legal nor illegal.

"My catheter was fitted so I could wear a bikini, but awkwardly positioned for having sex."

Disabled writer Mark O’Brien studied English and journalism at UC Berkeley and was commissioned by a magazine to interview disabled people about their sex lives in the 1980s. This led him to explore his own sexuality. He wrote in The Sun magazine: “I wanted to be loved … held, caressed, and valued. But my self-hatred and fear were too intense. I doubted I deserved to be loved … Most of the disabled people I knew in Berkeley were sexually active, including disabled people as deformed as I. But nothing ever happened.”

O’Brien eventually saw a sex surrogate, Cheryl Cohen Greene, and lost his virginity with her. They became life-long friends. Two films were made about him—the Oscar-winning short Breathing Lessons and The Sessions. He had five years of happiness with the writer Susan Fernbach before his death in 1999. Mark O’Brien’s struggle to affirm his right to sexuality has become iconic in the wider campaign for sexual rights for disabled people.

* * *

“Supporting disabled people to find partners and enjoy sex brings me endless joy and satisfaction,” writes Tuppy Owens, a sex therapist and the author of Supporting Disabled People with Their Sexual Lives: A clear guide for health and social-care professionals.

She’s campaigned for 20 years to boost disabled people’s confidence and access to sexual services. Among other services, she runs the Sex and Disability helpline, the TLC website (which connects disabled people to sexual services), and the Outsiders Club, a social club for disabled people looking to make friends and find partners. She also runs an online club for peer support and the Sexual Respect Toolkit website to support those who work in healthcare or social care to initiate conversations about sex.

The stories are genuinely moving. One woman used the help of a peer supporter to ask for her catheter to be re-sited. The woman is quoted: “My catheter was fitted so I could wear a bikini, but awkwardly positioned for having sex. When I pointed out to my consultant that I preferred sex to sunbathing, he said, ‘OK, let’s reposition it then.’ As a result, my husband and I have had a lot more fun!”

Owens’ book gives a sense of the vibrant emergent scene for disabled people, as well as providing practical advice about things such as sex toys suitable for people with different impairments. These include vibrating cushions, remotely controlled masturbation devices, and vibrators with long handles for people who could not otherwise reach.

"When you see some of my clients, their prospects of getting a partner are limited, if not nil."

Owens is one of many people across the world working to provide opportunities for disabled people who want to access sexual services. Rachel Wotton, a sex worker from Australia, is a founding member of Touching Base, a charity that has connected sex workers to disabled people since 2000. Similar schemes have since been set up in Canada and in New Zealand.

Wotton mounts a strong defense of the sex industry and its role in providing services to some disabled people: “For some people with disabilities, they only have one life, and to wait around for society to say ‘I will date someone with cerebral palsy’—well, when you see some of my clients, their prospects of getting a partner are limited, if not nil,” she says. “If they choose to see me, that’s OK. Society should change its ways, too, but people with disabilities should have all the rights that people without disabilities have. It’s not an all-or-nothing thing.”

In some countries where legislation around sex work is permissive (e.g. Holland, Germany, Denmark, and Switzerland), there is a flexible attitude towards services for disabled people. In Holland, as in Denmark, social workers ask disabled clients whether they need any support with their sexuality and may even fund limited numbers of visits by sexual assistants or sex workers.

The pioneer of the continental “sexual assistant” model is a Dutch woman, Nina de Vries. In a Skype interview from her home in Potsdam, she explained how physically disabled people started asking her to give them erotic massages in the 1990s (she does not offer penetration or oral contact). This work grew and grew. Eventually De Vries was asked to speak about her work to the media and at conferences.

In 2003, the Swiss charity Pro Infirmis asked her to train a more formal network of sexual assistants in Zurich, triggering considerable resistance from religious groups and some disabled people. The charity drew back from the work, although another organization does now offer a similar service in Switzerland, and others are available in France. A rather clinical masturbation service called White Hands has been available to some disabled men in Japan since 2008.

De Vries now works with people with learning difficulties and dementia, although she readily admits there are concerns about capacity and consent. “I work with people who are not able to communicate verbally, but they can say a clear ‘no’ or ‘yes’ by using their body, sounds, or facial expressions.” She has turned down clients where she thinks that there is not a clear wish for her services.

"I work with people who are not able to communicate verbally, but they can say a clear 'no'' or 'yes'' with sounds or facial expressions."

In Australia, Touching Base works with dementia and disabled people’s organisations to develop consent guidelines. “There is a lot of discussion around consent at the moment,” Wotton says. “In terms of dementia, we are looking at what people used to do, when they are losing capacity.”

“We talk a lot about informed consent, which is about understanding what you are consenting to, of your own free will. Our responsibility is to learn how people are communicating, whether it is with words, pictures or adaptive devices.”

The fight for so-called sexual citizenship is not confined to the disability-rights movement. Campaigners demonstrate how sexual minorities are marginalized, denied equal access, and even criminalized in particular nations. But while there is a common aim for sexual rights to be seen as fundamental, the means are in dispute.

Perhaps surprisingly, there appears to be little about sexual citizenship and the wider questions it brings up in medical-ethics journals, although ethicists do explore the issues around disabled people’s access to paid sexual services.

The arguments include that because some people with disabilities cannot obtain sex without paying for it, they should be exempt from any penalties arising from prostitution—and that the state should even meet the costs. Others argue that sexual needs are not de facto a right and that, at best, volunteer organizations should meet people’s need to have sex. Examining the potential harms of prostitution, one ethicist concluded that there may be a narrow benefit towards granting a right towards sexual pleasure.

But where are the voices of disabled people themselves in this? In the words of disability activists, who first coined the phrase, “Nothing about us, without us.”

Some disabled people argue that the state should decriminalize sexual-assistance services for people who are not able to have sex independently, and even fund them to use these services. Others call for other forms of help, such as peer support on subjects like how to regain sexual confidence after acquiring an impairment. There is broad agreement that sex education should be more inclusive of disability. And disabled people would like to challenge the negative attitudes that mean that they are not seen as valid sexual partners.

In 2005, the magazine Disability Now found that 37.6 percent of disabled men would consider paying for sex and that 16 percent of disabled women would do the same—although a minority in both genders, these figures are higher than those seen in the general population. However, a number of prominent disabled British and American activists profess themselves uncomfortable with the idea of paying for sex per se.

Kirsty Liddiard, a disabled sociologist from Sheffield University in the U.K., recently interviewed a small number of disabled men who have paid for sex. Their reasons included gaining sexual skills and experience, invigorating the body, having something to chat to male friends about, and a sense of independence. Such reasons, she concludes, “take us far beyond the usual discourse of ‘men—especially disabled men—need sex,’” adding: “Quite often men would conflate sex with intimacy, hence dissatisfaction and being left with the feeling of wanting more.”http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?iu=%2F4624%2FTheAtlanticOnline%2Fchannel_health&t=src%3Darticle%26pos%3Dboxinjector4&sz=300x250%7C320x350%7C728x90%7C768x350%7C970x250%7C1024x350&c=857697270&tile=22

Although she believes that the legalization of sex work would make it a safer form of employment for women, she adds: “I think the focus on sex work is because we live in a patriarchal culture where men’s desires are more nurtured. My research shows that disabled men, growing up, had more space to speak about their sexuality than young disabled women, who reported that they couldn’t claim their sexuality.”

Alex Ghenis, an American disability advocate and former dating and relationships columnist, is unconvinced: “It commodifies sex in terms of an action. It makes it so society can check this box that men are getting laid, so we don’t have to have broader social change—we are giving them sex through a brothel, so we don’t have to change our social attitudes around socially excluded people with disabilities.”

“And it pities and coddles us, as if we are being given things that will assuage us ... rather than have society change around us,” Ghenis adds.

Mik Scarlet, a disabled TV presenter and musician influenced by punk and Goth culture, is currently an advice columnist at the disabled people’s organization Enhance the U.K. It runs Love Lounge, a website that offers advice on sex and relationships to disabled people. “Imagine this,” he says. “I’m disabled, growing up in Luton, and it’s now legal for me to go to a brothel—to have sex for money—because apparently that’s the only way I’m going to lose my virginity.”

“Instantly, my relationship with sex is distorted, and it means that everyone I meet afterwards is going to say, ‘He’s disabled, that means he’s paid for sex; I don’t want to go to bed with someone who’s paid for it.’ You’ve reinforced the fact that you can’t give it away because you’ve paid for it.”

"It’s now legal for me to go to a brothel, because apparently that’s the only way I’m going to lose my virginity."

“We are reinforcing the idea that some people are too hideous and too disabled to have sex like the rest of us, and so they have to pay for it. And why is it OK to oppress women, to make their bodies a commodity? It’s not all right just because we are on wheels. I want to live in a world where I am perceived as viable a sexual partner as anybody else.”

And he is concerned about consent issues around sex work for some disabled people, however benign the aim. “If someone is on a level of disability where they are not able to give consent, if they can’t say yes—and there are many ways of doing so—then that’s it.”

“You have to protect people. I’m afraid whether you like it or not, it is not their right to have sex. Lots of people who are not disabled do not have sex. It is not a right.”

* * *

Most debates around sex and disabled people in the mainstream press mirror those of medical ethicists, by focusing on whether disabled people have the right’to pay for sex. But this is just one small part of the overall picture.

Disabled academics and activists paint on a much larger canvas, writing about issues such as consent around mental capacity, the forced sterilization of disabled people, the rights of disabled people in institutions to have sex and be free from sexual abuse, and the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) disabled people.

Sexual politics has only recently become part of the disability rights agenda, says Liddiard, who has also carried out groundbreaking research in the field of disabled women’s sexuality. She points out that disabled women experience far higher rates of sexual violence than non-disabled women and that there are very few services for disabled people seeking refuge from abusive relationships.

Ju Gosling is a disability-rights activist and the author of Abnormal: How Britain became body dysphoric and the key to a cure, a book that exposes the treatment of those with “abnormal” bodies. “Most women we know are looking for a relationship, and disabled people are no different,” she says. She has concerns that women with learning difficulties are prevented by those around them from having sexual relationships because they are vulnerable to exploitation.

In some supported housing for people with learning difficulties, only heterosexual partners are permitted to stay overnight.

She is also a campaigner for LGBT rights, and estimates that one-third of LGBT people have impairments. The barriers facing LGBT people with disabilities can be very different to those of LGBT people without disabilities, says Gosling—particularly when they depend on support from personal assistants or carers, some of whom will not approve of their sexuality and will even attempt to control it.

She gives the example of supported housing for people with learning difficulties where heterosexual partners are permitted to stay overnight, but gay or trans partners aren’t. Later in life, people may move into care homes where their sexuality is also frowned upon. “This is about someone’s right to be who they are,” she says. “People should not have to hide their love anymore.”http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?iu=%2F4624%2FTheAtlanticOnline%2Fchannel_health&t=src%3Darticle%26pos%3Dboxinjector5&sz=300x250%7C320x350%7C728x90%7C768x350%7C970x250%7C1024x350&c=857697270&tile=24

Mik Scarlet thought, as many teenage boys would, that his sex life was over when his spine collapsed in his teens and he was no longer able to get an erection. Meeting lesbian friends soon after rescued him, he says. A few years later, he met Diane Wallace, and they’ve been together for over 20 years.

“I know that sex is so much more than penetration,” he says. “Lots of disabled people have sex like everybody else, but for some of us our sex is not like everybody else—but that doesn’t mean it’s less. You can make somewhere else your erogenous zone, for instance, if you don’t have sensation in your genitals anymore.”

“There is so much ignorance,” says Diane. “People assumed our sex life was over because Mik was disabled. But there was a raw sexuality about Mik; he was so easy and confident.”

In 2003 Penny Pepper published Desires Unborn, a groundbreaking book of short erotic stories featuring disabled people. “I do feel I can talk about sex in an open and relaxed way that I don’t see with many non-disabled people,” says Pepper. “I think it’s because we’ve had to confront these issues about body image and that’s a good place to be.”

She cites, for example, the fact that she was able to ask a former personal assistant to place her and her then-partner in a position for sexual intercourse: “It involved chairs, he was visually impaired, maybe it’s a comedy sketch!” But, she adds: “Sex has a central role as a pathway to pleasure. There is so much pressure on everybody who is outside the body-beautiful stereotype [whether they are disabled or not].”

At UC Berkeley, the Disabled Students’ Union is continuing to push boundaries and has hosted no-holds-barred panel discussions for students and academics, entitled ‘Are Cripples Screwed?’ They examine issues surrounding disability, love, and sexuality.

In a documentary about the panels, one student who had been dating a non-disabled woman was particularly touched, he said, when “she suggested we had sex in my wheelchair. It was an ultimate act of acceptance.” A young disabled woman talked eloquently about sex being “anything that I can get off on. This brings us back into the human race.”

And that’s really the point. Disabled activists, patiently, are making some valid points about sexuality that hold true for everybody.

When Mik Scarlet says that penetration is not sex, he’s speaking for older people, too, or for women who don’t like penetration after sexual assault, or for men whose penises have been amputated or damaged after cancer or injury. The fact that some disabled people have developed erogenous zones in non-genital areas, such as the shoulders or inside the mouth, is knowledge of use to everyone who would like to extend their understanding of sexuality. Sexuality does not have to revolve around the genitals, or indeed around heterosexual norms of penetration.

Liddiard found this the most empowering part of her research. “Disability and impairment can invigorate sexuality, and disrupt our standard norms of gender and sexuality. Disabled bodies give us the chance to think outside of the box, outside the vision of penetration, the Hollywood view of sex.”

Disabled people, by defying some of the damaging myths around sex, may end up liberating all of us.

http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/03/sex-and-disability/386866/

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Why Sex With Someone With a Disability Is the Best Sex You Could Be Having!

As a queer person with a disability who is not shy about his sexuality, I find that some of the most common questions that I get are, "Can you have sex?" "Do you have sex?" and "How do you have sex?" These questions arise from many different places, but predominantly from the fact that our dominant sexual discourse has left disability out in the cold. I could launch into a discussion of all the internal emotions/frustrations that this has created for me personally, as I believe that those are valid and in need of unpacking. That being said, I'd like to focus on the positives of sex with people with disabilities and why it may be the best sex you've ever had, or haven't had -- yet.

1. It Forces You and Your Partner to Actually Talk

There is a misconception in our society that good sex is spontaneous, hot, and surprisingly silent. In my experience this is particularly prevalent in queer hookup culture. Each partner is simply supposed to read the other in that exact moment, and from this create this sexual fantasy. That all sounds amazing, but we all know that that is not true life or reality. This is especially true when engaging in sexual congress (OK, I just really like this term!) with a person with a disability. One of the reasons that sex with people with disabilities can be so much better is that in order to have it, you have to communicate, and I don't just mean, "Harder! Faster! Ooh, baby!" (although if that helps, by all means, be my guest). I mean you will have to "storyboard your sex," as I like to say. You can sit with your prospective partner and lay out exactly what will work for both of you. You can discuss what gets you off, what might hurt, and what might feel funny or amazing. You can openly talk about what you're apprehensive about and what you might want to try. This way, you're not unhappily surprised. You may even be surprised by how open you are. It kind of makes one rethink the old adage "Less talk, more action," right?

2. 'Blow... in My Ear...'

One thing that I love about how people with disabilities have sex is the fact that we have adapted our erogenous zones to respond to different stimuli. For instance, someone with paralysis might love it when you tweak their nipples or blow in their ears. That might be more pleasurable to them than a blowjob or fucking. People with disabilities are some of the most adaptable people, and you'd be amazed by what we can offer in the bedroom. Imagine for a second that your partner has a disability and can only use his mouth for everything. See what I'm saying? Hot, right? Persons with disabilities are experts at using what they have around them, and the same certainly holds true for our sex lives. I know how to hit your marks, probably ones you didn't even know you had. Rawr!

3. Top/Bottom Roles Dissolved

It would seem that as a gay man, I must be defined by one of three words: "top," "bottom," or "versatile." These roles help other gay men decide if they are sexually compatible. For me (and for many others too), these roles are completely arbitrary and inaccessible. If I can't "top" you, then I have to be your "bottom," but if we are both "tops," one of us has to be "versatile" and into both? What? Consider that it may be physically impossible for me to top you, or vice versa, but I can still take charge. I can guide your body with my hands and tell you what gets me off in that moment, and you can do the same -- no penetration required. One of the greatest pleasures for me is hearing a guy say, "I have never gotten off like that before, but it was incredible." Want my number yet?

4. Foreplay

Given my level of disability, I'll need help with a few things, particularly undressing, getting out of my chair and positioning, etc. So few people see this as sexually appealing, but if done correctly, this can be so hot. In that moment you can feel each others bodies and put on a little show. Also, I think humor in these instances can be really helpful. I find that when I make my partner laugh about the fact that he's carrying me over the threshold, as it were, that puts him at ease. Sometimes there may even be a sling involved! So come on over and take off my pants. No, really! Ha!

5. Redefining Sexual Norms

My favorite thing about having sex as a person with a disability is knowing that each and every time I do it with someone, I am redefining their sexual norms and altering their ideology about what is sexually appealing. I am turning them on in ways that they didn't even know were possible, through my words, my thoughts, and my body that defies everything they thought they knew. It forces partners (in whatever context) to be genuine and move away from all the scenarios that they think are sexy, and it create that sexiness within that moment, no matter how vulnerable, different or awkward it is.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-morrisongurza/sex-disability_b_4950460.html

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BRILLIANT BRILLIANT ARTICLE-

Why Kids Sext

An inquiry into one recent scandal reveals how kids think about sexting—and what parents and police should do about it.

It was late on a school night, so Jennifer’s kids were already asleep when she got a phone call from a friend of her 15-year-old daughter, Jasmine. “Jasmine is on a Web page and she’s naked.” Jennifer woke Jasmine, and throughout the night, the two of them kept getting texts from Jasmine’s friends with screenshots of the Instagram account. It looked like a porn site—shot after shot of naked girls—only these were real teens, not grown women in pigtails. Jennifer recognized some of them from Jasmine’s high school. And there, in the first row, was her daughter, “just standing there, with her arms down by her sides,” Jennifer told me. “There were all these girls with their butts cocked, making pouty lips, pushing their boobs up, doing porny shots, and you’re thinking, Where did they pick this up? And then there was Jasmine in a fuzzy picture looking awkward.” (The names of all the kids and parents in this story have been changed to protect their privacy.) You couldn’t easily identify her, because the picture was pretty dark, but the connection had been made anyway. “OMG no f‑ing way that’s Jasmine,” someone had commented under her picture. “Down lo ho,” someone else answered, meaning one who flies under the radar, because Jasmine was a straight‑A student who played sports and worked and volunteered and was generally a “goody-goody two shoes,” her mom said. She had long, silky hair and doe eyes and a sweet face that seemed destined for a Girl Scouts pamphlet, not an Instagram account where girls were called out as hos or thots (thot stands for “that ho over there”).

That night, in March of this year, Jennifer tried to report the account to Instagram’s privacy-and-safety center, hoping it would get taken down. She asked several friends to fill out the “report violations” page too, but after a few hours, the account was still up. (Instagram’s help center recommends contacting local authorities in cases of serious abuse.) She considered calling 911, but this didn’t seem like that kind of emergency. So she waited until first thing the next morning and called a local deputy sheriff who serves as the school resource officer, and he passed the message on to his superior, Major Donald Lowe. Over the years, Lowe had gotten calls from irate parents whose daughters’ naked pictures had popped up on cellphones, usually sent around by an angry boyfriend after a breakup. But he immediately realized that this was a problem of a different order. Investigation into the Instagram account quickly revealed two other, similar accounts with slightly different names. Between them, the accounts included about 100 pictures, many of girls from the local high school, Louisa County High, in central Virginia. Some shots he later described to me as merely “inappropriate,” meaning girls “scantily clad in a bra and panties, maybe in a suggestive pose.” But some “really got us”—high-school girls masturbating, and then one picture showing a girl having sex with three boys at once.

Lowe has lived in Louisa County, or pretty close to it, for most of his life. The county is spread out and rural, but it is by no means small-town innocent. People there deal drugs and get caught up with gangs, and plenty of high-school girls end up pregnant. Usually Lowe can more or less classify types in his head—which kids from which families might end up in trouble after a drunken fight in the McDonald’s parking lot. But this time the cast of characters was baffling. He knew many of the girls in the photos, knew their parents. A few were 14, from the local middle school. They came from “all across the board,” Lowe says. “Every race, religion, social, and financial status in the town. Rich, poor, everyone. That’s what was most glaring and blaring about the situation. If she was a teenager with a phone, she was on there.” He knew some of the boys who had followed the Instagram accounts, too. Among them were kids with a lot to lose, including star athletes with scholarships to first-rate colleges.

It seemed to Lowe, in those early days, as if something had gone seriously wrong under his nose, and that’s how the media reported it: “Deputies Bust Massive Teen Sexting Ring in Louisa County,” one headline said. The word ring stuck out, as if an organized criminal gang had been pimping out girls at the school. The Instagram accounts were quickly taken down, and Louisa County High School was transformed into a crime scene, which it remained for the next month. Police cars sat parked at the school’s entrance, and inside, a few deputies who reported to Lowe began interviewing kids—starting with girls they recognized in the pictures and boys who had followed the accounts. Jasmine, who was a sophomore, was one of the first to be called in. She told them she’d originally sent the picture to a boy in 11th grade she’d known for a couple of years and really liked. They asked her whether she knew of anyone else at school who had nude pictures on their phone, and she told them she did. For the most part, the kids were “more than cooperative,” Lowe says. One person would give up 10 names. The next would give up five, and so on

But pretty soon this got to be a problem. Within an hour, the deputies realized just how common the sharing of nude pictures was at the school. “The boys kept telling us, ‘It’s nothing unusual. It happens all the time,’ ” Lowe recalls. Every time someone they were interviewing mentioned another kid who might have naked pictures on his or her phone, they had to call that kid in for an interview. After just a couple of days, the deputies had filled multiple evidence bins with phones, and they couldn’t see an end to it. Fears of a cabal got replaced by a more mundane concern: what to do with “hundreds of damned phones. I told the deputies, ‘We got to draw the line somewhere or we’re going to end up talking to every teenager in the damned county!’ ” Nor did the problem stop at the county’s borders. Several boys, in an effort to convince Lowe that they hadn’t been doing anything rare or deviant, showed him that he could type the hashtag symbol (#) into Instagram followed by the name of pretty much any nearby county and then thots, and find a similar account.

Most of the girls on Instagram fell into the same category as Jasmine. They had sent a picture to their boyfriend, or to someone they wanted to be their boyfriend, and then he had sent it on to others. For the most part, they were embarrassed but not devastated, Lowe said. They felt betrayed, but few seemed all that surprised that their photos had been passed around. What seemed to mortify them most was having to talk about what they’d done with a “police officer outside their age group.” In some he sensed low self-esteem—for example, the girl who’d sent her naked picture to a boy, unsolicited: “It just showed up! I guess she was hot after him?” A handful of senior girls became indignant during the course of the interview. “This is my life and my body and I can do whatever I want with it,” or, “I don’t see any problem with it. I’m proud of my body,” Lowe remembers them saying. A few, as far as he could tell, had taken pictures especially for the Instagram accounts and had actively tried to get them posted. In the first couple of weeks of the investigation, Lowe’s characterization of the girls on Instagram morphed from “victims” to “I guess I’ll call them victims” to “they just fell into this category where they victimized themselves.”

Lowe’s team explained to both the kids pictured on Instagram and the ones with photos on their phones the serious legal consequences of their actions. Possessing or sending a nude photo of a minor—even if it’s a photo of yourself—can be prosecuted as a felony under state child-porn laws. He explained that 10 years down the road they might be looking for a job or trying to join the military, or sitting with their families at church, and the pictures could wash back up; someone who had the pictures might even try to blackmail them. And yet the kids seemed strikingly blasé. “They’re just sitting there thinking, Wah, wah, wah,” Lowe said, turning his hands into flapping lips. “It’s not sinking in. Remember at that age, you think you’re invincible, and you’re going to do whatever the hell you want to do? We just couldn’t get them past that.”

After a week’s immersive education on the subject, Donald Lowe found himself just where the rest of the nation’s law-enforcement community—and much of the nation—is on the subject of teen sexting: totally confused. Were the girls being exploited? Or were they just experimenting? Was sexting harming the kids? And if so, why didn’t they seem to care? An older man with whom Lowe was acquainted stopped him at the grocery store to tell him, “That’s child porn, and you ought to lock those people up for a long time.” But Lowe didn’t want to charge kids “just for being stupid,” he told me later. “We don’t want to label them as child molesters.”

As soon as teenagers got cameraphones, they began using them to send nude selfies to one another, without thinking or caring that a naked picture of a minor, unleashed into the world, can set off explosions. And while adults send naked pictures too, of course, the speed with which teens have incorporated the practice into their mating rituals has taken society by surprise. I’d heard about the Louisa County sexting scandal in the news. It seemed like a good case study—the place is traditional but not isolated; it has annual beauty queens and football pageantry on a Friday Night Lights scale, and also many residents who work in Richmond, the state capital. I spent several weeks in and around the county this spring and summer talking to kids, parents, police officers, and lawmakers, trying to understand how officials sort through such a mess of a case. Maybe more important, I wanted to understand how teens themselves think about sexting—why they send naked pictures and what they hope to get in return; how much or how little sexting has to do with actual sex. My hope was to help figure out how parents and communities should respond. Because so often in sexting cases that go public, we adults inadvertently step into the role of Freddy Krueger, making teenage nightmares come true: We focus on all the wrong things; we overreact. Sometimes we create an even bigger disaster.

A school resource officer talks to students at Louisa County High School about the recent sexting scandal—and the swirl of rumors that it generated.

When I asked the kids from Louisa County High School, which has about 1,450 students, how many people they knew who had sexted, a lot of them answered “everyone.” (Throughout this article, I will use sexting to mean the transmission of provocative selfies you wouldn’t want your mother to see—not words, but pictures.) A few of the 30 or so kids I talked with said 80 percent or 60 percent, and no one said fewer than half. Kids, however, are known to exaggerate. Surveys on sexting have found pretty consistently that among kids in their upper teens, about a third have sexted, making the practice neither “universal” nor “vanishingly rare,” as Elizabeth Englander, a psychology professor at Bridgewater State University, writes, but common enough in a teenager’s life to be familiar. A recent study of seven public high schools in East Texas, for example, found that 28 percent of sophomores and juniors had sent a naked picture of themselves by text or e-mail, and 31 percent had asked someone to send one.

The general public was first forced to contemplate teen sexting in 2009, when a scandal in rural Pennsylvania’s Tunkhannock Area High School, similar to the school in Louisa County, made national news. By that point, the great majority of teens had cellphones—71 percent, almost the same percentage as adults. The National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy and CosmoGirl.com had just conducted the first public survey on sexting among teens and young adults, showing that, much to parents’ chagrin, the practice was fairly common. In the Pennsylvania case, the local district attorney threatened to bring child-pornography charges against girls who showed up in the pictures, which was widely considered overkill. It “makes as much sense as charging a kid who brings a squirt gun to school with possession of an unlicensed firearm,” wrote a columnist for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Lawmakers around the country began searching for a better alternative.

“What are you doing?” he texted. “I just got out of the shower and I’m about to go to sleep.” “Send me a picture, PLEASE.” She caved. She sent it over Snapchat and said he had to let it erase right away. He said he did.

“I really don’t like the word sexting,” says Michael Harmony, the commander of the southern-Virginia branch of the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, which covers Louisa County. The term he makes his investigators use is self-production, which is law-enforcement-speak for when minors produce pictures of themselves that qualify as child porn. But changing the term doesn’t clarify much. Whether you call it self-production or sexting, it comes in too many forms to pin down. Harmony has dealt with a 13-year-old who posted her naked picture on MeetMe.com and had grown men show up at her house. He’s investigated a 17-year-old boy who blackmailed a girl into sending him naked pictures, and another boy who threatened to send out the naked pictures a girl had given him if she didn’t have sex with him. Lately, though, Harmony’s office has been flooded with cases like the one in Louisa County, generating bins filled with cellphones that his investigators have to go through one by one.

Since 2009, state legislatures have tried to help guide law enforcement by passing laws specifically addressing sexting. At least 20 states have passed such laws, most of which establish a series of relatively light penalties. In Florida, for example, a minor who is guilty of transmitting or distributing a nude photograph or video must pay a fine, complete community service, or attend a class on sexting. A second offense is a misdemeanor and a third is a felony. Where they’ve been passed, the new laws have helpfully taken ordinary teen sexting out of the realm of child pornography and provided prosecutors with a gentler alternative. But they have also created deeper cultural confusion, by codifying into law the idea that any kind of sexting between minors is a crime. For the most part, the laws do not concern themselves with whether a sext was voluntarily shared between two people who had been dating for a year or was sent under pressure: a sext is a sext. So as it stands now, in most states it is perfectly legal for two 16-year-olds to have sex. But if they take pictures, it’s a matter for the police.

Five years after the sexting scandal in Pennsylvania, cases still arise that betray shockingly little clarity about who should count as the perpetrator and who the victim. In another Pennsylvania case this year, two popular girls persuaded an autistic boy to share a picture of his penis with them, then forwarded the picture to a wide circle of schoolmates. The district attorney decided to go after the boy, according to Witold Walczak, the legal director of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, which intervened in the case. A recent study published in Pediatrics broke down how police departments handle “youth-produced sexual images.” About two-thirds of the cases that have received police attention involved “aggravating circumstances,” meaning an adult was involved, or one teen had blackmailed or sexually abused another, or had “recklessly circulated” the image without the person’s consent. The remaining third were what the authors, who are associated with the Crimes Against Children Research Center, defined as having “no malicious elements”; those “may best be viewed as adolescent sexual experimentation.” Nonetheless, in 18 percent of those cases, police departments reported making an arrest.

Virginia is not one of the states that has passed specific teen-sexting laws, and so Major Lowe was looking, potentially, at hundreds of felonies. Every boy who had a photo on his phone, every girl who’d snapped one of herself—all could be prosecuted as felons and sex offenders. If Lowe made an arrest, the case would land with Rusty McGuire, the main prosecutor for Louisa County. McGuire wouldn’t talk with me about this situation specifically, but he expressed his concern more generally about nude pictures of minors landing in the wrong hands: “What do you do? Turn a blind eye? You’re letting teenagers incite the prurient interest of predators around the country,” fueling a demand that “can only be met by the actual abuse of real children.”

McGuire has successfully prosecuted several actual pedophiles over the years, including a local man who had posed as a teenage girl on Facebook and solicited young boys for sex, and another man—a trusted teacher—who had been part of a ring whose members offered up their own children to other members for sex. When he talks about the awful details of these crimes, it’s hard to get them out of your head. The Virginia legislature has long failed to pass a sexting law largely for fear of being soft on child porn, says Dave Albo, the chairman of the state Courts of Justice committee. Still, the absence of any obvious lesser alternative put Lowe in a difficult spot. “They’re not violent criminals,” he told me. “If these kids just made a dumb-ass mistake, we don’t want to ruin their future.”

Junior-varsity football players check their phones before a game.

“She’s a whore. I’ve totally heard that she’s a whore.”

That comment came quickly, from a senior girl whose style was generally more refined. “She” was Briana, a sophomore softball player who, in school lore, was the one who’d started all the trouble.

“I have to show you something.” Briana’s friend had stopped her between classes one day and showed her a picture on Instagram, the same morning Jennifer, Jasmine’s mom, contacted the police. It was a picture of a pair of breasts, and Briana, who is now a junior, recognized them as her own. Pretty much anyone at the high school would have. She was the only girl who had so many freckles going down her shoulders and arms, and it didn’t take too much imagination to guess where else. Briana went to a young teacher she trusted. “I said, ‘There’s this picture of me up on Instagram.’ ” The teacher informed the principal, who eventually called the police. No one at school knew that Jennifer had already reported the account that morning.

While police were calling kids into a makeshift interview room at the high school, one by one, a more unruly drama was unfolding in the hallways. Because the Instagram accounts had been up for only a short time, not everyone had seen them. Rumors spread about which girls had appeared in photos and what they’d been doing. One was supposedly making out with her sister (not true). Another was “messing with, like 10, 15 dudes” (also not true). A group of sociologists led by Elizabeth Armstrong has studied the class dynamics of the term slut as used by young college women. High-status women from affluent homes associate slut with women they call “trashy” and not “classy.” To women from working-class families, upper-class women are “rich bitches in sororities”—whom they also commonly think of as sluts. The girl who called Briana a whore is a potential future sorority-chapter president. She and several other more affluent students described everyone associated with the Instagram accounts to me as “ghetto,” which in this context had mild racial connotations but generally stands for “trashy” or “the lower crowd.” The role of ultimate, quintessential slut fell to a “redneck” girl who appeared on Instagram. In the post-sexting-scandal lore, she “supposedly slept with her brother” (surely not true).

To the elite girls, the girls on Instagram were sluts not necessarily because they were sleeping around but because of what they looked like or how they acted. “Let’s just say people have different body types,” one girl told me. Others, speaking about girls in the photos, said, “You obviously have a little too much confidence,” or just “Butter face” (as in: nice body, but her face … ). In their college study, Armstrong and her team identify this brand of sniping as a way girls police one another and establish a sort of moral superiority without denying themselves actual sex, and something similar seemed to be happening here. Well-off, popular girls were most certainly in the Instagram photos, but none would admit as much unless I knew otherwise. Briana was, in many ways, on the opposite end of the spectrum—she lacked that kind of standing, and, because she had gone to the principal, she was the girl most widely associated with the accounts, and therefore the main character in the morality tale that was being stitched together between classes.

I met Briana in early June, just after school had ended. She was in a summer program for geometry remediation because she’d gotten a C in math. She told me that she had ADD and took Adderall, and that she loved history but hated math with a passion. “I don’t know. I try hard. I’m just more into sports.” On the day we met, she wore a purple tank top and not-too-tight shorts, and her long hair was down. She had a sunburn on her shoulders that was bothering her a little. She told me she ran track and played volleyball and softball. Mostly she seemed nervous and eager to please—“No, ma’am.” “Yes, ma’am”—and to make me understand that she was not a bare-your-breasts kind of girl.

“Just let me see them, please?” She texted back, “No,” she told me. He was a junior, one year ahead of her. She didn’t consider him her boyfriend, just someone she talked with at school sometimes. Plus she felt “self-conscious.” Briana is tall and fit but doesn’t exude that sexy sheen some high-school girls do. He asked a dozen more times, in different ways, and one night the text came as she was getting out of the shower. “What are you doing?” he texted. “I just got out of the shower and I’m about to go to sleep.” “Send me a picture, PLEASE.” She caved. She sent it over Snapchat and said he had to let it erase right away. He said he did.

For days after the investigation began, Briana felt that people were staring at her, talking about her, blaming her for the fact that the high school seemed like a prison, or that they were being hauled into a police interview, or—worst of all—that they had to hide their phones or have them confiscated for God knows how long. “It was getting 10 times bigger,” she told me. “As each day went by, more phones were being taken. It all went really, really fast—way faster than I expected.” Sometimes her friends would tell her, “Hey, they were talking about you in second period.”

Briana was prepared for part of the reaction: that everyone would think “if I show my boobs then that means I would do anything.” But the worst part was “everyone calling me a snitch. Everybody, like, hated me because they knew I had told. It was so bad that I didn’t want to go to school.”

Briana and Jasmine are friends, and the day after the police arrived, Jasmine also wanted to stay home from school. She had sobbed and thrown up when she saw her photo on Instagram. But Jennifer wouldn’t let her stay home. In fact, she told her daughter she would be punished if she cried in school or showed in any way that she was upset: “They already got a piece of you,” Jennifer told her. “Don’t let them get any more.” So Jasmine stayed stone-faced, and nobody said a thing to her. The future sorority girl told me she’d caught Jasmine’s eye that first week and thought, “She must be thinking, You’ve seen me naked,” but she also noted that Jasmine didn’t betray anything. “She was just walking around the school as if nothing happened.”

Briana was not so lucky. The incident always seemed to be there, at school and at home. When she and her mother were watching TV and a romantic or sexual scene came on, her mother would leave the room. During arguments she’d say, “You have no reason to have an attitude after everything you’ve done.” One time, after her younger sister had misbehaved, her mom yelled, “Don’t end up like your sister!” while Briana stood close by. (Her mother later apologized.) Briana told me she has tried to make amends. She cleans up the kitchen every night after dinner, cleans the bathrooms. “Some days we’re okay, and some days I think it’s all she thinks about. She sent me a note: ‘I still think of you as my little girl.’ I understand where she’s coming from. But I’m not a little girl. I think she hasn’t accepted the fact that I’ve grown up yet.”

About a month after the investigation, Briana got into a fight with a boy on the bus. She was still “stressed out,” she said, and he kept singing a song she found annoying, and she asked him to please stop. He told her, “Nobody even wants you here” and called her a bitch, and she said, “I’m gonna beat the effing crap out of you,” and she hit him, and got suspended for three days. Those happened to be the days of softball tryouts, so she almost didn’t make the team. Then, when the coach did let her join the team, a teammate accused Briana of putting her college scholarship in jeopardy because her phone had been confiscated and maybe the school would rescind its offer. Briana used to babysit for one of the teacher’s kids, “but then his wife wouldn’t have anything to do with me.”

Studies on high-school kids’ general attitudes about sexting turn up what you’d expect—that is, the practice inspires a maddening, ancient, crude double standard. Researchers from the University of Michigan recently surveyed a few dozen teenagers in urban areas. Boys reported receiving sexts from girls “I know I can get it from” and said that sexting is “common only for girls with slut reputations.” But the boys also said that girls who don’t sext are “stuck up” or “prude.” The boys themselves, on the other hand, were largely immune from criticism, whether they sexted or not.

Sometimes in Louisa County, between interviews, I hung out with a group of 15-year-old boys who went to the library after school. They seemed like good kids who studied, played football, and occasionally got into fights, but no more than most boys. They’d watch videos of rappers from the area and talk about rumors in the rap world, like the one that the Chicago rapper Chief Keef, a rival of D.C.’s Shy Glizzy, had gotten a middle-school girl pregnant. They’d order and split a pizza to pass the time while waiting for their parents to leave work and pick them up. I started to think of them as the high school’s Greek chorus because, while I recognized much of what they said as 15-year-old-boy swagger—designed to impress me and each other, and not necessarily true—they still channeled the local sentiment. This is how one of them described his game to me: “A lot of girls, they stubborn, so you gotta work on them. You say, ‘I’m trying to get serious with you.’ You call them beautiful. You say, ‘You know I love you.’ You think about it at night, and then you wake up in the morning and you got a picture in your phone.”

“You wake up a happy man,” his friend said.

“Yeah, a new man.”

“Yeah, I’m the man.”

How do you feel about the girl after she sends it?, I asked.

“Super thots.”

“You can’t love those thots!”

“That’s right, you can’t love those hos.”

“Girls in Louisa are easy.”

And thus it was with Briana and her seducer: “He was a jerk. He didn’t talk to me anymore. And he just flirted with other girls.”

Louisa County teens, geographically spread out and chronically over scheduled, have relatively few opportunities to simply hang out with one another. Much of the high school’s social life takes place online.

Why do kids sext? One recent graduate told me that late at night, long after dinner and homework, her parents would watch TV and she would be in her room texting with her boyfriend. “You have a beautiful body,” he’d write. “Can I see it?” She knew it would be hard for him to ever really see it. She had a strict curfew and no driver’s license yet, and Louisa County is too spread out for kids to get anywhere on their own without a car.

“I live literally in the middle of nowhere,” the girl told me. “And this boy I dated lived like 30 minutes away. I didn’t have a car and my parents weren’t going to drop me off, so we didn’t have any alone time. Our only way of being alone was to do it over the phone. It was a way of kind of dating without getting in trouble. A way of being sexual without being sexual, you know? And it was his way of showing he liked me a lot and my way of saying I trusted him.”

In the Texas high-school study, boys and girls were equally likely to have sent a sext, but girls were much more likely to have been asked to—68 percent had been. Plenty of girls just laugh off the requests. When a boy asked Olivia, who graduated last year from Louisa County High, “What are you wearing?,” she told me she wrote back, “Stinky track shorts and my virginity rocks T-shirt.” A boy asked another student for a picture, so she sent him a smiling selfie. “I didn’t mean your face,” he wrote back, so she sent him one of her foot. But boys can be persistent—like, 20-or-30-texts-in-a-row persistent. “If we were in a dark room, what would we do?” “I won’t show it to anyone else.” “You’re only sending it to me.” “I’ll delete it right after.”

When surveyed, by far the most common reason kids give for sexting is that their boyfriend or girlfriend wanted the picture, and my interviews in Louisa County support that. In a study of 18-year-olds by Elizabeth Englander, 77 percent said the picture they sent caused no problems for them. The most common outcome of a sext, says Englander, is “nothing”: no loss, no gain. Most girls (70 percent) reported feeling some pressure to sext, but Englander singles out a distinct minority (12 percent) she calls the “pressured sexters,” who say they sexted only because they felt pressure. These girls are more vulnerable. They tend to start sexting at a younger age, and to sext because they think they can get a boyfriend, as opposed to because they already have one. They have a fantasy that “if they sext, the popular people will see them as daring and self-confident, and they could get a boyfriend they wouldn’t otherwise have gotten,” Englander says. But generally that doesn’t work out. Pressured sexters are much more apt to feel worse after sexting than other teens are—her interviews reveal them to be less self-confident about their bodies and less assured about their place in the social hierarchy after sending a sext.

One recent study found that young adults who engaged in sexting were more likely to report recent substance abuse and high-risk sexual behavior, like unprotected sex or sex with multiple partners. Another found exactly the opposite, that “sexting is not related to sexual risk behavior or psychological well-being.” In Englander’s study, many of the worrisome behaviors associated with sexting showed up more in those who had been pressured. They were more likely, for example, to engage in a practice researchers call self-cyberbullying, a disturbing phenomenon in which teens post mean things about themselves on social-media sites, usually to get sympathy or attention. Pressured sexters were also more likely to have had problems with sexual violence in dating.

A consistent finding is that sexting is a pretty good indicator of actual sexual activity. This year, researchers in Los Angeles published a study of middle-schoolers showing that those who sent sexts were 3.2 times more likely to be sexually active than those who didn’t. A story in the Los Angeles Times described the study as proof that “sexting is not a harmless activity.” But in fact the findings seem a little obvious. Since most kids who sext report doing so in the context of a relationship, it makes sense that sex and sexting would go together. As Amy Hasinoff, the author of the forthcoming book Sexting Panic: Rethinking Criminalization, Privacy, and Consent, points out, “Sexting is a form of sexual activity,” not a gateway to it.

But kids also sext, or ask for a sext, or gossip about sexting, for reasons only loosely related to sex. A recent New York Times story explored the practice of “vamping,” or staying up after midnight to check in with friends online. The kids in Louisa County, like kids everywhere, are chronically overscheduled. They stay late at school to play sports or to take part in other after-school activities, then go home and do their homework. Nighttime is the only time teens get to have intimate conversations and freely navigate their social world, argues Danah Boyd, the author of It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens. For the Louisa County kids, that means checking up on the latest drama on Twitter—“Anyone still awake?” is a common post-midnight tweet—and filling up their Instagram accounts, or asking a girl for a pic.

In the vast majority of cases, the picture lands only where it was meant to. Surveys consistently show that very few recipients share explicit selfies— without the sender’s consent. Englander’s surveys show that pictures resulting from pressure are much more likely to be shared, and that rarely ends well. In the worst-case scenario, the girl is devastated, and in rare instances takes drastic action. In 2008, Jessica Logan committed suicide after her nude photo circulated around her Ohio town, and there have been several similar suicide cases since then. A few people in Louisa County recalled the time a popular, pretty girl at school sent a picture to her boyfriend that he then sent out to his friends, and “by second period,” according to Olivia, “she was so upset that the guidance counselor had to send her home.” But mostly, even a picture that’s shared without consent travels between just two or three cellphones, and plays only a fleeting role in the drama of coming of age.

“The only reason to regret it is if you get caught,” one girl told me. And while getting caught—by parents, teachers, future employers—is no joke, police departments would still do well to remember that. Whether a sext qualifies as relatively safe sexual experimentation or a disaster often depends on who finds out about it. Marsha Levick, a co-founder of the nonprofit Juvenile Law Center, sees many cases where the police investigation does much more harm than the incident itself. “The rush to prosecute always baffles me,” she says. “It’s the exponential humiliation of these boys, or more often girls, in an official setting, knowing their photos will be shown to police officers and judges and probation officers. And the reality is, a lot of these officials are going to be men. That process itself is what’s traumatizing.”

As the new school year began, few people attended an evening community meeting on teen sexting held by Rusty McGuire, Louisa County’s main prosecutor.

About a month into the investigation, Donald Lowe concluded that the wide phone-collection campaign had added up to one massive distraction. Yes, the girls who appeared on Instagram had done something technically illegal by sending naked photos of themselves. But charging them for that crime didn’t make any sense. “They thought they were doing it privately,” he told me, reaching much the same conclusion as Levick. “We’re not helping them at all by labeling them at an early age.” Lowe recalled to me a girl in his own high-school class who had developed a reputation as “the county slut, and it took her years and years to overcome that.” These girls didn’t need their names in the paper to boot.

By June, Lowe had made the decision to wipe the photos off most of the phones and return them to the girls, and most of the boys, with a warning: “We don’t want to put anything on your record, but the next time we come around, we’re not going to be so nice about it.” He held on to a few phones and got search warrants for a few more, and began to focus on what seemed more like the actual crime: the posting of explicit photos without consent on Instagram.

Within the first day or two of the investigation, Lowe had developed a pretty good suspicion of who was behind that. A few of the boys he talked to—and a couple of girls as well—had told him they’d sent photos directly to boys who they thought had set up the accounts. A few others had sent them to a go-between, but still had a decent idea of who was setting up the accounts. The organizers had apparently spent weeks gathering photos. They said they would open the accounts only when they had a lot of pictures in hand, and that anyone who sent one in would be guaranteed access. Lowe wasn’t sure whether it was just a couple of boys working together or with a slightly larger group of accomplices. His investigators subpoenaed Instagram for the IP address of the accounts’ originating computer, but because of a technical aberration, that turned out to be inconclusive. He continued to search for other, solid evidence.

Lowe would not confirm to me the identity of the main suspects in the investigation, but according to some of the kids and parents, they are two brothers—one a student at the school, one a recent graduate. One was a troublemaker known for hitting people on the bus, and the other a popular kid. One was under 18 and the other over, meaning that if they were charged, they could be subject to very different legal treatment. The key would be to figure out their intent—were the boys trying to make porn available to adults, or was it a “me and my buddies want to collect a bunch of pictures” kind of deal?

Lowe strongly suspected the latter, that this was about “raging hormones and bragging.” Kids, after all, described the accounts to him, and to me, as “funny,” “just something to laugh at,” “just a bunch of friends sitting around having a laugh.” If that were true, at least for any minors involved, a child-porn charge seemed too “Big Brother” to Lowe, and he and the local prosecutor might want to come up with a lesser charge or even no charge at all, especially because the account had been closed down so quickly and had been seen by relatively few people, limiting potential harm. But largely because of community pressures, he had to consider the possibility that he’d just discovered “the tip of an iceberg of some organized-crime thing.”

In late July, rumors were spreading among parents that the boys who had set up the Instagram accounts might be part of a gang. There had been some prominent gang activity in the area lately, and one local crew had been involved in the shooting of a cop. Maybe these gangs were also involved in child trafficking; maybe they would use the young girls’ pictures as an advertisement to lure johns. There was no evidence at all that whoever was behind the accounts was part of a gang, or that local gangs were involved in sex trafficking. In fact the theory seemed pretty far-fetched. But the mere mention of it was enough for Lowe to say—or feel pressured to say—that he couldn’t “rule it out.” At the time of this writing, in mid-September, the investigation was ongoing.

Many teen-sexting cases are aggravated by vague fears of predation and pedophilia, at times creating irresistible momentum. But “the conjecture that the Internet or sexting has increased the number of molesters or their motivation to offend has not really been supported by the evidence,” says David Finkelhor, who runs the Crimes Against Children Research Center. In fact, all of the evidence suggests that child molesting and sex offenses in general have declined over the period in which sexting has become popular, Finkelhor says. His group analyzed seven major sources of data about violence against children and found large declines in sexual abuse of children since the early 1990s. From 2003 to 2011, a span that coincides almost exactly with the rise of sexting, sexual-victimization rates of minors declined by 25 percent. Finkelhor cites a handful of possible factors but, ironically, one is that kids have started to do their “risk taking” and “independence testing” online, which could minimize their exposure to actual violence and physical harm.

“The rush to prosecute always baffles me. It’s the exponential humiliation of these boys, or more often girls, in an official setting … That process itself is what’s traumatizing.”

Cases that turn up genuine signs of child pornography should of course be investigated and prosecuted to the full extent of the law. But child-porn laws are designed explicitly to protect children from adults. Cases involving only minors fall into a different category, and deserve entirely different labels and punishments—or no punishments. Getting these standards right is important, because the investigation itself causes its own trauma, because not every law-enforcement officer is as considered as Donald Lowe, and because something that a third of older teenagers do routinely shouldn’t remain a crime, much less a crime on the order of child porn.

Many legal-reform advocates say the key is to distinguish between voluntarily sharing a photo and having it shared without your consent. “We should draw the line between my daughter stupidly sending a photo of herself to her boyfriend and her boyfriend sending it to all his friends to humiliate her,” Levick, of the Juvenile Law Center, told Slate last year. “The first is stupid. The second is more troubling and should be criminal.” Levick’s group has been trying for years to get states to recognize the difference between sexting that’s part of normal sexual exploration and sexting that’s coercive or violates privacy.

And yet few lawmakers are willing to concede that naked pictures of teenagers, even if voluntarily shared, are in any way acceptable. As Levick says, “I think this is coming from grown‑ups who fear that their kids are doing things they don’t understand. The technology is both hyper-visible and invisible, and parents are spooked by it. So kids are finding what’s a normal part of adolescent experimentation being criminalized.”

In cases involving only minors, the poles at either end of the continuum of all that a sext can represent seem pretty clear. Uploading another minor’s naked picture to the Web, where anyone might eventually find it, should be a criminal act, though not one that should necessarily be prosecuted as child porn. Taking a selfie and sending it to someone who might be receptive to it, or receiving a selfie and keeping it, should not be criminal at all. What’s in between—such as forwarding a selfie to one or 10 friends without consent—is more difficult. In Louisa County, the deputies gave an especially stern lecture to the boys they sensed had solicited pictures so they could forward them on to friends, taking advantage of the vulnerability of certain girls. The nonconsensual sharing of pictures, even among just a few people, should probably count as a criminal act, as long as there is prosecutorial discretion. But even in these instances, the policing should, if possible, be left to teachers and parents, not to the actual police. Or in some cases to no one, because since when was any version of adolescent sexuality fair and free of pain?

Michael Harmony, the commander of the southern-Virginia branch of the Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, says that as teen sexting has become more pervasive, cases involving large numbers of kids have multiplied quickly.

Shortly before the police got involved in Louisa County, Ryan, a quiet junior known as a math whiz, received the picture of Briana’s breasts from a friend at the beginning of lunch. “Guess who ??? wht do u think?” Throughout the whole afternoon, he could not get the photo out of his head: the size and shape of the breasts—which he described, improbably, as floating “like the Nerf ball I once threw too far into the waves”—and also all the freckles, suggesting summer and romantic surprises. Ryan had only one other similar photo, which a generous friend had sent his way. But being out of that game, as he saw it, had its advantages. He was free of the never-ending status competition at school—who had a new picture, who had the most, who had one no one else could get—and could just let his imagination wander.

He waited until late at night, when his mom was watching TV, to look at the photo again. Seated on his bed, he pulled out his phone. The first thing he noticed was that his battery bar was red. Now there was the problem of finding the power cord, and stretching it as far as the center of the bed. He noticed a text from his coach—had he forgotten a practice? Was there some piece of equipment he had to remember to bring in the next day? Finally he pulled up the picture. He knew Briana; he’d helped her with math once. And he couldn’t get the image of the girl sitting in class, puzzling over a problem, out of his head. He suddenly felt guilty, and also—because he’d heard about some boys collecting photos for an Instagram account—a little afraid. He hesitated, and then deleted the picture and got up to retrieve his laptop. He opened the first free porn site that popped into his head and typed in milf. Immediately, dozens of images flirted for his attention. He considered one in the second row, but then scrolled down a little further to find a curvier type, although a few weeks later, when he was recounting the moment to me, he couldn’t remember any other details beyond “long brown hair” and “big boobs.”

Briana’s parents—and Briana herself—would probably be creeped out if they knew how this scene had played out. And most parents would be upset if they learned that a naked picture of their daughter had showed up on a boy’s phone, even if he did delete it. But that such a photo should come to light doesn’t mean the girl and the boy are having sex, or that the boy is a stalker, or that the photo is going to show up on the Web.

Outside of actual romantic relationships, sexts usually seem to play a very minimal role in anyone’s sex life. In Thy Neighbor’s Wife, Gay Talese’s 1981 book about the sexual revolution, a teenage boy spends hours looking at his favorite picture in a photographic-art magazine, treating the image with an archivist’s care. But the high-school boys I spoke with barely glance at the sexts they receive. They gloat inwardly or brag to friends; they store them in special apps or count them. But actual fantasies come from porn, freely and widely available on the Internet. “Guys would pile them up,” one girl who had graduated a year earlier told me, referring to sexts they’d gotten. “It was more of a baseball-card, showing-off kind of thing.” Olivia described it as “like when they were little boys, playing with Pokémon cards.”

So how should parents think about sexting, especially when their daughters are involved? The research suggests that if your child is sexting but not yet in high school, you should worry more. And that you should do the same if your daughter has no real relationship with the boy she’s sending sexts to, but is pursuing a relationship, or just responding to repeated requests for a photo. Sexts don’t create sexual dynamics; they reveal them. Parents should use the opportunity to find out what those dynamics are, lest they accidentally make things worse.

What bothered Jennifer, Jasmine’s mother, about her daughter’s picture was not that her little girl was all grown up. It was the awkwardness of her daughter’s pose, the fact that she had to be really talked into sending that photo. Jennifer fits no one’s image of a perfect mother. As a kid, she had done drugs and gotten into fights and had a baby at 15. But life experience has made her a very perceptive parent. Another one of her daughters, who is two years younger than Jasmine, “is rebellious as hell. If she sent a picture, it’s because she damn well wanted to. She’d be like, snap, snap, ‘This is me,’ all over the place. If she didn’t want to, she’d send a picture of a cat and say, ‘That’s the only pussy you’re gonna get!’ But this one”—meaning Jasmine—“she’s a pushover. She would do anything for anybody. Even with stupid things, like her sister asks her to fold the laundry even though she folded the last 20 loads, and she’ll say, ‘Sure.’ It infuriates me. Girl, stand up for yourself! You should do something because you want to do it, not because somebody pushed you into it.”

Danah Boyd, the author of It’s Complicated, often talks about social media as a window into the teenage world. A parent who reacts purely by scaling up the restrictions is missing a chance to know what’s actually going on with their child, to know things that in previous eras would have stayed hidden from them. In her talks, Boyd advises parents not to, for example, shut down accounts. Kids will just find ways to open new ones under names that have nothing to do with their real ones, that their parents could never track, or they will migrate to new platforms. (Many of the kids I met in Louisa County used inventive, inscrutable names for their Instagram accounts, names only their peers knew about.) Instead, parents should take a deep breath—even in the most uncomfortable scenarios—and ask questions. Kids can have a million motivations to send a naked picture of themselves, and unless you ask, you won’t know whether the one that was in their head seems more like reasonable experimentation or something else.

A recent review of 10 official sexting-education campaigns concluded that all of them erred on the side of what the researchers called “abstinence”—that is, advising teens not to sext at all. These tend to link sexting tightly to ruinous consequences, but that’s a problem, because ruination doesn’t normally follow the sending of a sext. “If we present it as inevitable, then we’ve lost our audience,” says Elizabeth Englander, who leads groups about sexting in middle and high schools, “because they know very well that in the vast majority of cases it doesn’t happen.” If you say otherwise, “then the kids know immediately that you don’t know anything.”

In the vast majority of cases, the picture lands only where it was meant to. But pictures sent as a result of pressure are much more likely to be shared, and that rarely ends well.

Instead, Englander eases kids into the dangers slowly. She usually starts out by talking about how in life, it’s sensible to avoid risk. You wear a seat belt even though the chances of a fatal crash are slim. This way, she says, the kids understand that she knows the risks of a picture getting out are rare, but they also understand that if it does get out, the effects on their social life and future could be catastrophic. She gets the kids talking about why they send the pictures, so she can narrow in on the more risky situations she has identified from her research—namely, ones involving lots of pressure and very little trust.

Teens in Louisa County, like teens everywhere, hear a lot about sex, but really know only a little about it. Briana’s Twitter feed is a mix of little-girl cute and grown-woman sexy: a fuzzy kitten, inspirational quotes from Athletes for Christ, an ass in a bow thong. Any senior at Louisa County High School can tick off the names of girls who got pregnant in the past year. But the kids in Louisa County are also part of a generation that’s seen teen pregnancy decline to a record low. Teens are waiting longer to have sex than they did in the recent past. The majority now report that their first sexual experience was with a steady partner. Given how inundated and unfazed they are by sexual imagery, perhaps the best hope is that one day, in the distant future, a naked picture of a girl might simply lose its power to humiliate.

Homecoming at Louisa County High

In late August, about two weeks after the new school year started, Rusty McGuire, the Louisa County prosecutor, gave an evening community presentation at the middle school about sexting. He cited statistics showing how popular it was and explained that under Virginia’s child-porn laws, it was a serious crime. However, he acknowledged that sternly explaining to kids that it’s illegal or has long-term consequences “isn’t working.” As an alternative, he suggested humor, and showed a campaign called “Give It a Ponder,” run by LG. The series involves the actor James Lipton pinning a beard on kids who are about to sext, so they pause for a sober second thought, and it is, indeed, pretty funny. But only about a dozen parents and kids were there to see it.

Instead, the entire community seemed to be outside on the vast fields near the high school and middle school, seduced by the Thursday-night pause before the first home football game of the season, which would take place the next night. The sun was dropping and taking the worst of the August heat. Little kids were kicking up dirt on the baseball field or practicing their cheerleading (“Time to get loud! Time to represent!”). Parents were leaning against their bumpers drinking water or soda, and teenagers were using their bodies in ways the parents could admire: slamming into tackling dummies at the final pregame practice, doing sumo squats, running around the track.

Briana was there; her volleyball team had just won its game in three sets. “New me, new life, gotta get my shit together,” she’d retweeted before the start of school. Her profile picture showed her in a bikini, but she was staying clear of trouble. So far she’d earned all A’s. Her mom was trusting her to get her learner’s permit and even asked her why she’d decided to go to homecoming with a friend instead of a boyfriend. (“That’s the last thing on my mind,” she’d replied.) Coming out of the gym after the game, she and her friends were as loud and boisterous as the football players who were psyching themselves up for the following night’s game. A mom came up and pinched her butt: “Good job, Bri!” Nearby, a boy and a girl from school were enacting an airport-worthy goodbye.

Briana and two teammates leaned into each other and took a picture. “Photobomb!” a boy yelled behind them, but they barely paid him any attention. It was just another picture, and this one was theirs.

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2014/11/why-kids-sext/380798/

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Canada's New Cyberbullying Law Is Targeting Teen Sexting Gone Awry

When a 16-year-old girl from Saanich, BC looked at her boyfriend's cell phone in 2013 and saw that his ex-girlfriend was sexting naked photos of herself she got angry and jealous. Then she forwarded the images to a friend through text and Facebook.

It was a decision that would come with devastating consequences, turning a bright, ambitious teen into an outcast known around town as a pedophile.

After she was caught with the images, police seized them and charged her with possessing and distributing child pornography because the ex-girlfriend in the photos was also a minor at the time.

In January 2014, the girl (whose name cannot be released because she was under 18 years old when she committed the offense) became the first minor in Canada to be convicted of child pornography. As she awaited sentencing, the girl had to abide by conditions that included staying off the internet unless supervised by a designated adult.

This week, more than two years after she was first charged, she received her sentence — a six-month conditional discharge. At the hearing on Monday, the judge said the teen will avoid jail time if she continues reporting to her probation officer, stays off the internet unless supervised, and writes a letter of apology to the victim.

While the girl, now 18, and her mother are relieved that she doesn't have to go to jail, they're still reeling over how this whole ordeal has turned their lives upside down. "She was a very active, outgoing, and strong child," her mother, Rebecca, told VICE News after the sentencing. The girl went from being a star student with many friends and a passion for sports and photography to almost failing her classes and being bullied at school.

Even though her identity in the criminal proceedings was supposed to be concealed, as she was a minor, someone leaked details of the case on social media anyway. Students at her high school began taunting her, her mother says, calling her a pornographer and a pedophile. After she couldn't take it anymore, she transferred schools and tried to keep a low profile.

Her story is among a growing number of cases worldwide that underscore the tension between laws aimed at preventing child exploitation and the new realities of teen sexual expression.

The provision in Canada's new anti-cyberbullying law (Bill C-13) that makes it illegal to share "intimate images" of someone without their consent came into effect last month, long after the BC teen was convicted. It followed the high-profile case of Nova Scotia teenager Rehtaeh Parsons, who died after attempting to commit suicide in 2013 after sexually explicit images of her circulated online among her peers. At the time, law enforcement in Canada was scrambling to figure out how best to respond to the advent of sexting.

Since around 2009, dozens of Canadian teens — some as young as 13 — have faced child pornography charges for receiving and sending sexts containing naked photos of themselves or others to their friends. Over the last year in the province of Ontario, five teens caught sexting (three in Norfolk County and three in the Woodstock area) have been charged with possessing and distributing child pornography.

Then in April a group of elementary school children was investigated by police after they allegedly shared naked photos of themselves on their cell phones and Nintendo DS devices. A police spokesperson said no charges were laid in this case because the children involved didn't realize what they were doing.

In the US, countless youth have been charged and convicted of child porn in sexting cases over the last several years, even when they took the photos of themselves.

Australia was one of the first countries where police laid child porn charges against sexting teens — 32 teens there faced child porn charges in 2007. But last August, the state of Victoria tabled a new law that would make it illegal to share a sexually explicit image of someone without their consent — similar to Canada's cyberbullying legislation. But if passed, the Victorian law would also prevent anyone under the age of 18 from being convicted of child pornography in sexting cases.

Related: Canada's new cyberbullying bill will give it unnecessary surveillance superpowers. Read more here.

Mary Anne Franks, a law professor at the University of Miami who specializes in cyberbullying, told VICE News that Canada's new law is superior to most of the cyberbullying and sexting laws that have been passed in around 17 US states, and is preferable to child porn charges. New Jersey, for example, amended its laws so that teens caught sexting will not face child porn charges the first time they offend, while teens in Virginia can be sent to a diversion program on their first offence.

"The [Canadian] provision that deals with non-consensual sharing defines the crime well and makes it clear what is being prohibited," Franks said. The new law states that anyone, including adults, who shares an "intimate image" (defined as a "photographic, film or video recording" in which the person is fully or semi-naked) without the creator's consent can be sentenced to five years in prison.

"When a teen forwards an image of another teen non-consensually, it's wrong to say it's child pornography. That's not what's wrong with it — what's wrong with it is that it's non-consensual behavior," continued Franks. She added that it's difficult to tell at this point if the new law will mean that law enforcement will stop using child porn charges against teens, but it's a step in the right direction.

Franks said, however, that by the time law enforcement gets involved at all, it's a sign that parents and teachers haven't done their jobs to educate youth about healthy relationships. "Training and education needs to start as early as possible, for boys and girls, to emphasize that sexual activity in particular is the kind of thing where you always need unambiguous consent," she says.

The BC teen's mother, Rebecca, says that her daughter will appeal the conviction because she, too, thinks child porn charges were inappropriate in her situation and wants to set a legal precedent.

Rebecca hopes an appeal of her daughter's conviction will result in a decision that makes it clear that other teens in Canada should not face child porn charges in sexting cases. "There's an automatic stigma that comes with being labeled as a child pornographer, on a sexually deviant level," Rebecca says. "This wasn't about sexual gratification. Our child porn laws are designed to protect children against sexual predators and my daughter is not a predator."

Follow Rachel Browne on Twitter: @rp_browne

Photo via Flickr

Topics: americas, canada, cyberbullying, sexting, child pornography, united states, australia, rehteah parsons, online bullying, bill c-13, crime & drugs

https://news.vice.com/article/canadas-new-cyberbullying-law-is-targeting-teen-sexting-gone-awry

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AUSTRALIA- Victoria will become the first Australian state to change its laws surrounding sharing sexually explicit images, also known as ‘sexting’

The government yesterday tabled its response to an inquiry into sexting, announcing it will adopt two key recommendations.

The first will protect minors who take explicit images of themselves being prosecuted for child pornography offences.

The second will create a new summary offence which will make illegal the sharing of intimate images without consent.

Law Reform Committee chair Clem Newtown-Brown said under the current system, minors taking images of themselves were unintentionally captured by the Crimes Act.

"There were reports of children being put on the Sex Offenders’ Register," he said.

While the Committee found such cases were relatively rare, and police had the power to use their discretion in prosecuting child pornography offences in this context, it said such a loophole should not exist.

Sexting is not illegal when carried out between minors with no more than two years' age difference, or adults, under the new legislation.

But forwarding such images on to a third party will become a summary offence under the legislative change, the penalties for which are yet to be announced.

Mr Newtown-Brown said this type of activity was common when relationships broke down and could have "very dire consequences for victims who are embarrassed and humiliated."

A further recommendation the government create a digital tribunal, with the power to order websites to remove images, was not adopted by the government.

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2013/12/11/victorias-new-sexting-laws-protect-minors#page

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O CANADA

10 tips for safe and successful sexting

Canada, you're getting saucy!

According to the 2012 Canadian Living Sex Survey, 36 per cent of respondents had sent a sexy photo or video to a partner -- up from 30 per cent last year.

But sexting -- sending seductive text messages, photos or videos -- isn't as simple as it sounds. What should you write? How do you photograph yourself in a flattering way? Most importantly, how do you keep communications private with your partner?

For those of you who haven't tried sexting, or if you're not sure you're being as effective as you could be, we have some expert advice on sending sexy text messages. You may as well do it right, because once a text is sent you can't get it back!

Tips for successful sexting:

Jessica O’Reilly, a Toronto-based sexologist, says her first tip is to ease into sexting. "Some light flirting can gradually unfold into hot and heavy sexts while allowing you to test the waters and your boundaries," she says. So take things slowly -- you don’t need to send your hottest note or photo first.

You can also start off slow by saving specifics for the bedroom. Rather than be explicit in your sexts, be suggestive. "If it feels unnatural and awkward to share something overly sexy, be a subtle flirt," says Andrea Syrtash, a relationship expert and the author of Cheat On Your Husband (With Your Husband) (Rodale, 2011).

Sext in the affirmative. "Start your sext with something like, 'I want to...' rather than ‘We never...,'" says Syrtash.

Similarly, O'Reilly recommends that you

choose your words carefully. "A picture may be worth a thousand words, but when it comes to sex and fantasy, naughty talk can actually go a lot further than a close-up photo,” she says. "If you’re intimidated by dirty talk, start with some sexy compliments. Stroking the ego can be even hotter than stroking the you-know-what."

Page 1 of 2 -- Learn about photo etiquette when sexting, along with three sexting don'ts on page 2

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Play with punctuation and adjectives. "It may not sound sexy, but an exclamation point can go a long way when it comes to sex," says O’Reilly. "Note the difference between 'I’m coming.' and 'I’m coming so hard!'"

When it comes to photos, you can never be too safe, even if you trust your partner wholeheartedly. You may want to take close-up photos instead of longer shots that include your face. O’Reilly says these are not only a safer, but they can be fun for your partner to decipher. Leave something to the imagination!

If you’re still hesitant, take a cue from some of O’Reilly’s clients, "who take nude photos of their erotic spots, but add a temporary tattoo to throw off unwanted peepers. Brilliant and sneaky!" she says.

3 things NOT to do when sexting

Don’t send sexts to an unwilling participant. "Make sure your partner wants your sexy pics first," says O’Reilly. "Sending naked photos without consent from your recipient amounts to harassment."

Don’t keep your sexts on your device. Once you’ve enjoyed them, delete them, particularly if you have a company phone or have children who have access to your phone -- "unless you’re OK with them seeing your saucy photos and suggestive notes," says Syrtash.

Finally, don’t rush your sexts. As with anything, rushing can lead to errors. And you certainly don’t want to end up accidentally sending your risqué photos to your boss or neighbour!

Page 2 of 2

http://www.canadianliving.com/relationships/sex/10_tips_for_safe_and_successful_sexting.php

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CANADA'S MACLEAN'S MAGAZINE

The sexting scare

Though no ‘epidemic,’ it raises big issues for parents and the law

Anne Kingston

March 12, 2009

In January, six teenagers in Greensburg, Penn.—three girls and three boys all under the age of 18—were charged with child pornography for sending and receiving nude pictures of themselves via cellphone after the images were discovered by a high school teacher. Within weeks, teenage “sexting,” to use the catchy coinage, had become a seeming epidemic in the U.S., with a flurry of criminal charges, ranging from possession of child pornography to the lesser felony of obscenity, being laid in more than a dozen states.

With the concerned clucking that inevitably attends coverage of teenage sexuality, the U.S media—from Newsweek to Katie Couric—was all over it. Fox News called sexting “the new craze all over the country among 11- to 17-year-old adolescents.” The New York Post included “evidence” in the form of photos of scantily clad girls.

Yet the statistical proof of a sexting epidemic is scant: one lone survey sponsored by the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unwanted Pregnancy and CosmoGirl.com, which reported that 22 per cent of girls and 18 per cent of boys have electronically sent or posted nude or semi-nude images, even though 75 per cent knew it could have serious negative consequences.

That kids use what they believe is the private domain of their cellphones to text racy pictures is hardly surprising. What U.S. law enforcement views as pornography, teenagers see as high-tech flirting, oblivious to its dangerous consequences. Facebook and MySpace are filled with groups like “I’ve Sent Naked Pictures of Myself Over the Phone.” Nor is it shocking that a teenager who receives a naked image is tempted to share it—which is where the risk begins.

“These kinds of images are so ubiquitous, teens don’t see them as shocking,” says M. Gigi Durham, author of The Lolita Effect: The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and What We Can Do About It. “They see them as an acceptable way of representing themselves.”

Sexting is certainly a reminder of how mysteriously porous electronic communication can be. Teenagers’ casual willingness to provide explicit images of themselves only heightens the risk. A 14-year-old Florida boy charged this week with transmitting pornography after he sent a photo of his genitalia to a female classmate explained he did it because he was “bored.”

The discussion has yet to migrate north of the border, where police say sexting isn’t on their radar. “We expect to see it, but we haven’t seen it,” says Det.-Const. Dana Boyko of the Toronto Police Service’s sex crimes unit, child exploitation section. Boyko regularly speaks to teenagers in Grades 7 to 12 and recently asked them about sexting. “They’d heard of it,” she says. “But the general view was that it had been hyped by the media, like it’s the new thing to worry about—sharks, killer bees, sexting.”

Obviously, teenagers might be reluctant to tell a cop they’re sending or receiving naked self-portraits. Yet an informal poll of nine teenagers ranging in age from 13 to 18 yields similar findings. One 16-year-old girl says she’s never heard the term, though she didn’t doubt it happens. “But no girls I know would do it,” she says. Another girl expressed frustration with the focus it’s received: “I’m really tired about stories that make all teenage girls look like sluts,” she says.

In Canada, it’s not illegal for two teenagers under the age of 18 to carry naked photographs of one another, provided it’s for private viewing only. “The Supreme Court says that minors can possess sexual images of themselves and others in consensual activity, but when it’s distributed, it becomes child pornography,” explains Toronto criminal lawyer Frank Addario. “The bright line between harmless and criminal,” he says, “is whether the photo depicts the nakedness for a sexual purpose. If you have an image of a naked teen zipping around the Internet, a police officer somewhere is going to see it and lay a charge.” And that charge, he says, would be against the minor who distributed it, not the minor who’d created the photograph.

Boyko says her colleagues have debated how they’d handle a sexting complaint, which raises thorny questions: “Do we really want to charge a child for distribution or possession of child porn?” she asks. “We’d have to look at the circumstances, to see if the situation was abusive. In some cases it might be charges had to be laid, in others that it’s just a lesson.” Teaching a lesson is what U.S. authorities are trying to do, though charging a child as a sexual offender is a harsh remedy with lifelong implications.

Durham believes the conversation about sexting is an important one, even though she questions whether it’s as common as reports suggest. The media focus is useful, she says: “It’s raising interesting legal questions about how, as a society, we should deal with the impacts of new technologies on our lives, and on kids’ lives in particular.”

http://www.macleans.ca/culture/the-sexting-scare/

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Sexting in context

An issue of growing concern for young people across the EU is sexting. Sexting is the term used to describe the sending of sexually suggestive or explicit messages or photographs, typically via mobile phone. While normally consensual in the first instance, sadly many images end up widely circulated or posted online, especially when relationships end. The originator quickly loses all control over the images, often with embarrassing and potentially devastating consequences.

A recent EU Kids Online survey found that 15 per cent of 11- to 16-year-olds have received peer-to-peer ‘sexual messages or images [meaning] talk about having sex or images of people naked or having sex’, and 3 per cent say they have sent or posted such messages. In half of the countries across Europe, the risk of receiving sexual messages is below average, with Italy having the lowest level. The highest risk of sexting is encountered in Romania, the Czech Republic and Norway, followed by France, Estonia and Lithuania. The findings suggest that the majority of children across countries have not encountered sexting.

Further qualitative research from the UK has shown that while young people are increasingly savvy at protecting themselves from so called ‘stranger danger’ they are having to face a new problem of ‘peer to peer’ approaches with boys (in particular) constantly demanding sexual images. Sexting from peers worries young people more than stranger danger.

Stories of sexting are increasingly reported in the media. One extreme case is the tragic story of Jesse Logan, a high school student from Ohio, US, who committed suicide after her ex-boyfriend circulated nude images of her to other girls at her school, leading to bullying and intimidation.

There can also be serious legal consequences of sexting for young people: it is against the law to create, transmit or possess a sexual image of a minor. Some young people are therefore committing a crime through their actions, perhaps without knowing. There have even been cases (particularly in the US) of young people being prosecuted for such activities. This blog post by Larry Magid – technology journalist and online safety advocate - outlines the issues and risks of sexting further.

Understanding the issues

Some of the key issues regarding sexting are outlined below:

Loss of control of images

The minute you pass a digital image of yourself on, be that via text message on a mobile phone or posted on a social networking site, you have lost control of it forever. It can be circulated, copied and spread at an alarming rate, and there is no way of every regaining control. The longevity of images remaining in cyberspace is another key issue. Potentially, once an image has left your possession, it will exist in cyberspace forever. Images can come back to haunt you maybe 10, 20 or 30 years from now.

Cyberbullying

Aside from the embarrassment of a compromising image of you being out there for all to see, cyberbullying is often associated with sexting, leaving victims more open to vicious attacks as a result of their damaged reputation. See our additional document on cyberbullying for further information on this issue.

Legality

As outlined above, if minors engage in sexting they are actually creating, transmitting or possessing a sexual image of a minor, and this is illegal. While prosecuting young people for this type of activity is not necessarily the best solution, making them aware of the legal aspects can be helpful. Many young people will have no idea that they are actually distributing an image that is regarded as a child sexual abuse image. Being aware of this fact may help them to stop and think about their actions.

Grooming

It is also important to be aware of the potential links between sexting and more serious issues. Many paedophiles use sexting images (which are sometimes available on social networking profiles) in order to blackmail victims into providing more harmful images of themselves and others.

Positive parenting strategies for dealing with sexting

A key parental strategy here is to be aware of the risks, but also to keep a sense of perspective – not every young person who uses a mobile phone and the internet is going to be involved in sexting. Nevertheless, it is important for young people to have an awareness of their self and the potential risks to their reputation through their general online activities and, as parents, we must support them in this process:

Talk often

As with any online safety issue or risk, openness, awareness and education is the best form of defence, and will help your children to develop their own skills and resilience for dealing with any issues or challenges they encounter.

Try to maintain an open dialogue with your child about their digital lives, and make them aware of the issues they might encounter if sending compromising or just embarrassing images of themselves (as outlined above). Set ground rules for using technology - and have penalties for if they are abused - but try not to impose fear in your child that their online access will be taken away from them if they do encounter problems.

Danah Boyd has produced some guidance on the questions that parents should consider when they come across a sexting incident. These are very useful and take into account that every case will be different.

How old are the various participants involved? We must think about the subject of the image, the sender, and the recipient.

How explicit is the content being shared? Are we talking about bikini photos or are we talking about depiction of sex acts?

What is the intention behind the creation of the image? Are we talking about self-portraits, images created under coercion, or images created without the knowledge of the subject?

What is the intention behind the sharing of the image? Is it being shared for a private sex act or a flirtation? Or is it being shared to humiliate or shame someone? Or is it being shared for personal profit?

How does someone feel when they receive these images? Is the recipient delighted to receive the image or is it received as a form of harassment?

If problems do occur, talk through the issues in a calm and rational way, and try to help your child devise sensible self-protection strategies should they encounter problems again in the future. If serious sexting incidents do occur, it may be necessary to involve outside agencies to help you deal with the issues in the most efficient and effective way.

Likewise, look out for changes in your child – are they quieter than usual; are they being secretive; do they seem distressed? Children are often reluctant to discuss their problems, but any of these behaviours could indicate that they are experiencing issues online.

Know where to get help and advice if things do go wrong

If you or your children do experience problems relating to sexting, or indeed any online safety issue, it is important to recognise that you are not alone - there are a number of organisations that can provide help and advice.

Many countries operate national helplines or visit your national awareness centre website for further information on a range of online safety issues, including contacts and campaigns in your country.

Related links

·         What is sexting? (from Commonsense media)

·         What does sexting mean? (CEOP)

·         Exposed (10-minute YouTube film from CEOP)

http://www.saferinternet.org/online-issues/parents-and-carers/sexting

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'Sexting' is now the norm for Britain's teenagers, claims National Crime Agency as it campaigns to stem surge in explicit images

The National Crime Agency is trying to deal with the surge in explicit images and video being shared between children

The Agency’s Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP) said it receives reports of young people sending self-generated nude or nearly nude visuals on a daily basis. Typical cases include someone receiving an explicit private message before forwarding it on to others, a a revealing image being posted on a website or social media with low privacy settings, or a young person being blackmailed by a stranger over revealing images they have been tricked into taking.

The campaign, led by CEOP Command, aims to give parents the tools to deal with their children to reduce the dangers of sexting. It features a series of short animations been developed following a two-year research project with the University of Edinburgh, the University of Linkoping in Sweden and the German charity Innocence in Danger.

Read more: Snapchat tries to shed 'sexting' image
'Sexting teens should not be branded sex offenders'
Comment: Teenagers must be allowed to sext one another

In-depth interviews were carried out with 51 young people in the UK and Sweden to discover not only why they send explicit content, but what it means to them, the impact of engaging in this behaviour, and their advice to others. Many of those interviewed said they had felt pressured by someone they were in a relationship with into sending explicit images.

Ethel Quayle, project leader and senior lecturer in clinical psychology at the University of Edinburgh, said the group’s findings have been turned into practical advice. “It is not about condoning the activity, rather it is about providing more practical advice about being able to talk about this and manage issues when they come along,” she said. “It is interesting that the majority of young people we interviewed didn’t refer once to ‘sexting’. Instead they saw this as taking selfies or nude selfies.”

Gadgets and Tech News in Pictures

Zoe Hilton, head of safeguarding at the NCA’s CEOP Command, said: “Children and young people don’t necessarily know that sexting is dangerous. It can start off as a bit of fun but the issues start when that image gets into the wrong hands.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/sexting-is-the-now-the-norm-for-britains-teenagers-claims-national-crime-agency-as-it-campaigns-to-stem-surge-in-explicit-images-10319350.html

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Your Hands-on Guide to Solo Sex

Masturbation is one of the sexiest ways to please yourself. We tell you how to throw a party for one.

Even though masturbation seems less taboo these days, the National Health and Social Life Survey reported that 58 percent of women don't indulge. And of those who do, 47 percent feel guilty. It's ridiculous, insists Pepper Schwartz, PhD, author of Everything You Know About Love and Sex Is Wrong. "Masturbation prepares you for great sex, since you learn what you like and can teach a partner," she says. Every Cosmo girl should know %0A"how to masturbate. Here, a helping hand.

It takes more than a five-second lip-lock to get you in the mood for sex with him. Same holds true for a DIY session. To light your libido, create an atmosphere for arousal: a haven sans distractions where you can say to hell with inhibition. Lock the door so no one bursts in. Disconnect your phone(s). Add ambience with candles and slow jams. Next, tune in to your head space. "If you're watching CNN and trying to masturbate, it's going to take a while," says Rachel Venning, cofounder of the sex boutique Toys in Babeland and coauthor of Sex Toys 101. "In order to reach your peak, you need to relax and focus." If it takes a glass of wine to block out your boss (buzz kill!) and transition from work to play, cheers. Once you feel mentally uncluttered, fill your mind with sexy thoughts. Picturing Johnny Depp in a loincloth might help. Or do as Liz,* 28, does. "I have a videotape of Top Gun that I keep set to the volleyball scene," she says. "All that action makes me want to get some."

Names have been changed.

One of the most private places to awaken your senses is in the tub. To get started, draw a bubble bath. "As you soak in the warm water, your muscle tension will melt," says Schwartz. "You'll be more responsive to touch when you're relaxed." Increase the release by massaging your inner thighs and running your hands up your tummy and over your breasts. Now circle your nipples with a sudsy fingertip, then gently tug on them. "If this is an erogenous zone for you, it may trigger tingles down below," adds Schwartz. Now zero in on your hot spots by getting even more hands-on. "Our fingers are ideal tools for learning what type of pressure, speed, and stroke work the best," says Sadie Allison, sex educator and author of Tickle Your Fancy: A Woman's Guide to Sexual Self-Pleasure.* Let your digits wander south, tracing the sensitive folds of your inner labia. Get playful and draw the alphabet with your pinkie. Or try lightly tapping your clitoris with one finger, speeding up as you become aroused. All the while, note areas and touches that provide the most satisfaction. Bottom line: You're the master of your own domain. It takes trial and error to figure out what makes you tick. Experiment and you'll be surprised by the sexy sensations you can provoke. Take it from Sara, 23, who stumbled upon her own tub turn-on (and incidentally hasn't taken a shower since): "As the tub was filling up, I moved closer to the faucet to adjust the temperature," she explains. "The running water splashed on my clitoris and immediately felt good. So I wrapped my feet around the faucet and let the water flow over me. The excitement kept building."

Now to hit your high note, you'll need to intensify the manual manipulation. "There's no one method that works for everyone," explains Allison, "but certain stroking styles are tried and true." Like a move she calls The Figure Eight. Use one or more fingers to glide up, over and around your clitoral area, tracing the number eight. You'll cover the clitoris and the inner labia -- a lusty locale that has nerve endings within its walls, which some women find even more arousing than the clitoris. Another favorite is The Compass. Hold two fingers out straight, side by side, and run them north to south and east to west over the width and length of your entire pleasure zone. A more advanced method is The Three-Fingers Thrill. Use your index and ring fingers to hold open your labia. This frees up your middle finger to stroke the tip of your clitoris. Ultimately, you'll know what strikes a chord when a warm, flush feeling starts to set in. "Try not to be super goal-oriented, like, 'I have to have an orgasm in less than 15 minutes,' " says Venning. Just ride the wave of pleasure as your nether regions become more sensitive, your heart rate zooms, your breathing intensifies, and the walls of your vagina begin to contract -- all telltale signs you're bound for bliss.

Missy Elliott is on to something: Toys can be titillating. "Vibrators provide one of the strongest and most consistent forms of stimulation," says Judy Kuriansky, PhD, sex therapist and author of Generation Sex. Introduce the buzz factor once you've prepped yourself for pleasure, and it could make an orgasm a sure thing. But you have to know how to summon the sensations. Begin by working the vibrator over your clitoris, using the same techniques as described previously. (You may want to keep your panties on at first as a buffer; the buzz can be intense.) Then tease yourself by alternating speeds as your desire builds. Just remember to switch up your routine. "Vibrators are great training wheels, especially for the gal who thinks she'll never get there," says Kuriansky. A word of caution though: Too much humming can potentially cause your nerve endings to become somewhat desensitized. Pace your usage of this joy stick and let your fingers do the work on the off days. Now that you know what makes your body tick, it's time to share your stimulating secrets with someone you love...or at least lust for.

Sometimes those Os come from surprising sources. "I was in the hotel's hot tub when I flipped around to order a drink and inadvertently discovered perfect jet placement. Before I could say piña colada, the water pressure had sent me over the edge."
--Courtney, 19

"In the car, I keep my cell between my legs. One drive home, I was pissed at my guy so I refused to answer his calls. I guess he was worried -- he was pretty persistent. Luckily, the phone was on vibrate."
--Allie, 26

"I bought my jeans a size too small because they stretch, but I should've broken them in before class. Halfway through a lecture, my pants were practically molesting me. I had to excuse myself."
--Nat, 21

"My waxer moves my panties around as she works. One time, she pulled them up out of the way so she could get to the sides. The friction made me forget that Brazilians are supposed to be painful."
--Sarah, 32

http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/advice/a1602/solo-sex/

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5 Ways To Pleasure Yourself

Via Rebecca Lammersenon Jun 25, 2013

I’ve now written 40 articles for elephant journal.

Every one of my pieces is a window into my life, into the darkness, the lightness—the life I have lived.

I’ve spoken of my disorders, molestation, sex, relationships and divorce. Some may perceive my articles as ‘airing dirty laundry.’ I believe I share my life openly, transparently without shame, in order to help others know they are not alone in their thoughts, feelings or actions. Knowing we are not alone is the catalyst for growth, healing and transformation.

On the eve before my 34th birthday, I’m spending time reflecting on my life and the past year. My goal for the year to come is to continue shedding all the thoughts and conditioned beliefs that continue to hold me back.

I write this piece not only for myself, but for my daughters and all women.

My birthday wish is a wish for all of us; to stop hiding, stop feeling ashamed, and stop being embarrassed for who we are and what we want.

I give us all permission to explore our desires and our fantasies. I give us permission to claim what is our birthright—pleasure.

I do not want my daughters to own an ounce of guilt for expressing their sexuality, no matter how it manifests itself. I hope they freely explore their bodies, own their bodies, live in their bodies, enjoy their bodies and embrace all realms of giving and receiving pleasure.

I don’t want them to suffer like I have. It has taken almost 34 years for me to accept who dwells in me—a lioness who I have tamed and locked away for so long, because she scared me. I felt like a closet slut for years, until I recognized I’m no slut—I am an explosively passionate woman with a wild imagination and voracious desire for happiness and pleasure.

In my 34th year of life, I will release her completely because she deserves to live and breathe in the open, free of judgment—my judgment. She tries to ooze from my mind, my body and my heart every day and I can no longer contain her.

From adolecence to adulthood, I thought it was wrong to love sex as much as I did. I shunned my radiant imaginative desires and resisted pleasure completely. I thought it selfish, almost narcissistic to seek pleasure and attain a blissful state.

I searched in the wrong places—outside myself, in a sexual encounter with someone I didn’t know very well or in validation from people around me. I didn’t think I deserved to feel good. I was afraid of intimacy with myself, of allowing my needs to be acknowledged and fulfilled.

I hid within my sexual experiences instead of participating in. I withheld pleasure from myself, from my life. I felt guilty for masturbating or fulfilling my fantasies.

As I mature, I recognize the most important part of life, the gift of life is our ability to feel pleasure, to know pleasure.

God built me with the character I have, the thoughts, the desires, the body and the spirit I am meant to have in this life. I don’t need to cover up or be anyone else. Instead of trying to change, be something else–something more holy or more pure, I am meant to thrive and function as myself.

I give myself and all of us permission to stop avoiding who we are and give in to what gives us pleasure regardless of what society deems acceptable or unacceptable.

This year has gifted me–I didn’t know making love with myself had the power to usher me into a nest of self acceptance. It has transformed my ability to trust and be intimate with another person, to receive pleasure–which I never had before.

I didn’t know that the simple act of giving myself permission to feel good would change my life.

Here is my gift of permission for you:

1. Tease Yourself, Seduce Yourself—Get Naked Under Your Clothes.

I don’t wear underwear, unless (for sanitary reasons) I wear a short skirt which is a rare occurrence. I have a dresser drawer full of Hanky Pankys in a rainbow of colors that sit unharnessed to my pelvis. Why? Because it’s sexy to not wear them. I love being exposed. I am ready for pleasure at any moment. I enjoy teasing myself, seducing myself all day long.

At night, I wear a sheer slip to bed. The tingling sensation of the fabric on my skin gives me goosebumps. I love the way my nipples break through the veil of cloth. I stand in front of the mirror and I appreciate (not judge) the beauty of my body through the cloud of cotton. I separate from myself, admiring the person who stands before me yearning to be discovered, uncovered and explored.

I sleep naked—a lot. I recommend spending time every day naked. It’s a little uncomfortable at first. We are used to being naked between clothing changes, showering or having sex. What about just being naked? Enjoying the freedom of no restraints.

The first thing my daughters do when they walk in at the end of the day is strip down to nothing. They run around, do somersaults, dance. They are more comfortable naked than dressed.

When we are naked, we can’t hide—being vulnerable is vital to becoming comfortable with ourselves. Only when we are comfortable with ourselves can we be comfortable with another.

2. Act Like An Animal, Once in Awhile.

Animals are naked in every way; they don’t have manners, they don’t have clothes. They eat without utensils. They get dirty. They mate when they need to and want to, no matter who is watching.

Try being an animal once in a while.

Eat with your hands, eat foods that explode with juice allow them to coat your body and don’t rub it away. Get messy.

Allow yourself to go primal. If you have a partner, grab them and devour them as you did your food and if you are alone, devour yourself; in the middle of the living room, with the shades open, let the light in and please yourself.

3. Give In To Your Dark Side.

Give in to your desires. Your secret fantasies. Give in to your dark side. Who cares what “people” say is appropriate. If you desire it, explore it.

I enjoy watching pornography (well-executed pornography, that is).

I get turned on by watching and listening to people pleasuring each other.

I become fully invested in the experience. I pay attention to my mind and body as they respond to the stimulation. I melt into it, and before long I find myself caressing my own body as if it were another craving me, wanting me. My flaws no longer exist, I am perfect, I am all pleasure. It is ok, more than ok to love pleasure, and watching others giving and receiving it.

4. Do it in Front of a Mirror.

I used to avoid the act of masturbation. I would listen to the urge, do it and be done. I avoided what it looked like, what I looked like and how it felt. Now, I make as much of an effort to embrace the experience during my self pleasure as I do when making love with a partner.

I use toys or just my hands, depending on my mood.

I think it is important to build a partnership with my vagina. I know her, I know how she responds, what she looks like—I am connected with her.

I get down on the floor, in front of the mirror, and I look into myself. I watch as my face changes as I become aroused and how my body reacts in climax. It is nourishing to watch myself receive pleasure.

My advice is to make masturbation a sacred practice. Practice getting turned on by, you. Grab your breasts, rake your hands down your stomach. Make love with yourself because until we can make love with ourselves, be comfortable alone, we can’t be comfortable with anyone else.

5. Write It and Read It.

Write your fantasies, write your experiences, keep typing, don’t stop, don’t think about it. Just write and then, read what you write. Read it out loud.

Our spirit lives in our words. She exposes herself within the punctuation. There is no right or wrong. If you like bondage, give into it—it is how your spirit wishes to express herself.

Just as we are all unique, different, so are our desires. We all have something we fight against, that we stuff down because we think it is wrong to want what we want. It is not.

Give in to yourself. Allow yourself to feel the pleasure you crave.

Pleasure brings us as close to our spirit as we will ever be.

Look at the children of the world– they are pleasure seekers, pleasure dwellers and they are the happiest, purest beings on the planet. They do what feels good and right for themselves. They don’t care if it is socially acceptable–they listen to their hearts and their needs.

As we age to adulthood, sexual pleasure is and can be the most profound way to connect with ourselves. Pleasuring ourselves first, understanding our needs and wants must happen before we can receive pleasure from or give pleasure to another.

Once we connect and accept our desires, we accept who we are as we are.

By Rebecca Lammersen

http://www.elephantjournal.com/2013/06/5-ways-to-pleasure-yourself/

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An asexual person is a person who
does not experience sexual attraction

platonic relationships

Started by FallenAngel , Oct 08 2009 04:31 AM

Many people believe that a platonic relationship is similar to a friendship, a very close friendship (like best friends).

Am I the only one who thinks that platonic relationships could describe love? I only use the term "platonic relationship" to describe love (as in the feling felt between two partners in a relationship) with a deep emotional bond.

According to wikipedia (sorry I'm using that haha), the modern definition of a platonic relationship is "a non-sexual affectionate relationship." The example the site gave was "a deep, non-sexual friendship."

Also according to wikipedia, the traditional definition by Plato is basically a non-sexual relationship with a strong emotional connection, and not a friendship but love.

http://www.asexuality.org/en/topic/44626-platonic-relationships/

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THE THINKING ASEXUAL

http://www.asexuality.org/en/topic/44626-platonic-relationships/

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platonic love

“Platonic love” is a problematic term.

I do my best, these days, to avoid using it. Let me tell you why.

First of all, the original meaning of “platonic love” comes from Plato’s The Symposium, where the ideal kind of love was described as a kind redirecting the lover’s focus from the beloved (and sex with the beloved) to “the divine” or “philosophy,” basically to an interaction of the mind or some outside pursuit of knowledge. Plato (and Socrates) did not mean to exclude sexuality altogether from this ideal. They condemned the kind of erotic love that keeps two people obsessed with sex and each other’s body, to the point of neglecting those higher ideas, pursuits, etc, but they did not quite say that the ideal love is totally nonsexual.

The contemporary use of the term “platonic love” is obviously an inaccurate one. It is not true to Plato’s philosophy. In English, we understand “platonic love” to mean love that is not sexual—and that’s problematic for reasons beyond the disconnect to the original idea.

Usually, when people use the term “platonic love” to describe love that isn’t sexual, a simultaneous lack of romance is implicit too. In other words, if you “platonically” love someone, you don’t want to have sex with them and you don’t want to be a couple either. This usage does absolutely nothing to acknowledge the complexities of possible relationships. It conflates romance and sex and makes couplehood or primary partnerships synonymous with a romantic-sexual relationship.

Here’s the thing:

·         You can have a romantic nonsexual relationship.

·         You can have a nonromantic sexual relationship.

·         You can have a nonromantic nonsexual relationship.

Everybody would probably agree that the last kind—a nonromantic, nonsexual relationship—is “platonic.” But what about the other two? If we use the word “platonic” to mean a nonsexual relationship, then the romantic nature of the relationship makes no difference, but ask any romantic asexual or cross-orientation sexual person if their nonsexual romances fit into their understanding of “platonic love,” and they’ll most likely say, “No.” Then, there’s the nonromantic sexual relationship. Is that “platonic” because it doesn’t involve romantic feelings, despite the fact it’s sexual? The problem you’re most likely to run into if you love someone you have sex with but don’t have romantic feelings for them is that no one can believe that nonromantic love and sex can coexist in the first place. To say, “I ‘platonically’ love this person I’m fucking” just sounds weird and dishonest, to most people. You can have sex with someone you don’t love at all, but if you do love that person, the impulse is to label it “romantic” love.

Of course, all three types of relationships can’t be called “platonic” if we go by the original, actual meaning of “platonic love.” But because the term has already adopted its erroneous meaning on a widespread level, we can’t really go back to the true meaning either. “Platonic” probably got hijacked to describe nonsexual love because it’s useful to have a qualifier for the word “love” in English when we have such a fucked up, poor habit of using it to exclusively mean romantic-sexual love and otherwise, tossing it around in the vaguest ways possible.

It’s nice to have a way of saying “I love this person nonsexually and nonromantically” without actually phrasing it like that, simply because what I just wrote is wordy, clunky, etc. People like it when language flows, when we can get our point across in a way that’s short and sweet, but when it comes to emotions and relationships, this “short and sweet and simple” linguistic approach only holds us back. Emotions, love, and relationships are NOT short, simple, and sweet. There’s nothing more complex in our experience. It’s utterly fucking ridiculous that we’re so reluctant to use more sophisticated language to talk about love and relationships, when our actual experiences of them are frequently complicated as hell.

The asexual community inadvertently points out that the “romantic-sexual/platonic” love dichotomy is useless, problematic, and inapplicable for a lot of people. Romantic asexuals, whether they consent to sex or not, love their romantic partners romantically but not sexually. They would not use the term “platonic love” to describe their romantic feelings, even though those feelings stand without sexual desire/attraction. Cross-orientation sexual people can say the same of their romantic attachments.

Likewise, aromantic sexual people run into the problem of labeling their relationships/feelings when they have sex without ever feeling romantic love for their sexual partners, no matter how much they care. Yet obviously, you can’t really categorize a nonromantic sexual relationship into the same box as your nonromantic nonsexual relationships. Calling them all “platonic” misses the differences between the two, both sexually and emotionally.

Then, there are the aromantic asexuals and aromantic sexual people who want primary nonromantic partnership, aromantics whose nonromantic love for others can be just as intense as textbook romance. And almost no one understands them and what they want or how they feel because in the world’s understanding of love and relationships, if you don’t love someone romantically, you love them “platonically,” which means that you want to be friends and not a “couple,” because only romantic-sexual pairs can be couples with a primary relationship.

“Platonic love” is usually equated to friendship in our minds. If you love someone “as a friend,” meaning you don’t want them sexually or romantically, that love is “platonic.” Except—people do sometimes love their friends nonromantically but want to fuck them (and do!). And it’s now a very common thing in 21st century English-speaking societies to conceive of the ideal romantic-sexual relationship as inclusive of friendship anyway (which is a relatively new idea in civilization and still doesn’t exist in many different countries all over the world). I also happen to think that you can love someone romantically without being friends, just as you can be sexually involved with someone who isn’t your friend. So which relationships are “platonic” and which aren’t? And if they aren’t “platonic” but they aren’t “romantic,” then what are they?

What Plato was getting at in The Symposium was essentially: the ideal love may include sex but the intellectually-based friendship in it is far more important, without which the relationship is base and carnal in a way we shouldn’t settle for. The main problem with using “platonic love” to mean friendship is that friendship itself is the most ambiguous kind of connection between two people in the first place! I say this as someone who has been studying friendship and nonsexual love for years, from literary, historical, and philosophical perspectives. Philosophy in particular makes a big deal about the ambiguity of friendship. Erotic love is relatively simple in comparison!

The “romantic-sexual/platonic” love dichotomy leaves no room for the real emotional nuances people experience in their attachments, and I think that it often causes us to live with simplified relationships not because we want to or because we have simple desires and feelings but because we have no experience, cultural context, or language to accommodate a complex social life or set of relationships. This is why language is so important. This is why words and labels matter. How can you have the kind of relationships you want with anyone, if you don’t even have the words to accurately express how you feel? Hell, half the time, people don’t even understand their own feelings and relationship desires because what they feel is not simple at all, but the only relationship framework they know makes everything seem simple and clear cut: romance and sex go together, friendship is separate from both of those things, couplehood/primary partnership is exclusive to romance and sex, etc.

But if we are to accept the possibilities and realities of asexual romance, primary nonsexual/nonromantic love, nonromantic sex and sexual friendship, romantic (nonsexual) friendship, queerplatonic nonsexual relationships and sexual relationships, etc…. we have to drop this way of thinking and speaking about relationships and love in a romantic-sexual/platonic dichotomous way. None of those “complex” relationships fit into that model, which is why the average romantic-sexual person who has no exposure to anything other than normative relationship style will almost always react to those other kinds of relationships with total confusion, rejection, etc.

Unfortunately, I don’t have an alternative to “platonic”, for describing nonsexual/nonromantic love or nonromantic love coexisting with sex or primary partners who are neither sexually nor romantically involved. Right now, I’m just going through the trouble of saying “nonsexual” and “nonromantic.” The one thing I like about using those words is their specificity. They clearly communicate what I mean, with no room for confusion other than the kind that might arise when the relationship or love in question appears “complicated” to someone else. If a relationship is romantic but nonsexual, I’ll say so. If it’s nonromantic but sexual, I’ll say so. If it’s nonromantic and nonsexual, I’ll say so. Clarity is worth a little wordiness.

Posted in Aromanticism, Celibate Asexuality, Language & Terminology, Love & Relationships, The Basics, Visibility and Education and tagged aromantic, asexual, asexuality, friendship, language, love, nonromantic love, nonsexual love, plato, platonic love, relationships, romance, romantic love, sexuality, words on June 6, 2012. 5 Comments

Platonic Life Partnerships Take Courage

The following thoughts have been percolating in my brain over the last few weeks and reached a fullness last night when I was talking it out to my sister over the phone. I want to share this with you, fellow aces and aromantics, because I think it’s something that many of you probably haven’t considered. It took me quite a long time to consider it, and I’ve been thinking about nonsexual primary love for a decade or more.

Clarification: the relationship I’m talking about in this post is a primary platonic/queerplatonic relationship, not a nonsexual romantic relationship. I personally don’t differentiate, in my own life and heart, between nonsexual “romantic” love and nonsexual “platonic/not-romantic” love, but for the purpose of comprehension, I will treat them as two separate types of love/relationship because most people see them that way.

*****When I say “primary platonic partnership,” I mean a relationship that occupies that space in the lives of both partners, where they are each other’s most important person, they live together in a committed way, they intend to stay together regardless of whatever other relationships happen in their lives, they share in each other’s Big Life Things, they’re each other’s main go-to person for whatever, etc. I mean a relationship that both people have openly, verbally established as being their primary partnership. It’s called “partnership” for a reason. This is a hell of a lot more involved and serious than common friendship, even the average best friendship.

Main Thought: Most romantic-sexual people don’t have the courage to commit to a primary platonic life partnership.

Why would they need courage? Because choosing to have a primary platonic life partner instead of a romantic-sexual life partner is the most subversive act a romantic-sexual person could make in the contemporary social world. It is a radical departure from everything that is considered “normal” and standard. A primary platonic life partnership is something that most people don’t understand, don’t accept as valid, have never even heard of before, etc. Not to mention that if a romantic-sexual person in a primary platonic life partnership has just signed up to deal with a long list of complications in their social life that may or may not subside with time. Primary platonic life partnerships don’t have a script, don’t have a pre-established framework in our culture, don’t have legal recognition as being equal to a romantic-sexual monogamous relationship, don’t even have effective language to describe and communicate about them!

If you’re a romantic-sexual person with a primary platonic life partner of the same sex, people around you will question or suspect that you’re gay, and if your PLP is of the opposite sex, they’ll either assume it’s a heterosexual relationship or strongly question why it *isn’t*** a heterosexual relationship.

How do you introduce your PLP to your family? To your other friends?

Where do you find a community of people who understands what your relationship is and how important it is?

What examples do you look toward, to know how you should conduct the relationship or negotiate it into the rest of your life?

How do you explain to your lovers that you already have a partner that comes first, even though you aren’t fucking and never have and never will?

Are you ready for the judgment and the confusion and the stares when you bring (if you bring) your PLP to Christmas dinner or a wedding or whatever and you introduce them for what they are and no one else has any idea what you’re talking about and thinks that you’re a freak or lying about the sexual nature of the relationship?

You ready to not fit in with your other romantic-sexual friends who are all living totally normative, ordinary lifestyles? To field their questions and criticisms?

You ready for the question: “Well, what are you going to do if you find the right person to have a romantic-sexual relationship with and you miss out on that opportunity because you tied yourself down to someone who’s just a friend?”

How do you deal with the fact that society won’t view you and your PLP as a “couple” the way they would if you were fucking and romancing each other, even if you live together, even if you rely on each other the most, even if you own property together, have kids together, travel together, do business together, etc?

How do you resist the urge to internalize all of this doubt and disapproval and judgment?

If you and your partner are the only ones in the whole world that you know of who takes your commitment seriously and you aren’t receiving that communal/societal validation on a regular basis, are you strong enough to hold to your relationship anyway, when everything and everyone around you is telling you to be “normal”? To put sex first? To have an ordinary marriage with a lover?

Are you ready to defend yourself and your partner and your relationship on a regular basis?

What do you do if you co-workers or your parents ask about your marital status? Are you “single” because you don’t have a lover or are you “taken” because you DO have a primary partner that you’re emotionally committed to? Aren’t you both?

How do you resist the demands of a lover who wants you to leave your PLP for them and has all of society backing them up?

How do you deal with the potential identity crisis having a PLP might induce? You’re a freak now. You fall outside of the normative social system. Even if you’re heterosexual, you aren’t fully part of the hetero-normative world. You aren’t living like all your other sexual friends. Maybe your PLP is someone of the same sex, in which case what the world sees is not just your opposite-sex lovers but the same-sex person living in your house and escorting you to social functions and identifying as your partner. Maybe your PLP is of the opposite-sex and then no one believes you aren’t fucking and when they find out one or both of you are fucking other people, they’re outraged by that. They say you’re bad to each other or bad to your lovers. If you’re queer and you have a PLP, what do other queer people say about you? What if you’re gay and your PLP is of the opposite-sex? Does your queerness come into question? Can you bring your partner around your queer friends? If your PLP is of the same-sex, how do you deal with the potential condemnation other queer people will shoot your way for not sexualizing that relationship? For seeking sexual relations with other people while prioritizing your PLP?

What if you feel like you need resources as someone pursuing a primary platonic partnership? There aren’t any.

What if you have moments where you question yourself and your relationship and you need someone to validate and affirm your choice and remind you why you’re in the relationship? Who do you talk to? Who gets it? Probably no one you know personally. No, not even a therapist.

What if you have a lover and that lover leaves you, and your friends and family blame your platonic partnership? And you?

What if you’re a heterosexual with a same-sex platonic life partner and your family wouldn’t accept you for being gay and then you tell them you have this PLP and they think that’s bullshit and you’re covering up the fact that you’re gay, even though you aren’t, and then they condemn you on the basis of their erroneous assumptions?

What if you’re out as gay and your family and friends are perfectly accepting of that and then you bring around an opposite-sex PLP and suddenly they think you’re straight after all? But you aren’t straight and you still want your sexual identity taken seriously? What if your PLP is of the same-sex but they’re straight and it comes out that not only are you having sex with other people, they are too and they’re doing it with people of the opposite sex? What if your family and friends think they need to defend you against your partner?

Or if your PLP is asexual, do you tell everyone you know? Then you have to explain asexuality. And half the time sexual people fail to get it or accept it even when it’s explained to them. What if people then think that the only reason you and your PLP aren’t in a romantic-sexual relationship is because your PLP is asexual and holding you hostage in a nonsexual primary relationship when you would be fucking them if you could?

Are you ready to confront your own social conditioning and deconstruct everything you’ve been taught to think since the day you were born, about love and relationships and friendship and family and romance and sexuality? Are you ready to be so conscientious about your relationships, your feelings, your reasoning behind the lifestyle you choose?

The point is this: it’s easy to do the “normal” thing. It’s easy to choose and pursue a normative life. It means you fit in. It means you’re part of the dominant system. It means you minimize the complexities in your life. It means you don’t have to expend all this extra energy and time to explain, defend, negotiate, think about, communicate, etc for the sake of maintaining a relationship that isn’t “normal” by the rest of the world’s standards.

Show up to a family gathering or an outing with your friends and bring your lover and introduce that person as your lover who is the most important person in your life, and everyone gets it. Immediately. No explanation required. Good job, you’re doing it right.

There are many places and cases where even being gay and having a primary sexual relationship with someone of the same-sex would be more readily accepted (and certainly more understood) than being a sexual person in a primary platonic partnership. The one benefit of being queer, if you’re in or looking to be in a primary platonic partnership, is you know what it’s like to not be completely normative, even if you’re fortunate enough to come from an accepting family and have accepting friends and go to an accepting school or work environment. Having a platonic life partner still departs from “normal” more than having same-sex sexual relationships that you make primary in your life, but at least you have some experience with falling outside heteronormative culture.

If you’re heterosexual, on the other hand, having a platonic life partnership can be scary as shit. You’ve been at the top of the “normal” pyramid your whole life and suddenly you’re doing something that’s really radical and giving up some of your “normal” privileges. You have to do the work of being “abnormal.” You can no longer function on autopilot in your social life. You can no longer stop at saying “I’m straight.” That doesn’t sum up your relationship story. You probably aren’t going to get married and have a wedding the way you’re expected to. When you get with your friends and they talk about their lovers, their spouses, their sex lives, dating, etc, you may be able to talk about your sex life, but if the subject is “my partner,” your partner is not the same kind as your friends’.

Basically, if you’re going to live a lifestyle that’s not “normal,” it takes guts.

An asexual or an aromantic doesn’t necessarily have a choice. We are what we are. Especially for those of us who are sex-averse and never having sex or for an aromantic who is NOT at all comfortable doing relationships that look or feel anything like romance, we’re outside the norm by default. And if we’re active in the online community, we’re used to these concepts of alternative relationships based around nonsexuality. We have the language, the ideas, more readily at hand. We’re already in a position where we have to explain what we are to other people so adding a relationship to that spiel isn’t out of our depth. We’ve probably put a lot of thought into the subject of a primary platonic relationship before we actually get into one, if we get into one.

I honestly don’t think most romantic-sexual people have the courage to take on the challenges (willingly) of a lifestyle so alternative as one including a primary nonsexual/nonromantic relationship. And it’s logical of them. Pursuing a normative relationship style is easiest, and human beings tend to go with the path of least resistance whenever they can. Why not, right?

To go down a more difficult road, by choice, knowing what you’re in for and that you could be going down the easy road instead, requires a powerfully compelling reason. The payoff has to look like it outweighs the cost. A romantic-sexual person who chooses a primary platonic life partner would have to feel so much love, so much connection with that other person, that not being partners with them feels unbearable. A hell of a lot more unbearable than being a freak in society and putting up with all the bullshit that entails.

And frankly? I just don’t believe that the vast majority of romantic-sexual people will or can love someone nonsexually and nonromantically to that degree. Not that it’s necessarily a choice…. The formation of a friendship such that it is primary partnership material for romantic-sexual people is rare and always has been, if my study of nonsexual love in history is any indication.

So as someone who wants a nonsexual/nonromantic partnership with a woman (in addition to a nonsexual partnership with a man), I need that woman to be someone who knows how to handle this situation with grace and patience and courage. I need a woman who wants it as enthusiastically as I do. I need a woman who doesn’t have a problem with going around to her friends and family and saying, “This is my life partner and we aren’t sexually involved and we aren’t really romantic either and she’s the one I want to be with for good and this is what that means and if you still don’t get it after I explain it to you, I don’t care. This also has no bearing on my sexual orientation or my romantic orientation. I expect you to respect this relationship and the commitment I’ve made to it and treat me and my partner the way you would treat any other couple you know.”

Why I ever believed that my heterosexual childhood friend could be that kind of person, I have no idea, but it’s very clear to me now how ridiculous it is to expect all that from someone like her.

I need a woman who’s aromantic (and perhaps also asexual)—because that’s the sort of person who can not only be trusted with a primary platonic life partnership but the sort of person who is most prepared to actually carry it out in the real world.

Posted in Aromanticism, Celibate Asexuality, Love & Relationships and tagged alternative relationships, aromantic, aromanticism, asexual, asexuality, love, nonsexual love, platonic life partners, platonic life partnerships, platonic love, queerplatonic, queerplatonic life partners, relationship anarchy on May 6, 2012.

A Personal Reflection on Platonic Life Partnerships

My aunt is in a long-term, emotionally exclusive, committed platonic partnership. She’s a heterosexual woman. Her platonic partner is a heterosexual man. They’ve been living together for over 10 years. They have never engaged in sexual activity.

Their relationship is a radical one for several reasons: it’s an example of cross-sex friendship that did not start in sexuality or include it later on, it’s an example of two sexual people in a primary nonsexual and nonromantic relationship, it’s an example of a platonic partnership that has enjoyed emotional exclusivity despite the fact both people in it are romantic and yet not romantically involved with each other (for all intents and purposes), it’s an example of a heterosexual man finding happiness in a nonsexual partnership (in general and with a woman), etc.

My aunt and her partner are now in their early 50s; they met in their early 40s. Thus, they’d both lived a lot of life beforehand. My aunt always thought she wanted a traditional marriage and children, and she met her partner on a date that was supposed to lead to a romantic relationship and marriage. Her partner’s never been married or had children either and at the time was at least looking for a girlfriend. Yet for some reason, their relationship never evolved in that direction. But they hit it off enough that he asked her to move in with him, and she said yes. They’ve been living together ever since, and are quite happy. He’s had casual sex with other women during the years of their cohabitation but never a girlfriend. She’s never had a boyfriend during their partnership either.

I should also mention that my aunt is a virgin. She, like all the women on my mother’s side of the family, is devoutly Catholic and doesn’t believe that extramarital sex is appropriate. She had boyfriends in her youth but never allowed any kind of genital activity. (My mother didn’t either, for the record.) She’s never been married, thus she’s never had sex. She wouldn’t have consented to sex with her partner even in the initial stages of their friendship because they obviously weren’t married. I assume that at some point, it became clear theirs was a platonic relationship, not a romantic one, and that altering the nature of their relationship to include romance or sex would’ve felt awkward and unnatural.

Their relationship, which began when I was a child around the age of 9 or 10, serves as this fascinating anomaly and example for me, a young celibate asexual interested in long-term intimate partnership. And their relationship doesn’t just represent love possible for asexuals but the possibility of nonsexual and/or nonromantic primary life partnerships between two sexual people as well.

It must be said that of all the primary relationships I’ve witnessed in my family, nuclear and extended, this platonic partnership has been the most successful and happy and stable. My parents’ marriage disintegrated quickly and painfully. My father’s sister is divorced. My father’s parents split when he was a toddler. My mother’s biological parents were never together and my grandmother’s relationship with my step grandfather, while ultimately lasting, hasn’t been without its troubles (including infidelity). My mother’s brother is divorced and now into his second marriage. You get the idea.

Yet amongst all that bullshit, there’s this curious platonic relationship that happened quite out of the blue and continues to serve my aunt and her partner beautifully. My aunt, who’s close to my mother and talks with her at length several times a week, has remarked to her in the past: “I’m glad I never got married. I look at you and your marriage and I’m much happier than you ever were.” Now that my aunt’s in her 50s, she’s also abandoned her interest in children, which she definitely harbored through her 20s and 30s. Her partner, likewise, has gotten so comfortable with their partnership that it would be nothing short of illogical and ridiculous to leave it in pursuit of a traditional romantic-sexual marriage.

The bottom line is that this man and woman provide each other with all the emotional satisfaction and companionship they want, and sex was never relevant. It’s less relevant to him, the one who was sexually active before, than I’m sure it once was. He may have casual sex with other women from time to time, but there’s no question in his mind that his partner is my aunt. He’s not interested in leaving her for a conventional girlfriend, he’s not interested in traditional marriage with someone else. They’re both clear on the primacy of their partnership and their commitment to each other and have been for quite some time. I’m not sure how quickly they quit looking for intimacy outside of each other but it seems like it happened pretty fast.

And I suppose it’s nothing more than common sense. There’s no sex in this relationship and there’s arguably no romance either—yet functionally, it’s identical to a conventional marriage in all the ways that matter. Why go looking for something you already have? Especially in their late middle age and especially with the knowledge of other peoples’ marital failures and misery. They have love, they have stability, they have commitment, they have cohabitation, they have friendship, they have support. For them, this is enough. If a need arises for sex, my aunt’s partner finds it elsewhere. And apparently, neither my aunt nor her partner has spent time complaining about a lack of romance.

It’s one of the few real life examples I have of nonsexual (and, in their case, nonromantic) primary life partnership, and I often overlook it when I’m in the midst of intense pessimism or despair about my own relationship desires, as a celibate asexual. Yet when I remember my aunt, I have no choice but to acknowledge that her relationship is real. It’s a real life example, in my own family, of the sort of relationship I want—and what’s more, it’s an example of deviation from the romantic-sexual monogamous (marriage) standard. And it’s not amongst asexuals but between two sexual people! (It also knocks that idea of “men and women can’t be friends” on its ass.)

It makes me think, not just of my own personal relationships, but of how we might revise the American cultural conceptualization of relationships and life partnership. I compare this partnership to all the failed and problematic romantic-sexual monogamous relationships in my family (and my friends’ families) for a reason. I think it’s particularly important to acknowledge that romantic-sexual monogamy is highly volatile; I’d go so far as to say it’s the most unstable form of relationship two humans can engage in. Does it succeed sometimes? Yes. But it fails just as often and that failure, in the context of a relationship hierarchy where the romantic-sexual monogamous relationship occupies a superior position over all other relationships and hoards the emotional intimacy of both partners, is especially damaging and painful.

Romantic-sexual monogamy, ending in marriage, continues to be the dominant social expectation—regardless of how far we’ve progressed and regardless of how deeply problematic traditional marriage is for millions and millions. Fewer and fewer Americans are getting married at all, and the ones who do choose marriage are stalling it for later in their lives than previous trends. One thing celibate asexuality has the potential and power to encourage is alternatives to conventional marriage and romantic-sexual monogamous primary relationships. Some sexual people may find that, even while they have sex lives and romance blended into their sex lives, a nonsexual primary relationship is more suitable to them. If nothing else, nonsexual primary relationships may provide a healthier and happier stability to a sexual person who experiences common levels of volatility and transience in their romantic/sexual relations with others.

To illustrate, let me create an example that’s a little different than my aunt’s relationship with her partner:

Say Jenny is a heterosexual female. She decides to enter into a committed nonsexual relationship with Anne, they move in together, they share everything, etc. (Whether their relationship is romantic or platonic makes no difference.) Jenny continues to have sexual relationships with men and sometimes, those relationships are also romantic. She enjoys them for what they provide but Anne is her partner, the person she lives with and depends on. If she’s romantically/sexually involved with a man and then, that man breaks up with her, Jenny’s living situation is not disturbed, and she still has a primary partner who continues to provide her with support and companionship and love. Her partnership with Anne is mostly smooth and harmonious. While the ending of a sexual or romantic-sexual relationship with a man may upset Jenny somewhat, it’s a lot less upsetting than it could be because that break-up doesn’t mean a loss of Jenny’s primary source of emotional intimacy, companionship, support, etc. Anne is that source. So no matter who breaks up with Jenny, she isn’t alone. She has a home, she has physical and emotional companionship, she’s got stability, she’s got someone in her life she can trust and depend on, etc. And her partnership with Anne obviously does not prevent Jenny from playing with others sexually and/or romantically. Jenny and Anne respect their commitment to each other and value it and derive significant pleasure from placing it in a central position. Jenny likes having Anne for her primary partner, and so Anne has no reason to care who else Jenny plays with outside of their partnership. (If Anne is sexually and/or romantically inclined, Jenny likewise doesn’t have to care about those extra relations either.) As long as the commitment and integrity of their partnership is preserved, they’re free to do whatever suits them individually, while having a stable relationship in their lives that attends to their emotional and practical needs. Anne and Jenny’s partnership may also make Jenny’s sex/romance life better, by taking the pressure off of those sexual/romantic relationships to be her main source of love/stability/commitment and allowing them to unfold in ways that provide her with fun.

That’s just one possible model for how a nonsexual primary partnership might work. My aunt’s relationship with her partner is another.

I would love to live in a world where these kinds of partnerships are commonplace, but in order for that to happen, beyond opening up this dialogue of possibilities, it takes action. It takes real live people making the choice to pursue this lifestyle rather than a conventional one where romantic-sexual relationships are primary. Sometimes, these relationships happen accidentally, like it did for my aunt. But I think for the most part, it’s only going to happen if people make a deliberate choice to go with it, to ask for it, to think about it, to take it seriously, etc. Instead of sitting back and thinking about what a cool idea this is, I think its time for more people to give it some serious thought—to think not only about nonsexual primary relationships but to ask themselves what they really want and why, to question the normative relationship model not as something universally faulty and bad but as a model that isn’t the only option or the automatic best option.

What are the pros and cons of a romantic-sexual monogamous primary partnership? What are the pros and cons of a nonsexual primary partnership? How do they compare for you, the individual? And if, upon making that comparison, you find that a nonsexual and/or nonromantic primary partnership looks more appealing—why wouldn’t you move forward with making that happen, instead of defaulting to romantic-sexual monogamy at the top of your pyramid? We’re free to do it. We’re free to do whatever we want. Society may scorn alternative relationships but they don’t have the power to stop people from pursuing them. I hate that even I seem to assign power to institutionalized relationship norms and marriage as if these things have power outside of the humans who continue to participate in them. Of course they don’t. A dominant relationship trend is no more than the sum of several individual choices.

We have the freedom to choose differently. Celibate asexuals don’t have much choice, romantic-sexual monogamous relationships aren’t for us, but nonsexual and/or nonromantic primary relationships are options for sexual people too, whether a sexual person pairs with an asexual or another sexual person. And if you’re sexually active, choosing a nonsexual primary relationship doesn’t limit you: it actually gives you far more freedom. Unless you agree within your nonsexual primary relationship to be both physically and emotionally exclusive, there’s nothing to say you can’t still have sex and/or romance with people besides your primary partner. (Platonic/nonsexual romantic relationships challenge the hell out of monogamy, as you can see.)

Anyway. I expect my aunt and her platonic partner to be together until the end. It’ll be cool to watch. I appreciate having an example of this kind of relationship so close to home.

Posted in Aromanticism, Celibate Asexuality, Love & Relationships, Personal and tagged alternative relationships, cross-sex friendship, love, nonsexual love, platonic life partners, platonic love, relationship anarchy on March 24, 2012. 1 Comment

Love that Thrills and Delights Me

I love nonsexual love and intimacy that is intense, passionate, tender, warm, emotional, and lasting.

I love nonsexual romance.

I love relationships that blur the line between friendship and romance.

I love relationships that dismiss boundaries between the platonic and romantic altogether.

I love the kind of nonsexual relationship that is so emotionally deep and intense and loving that not even the people in it know how to label it.

I love nonsexual life partnerships.

I love the idea of nonsexual soul mates.

I love platonic life partnerships.

I love the idea of two people who love each other nonsexually and/or nonromantically choosing to put each other first for life and being happy together, as happy as they could ever be.

I love seeing two men love each other nonsexually but with great emotional intensity and depth and commitment—whether they’re in a nonsexual romantic relationship or romantic friendship or at the height of platonic love.

I love physical affection taking place abundantly in nonsexual relationships.

It makes me happy when two asexuals find love with each other.

It makes me happy when two aromantics find love with each other.

It makes me happy when two people commit to each other as nonsexual romantic partners.

It makes me happy when two people commit to each other as platonic life partners.

It makes me happy when nonsexual love is extremely intense and important and deep, when it has the freedom to thrive and expand beyond all limits.

It makes me happy when platonic love is taken as seriously as romantic love and when it is respected just as much.

It makes me happy when two people in a nonsexual romantic or platonic relationship cuddle and hug and hold hands and kiss and caress and sleep in the same bed and dance with each other and do this freely and confidently and joyfully.

It makes me happy when people choose a nonsexual life partnership.

It makes me happy when people understand nonsexual romance or romantic friendship or primary platonic relationships.

It makes me happy when two nonsexual partners spend their lives together in perfect harmony and contentment.

It makes me happy when intimacy in platonic relationships reaches the degree of intimacy in romantic relationships.

It makes me happy when an asexual finds committed, celibate love.

I love epic nonsexual love.

I love the kind of nonsexual love that feels so deep and intense and powerful, it’s beyond description.

I love the kind of nonsexual love that can be viscerally felt and experienced.

I love nonsexual love that is warm and affectionate and special and multi-dimensional.

I love nonsexual love that’s deliciously complex.

I love platonic love that adopts romantic elements.

I love it when people who love each other nonsexually and/or nonromantically profess their feelings to each other.

I love it when nonsexual and/or nonromantic love is the kind that matters most.

I love nonsexual love that is the primary, joy-giving, emotional focus in someone’s life.

I love it when a man and a woman love each other nonsexually and/or nonromantically and when that love is still deep and compelling and tender and important to them.

I love relationships that fulfill their own impulses, whatever they may be.

I love it when people are free to love as many others as their hearts want and when they do it happily and easily and harmoniously.

I love the idea of someone proposing to their nonsexual and/or nonromantic love.

I love it when two people who love each other nonsexually and/or nonromantically look at each other with so much emotion, their bond is naked on their faces.

I love it when a person’s desire is for a nonsexual and/or nonromantic partner.

I love nonsexual polyamory. I love platonic polyamory.

I love nonsexual relationships that defy categorization.

I love the idea of two people who love each other nonsexually living happily ever after.

Posted in Asexual Pride, Celibate Asexuality, Love & Relationships and tagged aromantic, aromanticism, asexual, asexuality, love, nonsexual love, nonsexual romance, platonic love, platonic partnerships on March 24, 2012. Leave a comment

Men Deserve Access to Nonsexual Love

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but Western Culture loves to sexualize positive male emotion. Male emotion is grossly oversimplified, at least in mainstream media depictions, although I have some personal experience informing me that in daily life, that oversimplification still applies. Males are generally allowed to express and feel negative emotion more than females, yet when it comes to positive emotion in a social context, males are disturbingly limited to channeling all that emotion into their sex lives.

Emotional restraint is a problematic feature of traditional masculinity that continues to affect males of all ages today, despite living in post-feminist society. Males are raised, from early childhood, to have specific emotional control. Certain emotions are acceptable and others are not. Acceptable emotions are only appropriate in certain contexts. Negotiating his public and socio-emotional experience and behavior heavily determines a male’s masculine image and his own self-image. Anger is the most acceptable, masculine emotion. Sadness, on the other hand, is usually not appropriate for public expression. (There are exceptions, of course, such as funerals.) Pride and aggressive confidence are encouraged; insecurity is decidedly not masculine. Expressing emotions publicly that have been deemed inappropriate (read: effeminate) results in the shaming of a male. He internalizes that shame, even to the point where his own private expression or experience of these emotions leads to shame, embarrassment, or guilt.

When it comes to love, I’ve noticed that men are expected to channel most of their loving emotions through their sexuality. It is acceptable for a male to feel love in a sexual relationship and to feel that love without any restraint whatsoever. He’s expected to express his feelings to his romantic-sexual partner and when he fails to do so, he is criticized for being cold, emotionally inept, or unromantic. The media often depicts male love as a result of sex rather than sex a result of love, and since one of the oldest and primary tenets of successful masculinity is high sexual performance and promiscuity, that depiction makes sense. According to the mainstream rules and portrayals of masculinity, males are sexual beings first, emotional beings second.This attitude is apparent in all-male social situations, where males encourage sexuality and avoid emotional talk or acknowledgment of each other’s emotional desires and experiences. It’s also apparent in common interpretations of maleness by women (I’m thinking primarily of heterosexual women). We criticize males for “only caring about one thing” and “not being in touch with their emotions,” even while we judge them by their sexual achievements and emasculate them when they’re too emotional or “inappropriately” emotional according to masculinity’s guidelines.

Males are extremely limited by the rules of masculinity when it comes to engaging in and expressing their emotions in nonsexual relationships. Women tend to have a little more wiggle room to explore nonsexual romance with other women or the emotional power of platonic relationships. Men, on the other hand, are so enslaved by the sexualized masculinity standard that often, their only option for experiencing meaningful emotional connection to others is through sexual romance. A man is indoctrinated to sexualize his own emotions, to read his attachment or interest in emotional intimacy as being sexual in nature, since he is socially prohibited from fully engaging his emotions or seeking intimacy with friends, family members, or other emotionally/physically platonic partners. He is prohibited from seeking nongenital physical affection uninhibitedly from anyone other than his sexual partners: touching is heavily sexualized in American culture no matter what your gender, and for a male who is understood as a hypersexual being by society, his seeking of physical affection is all the more likely to be interpreted as indicative of sexual desire. This prohibits him (if he is heterosexual) from freely engaging in physical affection with other males, for the sake of preserving his heterosexual identity in public, and it can also be heavily discouraged in his platonic friendships with women (if he has any) because of the risk that those women will misinterpret his behavior as being sexually motivated.

This is why asexual men, when they’re actually acknowledged as real live human beings, are usually assumed to be completely aromantic and/or asocial. What few media depictions of asexual males or sexually disinterested males exist characterize them as being anti-social or even sociopathic. Deep emotion is nowhere in sight for these males. They also completely lack any desire for physical affection. Their emotional and social coldness is only compensated for via their above average intellect, a particular talent, and/or their single-minded focus on work. We, as a society, cannot accept a man who experiences emotions divorced from sex. We cannot accept a man who seeks love, who seeks romance, who is a fully functional emotional being and yet feels his feelings and desires without sexuality as a motivating factor.

When a man shows emotional interest or attachment to a woman, we immediately sexualize it in our minds because on a subconscious level, we still don’t believe that males and females can love each other nonsexually. (Unless they’re biologically related or have different sexual orientations, and even then, the emotional substance of the relationship is nowhere near that of a romantic-sexual relationship.)

When a man shows strong emotional interest or attachment to another man, the majority vote wants to declare him or his emotions homosexual—because now, we don’t even want to believe that two men can be fully emotionally engaged with each other outside of sex either.

And if the man’s emotions are romantic? Forget it. Must also be sexual.

We have rendered the modern male incapable of platonic love, incapable of experiencing romantic feelings without sex, incapable of valuing physical affection outside of sexual relationships. We hold him to the sexual standard of traditional, mainstream masculinity.

He is free to fuck whoever he wants—but when it comes to emotions, when it comes to love, he is in bondage. He must feel according the rules, love according to the rules. He can either love a person sexually or feel nothing for them at all, with the exception of anger, hatred, and tendency toward violence.

You may sit there and say, “Well, that’s an exaggeration, of course men love their families and their children and, yeah okay, probably, maybe their friends.”

But love is more than just a word. It’s more than an assumption. Men must be allowed to express that love as much as they want, however they want. They must be allowed to really feel it, however the feeling comes, whether it’s for a friend or a family member or someone that falls into a totally different category yet still is not a sexual interest. They must be given the freedom to make any given nonsexual relationship as emotional as they want it to be.

No heterosexual man in 21st century America, an allegedly “free” and “progressive” society, should have to question or defend his sexuality based on feeling deep emotions toward another male.

He should not be expected to sexualize his feelings every time he feels connected to a female.

Nor should we automatically assume that a queer man’s strong feelings for another male are indiscriminately sexual or that, if he has deep feelings (even romantic feelings) for a female, that he is somehow less queer.

Asexual men, furthermore, are not all anti-social hermits who would hiss at you for coming within a five foot radius of them. They do love people, they do sometimes have romantic feelings, they do value companionship.

We, as spectators, should not be making assumptions about the nature of a male’s feelings or his desire for intimacy or physical affection, based on the ridiculous notion that all he really wants is sex. (Nobody should assume they know the nature of anyone else’s feelings, for the record, unless you’ve been told by said person.)

Men are entitled to fully experience and express all forms of nonsexual love. They should have the freedom to engage with others emotionally in a nonsexual context, to explore the complexity and richness of feelings for people they are not sexually attracted to, and to experience deeper levels of emotional intimacy outside of sexual relationships. Men deserve the freedom and the opportunity to freely love other men in platonic relationships, understanding that they are allowed and capable of feeling powerful emotional connection in male-male nonsexual relationships. Men deserve the freedom and the opportunity to explore their individual capacity for nonsexual romantic love, whether with women or other men. Men deserve the freedom to give and receive nonsexual physical affection with anyone they feel inclined to share it with. It should be safe for them to seek out this affection and this emotional intimacy. They should feel comfortable wanting it and comfortable asking for it and comfortable receiving it. Men should be able to safely make themselves vulnerable to people they are not sexually involved with.

It is time that men are allowed by society and also by themselves to function at their fullest emotional and relational potential, without the world making interpretations about their emotional connections through a sexualized lens. It’s time that men are seen as emotional beings first, sexual beings second. It’s time that men realize they are free to have relationships of emotional depth and significance that are also completely nonsexual; it’s time they realize they’re free to have social lives that are a hell of a lot more complex than “One very emotional romantic-sexual monogamous relationship/many sexual relationships and a bunch of emotionally shallow nonsexual relationships.” It’s time men are freed to experience romance outside of sexuality, if they are so inclined to explore that. It’s time we stop expecting men to sexually perform as justification for their emotions. It’s time we all understand that the emotional content of a male’s relationships has absolutely no bearing on his masculinity.

Note: There is a difference between platonic love and nonsexual romantic love, and I think men can and should be able to experience both in whatever ways they wish. Both these types of love have nothing to do with a man’s sexual orientation.

Posted in Aromanticism, Celibate Asexuality, Love & Relationships, Sexuality, Touch and tagged love, masculinity, men, nonsexual love, nonsexual romance, platonic love, relationships, romantic friendship on March 24, 2012.

https://thethinkingasexual.wordpress.com/tag/platonic-love/

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He whom love touches not walks in darkness. —Plato
Whereas Aristotle is not nearly as interested in erotic love (erôs) as he is in friendship (philia), for Plato the best kind of friendship is that which lovers can have for each other. It is a philia that is born out of erôs, and that in turn feeds back into erôs to strengthen and to develop it.

"I want to know God’s thoughts… the rest are details" .
— Albert Einstein

ASEXUAL IS COOL- PLATONIC LOVE IS ENOUGH FOR MILLIONS AND MILLIONS GLOGALLY

COMMENT:

The real issue...

Submitted by GoodAtTruth on June 24, 2012 - 8:00am

... plato gets at some fundamental truths but only those people with the right confluence of biological traits can live that way in a way that isn't harmful to them. Many people simply cannot turn off their disgust with ugly or fat people for instance, most people hold their own views and emotional sentiments as sacred and don't think very deeply (if they are even biologically capable of such).

When plato is seeking ideals this is pre-scientific revolution, we now know that the universe works on things like energy, and people are just biological machines made of meat. i.e. if plato were alive today he'd see that all the higher ideal behaviors and thoughts have dependencies on the physical structure of the human body and mind.

He would probably love computers, since they are pretty close to the 'world of ideas' he so imagined.

You could order a society ideally based on programmed robots without consciousness but even then the laws of nature, wear and tear on the their bodies would effect their functioning and create less ideal or unexpected behavior.

Plato on True Love

Plato's account of true love is still the most subtle and beautiful there is.

Post published by Neel Burton M.D. on Jun 23, 2012 in Hide and Seek

He whom love touches not walks in darkness. —Plato

Whereas Aristotle is not nearly as interested in erotic love (erôs) as he is in friendship (philia), for Plato the best kind of friendship is that which lovers can have for each other. It is a philia that is born out of erôs, and that in turn feeds back into erôs to strengthen and to develop it.

Like philosophy itself, erôs aims at transcending human existence, at connecting it with the eternal and infinite, and thereby at achieving the only species of immortality that is open to us as human beings. Not only does philia strengthen and develop erôs, but it also transforms it from a lust for possession into a shared desire for a higher level of understanding of the self, the other, and the universe. In short, philia transforms erôs from a lust for possession into an impulse for philosophy.

As Nietzsche put it in his book of 1882, The Gay Science,

Here and there on earth we may encounter a kind of continuation of love in which this possessive craving of two people for each other gives way to a new desire and lust for possession—a shared higher thirst for an ideal above them. But who knows such love? Who has experienced it? Its right name is friendship.

In other words, if erotic love can be transformed into the best kind of friendship, then it can open up a blissful life of shared understanding in which desire, friendship, and philosophy are in perfect resonance with one another.

Plato’s theory of love is fleshed out in the Phaedrus and the Symposium. Like many Greeks of his era and social position, Plato is most interested in the same-sex desire that can exist between an older and a younger man, but there is no reason to suppose that his theory of love does not also apply to other kinds of erotic relationship. That having been said, Plato distinguishes the kind of love that can give rise to philia from a baser kind of love that is enjoyed by those who are more given to the body than to the soul. Rather than underpin the search for truth, this baser kind of love is almost designed to impede it, and calls into my mind the song of Fanny Crowne in Aldous Huxley’s dystopian novel of 1932, Brave New World. In this song, Fanny Crowne compares love to soma, a hallucinogenic drug that has been engineered to take users on enjoyable, hangover-free ‘holidays’, and that is described as having ‘all the advantages of Christianity and alcohol [but] none of their defects’.

Hug me till you drug me, honey; Kiss me till I’m in a coma:
Hug me, honey, snugly bunny; Love’s as good as soma.

In the Phaedrus, Socrates says that, although madness can be an illness, it can also be the source of man’s greatest blessings. There are four forms of such ‘divine madness’, prophecy from Apollo, holy prayers and mystic rites from Dionysus, poetry from the Muses, and—the highest form—love from Aphrodite and Eros. The madness of love arises from seeing the beauty of the earth and being reminded of true, universal beauty. Unfortunately, most earthly souls are so corrupted by the body, ‘that living tomb which we carry about’, that they lose all memory for the universals. When their eyes fall upon the beauty of the earth, they are merely given over to pleasure, and ‘like a brutish beast’ rush on to enjoy and beget. In contrast, the earthly soul that is able to remember true, universal beauty and so to feel true love gazes upon the face of his beloved and reverences it as an expression of the divine—of temperance, justice, and knowledge absolute. As his eyes catch those of his beloved, a shudder passes into an unusual heat and perspiration. The parts of the soul out of which the wings grew, and which had hitherto been closed and rigid, begin to melt open, and small wings begin to swell and grow from the root upwards.

Like a child whose teeth are just starting to grow in, and its gums are all aching and itching—that is exactly how the soul feels when it begins to grow wings. It swells up and aches and tingles as it grows them.

The lover feels the utmost joy when he is with his beloved and the most intense longing when they are separated. When they are separated, the parts out of which the lover’s wings are growing begin to dry out and close up, and the pain is such that he prizes his beloved above all else, utterly unable to think a bad thought about him, let alone to betray or forsake him. The lover whose soul was once the follower of Zeus among all the other gods seeks out a beloved who shares in his god’s philosophical and imperial nature, and then does all he can to confirm this nature in him. Thus, the desire of the divinely inspired lover can only be fair and blissful to the beloved. In time, the beloved, who is no common fool, comes to realize that his divinely inspired lover is worth more to him than all his other friends and kinsmen put together, and that neither human discipline nor divine inspiration could have offered him any greater blessing.

Thus great are the heavenly blessings which the friendship of a lover will confer upon you ... Whereas the attachment of the non-lover, which is alloyed with a worldly prudence and has worldly and niggardly ways of doling out benefits, will breed in your soul those vulgar qualities which the populace applaud, will send you bowling round the earth during a period of nine thousand years, and leave you a fool in the world below.

There is in terms of the ideas covered quite a lot of overlap between the Phaedrus and the Symposium. However, whereas in the Phaedrus Plato emphasizes the relationship that love has to the divine and hence to the eternal and infinite, in the Symposium he emphasizes more the relationship that it has to the practice of philosophy, the search for happiness, and the contemplation of truth.

In the Symposium, Socrates argues that, if love is not of nothing, then it is of something, and if it is of something, then it is of something that is desired, and therefore of something that is not possessed. He then relates a conversation that he once had with a priestess called Diotima of Mantinea, from whom he learned the art of love. Diotima (‘honoured by the gods’) told him that the something that love desires but does not possess consists of extremely beautiful and extremely good things, and particularly of wisdom, which is both extremely beautiful and extremely good. Love, said Diotima, must not be confused with the object of love, which, in contrast to love itself, is perfectly beautiful and perfectly good. If love desires but does not possess beautiful and good things, then love cannot, as most people think, be a god. Love is in truth the child of Poverty and Resource, always in need, but always inventive. He is not a god but a great spirit (daimon) who intermediates between gods and men. As such, he is neither mortal nor immortal, neither wise nor ignorant, but a lover of wisdom (philosophos). No one who is wise wants to become wise, so too no one who is ignorant wants to become wise. ‘For herein is the evil of ignorance, that he who is neither good nor wise is nevertheless satisfied with himself: he has no desire for that of which he feels no want.’ The aim of loving beautiful and good things is to possess them, because the possession of beautiful and good things is happiness, and happiness is an end-in-itself.

Diotima then told Socrates of the proper way to learn to love beauty. A youth should first be taught to love one beautiful body so that he comes to realize that this beautiful body shares beauty with other beautiful bodies, and thus that it is foolish to love just one beautiful body. In loving all beautiful bodies, he learns to appreciate that the beauty of the soul is superior to the beauty of the body, and begins to love those who are beautiful in soul regardless of whether they are also beautiful in body. Once he has transcended the physical, he gradually finds that beautiful practices and customs and the various kinds of knowledge also share in a common beauty. Finally, he is able to experience beauty itself, rather than the various apparitions of beauty. By exchanging the various apparitions of virtue for virtue itself, he gains immortality and the love of the gods. This is why love is so important, and why it deserves so much praise.

For Aristotle, happiness involves the exercise of reason because the capacity to reason is the distinctive function of human beings. However, it could be argued that the distinctive function of human beings is not the capacity to reason but the capacity to form meaningful, loving relationships. Plato reconciles these positions by blending desire, friendship, and philosophy into a single total experience that transcends and transforms human existence and that connects it with the timeless and universal truths of the eternal and infinite. For Plato, truth and authenticity are a higher value than either reason or love, which aim at them, and a higher value even than happiness, which is merely the manifestation of their presence.

Neel Burton is author of The Meaning of Madness, The Art of Failure: The Anti Self-Help Guide, Hide and Seek: The Psychology of Self-Deception, Heaven and Hell: The Psychology of the Emotions, and other books.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/hide-and-seek/201206/plato-true-love

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Is No Sex The New Normal?

June 18, 2015Uncategorized

Lots of healthy and passionate women in lengthy intimate relationships are not having sex. I’m not talking about partners in sexual standoffs because of their toxic, disconnected relationships. This is a love story — and growing trend — about connected couples that cuddle and kiss, and perhaps play around in what sex therapists have termed “outercourse” — which is everything but intercourse.

Though some happy mates aren’t even going for that.

I heard dozens of stories about lasting love minus the sex during the research for my latest book “Sex After…Women Share How Intimacy Changes As Life Changes.” My subjects spoke of being bound by the heart and history rather than the loins. I found it was the younger women of hooking-up age and older widows who were dating for the first time in 50-plus years that were the most breathless, even exploratory, about sex. Many midlife women were going through a dry spell — that had lasted months, even years.

Dips in desire from dealing with menopause and erectile issues were only partially responsible. Women gave many different answers to the question: “Why aren’t you having sex?” They talked of not wanting to be touched. Of being too busy. Too exhausted. Too self-absorbed. I often heard: “It’s too much work.”

“I need to feel sexy but I don’t need sex,” was one memorable line from Lynne, a 55-year-old woman who is “madly in love” with her husband with whom she just celebrated an 18th year anniversary. They peck hello and good night but haven’t had sex since New Year’s Eve, 2011. I heard from Lynne and others how the nature of true intimacy is about so much more than what our bodies can do. Here is more from her on going from daily sex to no sex:

Lynne:

When I met Ron it was extremely sexual — our record was five times in one day, and we would average six times a week. Then the norm became once a week, then twice a month, and now — nothing. When I hit menopause there was very little lubrication and at the same time my desire started to dry up. My husband was very accepting because his drop in libido matched mine.

We have all the cuddling and hugging and kissing, and all that’s wonderful. I admit that I miss intercourse, of being joined as one. I just don’t miss it enough to do anything about it. Without the inclination, there is no motivation.

So while I am having sadness over the loss of intimacy I don’t have any real desire to have sex. So It’s a Catch 22 — I want to want to, but I just don’t. We talk about having oral sex, we’re just not hot and heavy enough to both head South.

Yet this is a man that I am more madly in love with than when we were having sex several times a day. We have so many life experiences together, raising children, traveling, talking for hours. On an emotional and spiritual level we have an incredible bond. It’s more than a lack of hormones — there are just no more feelings of wanting to jump on each other. And neither of us want to take desire-inducing drugs.

I spoke to my gynecologist about it, and she said: “There are a lot of women in my practice not having sex any more and they are perfectly happy in their marriages. So don’t stress over it. You have a quality marriage without it.”

I’ve had a lot of time in this new phase of our lives to think about what sexuality really means. I realize that our hotness for each other was never just sex. It was an expression of deep love. Now without the physical passion that spiritual passion has become even more fiery.

Lynne’s story mirrors other women who shared how soulful love was sustaining their relationships more than mind-blowing sex. Gina, 52, is married for 20 years to a man who just turned 60. Their three children are in college. Like Lynne, she, too, was “hot, hot, hot — we couldn’t keep our hands off of each other,” during their courtship and in the first years of marriage. And now?

“Little or no touching,” said Gina. “Though I am still very attracted to him. I love his looks. I love the way he smells. But right now, I am in me-mode. I do not feel like sharing my body with anybody, even this person I love dearly. I want to get into bed and go to sleep, and not get all riled up and sweaty. We both hope that this is a phase, but I can’t promise you this is a phase. It’s starting to feel normal.”

Is no sex increasingly becoming the new normal? The answer is “yes” if it feels normal to you. Normal sexuality between a couple is what those two people feel meets their emotional and physical needs. It’s your relationship, not your sister’s, not your mother’s, and there is no gold standard number to aspire toward as a normal amount to get it on.

Your girlfriend who is always calling her partner “sweetie” and claims to be doing it every night may be flinging dishes at him when they get home, and they may sleep in separate bedrooms.

Even the most meticulous of sex researchers will never get accurate statistics on how often couples are having sex — because people tend to lie about sex. So don’t worry that your carnal activity isn’t measuring up to the cousin or girlfriend who claims she’s getting it every day. Because no one knows what’s really going on behind closed doors except the two people in that room. Though many of those closed-door secrets and challenges are revealed in “Sex After…Women Share How Intimacy Changes As Life Changes.”

Iris Krasnow is a bestselling author of relationship books and a popular keynote speaker on women’s issues. Connect with her on iriskrasnow.com.

https://legalmarketingreviewsforattorneys.wordpress.com/2015/06/18/is-no-sex-the-new-normal/

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COMMENT:

The time has come for parents to tell children the truth about sex and the fairytale. I love this feature and have seen Shirley do one of her talks, she is very passionate about this subject matter.

No sex please: the joys of a celibate life

It's not that they can't get it; it's just that they don't want it, full stop – meet the very modern women perfectly happy to be celibate or asexual. By Rebecca Seal

There are an awful lot of people very quietly not having sex in our loudly sexualised society. Recent research suggests that one in 20 couples is celibate, though not necessarily by mutual choice; while about one per cent of the population is asexual – that is, not sexually attracted to anyone.

Why, then, is not wanting sex still seen as the oddball option? At a time when teenagers face increasing peer pressure to lose their virginity and couples are expected to enjoy sex well into retirement – aided by the twin gods of Viagra and hormone replacement therapy – could celibacy and asexuality be the last sexual taboos?

'Questioning sex makes people very uneasy and there's a lot of stigma about not having sex,' says Hephzibah Anderson, who wrote the memoir Chastened (Vintage, £7.99) after choosing to be celibate for a year. 'But most of us will go through a dry spell at some point, and some people just aren't that into it. Why should they be mocked? One of the reasons I wrote the book was to try to bring celibacy back as an option.'

While people may dip in and out of celibacy, asexuality tends to be a permanent state. The Aven online asexual network has 40,000 members worldwide. Its founder, David Jay, says that being asexual can be isolating. 'For some, it's a lonely struggle,' he says. 'A lot of asexual people feel disempowered or broken, wondering where they fit into society, especially since it can seem as though sex is necessary for happiness.'

'Socially, we've made sex an imperative,' says Paula Hall, a sexual psychotherapist for Relate. 'Having a healthy sex life isn't seen as an optional extra, it's seen as essential, like a healthy diet, which is nonsense – we need to eat food in order to survive and function, but we don't need to have sex. It makes sense that some people might not want to. Sexuality is very fluid; some people have low or no sex drive, but if it doesn't cause them distress then it's not a dysfunction. We shouldn't make moral judgments.'

Shirley Yanez, 54, a life coach from Leicester, has not had sex for nine years

I had been sexually active from about 13 and was never really told anything about the dangers of unprotected sex. When I was 16 I had an abortion, but I carried on being carefree and thoughtless until my mid-thirties, when I met the man of my dreams. We got married and started trying for a baby. After about six months I decided to see a gynaecologist and to my horror discovered I had blocked fallopian tubes and was infertile. I had had chlamydia. My sexual behaviour had ruined my opportunity to settle down; I couldn't give my husband the baby he desperately wanted, and the marriage ended.

In my forties I set up a head-hunting firm in the City and gave up sex to focus on the business. I became more and more successful, but also more lonely. Then, in 1999, I went to Los Angeles to be maid of honour for my best friend. The best man was very attractive and, after a lot to drink, I went to bed with him. The sex was brilliant. I married him the next week, gave up my business, sold my house, put all my money into stocks and moved to LA.

But in 2000 the stock market crashed and I lost pretty much everything within a couple of weeks. The new husband didn't appear to be he person that he was when I had money. We divorced within a year.

In 2005, still in LA, I collapsed and was rushed to hospital. They told me I had a massive fibroid in my uterus and needed a full hysterectomy, which would cost thousands of dollars I didn't have; I couldn't afford medical insurance. Thankfully my old business partner sent me a ticket home and within a week I'd seen an NHS surgeon, who told me the fibroid could also be due to chlamydia.

While I recovered I had to sign on. Going to the job centre as an ex-millionaire felt awful. However, I was still alive. I began to see that my life of sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll had been my downfall – celibacy was the way forward. Now I run a website for women, venuscow.com, and do workshops where I talk about celibacy.

I try to explain to young girls that the risks they might run now can have devastating consequences in future, but I also meet a lot of mature women who are recently divorced, and, having had a terrible knock, are throwing themselves into relationships with younger men.

A lot of these women are inexperienced and don't realise that STDs are on the increase or understand that giving your body to a complete stranger when you're already in turmoil is really risky. I'm not saying that I will definitely never have sex again, but I will never be reckless with sex again.

Simone, 22, a law student from Manchester, is asexual and has never had sex

Asexuality is not experiencing sexual attraction and not having the feelings most people get when they look at or touch someone they're attracted to. During my teens I didn't go through what other people did. I wasn't even sure of my sexuality - I wasn't into boys, so I thought I must be a lesbian, but when I thought about girls they didn't appeal to me either.

For a while I called myself bisexual (which you could argue is technically correct since I have the same level of attraction to boys and girls: none). When I was 17 and my friends were in relationships I did try dating boys. We'd go to the cinema and I'd think we were there to watch a movie and they thought we were there to cuddle and kiss. I hated every moment of it, but I thought everyone hated it and forced themselves. When I talked to my family and they explained that most people enjoy that kind of thing, I decided that I must be really strange.

I was very confused until I was 18, when I had a conversation with a friend who asked if I might be asexual. I looked it up and felt it fitted. If I hadn't discovered the asexual community I would have continued to think something was wrong with me and could have fallen into a relationship I didn't want to be in – I think that has happened a lot to other, especially older, people.

We tend to use terms like 'a-romantic', 'bi-romantic' and 'hetero-romantic'. Someone like me who's a-romantic will generally have no desire for a romantic relationship (or a physical relationship, at least). Someone who's bi-romantic is interested in romantic relationships but has no preference as to gender. Homo-romantic and hetero-romantic work like homosexual or heterosexual but without the sexual attraction element.

I was in a relationship briefly with a man who is also asexual, but there was nothing in it that I couldn't get from friends. We spent most evenings together, going for walks, going out to dinner, playing games or watching TV, during which we would hold hands or cuddle on the sofa. We didn't share a bed and that's something I personally wouldn't want to do.

I don't really enjoy physical contact but many asexual people do, and, among those, there's a huge range. Some people don't mind hugs and holding hands but dislike kissing, for example. A lot of asexual people do want relationships and children. Here, the number of options is as varied as your imagination. They could have sex for the sake of getting pregnant, otherwise there's adoption or surrogacy.

If I ever wanted a relationship it would be for the sake of company, conversation, security and practicality. It wouldn't matter what gender the person was or what they looked like.

I'm not prudish and I don't have any hang-ups about sexuality. I'm a really indulgent person and quite sensual in a non-sexual way – I love good food. If I had desires, I'd be indulging them. I'm not exercising self-restraint and it's not the same as choosing to be celibate.

I've had a lot of rude reactions and, when I try to explain, a lot of people cut me off with, 'I understand – you're scared,' or, 'I understand – you haven't met the right person.' It's frustrating because I'm the person who is asexual, and they've never come across it before but still slap their own interpretation on me. It's very rude and patronising, as though I only think I'm asexual.

Suzie King, 56, a counsellor from Cambridge, has been celibate for six years and runs the dating website Platonic Partners

I haven't switched off biologically or become frigid – I still have a passionate nature. When I made the decision to take a break from sex I had come to the end of a difficult four-year relationship – I was trying to be a stepmother and it wasn't working. I had compassion burn-out. The compassion and creativity I did have left I decided to put into new businesses.

I started a platonic dating website (platonicpartners.co.uk) after a friend of mine got very depressed because he was becoming impotent; he feared he'd never have a relationship again and attempted suicide. I sat by his bed in the hospital thinking how dreadful it was that someone should judge themselves so harshly because one bit of their anatomy didn't work. It made me wonder if there were other people out there like him.

I researched and found that at any one time there are five million people in Britain with sexual dysfunction, never mind asexual people and people like me. There are probably a couple of million celibate people in Britain, but there were no dating sites for people who wanted love but not sex.

When I set up Platonic Partners some men in the local pub were really nasty about it. 'What do you want to go and set up a weird website like that for? There's no one out there who doesn't want sex, and if they don't they're mad.' I was laughed off local radio and television programmes, too. Anything that's different, people are scared of – like homosexuality 20 years ago. But there's a good philosophical motivation for celibacy: I think people are sick of sex being everywhere and the world needs fewer babies.

Libido is a very dynamic energy and it's my belief that you can channel it into other things. When I was sexually active I had a tantric partner for a very long time Tantra is not about orgasm, but about channelling energy up out of the lower part of the body and into the heart and head.

What seems to happen along the way is that you get a sort of whole-body orgasm and a glow that lasts for days. It is the best sex anyone can ever have, but it takes a lot of work and discipline. However, what happens when you've practised tantra for a long while is that you can reach the bliss stage without the physical bit.

Recently I sat on the beach and meditated for two hours and I came to a place of calm and felt filled with light, just as I would have if I'd been having a tantric session. So it's not as if I'm missing the end product.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/sex/8168531/No-sex-please-the-joys-of-a-celibate-life.html

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Clara Hughes CANADIAN OLYMPIAN- Finishes Bike Ride -July 3 update-from the mouths of the children- JUNE 26 UPDATE- CANADA DAY'S COMING-JULY 1- GET UR CANADA ON -4 CANADA OLYMPIAN CLARA HUGHES BIG RIDE 4 MENTAL HEALTH FOLKS- send her tweets of support and love- Hey it’s Canada –Mental Health matters. NEWS UPDATES-Teen/Youth/PTSD/Abuse/Bullying stuff /Our Olympian Clara's completes journey 4mentalheal-let's talk-July 1- Clara's in Ottawa CANADA DAY 2014/SEPT 24 NS RCMP- preventing violent encounters -respect homeless and psychiatric problems DO LIST

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CANADA MILITARY NEWS- tips 4 DISABLED- seniors-- fire - how 2 make do and some hints- Canada/USA/Aussie/Europe/UK etc. from dressing 2 shopping 2 living- feeeck em all...do it your way...oops sorry Pope.

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CANADA: True Patriot Love Foundation launches Highway of Heroes concert tour

Saturday, July 11, 2015

well yes.... what a party it will be...QUOTE: The Aug. 14 event, a masquerade that will take place in a wheelchair-accessible theatre, is believed to be the first of its kind in Canada.

Most discussions on accessibility focus on physical barriers, but the event’s organizers said it’s also important to look at the emotional and social hurdles that people with disabilities face, such as the widespread belief that they aren’t sexual beings.

“Access (to sexuality) is such a major barrier for people with disabilities — I don’t think there’s any other group in society that, depending on the level of their physical limitation, can’t even pleasure themselves sexually,” said Stella Palikarova, a disability awareness consultant.

Toronto group organizes ‘Deliciously Disabled’ sex party

http://metronews.ca/news/canada/1449612/group-organizes-sex-party-for-disabled-people/

13 Photographs Inside the Sex Lives of People With Disabilities (NSFW)

Olivier Fermariello's images will change your definition of beauty.

http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/news/a30735/photos-sex-lives-of-people-with-disabilities/

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CHINA:

Learning how to flirt

Updated: 2015-01-16 07:10

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ITALY- Course aims to train 'sex assistants' for disabled

http://nova0000scotia.blogspot.ca/2015/06/canada-military-news-disabilities-are.html

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ASEXUAL IS COOL- PLATONIC LOVE IS ENOUGH FOR MILLIONS AND MILLIONS GLOGALLY

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Saturday, July 11, 2015

well yes.... what a party it will be...QUOTE: The Aug. 14 event, a masquerade that will take place in a wheelchair-accessible theatre, is believed to be the first of its kind in Canada.

Most discussions on accessibility focus on physical barriers, but the event’s organizers said it’s also important to look at the emotional and social hurdles that people with disabilities face, such as the widespread belief that they aren’t sexual beings.

“Access (to sexuality) is such a major barrier for people with disabilities — I don’t think there’s any other group in society that, depending on the level of their physical limitation, can’t even pleasure themselves sexually,” said Stella Palikarova, a disability awareness consultant.

Toronto group organizes ‘Deliciously Disabled’ sex party

http://metronews.ca/news/canada/1449612/group-organizes-sex-party-for-disabled-people/

13 Photographs Inside the Sex Lives of People With Disabilities (NSFW)

Olivier Fermariello's images will change your definition of beauty.

http://www.cosmopolitan.com/sex-love/news/a30735/photos-sex-lives-of-people-with-disabilities/

---------------

CHINA:

Learning how to flirt

Updated: 2015-01-16 07:10

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ITALY- Course aims to train 'sex assistants' for disabled

http://nova0000scotia.blogspot.ca/2015/06/canada-military-news-disabilities-are.html ---------------- BLOGSPOT:

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ASEXUAL IS COOL- PLATONIC LOVE IS ENOUGH FOR MILLIONS AND MILLIONS GLOGALLY

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