Here’s a lovely piece…of erotic art by Milo Manara:

When writing a sex-positive blog like this, it’s easy to forget that our American culture still contains a lot of people who are not sex positive, plus a great many more whose sex-positivity, if any, is strongly cabined by an expectation that “proper” sex is a purely marital affair. All of which leads (even in this new millenium of ours) to folks who find themselves to be both ill-informed and virgin on their wedding nights. Let me present the following window into that culture, in the form of Mormon honeymoon advice (complete with a heated argument in the comments about this suggestion to ditch the special Mormon underpants):

Ditch the garments during a majority of the honeymoon. I mean, you need to do what feels right for you, but I, for one, did not feel the least bit sexy in my garments and cloistering myself in the bathroom to change into lingerie seemed to kill the passion of the moment(s). You can just look at it as 24hr foreplay.

Hey, it wasn’t just a fluke. Last week we posted the link about using Google to get sex, and this week Scoble is back with a link to this story about how Rory got Googled, and wound up getting harvested:

Google: I owe you in a very big way. There are six billion people in the world, approximately five zillion web pages cataloged in your little magnetic platters, and you somehow managed against the odds to deliver a highly intelligent (major: aviation science / minor: journalism/creative writing), dynamic, gorgeous human being to my doorstep.

I was busy last month when Violet Blue wrote up the Vintage Spanking Photos blog:

A wonderfully simple concept, the Vintage Spanking Blog features a regularly updated installment of pictures of lusciously round, imminently smackable female bottoms from times gone by … or at least squirmier, sore-cheeked times of yore…

Busy I was, but I did make a mental note that I wanted to pass on the link. This is “pretty bottoms” week on Vintage Spanking:

Mmm, indeed it is.

A question that comes up repeatedly in the sex blog world is “Why aren’t there more male-written sex blogs?” Start clicking links, take a poll — it quickly becomes clear that there are a lot more women than men writing about sex in the blogging world. Focus on blogs that (unlike this one) are mostly introspective and personal, and the imbalance comes into even sharper focus.

Susie Bright, having recently returned from a Blogher conference of mostly female bloggers, touches on this question in the course of a long and interesting essay on gender bias in the blog world. Unfortunately, when she tries to answer the question, she hits us male sex bloggers up aside the head with a big chunk of her own gender bias, and I’m just not willing to sit here and take it quietly. She writes:

Why don’t straight men include sexuality in their blog writing– aside from the resolutely anonymous few that sex-blog professionally?

Because outside of the “adult” world, a straight man writing about his sexual life– his erotic self-reflection– is considered feminizing. It would make him a pussy to his peers.

I fall squarely within her category of the “resolutely anonymous few that sex-blog professionally”, and I’m calling bullshit. Read my archives, I could give a shit less what “my peers” (the male ones, or the subset of them who could use “pussy” as an insult) think of me. They aren’t right in the head, and they don’t seem to like women very much. Indeed, in Susie’s own interview with me, I spoke of my belief that a lot of guys are “broken” when it comes to their views of women. Why would I let the views of broken people affect my behavior?

Ironically enough, Susie gets a lot closer to the truth just two paragraphs down the page of her essay. Here, and she’s talking about women even though she says “folks”, she says:

Some folks at our panel talked about the risk of hurting loved ones if we blog about our sexual lives. They were concerned with boundaries, respect, and discretion– timeless issues for authors in any era.

Those concerns are about ETHICS.

Damn straight they are, and the ethical concern goes a lot further toward explaining why I don’t write much about my own sex life than the fanciful notion that I’m worried some misogynist male shithead is going to call me a pussy. Why aren’t these ethical concerns (expressed by the women at Susie’s conference) supposed to be available to me, a man?

This is really just an extension of the basic “Don’t kiss and tell” rule. Yes, there’s a gender bias built into that rule, or at least reflected by it, because it is (or, at least, was taught to me as) a rule for the protection of women. The women I know don’t seem to have been taught it, or taught that it should apply to their discussions of men. That’s because — I’m speculating — men aren’t seen as being so vulnerable to reputational damage when their sexuality becomes a matter of public discussion.

So there it is, male sex blogggers. You’re damned if you tell (because it’s just not safe for women to have the details of their sexual lives broadcast, and a real man doesn’t put a woman he loves, or even “just” fucks, at risk) and damned if you don’t (because, Susie says, you’re just a coward who remains silent because you fear “feminizing” censure from the lowest of other men). I know not what course others may take, but as for me, I’ll continue doing what I’ve always done — speaking when it seems right to me, and be damned what anybody else thinks.

What can I say? J and I talked a lot, he gets the orgasm thing (thanks for your help there) but the sexblogger thing has squicked him. It’s been alot of back and forth, he’s definitely interested in some kinds of exploring but he’s a smalltown boy and this is a small town we live in…..and there are issues from his ex-wife that he’s trying to deal with. Including some sex stuff. So I think it’s all just too much for him. He says he “sees somebody different now” when he looks at me, and doesn’t know who that is.

Before anybody gets all down on him like happened here and here, J’s attitude is just fine in alot of ways, he says he couldn’t tell that I came at all that day, he’s a real sweet guy that’s just got too much to handle right now. We may end up together some time down the road…..but I’m not counting on that. I’m thinking I need to get out of Lutheranville. So I guess it’s back to Sssh.com for awhile.

So, next question is, when should the sexblogger subject come up in a relationship? It’s a trust thing for me, I don’t talk about this dirty little habit with most people because it just isn’t their business. And telling a guy too early will probably give him a whole barrelfull of wrong ideas.

This is fun: